WE have before us the remarks of a very amiable and accomplished gentleman upon one of the most important subjects, that can be brought within the range of critical or philosophical vision. To say that he has performed all that he proposed to himself, or has presented to our eyes the panorama which may have been present to his own, is more than the writer will expect, or than truth permits us to affirm. The chief error of the work resides in its title. It is not a history of civilisation, but a commentary upon it; not a series of views composing a circular landscape, every object clearly defined, the distances happily marked, and the light and shade naturally disposed; but a collection of detached and distinct views, in themselves pleasing and important, but deficient in unity of expression and harmony of combination. We would not be misunderstood. The historian of civilisation must assuredly be guided by certain seasons marked by striking events, linked with those that preceded, and influencing those that followed them; epochs fulfilling their Greek derivation, by furnishing high places from which the eye looks back over the past and forward over the future. Of this kind, in Scriptural history, are the creation of Adam, the deluge, the call of Abraham; and in modern

history, the age of Charlemagne, from which, as from a mountain-top, the old empire of the world is seen to recede and set, while the new rises with a faint but gathering splendour. The narrative of the progress of civilisation contains within itself the elements of all history -- the flower, the essence; whatever is picturesque, or beautiful, or ennobling, or magnificent; the enterprise of commerce, the enchantment of art, and the embellishments of literature; the old manor-house sending forth its little band to fight for the Holy Sepulchre, the merchant over his ledgers at Amsterdam, or Titian behind the sunny window in Venice; each and all are representatives of the figures that await the pencil of the annalist of civilisation. How is he to arrange his subject? how group his crowding sitters? how impart to his drawing force and animation, and to his colouring brilliancy and truth? How ought history, in general, to be written? According to Fox, it should assume the shape of continued narration, neither deviating into commentary nor admitting the illustration of notes-a picture-gallery, in which nothing of the exhibitor is to be seen except the wand. Thus he narrowed the whole duty of the author into the small limits of telling

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