It must be admitted that the greater portion of mediæval history, whatever its true character, is shrouded in an obscurity which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate. But the same cannot be said of the close of that period,—the transitional era that preceded what we are accustomed to consider as the dawn of modern civilization. For Continental Europe, at least, the fifteenth century is hardly less susceptible of a thorough revelation than the sixteenth. The chroniclers and memoir-writers are more communicative than those of the succeeding age. The documentary evidence, if still deficient, is rapidly accumulating. The conspicuous personages of the time are daily becoming more palpable and familiar to us. Joan of Arc has glided from the luminous haze of legend and romance into the clearer light of history. Philippe de Comines has a higher fame than any eye-witness and narrator of later events. Louis XI. discloses to posterity those features which he would fain have concealed from his contemporaries. And confronting Louis stands another figure, not less prominent in their own day, not less striking when viewed from our day,—that of Charles the Bold, of Burgundy.
The career of this latter prince has generally been regarded as merely a romantic episode in European history. Scott has painted it in vivid colors in two of his most brilliant fictions,—"Quentin Durward," and "Anne of Geierstein." But, perhaps from this very notion in regard to its lack of historical importance, the reality has never been depicted in fulness or with detail, except in M. de Barante's elegant rifacimento of the French chroniclers of the fifteenth century. That the subject was, however, one of a very different character has been apparent to the scholars in France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, who during the last twenty years have made it a special object of their researches. A stronger light has been thrown upon every part of it, and an entirely new light upon many portions. Charles has assumed his rightful position, as the "Napoleon of the Middle Ages," whose ambition and whose fall exercised, a powerful influence on the destinies of the principal European states.
But the labors through which this has been accomplished are as yet unknown to the general mass of readers. The results lie scattered in quarters difficult of access, and in forms that repel rather than attract the glance. Chronicles written in tough French and tougher German have been published in provincial towns, and have scarcely found their way beyond those localities. Various learned societies and commissions have edited documents which would be nearly unintelligible without a wide comparison and complete elucidation. Single, isolated points have been treated and discussed by those who took for granted a familiarity on the part of the reader with the general facts of the case. To combine this mass of evidence, to sift and establish it, and to weave it into a symmetrical narrative, is the aim of the work before us. The idea was conceived while the author was engaged in assisting the late Mr. Prescott in cognate branches of study. That great and generous writer entered heartily into the project, and made use of the ample facilities which he is well known to have possessed for the collection of the necessary materials. The correspondence which he opened for this purpose led to the belief that he had himself undertaken the task; and great satisfaction was expressed by the eminent Belgian archivist, M. Gachard, that a pen which had already given so much delight and instruction to the world was about to be engaged on so attractive a theme. But Prescott was not more ardent in the prosecution of his own inquiries than in furthering those of others; and he displayed in this, as in many like instances, the same noble spirit which, since his death, has been so gracefully acknowledged by Mr. Motley.
Of the manner in which the work is executed it would be, perhaps, premature to speak. We have no hesitation, however, in assigning to Mr. Kirk's most fascinating narrative a place with the great achievements of genius in the department he has chosen to fill. His advent among the historians will be welcomed the world over. A glance at the copy placed in our hands has enabled us to indicate its nature. The two volumes about to appear bring the story down to the crisis of Charles's fate, the moment when he became involved in a war with the Swiss. A third volume, now in course of preparation, will complete the eventful tale.
We think it not unlikely that to the American reader the first half of the history will seem, at the present time, to possess a peculiar interest. For this part of the work contains the last great struggle between the French crown and the feudal princes,—a struggle involving the question whether France was to form one nation or to be divided into a number of petty states. Such a struggle is now going on in our own country. The question we are debating is whether the nation is to be disintegrated or consolidated. The theory of "State sovereignty" is nothing more than the old theory of feudal independence. "I love France so well," said Charles of Burgundy, "that I would fain see it ruled over by six kings instead of one." "I love the republic founded by our fathers so well," says Jefferson Davis, "that I would fain see it split up into several hostile confederacies." When we see that France, under the direction of a Louis XI., came out of that struggle triumphant, we shall not despair of our own future, trusting rather to the guidance of that Providence which is working out its own great designs than to instruments little cognizant of its plans and too often unconscious of its influence.
Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and Other Papers. By THOMAS FULLER, D.D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
There certainly never was a greater piece of publishing felicity, in its seasonableness, than this entire reprint. The "Thoughts" are as good, for whatever is bad or trying in our times, as they were hundreds of years ago; so that one might almost suspect the title of the book for an invention, and consider many a passage in it to be new matter, only—after the fashion of some who, in essay or story, try to reproduce the ancients—skilfully put in the manner of the old preacher. To all who would have religious comfort in the distractions of present events we especially recommend this incomparable divine's truly devout and thoughtful pages. None of our authors have succeeded so well in providing for our own wants. The sea of our political agitations might become smooth under the well-beaten oil which he pours out. The divisions made by the sword to-day would heal with the use of his prescriptions. Human nature never grows old; and America, in her Civil War, is the former England over again now.
Sticklers for a style of conventional dignity and smooth decorum may think to despatch Fuller's claims by denominating him a quaint writer. This would be what is vulgarly called a snap-judgment indeed. His quaintness never runs into superficial conceit, but embodies always a deep and comprehensive wisdom. He insinuates truth with a friendly indirectness, and banters us out of our folly with a foreign instance. Plutarch or Montaigne is not more happy in historical parallels, for personal reflection and sober application to actual duty. Never was fancy more alert in the service of piety. His imagination is as luminous as Sir Thomas Browne's, and, if less peculiar and original in its combinations, rises into identity with more child-like and lofty worship. Ever ready to fall on his knees, there is in his adoration no touch of cant, or of that other-worldliness which Coleridge complains of as interfering with the pressing affairs and obligations of the present. No pen ever drew a firmer boundary between sentiment and sentimentality. But never was shrewd knowledge of this world so humane, keen observation so kind, wit so tender, and humor so sanctified, united with resolution by all means to teach and save mankind so invariably strong.
While so much of our religious literature is a weak appeal to shallow feeling and a gross affront to reason, it is refreshing to meet with an author who helps us to obey the great precept of the Master, and put mind and strength, as well as heart and soul, into our love of God. Indeed, this precious treatise, or assemblage of little treatises, so rational without form of logic, so convenient to be read for a moment or all day long, and so harmonious in its diverse headings, should be everywhere circulated as a larger sort of religious tract. We hear of exhortations impressed in letters on little loaves for the soldiers to eat. We wish every military man or civilian, intelligent enough for the relish, could have Fuller's sentences to feed on, as, beyond all rhetoric, bread of life.
So let a welcome go to the old worthy, our hearts' brother, as he seems to rise out of his two-centuries' grave. At a time when Satan appears again to have been let loose for a season, and we know the power of evil, described in the Apocalypse, in the fearful headway made by the rebellious conspiracy of his servants, carried to such a point of success, that statesmen, and scholars, and preachers, even of so-called liberal views, on the farther shore, bow to it the knee, while the frowning cannon at every point shows how remote the Millennium still is,—thanks for the counsels, fit to our need, of a writer still fresh, while the main host of his contemporaries are long since obsolete, with dead volumes for their tombs. How many precious quotations from his leaves we might make, but that we prefer to invite a perusal of the whole!