it did from some "des hommes les plus compétents en Angleterre," among whom he is happy to be able to cite Lord Macaulay. The difficulty of his task increased, however, as he came lower down the stream of time. The nearer that events are to our own day, the more multiplied and diverse are the aspects they assume. Our interest in them increases, and together with it, and because of it, our "passion" as readers-la passion du lecteur being always prompt, if ever so little crossed, to burst forth against the historian; which peril, for the latter, is one that is often increased by the very equity of his judgments, and from which M. de Bonnechose admits himself to have been, despite all his endeavours, to some extent a sufferer.

Thus, he refers in his Preface (t. iii., pp. iii. sq.) to two sets of strictures to which his work has been subjected. The first he meets with in certain organs of exclusive religious opinions, differing sharply enough, though, inter se. By these censors he is accused of occupying too general a ground-of not sufficiently inclining the scale to this side or that of being (in effect) indifferent where (in intention) he was impartial. "With my whole soul I repel a reproach like this, which, preferred against me by two opposed parties, at any rate assures me that, in a theological point of view, I have faithfully adhered to my programme as regards the abstaining from all controversy. It is desirable, as I think, to have the history of modern peoples written in a Christian spirit, without being, for that matter, either Catholic or Protestant exclusively." M. de Bonnechose justly claims to have shown deep sympathy with the si respectable class of English Catholics who, for ages, were the victims of guilty intolerance-with Ireland, too, si long-temps opprimée. He reminds his censors of the legitimate tribute of admiring respect paid by him to the civilising labours of Catholicism in Europe: "indeed I know of no Christians of greater excellence than a Saint Francis of Sales, a Fenelon, a Cheverus; but it is also my belief that God has had able servitors in deeds and words in all the great families into which Christendom is divided; in every hindrance offered to the spreading of the Gospel, I descry peril for society at large, and in the raffermissement of souls by the vivifying principles common to all Christian churches, I see the very conditions of prosperity, freedom and safety to modern states: is this indifference?"

One objection thus disposed of, or reduced to a query, M. de Bonnechose then tackles a second one. He has been charged with over-indulgence, if not to criminal acts, at least to guilty persons. "Astonishment is expressed at the care I take to put virtues as well as vices in the balance. What then! is not the historian called upon as a judge to weigh the good as well as the bad? does not the heart of man present, almost invariably, a certain mixture of good and bad principles of which he must take equal account? No doubt there are exceptions, and when I see before me one of those men in whom the moral life seems utterly extinct, a Richard III., a Henry VIII., a Jeffreys-in one word, a monster-I am not aware of having been deficient either in colour to paint him, or in vigour to denounce him to the execration of all times." But such exceptions, he goes on to remark, are extremely rare; while, even for the clearest and most penetrating intellect, there ever remains a certain "unknown quantity" in earthly events, just as in the mobiles of

human actions: true repentance and hearty self-sacrifice may, in the sight of God, cover a multitude of sins; and shall the historian, who, in any and every case, can see but in part and know but in part, be more severe in his sentence than the Sovereign Judge from whom no secrets are hid ?

It is not, therefore, within the ambition of M. de Bonnechose to overcolour for passion and party purposes the complexion of his charactersto disfigure and defeature them at discretion, or in defiance thereof-to distort and exaggerate events, so as to suit the palate of partisanship, or square with the preconceived theory of sectarian prejudice. He would eschew this method of premeditated praise and prepense malice. He would keep aloof from the easily popular historians who travel this welltrod à priori road-ce chemin battu-by keeping to which a "high literary fortune" may be swiftly attained: he prefers a slower though not surer success in tracking the "rude path" he has chosen: mon sillon est tracé, he declares, and there is no time now to look back, and pick out another, when approaching that term at which every man must ask himself what he has to offer, for his part in the sacrifice, to the eternal Author of all goodness and all truth.

As a reflecting well-wisher to the alliance between his own country and ours, M. de Bonnechose has a word to say on the interest, passion, ignorance, and indolence even, which render the majority of men blind and absolute in their judgments-" disposition redoutable, facile à exploiter surtout entre peuples rivaux"-and against those writers the effect of whose system is, not only to spread abroad false ideas, abase the public mind, and incapacitate it for anything like attentive, thoughtful, impartial examination, but to render indestructible the prejudices which separate parties, classes, nations-to rekindle the ashes of ancient enmities-and sow for future generations those "pestilent harvests" which shall be reaped "in tears, and blood, and ruin." With a widely different purpose has our author composed this book. He believes, he is profoundly convinced, that the happiness and progress of the human race are interested in the maintenance of good feeling between "the two great peoples whom Providence has made to increase in power and knowledge, standing as they do face to face, not for mutual destruction, but for the rivalry of intelligent and generous emulation. Too often, alas! during long years consecrated to this work, have mischievous passions, on either side, misled public opinion: I have heard ill-boding rumours, I have seen the horizon darkened with clouds, and at signs that betokened a tempest at hand my mind has been troubled within me, and I have felt my heart sink. With returning calm my confidence has been restored, and I have so far presumed well of my country as to believe she would not forbid my being sympathetic and just towards a neighbouring great people.

"What I love, what I honour in that people, is their respect for tradition combined with a demand for progress without which the worship of the past would lead Europe to the petrified condition of the peoples of the immobile East; it is the permanent alliance of order with freedom; it is that prudent wisdom which, in political transformations, casts down only in the act of building up; it is, alongside of all the glory that wealth and the arts can add to an advanced civilisation, the ever increasing share of the many in social advantages; in fine, it is the remarkable agree

ment, the common endeavour, though under varied forms, to spread the Christian faith, to give free course to the divine word among the souls of men. For all these causes it is, as I apprehend, and despite many a shade in the picture, that a great providential mission has been entrusted to England. My sympathies do not blind me; I see her greatness and her strength, I see also her wounds and weaknesses; here a noble pride, incomparable activity, patriotism and public spirit in their highest power, moral grandeur and practical wisdom: there, haughtiness, selfishness, cruel sufferings, fatal entraînements, gloomy and ardent passions revealing themselves in sudden explosions like lava from a volcano."

M. de Bonnechose adds, that the most formidable enemies of English, as of almost every other modern society, are not from without; elle les porte dans ses flancs. Will she escape from the dangers that menace her? Will she be seen strengthening herself in her own glorious pathway, or, in her turn, declining to the depths below? "Great questions, which it behoves France, in her own interest, to study with a mind free from narrow prejudices, above vulgar jealousy. Other times have come, imposing other laws on the world: all the members of the great human family, peoples as well as individuals, are become solidaires; new and multiplied relations are daily creating common interests for them both, powerful ties, unknown of old; the time is gone when-as it seemed to sages and statesmen-Carthage must be destroyed that Rome might be saved; the weakest nation could not, at this time of day, disappear from the map of Europe without leaving a large void, and producing a deep perturbation: how then would it be in the case of England, that giant nation, France's rival in the route of civilisation and genius, but without one rival in that of wise and prolific freedom? Let us not desire to see her either blinded or in ruins: another Samson, she would fall; but she would drag down the world with her, in her fall!" What will the world say-across the water? What will M. Louis Veuillot think of 'the Hebrew parallel-or M. Emile de Girardin of the contingent collapse?

The same general character that marked the former volumes, is maintained throughout these closing ones; the same clearness of arrangement, industry in research, and moderation in summing up. M. de Bonnechose resumes his narrative at the accession of James I., to whose pedantic peculiarities and personal foibles he shows himself keenly alive; and carries it on to the very eve of the French Revolution. Of the events which occurred between that period and the death of William IV., he gives a chronological summary by way of supplement. Faithfully he has adhered, in the main, to his plan of composition, which was, from the beginning, to trace the history of England's political institutions simultaneously with that of remarkable events to take them as they rise, to study them as they operate, to demonstrate their actual results. In following out their successive developments, his particular aim has been to fix attention on what he calls the distinctive character of the English Constitution-that which distinguishes it so essentially from the constitutions of other free, or would-be free, peoples; to show that it has not been produced at a moment's notice, after some known model, nor founded à priori on rational general principles, but that its formation has been slow and gradual, established on usage, subordinated to times and circumstances, "semblable aux digues opposées sur des terrains mou

vants, selon les périls et les besoins de chaque jour, à l'océan ou à ses fleuves."

The amount of good sense and good feeling in this really painstaking work, is infinitely creditable to the author's head and heart. Were this Histoire d'Angleterre adopted as a text-book in France, in university, public school, and private education, we might augur well for the alliance, so much sound information and honest, intelligent exposition does it contain. There are worse text-books on the subject, current in our own schools, and written in our own language. M. de Bonnechose shows himself unusually conversant with minutie which foreigners, Frenchmen at least, find it so hard to master. In the one matter of proper names, for example, he is-for a Frenchman-quite exceptionally correct. Hundreds of (to him) outlandish names have to be spelt in our island manner, and, wonderful to relate, most of them he spells right. If he spelt them all right, or very nearly all, could he be a Frenchman? Let us here, in perfect good-nature, and with every desire to be respectful, pause to comment, in passing, on the seemingly congenital incapacity, under which every Frenchman labours, of tackling British patronymics. He cannot for the life of him attain accuracy when dealing with the firm and dabbling with the names of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. He cannot mind his p's and q's, when our nomenclature is in question. Is it possible that we English, unwittingly-when tampering with French titles -commit anything like the same proportion of perverse ingenuities?

M. de Bonnechose, we repeat, is exceptionally correct in the majority of his proper names; very few indeed, of France's most cultivated scholars, who have made England and the English their particular study, would be nearly so accurate as he is in this respect. And yet observe some of the slips we have noted in his History, in illustration of our argument— heterographic peccadilloes, not worth noticing unless with some such view. Thus we have Witgift the archbishop, Sir Thomas Oversbury, Doctor Hamond, the river Saverne, Colonel Huschinson, Fleetwod, Lillburne, "the little port of Brightelmstone near Soreham," Colonel Ingolsby, Admiral Black, Lord Somer, the duke of Abermale, Sherness, Lord Godulphin, "the venerable Kean" (what, Edmund? by no means. Charles, then? certainly not. Bishop Ken is the man)—the town of Tawnton, the county of Sommerset, the heath of Honslow, the village of Kingsington, Sir William Lockart, Sir James Montgommery, the battle of Killiecerankie,* Lord Schrewsbury, the sieges of Darry and

* Irish and Scotch patronymics may well puzzle the historian sometimes. However, he tackles them bravely enough, and often quite successfully—though he fluctuates, for instance, between "le célèbre chef Owen Roe O'neil” and “O'neal.” "MacLeod d'Assint" is a chieftain of the "High Lands"-a very natural, though Frenchified, division of the words (so again we have Black Heath, White Hall, Maiden Head, York Shire, &c.).

Even when done into unexceptionable French, one does not always recognise, at the first glance, the most familiar names and objects. These old friends look so different with their new faces. Thus, in the reign of Charles II., there catches our eye in the wide margin of p. 462 (t. iii.), the words,

"Bill Coventry,"

neither more nor less. One's first thought is, But who was Bill Coventry? How did Bill distinguish himself, to be put in the margin like this? M. de Bonnechose, however, is not writing for a nation of Bills and Toms and Jacks; and Bill

of Limerik, Sarrah (and elsewhere Sara) Jennings, the marquis of Twysdale, Sir Robert Hartley (Harley), Sir Cloudesley Showell, Addisson the essayist, Philip and Parnel the poets, Sir Watkin Willams, the historian Smolett, Lord Chersterfield, Admiral Pockoke, Sir Francis Dalshwood, the "ancient abbey of Medelsham," William Dowsdell, Lord Chatam, Lord Pagot, Sir Josuah Reynolds, Brandley the engineer, O'Connel, Lord John Russel, Lord Lacke (Lake), Sir James Makintosh, Mr. Huskinson, Lord Ellinborough, and M. Rabuck.* The last name, by the way, is an insoluble problem to Frenchmen: the despairing efforts made to pronounce it by the Government prosecutor in the late Montalembert trial, are said to have been irresistibly comical. M. Roebuck, Roobuck, Reebuck,-chut, que voulez-vous !

That some of these and similar errors-venial and trivial as they are -may be chargeable on printer rather than author, we would readily allow. And yet, whether the author would gain much by a wholesale system of errata, we may be permitted to doubt. For which doubt we can show cause, by an amusing example to the purpose. In Charles the Second's reign we come (vol. iii. p. 475) across an odd-looking name, Shap. Who was Shap? The context explains it. Archbishop Sharpe is meant le primat Shap. (Poor primate, doomed to be hacked and maimed by Balfour of Burley, living; and by a foreigner, dead.) Now it evidently struck M. de Bonnechose, when revising his proofs, that Shap was hardly the thing. The name wanted a letter more, or the letters had got transposed, or at any rate there was a screw loose. So in the table of errata, a line is given to Shap. We produce that line as it stands:

P. 475. l. 31, au lieu de: SPHAP; lisez: SPHARP.

Whether the emendation be an improvement-and which of the three varieties is nearest the mark, Shap, Sphap, or Spharp,—we leave the reader to decide.

But we must really beg pardon of M. de Bonnechose, for the undue prominence we have given-quite out of all proportion-to petty slips of this description; reiterating at the same time our assertion that he is, by comparison with his countrymen generally, a model of correctness in Anglican onomatology, as the reader would see at once, were we to cite the hundreds of names spelt right, as a set-off against the dozen or two spelt wrong. In fine, M. de Bonnechose has done well by us in his History of our country, and well done is our parting word, of, and for,

and to him.

Next on the list comes M. le Baron de Barante's new work, the LIFE OF MATHIEU MOLE. His preface remarks upon the dying out, within the last thirty years, of several of the illustrious and noble families of the old magistracy in France. The names of D'Aguesseau, Lamoignon, Molé, belong now to history only, in which they hold so eminent a

Coventry turns out to be simply our old acquaintance the Coventry Act, passed in Parliament apropos of the mutilation to which Sir John Coventry had been subjected, for his satire on a rather too merry monarch.

* Vol. iii. pp. 19, 25, 125, 195, 201, 291, 314, 320, 415, 455, 513, 543, 569; vol. iv. 27, 28, 38, 48, 50, 53, 146, 152, 162, 216, 238, 323, 324, 370, 456, 474, 483, 498, 512, 636, 699, 700, 721, 733, 743, 744, 745, 752.

+ Le Parlement et la Fronde. Le Vie de Mathieu Molé. Notices sur Edouard Molé et M. le Comte Molé. Par le Baron de Barante. Paris: Didier et Cie. 1859. April-VOL. CXV. NO. CCCCLX. 2 H