contract a close alliance with Russia for the settlement of the Eastern question in the Mediterranean, we discard the alliance of France, and with two wars in progress in Asia, we kindle all the elements of strife in Europe. We have said that Russia was the only power which made Affghanistan formidable to us, but we retract the expression; we ourselves have made Affghanistan more formidable than it ever was before, or could have become by any other training or influence. Henceforth it is formidable by the injustice of our invasion,-by the recollection of scenes in which a British regiment, a British envoy and a British general suffered not only death but disgrace, and by the vindictive feelings it has kindled beyond the Indus. It is formidable by the cost it has thrown upon the finances of two empires; and most of all we trust that the history of the war in Affghanistan may be for ever formidable as a warning to statesmen of what effects may follow the mistakes of policy and the misuse of power.

Would that it were possible to pause here, in expectation that the removal of the authors of all this mischief might lead to more hopeful and secure relations between Great Britain and the nations of Central Asia! But whilst Lord Ellenborough is celebrating his triumphs with a display of pompous absurdity, only equalled by the language of his proclamations, the army under General Pollock has earned from its successes a kind of distinction, which is, if possible, less enviable than that which attaches to the recollection of General Elphinstone's misfortunes. That army returns to the frontiers of India imbrued with the blood of peoples, who, in their savage bravery, have done no more wrong than every nation which has sustained a struggle for national independence. In spite of our own national interests and credit, the old impulse will have its way. It is impossible for Englishmen not to feel that the Affghan people have shaken off the yoke of a foreign power by their own energy, and that such an effort is not the less gallant because we were ourselves the aggressors. Unhappily, such is the issue of this contest, that not only we are compelled to respect the cause and the national spirit of our enemies when they are most fatal to ourselves, but even in the midst of triumph and what is called retribution, we feel only the more bitterly that all this bloodshed has been vain or worse than vain.

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ARTICLE IV.

Lebensbilder aus dem Befreiungskriege. 2 vols. Jena: Fromman, 1841. (Biographical Sketches from the time of the War of Freedom.)

IT has frequently been remarked, and with justice, that while the curtain of secrecy is withdrawn, after a respectable period has intervened, from the arcana of most European cabinets— while in France and England, by the publication of state papers, diplomatic and military despatches and private correspondence of illustrious individuals, sure beacons are from time to time set up, serving to light the future annalist through the obscure nooks of the world's history, and enabling him correctly and justly to appreciate the real spirit and configuration of past events,-Germany alone presents an exception to the rule. The oracles are dumb: a taciturnity prevails amongst them almost as profound as that imposed of yore on the initiated, at the mysterious rites of the august Ceres. We do not exaggerate; let our readers turn for a moment to the transactions at the close of the last, and opening of the present century. A series of tremendous events, second to none on record, ancient or modern, convulses Germany; havoc is cried, and the dogs of war, foreign and domestic, scour her fair plains to their utmost confines; princes and potentates are knocked down and set up like ninepins, and finally, one and all lie prostrate at the foot of the modern Attila. For years does the land groan under the crushing incubus: and then she rises; rises as one man; rends her bonds asunder, and Germany is once more free. The million meanwhile look on, assaying to discover, as best they may, the why and wherefore of what they have witnessed. The general results are clear and undisputed; the individual causes are but imperfectly known or only guessed at. Like the audience of a Marionette theatre, we gaze and marvel at the inexplicable movements, at the miraculous sights presented in succession to our puzzled senses; while the primum mobile of the drama, he who "sways the puppets, pulls the strings," lies perdu,

smiling complacently at the futile efforts of the mass to unriddle the phænomena. Since the Peace, the French press has teemed with interesting revelations bearing on the events of the war; the sayings and doings of most of the principal lions on that side have long found their way to the public; not in all cases, we allow, from equally authentic sources. Not so in Germany. With the furor biographicus, even in its most mitigated phase, they have as yet been uninoculated. Let us not be mistaken, we allude to the leaders in the senate and the camp. Literary men have found chroniclers enough and to spare; but the merits and demerits of statesmen and warriors are still matter of speculation and controversy. Von Stein, for instance-what do we know of "Cato" Stein, the unflinching patriot and consummate statesman, but from very mangled and desultory accounts? No credible biography of him has ever appeared*.

His letters to Gagern and Arndt are doubtless valuable as far as they go, but instead of appeasing, they only whet our desire to know more. Doctor Johnson says somewhere, the necessity of complying with the times and of sparing persons is the great impediment of Biography! But most of Von Stein's contemporaries are now in their graves; and with all due deference, we contend that truth and justice ought to love the light. It is lesemajesty, we say, to the sacred muse of history, to shroud over the full glory of the great and good, lest we should at the same time risk laying bare the shame of the wicked and the vile. But secret history has been hitherto a sealed book to the Germans. Tell it not in Gath,' cried the censor, and censors must be obeyed. In this posture of affairs we cannot but hail with pleasure any accession to our knowledge, any allowed infraction of the silent system. And this is eminently our feeling in perusing the

Since writing the above, we learn that this desideratum is at length to be filled up. M. Pertz, head keeper of the Royal Library at Berlin, has been entrusted by the relatives of the late statesman with all his posthumous papers; and this gentleman's well-known editorial talents make us confident that he will produce a work every way worthy of the theme.

A ridiculous affair, confirmatory of the above remarks, is now pending at Berlin. It is well known that certain members of the Berlin Academy have been charged with preparing a Life of Frederick the Great, compiled from original documents. The Royal Archive office has however refused to place all the papers at their disposal, contrary to the express conditions on which they undertook the work.

volumes before us, for they refer to subjects once pregnant with deep import to England. The success or failure of the war in Germany was as much bound up with our own most vital interests as the Peninsular campaign. The one was fought with our men, the other with our money; but both tended indirectly to one object-the preservation and independence of Britain.

The writer of the Lebensbilder has thought proper, perhaps for good and sufficient reason, to remain incognito; however, we do not see why we should be so scrupulous, and can inform our readers that it is Baron Hormayr. One or two sly attempts, we see, are made, to throw the public on a wrong scent; but were it by nothing else, we should have detected him by his peculiar "buzz prose" style, as Canning would have called it. This is in fact the great drawback on his acknowledged merits as an historian. His profuse stores of knowledge are like young bears not yet licked into shape by the mother. His sentences frequently contain the materials, not for one but for a dozen sentences; while sudden sparkles of intelligence, and remarks betraying much acumen and profound thought, are too often stifled in a flood of tasteless bombast.

But as Hormayr is a personage who at one time occupied no insignificant place in the arena of German politics, he merits a formal introduction to our readers. The celebrated Johannes Von Müller thus writes of him to the Archduke John of Austria, in 1801: "Le Jeune Baron d'Hormayr "d'Innsbrouc est beaucoup chez moi, c'est un jeune homme qui à la plus grande application (le moyen âge de sa patrie en fut l'objet jusqu'ici), réunit une sagacité et une vivacité "étonnante et d'excellens principes, et qui montrera un jour "beaucoup de valeur dans les affaires de sa patrie." And again, "j'en suis sûr jouera avec le tems et peut-être dans

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peu un des principales rôles dans le Tyrol.” The prophecy of the acute historian was destined to be in great part verified. While yet very young, a high and confidential post was conferred on Hormayr by the Austrian government; and so favourable was the opinion inspired by his talents at Vienna, that before the breaking out of the war of 1809, he was the person selected to concert and direct the plan of the

Tyrolese insurrection; an insurrection yielding not even to the Sicilian Vespers in the skilfulness of its design, and in the silent yet desperate energy of its operation. During this memorable struggle he personally aided and directed the endeavours of his countrymen, under the title of General Intendant of Tyrol. On the disastrous failure of the enterprise he returned to Vienna. Subsequently he was denounced by one Roschman to the Emperor Francis, as a person concerned in treasonable practices against the Austrian government. Vehement protestations were made of Hormayr's (i.e. the author's) innocence of the charge; be this as it may, in the dead of a terrible night in March 1813, Hormayr's lodgings at Vienna were suddenly beset by a strong body of police, who quietly bid him attend them as their prisoner.

"In a street of one of the suburbs," as he goes on to relate, "Hormayr and his attendants, alighting from the fiacre, entered a capacious coach which was in waiting. For 500 (German) miles they travelled in this conveyance, never halting till they reached the infamous fortress of Munkács, on the frontiers of Transylvania. This spot was once renowned as the abode of Rakoczy, and as the fane of Hungarian liberty. Afterwards it became a tomb, combining the horrors at once of the Bridge of Sighs, of the swamp-dungcons and of the leaden roofs (Pozzi and Piombi) of old Venice. It is now reduced by fire to a heap of ashes. The wall of No. 4, where Hormayr was confined, had been sooted over with algebraic computations and verses of despair, by the hand of Riedel, preceptor to the Emperor Francis. Later it became the miserable abode of Prince Ipsilante. On completing their very harassing journey the commissioners delivered Hormayr into the hands of Major General Czapka, as a prisoner of state, Hilbert by name,' for whose safe custody he was to provide, treating him however with decency and respect. A heavy responsibility, it was added, would devolve on him if he allowed anybody either to see the prisoner, or to know of his being there."

He was afterward transferred to Spielberg, a name familiar to Englishmen as the scene of Silvio Pellico's sufferings. More fortunate than the Italian, Hormayr was liberated after little more than a year's confinement, and after a fashion not less mysterious than the mode of his arrest. On the abdication of Napoleon, the Emperor Francis despatched a courier post-haste to Brünn, with orders for Hormayr to be set at liberty forthwith.

"He thus intended to have it believed that the arrest took place by command of Napoleon, and that with his fall no further motives existed for