ART. III.—A History of England in the Eighteenth Century. By WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY. Two vols., 8vo. London: 1878.

HISTORY may be written in many ways. The earliest and the most attractive form of the records of past times is that which perpetuates the actions and the speeches of the men who lived in them. The interest inspired by these narratives is a dramatic interest, and it is by strong personal associations that the events themselves are rooted in the memory. To nine-tenths of mankind history has no other meaning. They care infinitely less for the changes and incidents of policy and war than for the men by whom those changes were accomplished. The siege of Troy is impersonated in Achilles and Hector; the Bible history in Moses and Abraham, Joseph and King David; the Persian war in Xerxes and Themistocles ; the wars of the Roman Republic in Scipio and Hannibal, and its fall in Cæsar, and so on through the chiefs and rulers of men until the struggles immediately preceding our own times are summed up in the Napoleonic legend. The men who, for good or for evil, have swayed the destinies of their age, have, in the eyes of the vulgar, made its history.

Another form of historical composition may be termed epic. It seeks mainly to be a faithful record of events. As the great current sweeps onwards, it bears along with it all human effort and human greatness. One occurrence seems to lead irresistibly to another, branching out into innumerable and remote consequences; insomuch that as the more dramatic theory of history is based on a lofty conception of freedom of action, this points rather to an universal necessity overruling the affairs of men. The heroic is lost in the politic character; but it is here that the student of history finds the most ample materials for research and comparison, and it is from the study of institutions and the sequence of events, rather than from the imagery of historic greatness, that the philosophy of history may be evolved. The late Mr. Buckle carried his theory of the operation of general causes in history to such an extreme that he denied, or at least disputed, the effects of personal genius and energy. But on this point Mr. Lecky, the author of the work now before us, has an interesting passage, which it may be well to cite in this place :

'It is not difficult, however, to show that this, like most very absolute historical generalisations, is an exaggeration, and several instances might be cited in which a slight change in the disposition of circumVOL. CXLVIII. NO. CCCIII.

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stances, or in the action of individuals, would have altered the whole course of history. There are, indeed, few streams of tendency, however powerful, that might not, at some early period of their career, have been arrested or deflected. Thus the whole religious and moral sentiment of the most advanced nations of the world has been mainly determined by the influence of that small nation which inhabited Palestine; but there have been periods when it was more than probable that the Jewish race would have been as completely absorbed or extirpated as were the ten tribes, and every trace of the Jewish writings blotted from the world. Not less distinctive, not less unique in its kind, has been the place which the Greek, and especially the Athenian, intellect has occupied in history. It has been the great dynamic agency in European civilisation. Directly or indirectly it has contributed more than any other single influence, to stimulate its energies, to shape its intellectual type, to determine its political ideals and canons of taste, to impart to it the qualities that distinguish it most widely from the Eastern world. But how much of this influence would have arisen or have survived if, as might easily have happened, the invasion of Xerxes had succeeded, and an Asiatic despotism been planted in Greece? It is a mere question of strategy whether Hannibal, after Cannæ, might not have marched upon Rome and burnt it to the ground, and had he done so, the long train of momentous consequences that flowed from the Roman Empire would never have taken place, and a nation widely different in its position, its character, and its pursuits, would have presided over the developments of civilisation. It is, no doubt, true that the degradation or disintegration of Oriental Christianity assisted the triumph of Mohammedanism; but if Mahomet had been killed in one of the first skirmishes of his career, there is no reason to believe that a great monotheistic and military religion would have been organised in Arabia, destined to sweep with resistless fanaticism over an immense part both of the Pagan and of the Christian world, and to establish itself for many centuries and in three continents as a serious rival to Christianity. As Gibbon truly says, had Charles Martel been defeated at the battle of Poitiers, Mohammedanism would have almost certainly overspread the whole of Gallic and Teutonic Europe, and the victory of the Christians was only gained after several days of doubtful and indecisive struggle. The obscure blunder of some forgotten captain, who perhaps moved his troops to the right when he should have moved them to the left, may have turned the scale, and determined the future of Europe. Even the changes of the French Revolution, prepared as they undoubtedly were by a long train of irresistible causes, might have worn a wholly different complexion had the Duke of Burgundy succeeded Lewis XIV. and directed, with the intelligence and the liberality that were generally expected from the pupil of Fénelon, the government of his country. Profound and searching changes in the institutions of France were inevitable, but had they been effected peacefully, legally, and gradually, had the shameless scenes of the Regency and of Lewis XV. been avoided, that frenzy of democratic enthusiasm which has been the most distinctive product of the Revolution, and which has passed, almost like a new

religion, into European life, might never have arisen, and the whole Napoleonic episode, with its innumerable consequences, would never have occurred.' (Vol. i. pp. 14-16.)

We must, therefore, acquit Mr. Lecky of any tendency to adopt Mr. Buckle's celebrated paradox, and, indeed, he leans at times to the opposite belief, like Pascal when he said that a grain of gravel obstructing a passage might have terminated the life of Cromwell and changed the fate of England. But Mr. Lecky has not the less adopted a method of writing history which is peculiar to himself. He begins by discarding what he terms the personalities of history, and he suppresses nearly all that is of a purely biographical, parliamentary, or military character. The consequence is, that although some of his portraits of the men of the time are executed with his usual candour and discrimination, he nowhere exhibits them in action; the dramatic element is entirely wanting. Nor does he attempt to give us a connected narrative of events. The wars of Marlborough, the struggles of party in the House of Commons, the diplomatic negotiations with Holland, Austria, and France, the transactions which led to the union with Scotland, the financial measures of Sir Robert Walpole, are related in the most cursory manner, and the particulars of these memorable occurrences must be sought elsewhere, or, as the phrase is, 'taken for read.' It is true that they have often been recorded before, and by none better than by the late Lord Stanhope, though not, it must be said, as Lord Macaulay would have described them, had he lived to complete that portion of his work, which he was of all men best fitted to execute, and which we have most reason to regret.

Mr. Lecky's method of writing history is, therefore, entirely critical. It resembles, though in a more complete and extended shape, that form of historical composition which has been created by the periodical literature of the present day. It consists of a series of ingenious speculations and remarks, suggested by the course of events, and illustrated by a prodigious amount of minute details, collected with great care in an extended range of reading and research, to throw light on the manners of the age. From this point of view his work is perfectly successful. It combines a great many facts with a great deal of thought: in his facts he is singularly accurate, and his reflections are always suggested by a liberal and ingenuous spirit. Except when he speaks of Ireland, in a portion of the work to which we shall revert hereafter, he never assumes the tone or temper of a partisan. He has no passionate likings or aversions, and the actions of public men have never been discussed in more

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philosophical and dispassionate language. His style is equable and pure, sometimes rising to eloquence, but never straining after rhetorical effect. Few books, therefore, of the present time reflect more credit on their author, or deserve to be more read by a cultivated public. But, to express our meaning without disguise, we think that his work might more fitly be described as what the French term a Tableau de Mours than as a History of England in the Eighteenth Century; and its true character would have been more accurately expressed if he had omitted the word History' in his title-page, and called the book simply England in the Eighteenth Century.' Indeed, this is the running title of the work on every left-hand page of it. Mr. Lecky shines as an essayist rather than as an historian. His disquisitions on the moral and social aspects of the times, on aristocracy, on marriage and divorce, on the influence of religious sects, on cruelty and humanity, on sports, on the habits of society, on the tone of literature, and the state of the arts, are the most finished parts of his book, and those which contain the largest amount of novelty and amusement. He rambles at pleasure through these topics, just as the fancy of the moment leads him, and though the result is a mosaic picture rather than a work of consummate art, his varied reading and his pleasing style render it both instructive and entertaining. It would be easy to cull from his pages a cento of anecdotes illustrating the eighteenth century and the manners of our forefathers. One wonders if our own grandchildren will differ as much from ourselves as we evidently differ from our great-grandfathers. We only hope they will make as much progress in the arts and refinements of life as has been made by the last two generations. To us it would seem preferable to be transported back to the days of Elizabeth or the Stuarts, rather than to those of the intriguing politicians and roystering squires who lived a hundred and fifty years ago. There can hardly have been a time when party spirit was more senseless or more fierce, when the Court was more profligate, the Church more torpid, the people more ignorant, and manners more coarse than they were in the days of which Lord Hervey and Fielding have left a too faithful picture to excite the disgust of posterity.

We propose, however, not to dwell on these scenes, as they have already been reproduced to the public by a highly competent critic, but rather to examine the historical portions of the work, which Mr. Lecky doubtless regards as the most important part of his undertaking, and which, though fragmentary, are of undoubted interest.

The political history of England in the eighteenth century is marked, in Mr. Lecky's view, by two great divisions. The rule of the Whigs, extending from the later days of William and Anne, through the reigns of the two first Georges, to the accession of George III.; and the rule of the Tories, extending throughout the long reign of that sovereign and his immediate successor. The exceptions to this general observation, when the Opposition stumbled casually into office, were inconsiderable. The fact being so, it seems to us that this division was really determined by a consideration of a higher order. The first half of the eighteenth century was a period of disputed succession to the British crown. The contest, which began with the Revolution of 1688, was terminated at Culloden in 1745. The one great question, paramount to all others, was whether the Stuarts should return, or whether the Hanoverian settlement should be maintained-whether the love of legitimacy and the monarchical theory of government, as held by the Tories, should prevail, or a system of government limited by Parliament and the will of the people. That question predominated over all. The foundation, as they called it, of Whig principles was the maintenance of the Hanoverian dynasty on the throne; every one of their political measures and opinions, some of which were doubtless in themselves open to criticism and censure, was dictated by the supreme necessity of resistance to the Jacobites. By this test they must be tried, and this point of view alone explains all the transactions and policy of the time. The Whigs made war on France because Louis XIV. had been the active ally of James II., and left nothing undone to bring about the restoration of the Catholic line. The Whigs maintained the penal laws against the Catholics, especially in Ireland, because Ireland had been the field on which James maintained himself to the last, and might look for his warmest adherents, who were, however, so effectually disarmed that it was in Scotland, not in Ireland, that successive insurrections broke out. The Whigs prosecuted Dr. Sacheverell (one of their least reasonable measures) because, as Mr. Burke showed with great force in his Appeal from the New to 'the Old Whigs,' that noisy priest had attacked in popular language the very basis of popular government and parliamentary power. The Whigs passed the Septennial Act, by which a House of Commons prolonged its own existence, because new elections at that moment would probably have returned a Jacobite Parliament. These were strong party measures, only to be justified by their necessity and their success. It is marvellous, even with these measures, that success was obtained.