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succeeded Robertson as Historiographer to His Majesty for Scotland, published The History of Ancient Greece, its Colonies and Conquests, two volumes, quarto, 1786. The monarchical spirit of the new historian was scarcely less decided than that of Mr Mitford, though expressed with less zeal and idiomatic plainness. The history of Greece,' says Dr Gillies, 'exposes the dangerous turbulence of democracy, and arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing the incurable evils inherent in every republican policy, it evinces the inestimable benefits resulting to liberty itself from the lawful dominion of hereditary kings, and the steady operation of well-regulated monarchy.' The History of Dr Gillies was executed with considerable ability and care; a sixth edition of the work (London, 1820, four volumes, 8vo) was published, and it may still be consulted with advantage. Dr Gillies also wrote a View of the Reign of Frederick II. of Prussia, a History of the World from the Reign of Alexander to Augustus (1807-10), a translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric (1823), &c.

In 1799, MR SHARON TURNER, a London solicitor, commenced the publication of a series of works on English history. The first was a History of the Anglo-Saxons (1799-1805); the second, a History of England during the Middle Ages (1814-15). In subsequent publications he continued the series to the end of the reign of Elizabeth; the whole being comprised in twelve volumes, and containing much new and interesting information on the government, laws, literature, and manners, as well as on the civil and ecclesiastical history of the country. From an ambitious attempt to rival Gibbon in loftiness of style and diction, Mr Turner has disfigured his History by a pomp of expression and involved intricacy of style, that often border on the ludicrous, and mar the effect of his narrative. This defect is more conspicuous in his latter volumes. The early part of his History, devoted to the Anglo-Saxons, and the labour, as he informs us, of sixteen years, is by far the most valuable. Mr Turner also published a Sacred History of the World, in two volumes. So late as 1845, Mr Turner published an historical poem, Richard III. He latterly enjoyed a pension of £200 per annum, and died at his residence in London, February 13, 1847, aged seventy-nine.

History has been largely indebted to the persevering labours of the REV. WILLIAM COXE, Archdeacon of Wilts (1747-1828). In the capacity of tutor to young noblemen, Mr Coxe travelled over various countries, and published Travels in Switzerland (1778-1801), and Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1778-84). Settling at home, and obtaining church preferment, he entered on those historical works, derived from family papers and other authentic sources, which form his most valuable publications. In 1798 appeared his Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole; in 1802, Memoirs of Lord Walpole; in 1807, History of the House of Austria; in 1813, Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon; in 1816-19, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough; in 1821, Correspondence of the Duke of Shrewsbury; and in 1829, Memoirs of the Pelham Administration. The last was a posthumous publication. The Memoirs of Walpole and Marlborough are valu

able works, containing letters, private, official, and diplomatic, with other details drawn from manuscript collections. As a biographer, Coxe was apt to fall into the common error of magnifying the merits and sinking the defects of his hero; but the service he rendered to history by the collection of such a mass of materials can hardly be overestimated.

Resembling Turner and Coxe in the vastness of his undertakings, but inferior as a writer, was GEORGE CHALMERS (1742-1825), a native of Fochabers, county of Elgin, and originally a barrister in one of the American colonies before their disjunction from Britain. His first composition, A History of the United Colonies, from their Settlement till the Peace of 1763, appeared in 1780; and from time to time he gave to the world many works connected with history, politics, and literature. Among these was a Life of Sir David Lyndsay, with an edition of his works; a Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, from the State Papers, &c. In 1807, he commenced the publication of his Caledonia, of which three large volumes had appeared, when his death precluded the hope of its being completed. It contains a laborious antiquarian detail of the earlier periods of Scottish history, with minute topographical and historical accounts of the various provinces of the country.

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CHARLES JAMES FOX (1749-1806), the celebrated statesman and orator, during his intervals of relaxation from public life, among other literary studies and occupations, commenced a History of the Reign of King James II., intending to continue it to the settlement at the Revolution of 1688. An Introductory Chapter, giving a rapid view of our constitutional history from the time of Henry VII., he completed. He wrote also some chapters of his History; but at the time of his death he had made but little progress in his work. Public affairs, and a strong partiality and attachment to the study of the classics, and to works of imagination and poetry, were constantly drawing him off from historical researches; added to which, he was fastidiously scrupulous as to all the niceties of language, and wished to form his plan exclusively on the model of ancient writers, without note, digression, or dissertation. He once assured me,' says his nephew, Lord Holland, that he would admit no word into his book for which he had not the authority of Dryden.' We need not therefore wonder that Mr Fox died before completing his History. Such minute attention to style, joined to equal regard for facts and circumstances, must have weighed down any writer even of active habits and uninterrupted application. In 1808, the unfinished composition was given to the world by Lord Holland, under the title of A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II., with an Introductory Chapter. An Appendix of original papers was also added. The History is plainly written, without the slightest approach to pedantry or pretence; but the style of the great statesman, with all the care bestowed upon it, is far from being perfect. It wants force and vivacity, as if, in the process of elaboration, the graphic clearness of narrative and distinct perception of events and characters necessary to the historian, had evaporated. The sentiments and principles of the author are, however, worthy of his liberal and capacious mind.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

amounting to about 350 pages-was published in 1834, with a continuation by some writer who was opposed to Sir James in many essential points. In the works of Mackintosh we have only the fragments of a capacious mind; but in all of them his learning, his candour, his strong love of truth, his justness of thinking and clearness in perceiving, and his genuine philanthropy, are conspicuous. It is to be regretted that he had no Boswell to record his conversation.

neglect literature, though he wanted resolution for continuous and severe study. The charms of society, the interruptions of public business, and As a philosophical historian, critic, and poli- the debilitating effects of his residence in India, tician, SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH deserves honour- also co-operated with his constitutional indolence able mention. He was also one of the last of the in preventing the realisation of the ambitious Scottish metaphysicians, and one of the most dreams of his youth. He contributed, however, brilliant conversers of his times-qualifications various articles to the Edinburgh_Review, and apparently very dissimilar. His candour, benevo-wrote a masterly Dissertation on the Progress of lence, and liberality gave a grace and dignity to Ethical Philosophy for the Encyclopædia Britanhis literary speculations and to his daily life. nica. He wrote three volumes of a compendious Mackintosh was a native of Inverness-shire, and and popular History of England for Lardner's was born at Aldourie-house, on the banks of Loch Cabinet Cyclopædia, which, though deficient in the Ness, October 24, 1765. His father was a brave graces of narrative and style, contains some adHighland officer, who possessed a small estate, mirable views of constitutional history and anticalled Kylachy, in his native county, which Sir quarian research. His learning was abundant; James afterwards sold for £9000. From his earliest he wanted only method and elegance. He also days James Mackintosh had a passion for books; contributed a short but valuable Life of Sir and though all his relatives were Jacobites, he was Thomas More-which sprung out of his researches a staunch Whig. After studying at Aberdeen into the reign of Henry VIII., and was otherwise where he had as a college-companion and friend a subject congenial to his taste-to the same the pious and eloquent Robert Hall-Mackintosh miscellany; and he was engaged on a History went to Edinburgh, and studied medicine. In of the Revolution of 1688, when his life was 1788, he repaired to London, wrote for 'the press, somewhat suddenly terminated on the 30th of and afterwards applied himself to the study of May 1832. The portion of his History of the law. In 1791, he published his Vindicia Gallica, Revolution which he had written and corrected a defence of the French Revolution, in reply to Burke, which, for cogency of argument, historical knowledge, and logical precision, is a remarkable work to be written by a careless and irregular young man of twenty-six. Though his bearing to his great antagonist was chivalrous and polite, Mackintosh attacked his opinions with the ardour and impetuosity of youth; and his work was received with great applause. Four years afterwards he acknowledged to Burke that he had been the dupe of his own enthusiasm, and that a 'melancholy experience' had undeceived him. The excesses of the French Revolution had no doubt contributed to this change, which, though it afterwards was made the cause of obloquy and derision to Mackintosh, seems to have been adopted with perfect sincerity and singleness of purpose. He afterwards delivered and published a series of lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations, which greatly extended his reputation. In 1795, he was called to the bar, and in his capacity of barrister, in 1803, he made a brilliant defence of M. Peltier, an emigrant royalist of France, who had been indicted for a libel on Napoleon, then First Consul. The forensic display of Mackintosh is too much like an elaborate essay or dissertation, but it marked him out for legal promotion, and he received the appointment-to which his poverty, not his will, consented-of Recorder of Bombay. He was knighted; sailed from England in the beginning of 1804; and after discharging faithfully his high official duties, returned at the end of seven years, the earliest period that entitled him to his retiring pension of £1200 per annum. | Mackintosh now obtained a seat in parliament, and stuck faithfully by his old friends the Whigs, without one glimpse of favour, till, in 1827, his friend Mr Canning, on the formation of his administration, made him a privy-councillor. On the accession of the Whig ministry in 1830, he was appointed a commissioner for the affairs of India. On questions of criminal law and national policy Mackintosh spoke forcibly, but he cannot be said to have been a successful parliamentary orator. Amid the bustle of public business he did not

Chivalry and Modern Manners.

From the Vindicia Gallica.

in unforeseen excesses and execrable crimes. In the eye
The collision of armed multitudes [in Paris] terminated
of Mr Burke, however, these crimes and excesses assume
an aspect far more important than can be communicated
to them by their own insulated guilt. They form, in
his opinion, the crisis of a revolution far more important
than any change of government—a revolution in which
the sentiments and opinions that have formed the
manners of the European nations are to perish. The
age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe ex-
He follows this exclamation by
tinguished for ever!"
an eloquent eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy
predictions of the future state of Europe, when the
the tone in arts and manners is thus debased and
nation that has been so long accustomed to give her
corrupted. A caviller might remark, that ages much
more near the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours
have witnessed a treatment of queens as little gallant
and generous as that of the Parisian mob. He might
remind Mr Burke that, in the age and country of Sir
Philip Sidney, a queen of France, whom no blindness
to accomplishment, no malignity of detraction, could
reduce to the level of Marie Antoinette, was, by ‘a
nation of men of honour and cavaliers,' permitted to
languish in captivity, and expire on a scaffold; and he
might add, that the manners of a country are more
surely indicated by the systematic cruelty of a sovereign,
than by the licentious frenzy of a mob. He might
remark, that the mild system of modern manners which
survived the massacres with which fanaticism had for a
century desolated and almost barbarised Europe, might
perhaps resist the shock of one day's excesses committed.
by a delirious populace.

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Revolution had swallowed up all the asylums of free discussion on the continent, we enjoyed that privilege, indeed, more fully than others, but we did not enjoy it exclusively. In Holland, in Switzerland, in the imperial towns of Germany, the press was either legally or practically free. Holland and Switzerland are no more; and since the commencement of this prosecution, fifty imperial towns have been erased from the list of independent states by one dash of the pen. Three or four still preserve a precarious and trembling existence. I will not say by what compliances they must purchase its continuance. I will not insult the feebleness of states whose unmerited fall I do most bitterly deplore.

But the subject itself is, to an enlarged thinker, fertile in reflections of a different nature. That system of manners which arose among the Gothic nations of Europe, of which chivalry was more properly the effusion than the source, is, without doubt, one of the most peculiar and interesting appearances in human affairs. The moral causes which formed its character have not perhaps been hitherto investigated with the happiest success. But to confine ourselves to the subject before us, chivalry was certainly one of the most prominent features and remarkable effects of this system of manners. Candour must confess that this singular institution is not alone admirable as a corrector of the ferocious ages in which it flourished. It contributed to polish and soften Europe. It paved the way for that diffusion of knowledge and extension of commerce which afterwards in some measure supplanted it, and gave a new character to manners. Society is inevitably progressive. In government, commerce has overthrown that feudal and chivalrous' system under whose shade it first grew. In religion, learning has subverted that superstition whose opulent endowments had first fostered Peculiar circumstances softened the barbarism of the middle ages to a degree which favoured the admission of commerce and the growth of knowledge. These circumstances were connected with the manners of chivalry; but the sentiments peculiar to that institution could only be preserved by the situation which gave them birth. They were themselves enfeebled in the progress from ferocity and turbulence, and almost obliterated by tranquillity and refinement. But the auxiliaries which the manners of chivalry had in rude ages reared, gathered strength from its weakness, and flourished in its decay. Commerce and diffused know-years have not effaced them from your memory, that ledge have, in fact, so completely assumed the ascendant in polished nations, that it will be difficult to discover any relics of Gothic manners but in a fantastic exterior, which has survived the generous illusions that made these manners splendid and seductive. Their direct influence has long ceased in Europe; but their indirect influence, through the medium of those causes, which would not perhaps have existed but for the mildness which chivalry created in the midst of a barbarous age, still operates with increasing vigour. The manners of the middle age were, in the most singular sense, compulsory. Enterprising benevolence was produced by general fierceness, gallant courtesy by ferocious rudeness, and artificial gentleness resisted the torrent of natural barbarism. But a less incongruous system has succeeded, in which commerce, which unites men's interests, and knowledge, which excludes those prejudices that tend to embroil them, present a broader basis for the stability of civilised and beneficent manners.

These governments were, in many respects, one of the most interesting parts of the ancient system of Europe. The perfect security of such inconsiderable and feeble states, their undisturbed tranquillity amidst the wars and conquests that surrounded them, attested, beyond any other part of the European system, the moderation, the justice, the civilisation, to which Christian Europe had reached in modern times. Their weakness was protected only by the habitual reverence for justice which, during a long series of ages, had grown up in Christendom. This was the only fortification which defended them against those mighty monarchs to whom they offered so easy a prey. And, till the French Revolution, this was sufficient. Consider, for instance, the republic of Geneva; think of her defenceless position in the very jaws of France; but think also of her undisturbed security, of her profound quiet, of the brilliant success with which she applied to industry and literature, while Louis XIV. was pouring his myriads into Italy before her gates; call to mind, if ages crowded into happy period when we scarcely dreamed more of the subjugation of the feeblest republic in Europe than of the conquest of her mightiest empire, and tell me if you can imagine a spectacle more beautiful to the moral eye, or a more striking proof of progress in the noblest principles of civilisation. These feeble states, these monuments of the justice of Europe, the asylum of peace, of industry, and of literature-the organs of public reason, the refuge of oppressed innocence and persecuted truth-have perished with those ancient principles which were their sole guardians and protectors. They have been swallowed up by that fearful convulsion which has shaken the uttermost corners of the earth. They are destroyed, and gone for ever! One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society, where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The press of Mr Burke, indeed, forebodes the most fatal conse-England is still free. It is guarded by the free constituquences to literature, from events which he supposes to have given a mortal blow to the spirit of chivalry. I have ever been protected from such apprehensions by my belief in a very simple truth-that diffused know ledge immortalises itself. À literature which is confined to a few may be destroyed by the massacre of scholars and the conflagration of libraries, but the diffused knowledge of the present day could only be annihilated by the extirpation of the civilised part of mankind.

Extract from Speech in Defence of Mr Peltier, for a

Libel on Napoleon Bonaparte, February 1803. Gentlemen-There is one point of view in which this case seems to merit your most serious attention. The real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the civilised world ever saw-the defendant is a defenceless proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the ONLY FREE PRESS remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of the English press is new-it is a proud and a melancholy distinction. Before the great earthquake of the French

tion of our forefathers. It is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen, and I trust I may venture to say, that if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British empire. It is an awful consideration, gentlemen. Every other monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric which has been gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue of our fathers, still stands. It stands, thanks be to God! solid and entire —but it stands alone, and it stands in ruins! Believing, then, as I do, that we are on the eve of a great struggle, that this is only the first battle between reason and power-that you have now in your hands, committed to your trust, the only remains of free discussion in Europe, now confined to this kingdom; addressing you, therefore, as the guardians of the most important interests of mankind; convinced that the unfettered exercise of reason depends more on your present verdict than on any other that was ever delivered by a jury, I trust I may rely with confidence on the issue-I trust that you will consider yourselves as the advanced-guard of liberty-as having this day to fight the first battle of free discussion against the most formidable enemy that it ever encountered!

DR JOHN LINGARD-GEORGE BRODIE

WILLIAM GODWIN.

DR JOHN LINGARD, a Roman Catholic priest, published in 1819 three volumes of a History of England from the Invasion by the Romans. He subsequently continued his work in five more volumes, bringing his narrative down to the abdication of James II. To talents of a high order, both as respects acuteness of analysis and powers of description and narrative, Dr Lingard added unconquerable industry, and access to sources of information new and important. He is generally as impartial as Hume, or even Robertson; but it is undeniable that his religious opinions have in some cases perverted the fidelity of his History, leading him to palliate the atrocities of the Bartholomew Massacre, and to darken the shades in the characters of Queen Elizabeth, Cranmer, Anne Boleyn, and others connected with the reformation in the church. His work was subjected to a rigid scrutiny by Dr John Allen, in two elaborate articles in the Edinburgh Review, by the Rev. Mr Todd-who published a defence of the character of Cranmer-and by other zealous Protestant writers. To these antagonists Dr Lingard replied in 1826 by a vindication of his fidelity as an historian, which affords an excellent specimen of calm controversial writing. His work has now taken its place among the most valuable of our national histories. It has gone through three editions, and has been received with equal favour on the continent. The most able of his critics (though condemning his account of the English Reformation, and other passages evincing a peculiar bias) admits that Dr Lingard possesses, what he claims, the rare merit of having collected his materials from original historians and records, by which his narrative receives a freshness of character, and a stamp of originality, not to be found in any general History of England in common use. We give a specimen of the narrative style of the author.

Cromwell's Expulsion of the Parliament in 1653. At length Cromwell fixed on his plan to procure the dissolution of the parliament, and to vest for a time the sovereign authority in a council of forty persons, with himself at their head. It was his wish to effect this quietly by the votes of the parliament-his resolution to effect it by open force, if such votes were refused. Several meetings were held by the officers and members at the lodgings of the Lord-general in Whitehall. St John and a few others gave their assent; the rest, under the guidance of Whitelock and Widrington, declared that the dissolution would be dangerous, and the establishment of the proposed council unwarrantable. In the meantime the House resumed the consideration of the new representative body; and several qualifications were voted, to all of which the officers raised objections, but chiefly to the 'admission of members,' a project to strengthen the government by the introduction of the Presbyterian interest. 'Never,' said Cromwell, 'shall any of that judgment who have deserted the good cause be admitted to power.' On the last meeting, held on the 19th of April, all these points were long and warmly debated. Some of the officers declared that the parliament must be dissolved one way or other;' but the general checked their indiscretion and precipitancy, and the assembly broke up at midnight, with an understand ing that the leading men on each side should resume the subject in the morning.

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At an early hour the conference was recommenced, and, after a short time, interrupted, in consequence of the receipt of a notice by the general, that it was the intention of the House to comply with the desires of the army. This was a mistake; the opposite party had indeed resolved to pass a bill of dissolution; not, however, the bill proposed by the officers, but their own bill, containing all the obnoxious provisions, and to pass it that very morning, that it might obtain the force of law before their adversaries could have time to appeal to the power of the sword. While Harrison 'most strictly and important a step, Ingoldsby hastened to inform the Lordhumbly' conjured them to pause before they took so general at Whitehall. His resolution was immediately formed, and a company of musketeers received orders to accompany him to the House. At this eventful moment, big with the most important consequences both to himself and his country, whatever were the workings of Cromwell's mind, he had the art to conceal them from the eyes of the beholders. Leaving the military in the lobby, he entered the House and composedly seated himself on one of the outer benches. His dress was a plain suit of black cloth, with gray worsted stockings. For a while he seemed to listen with interest to the question, he whispered to Harrison, This is the time; debate; but when the Speaker was going to put the I must do it ;' and rising, put off his hat to address the House. At first his language was decorous, and even laudatory. Gradually he became more warm and animated; at last he assumed all the vehemence of passion, and indulged in personal vituperation. He charged the members with self-seeking and profaneness, with the frequent denial of justice, and numerous acts of oppression; with idolising the lawyers, the constant advocates of tyranny; with neglecting the men who had bled for them in the field, that they might gain the with doing all this in order to perpetuate their own Presbyterians who had apostatised from the cause; and power and to replenish their own purses. But their time was come; the Lord had disowned them; He had chosen more worthy instruments to perform His work. Here the orator was interrupted by Sir Peter Wentworth, who declared that he had never heard language so unparliamentary-language, too, the more offensive, because it was addressed to them by their own servant, whom they had too fondly cherished, and whom, by their unprecedented bounty, they had made what he was. At these words Cromwell put on his hat, and, springing from his place, exclaimed: 'Come, come, sir, I will put an end to your prating.' For a few seconds, apparently in the most violent agitation, he paced forward and backward, and then, stamping on the floor, added: You are no parliament; I say you are no parliament; bring them in, bring them in.' Instantly the door opened, and Colonel Worsley entered, followed by more than twenty musketeers. 'This,' cried Sir Henry Vane, is not honest; it is against morality and common honesty.' 'Sir Henry Vane,' replied Cromwell; 'O Sir Henry Vane! The Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Vane! He might have prevented this. But he is a juggler, and has not common honesty himself!' From Vane he directed his discourse to Whitelock, on whom he poured a torrent of abuse; then pointing to Chaloner, 'There,' he cried, 'sits a drunkard;' next to Marten and Wentworth, 'There are two whoremasters;' and afterwards selecting different members in succession, described them as dishonest and corrupt livers, a shame and scandal to the profession of the gospel. Suddenly, however, checking himself, he turned to the guard and ordered them to clear the House. At these words Colonel Harrison took the Speaker by the hand and led him from the chair; Algernon Sidney was next compelled to quit his seat; and the other members, eighty in number, on the approach of the military, rose and moved towards the door. Cromwell now resumed his discourse. 'It is you,' he exclaimed, 'that have forced me to do this. I have sought the Lord both day and

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night that He would rather slay me than put me on the doing of this work.' Alderman Allan took advantage of these words to observe, that it was not yet too late to undo what had been done; but Cromwell instantly charged him with peculation, and gave him into custody. When all were gone, fixing his eye on the mace, 'What,' said he, shall we do with this fool's bauble? Here, carry it away.' Then, taking the act of dissolution from the clerk, he ordered the doors to be locked, and, accompanied by the military, returned to Whitehall. That afternoon the members of the council assembled in their usual place of meeting. Bradshaw had just taken the chair, when the Lord-general entered and told them that if they were there as private individuals, they were welcome; but if as the Council of State, they must know that the parliament was dissolved, and with it also the council. 'Sir,' replied Bradshaw, with the spirit of an ancient Roman, we have heard what you did at the House this morning, and before many hours all England will know it. But, sir, you are mistaken to think that the parliament is dissolved. No power under heaven can dissolve them but themselves; therefore, take you notice of that.' After this protest they withdrew. Thus, by the parricidal hands of its own children, perished the Long Parliament, which, under a variety of forms, had, for more than twelve years, defended and invaded the liberties of the nation. It fell without a struggle or a groan, unpitied and unregretted. The members slunk away to their homes, where they sought by submission to purchase the forbearance of their new master; and their partisans, if partisans they had, reserved themselves in silence for a day of retribution, which came not before Cromwell slept in his grave. The royalists congratulated each other on an event which they deemed a preparatory step to the restoration of the king; the army and navy, in numerous addresses, declared that they would live and die, stand and fall, with the Lord-general; and in every part of the country the congregations of the saints magnified the arm of the Lord, which had broken the mighty, that in lieu of the sway of mortal men, the fifth monarchy, the reign of Christ might be established on earth.

It would, however, be unjust to the memory of those who exercised the supreme power after the death of the king, not to acknowledge that there existed among them men capable of wielding with energy the destinies of a great empire. They governed only four years; yet, under their auspices, the conquests of Ireland and Scotland were achieved, and a navy was created, the rival of that of Holland, and the terror of the rest of Europe. But there existed an essential error in their form of government. Deliberative assemblies are always slow in their proceedings; yet the pleasure of parliament, as the supreme power, was to be taken on every subject connected with the foreign relations or the internal administration of the country; and hence it happened that, among the immense variety of questions which came before it, those commanded immediate attention which were deemed of immediate necessity; while the others, though often of the highest importance to the national welfare, were first postponed, then neglected, and ultimately forgotten. To this habit of procrastination was perhaps owing the extinction of its authority. It disappointed the hopes of the country, and supplied Cromwell with the most plausible arguments in defence

of his conduct.

Besides his elaborate History of England, Dr Lingard was author of a work evincing great erudition and research, on the Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, published in 1809. Dr Lingard died at Hornby, near Lancaster, his birthplace, in July 1851, aged eighty.

The great epoch of the English Commonwealth, and the struggle by which it was preceded, has been illustrated by MR GEORGE BRODIE'S History

of the British Empire from the Accession of Charles I. to the Restoration, four volumes, 1822, and by MR WILLIAM GODWIN'S History of the Commonwealth of England, four volumes, 18241827. The former work is chiefly devoted to an exposure of the errors and misrepresentations of Hume; while Mr Godwin writes too much in the spirit of a partisan, without the calmness and dignity of the historian. Both works, however, afford new and important facts and illustrations of the momentous period of which they treat. Mr Brodie was Historiographer Royal of Scotland; he died January 2, 1867.

W. ROSCOE-M. LAING-JOHN PINKERTON. WILLIAM ROSCOE (1753-1831), as the author of the Life of Lorenzo de Medici, and the Life and Pontificate of Leo X., may be more properly classed with our historians than biographers. The two works contain an account of the revival of letters, and fill up the blank between Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Robertson's Charles V. Mr Roscoe was a native of Liverpool, the son of humble parents, and while engaged as clerk to an attorney, he devoted his leisure hours to the cultivation of his taste for poetry and elegant literature. He acquired a competent knowledge of the Latin, tion of his clerkship, Mr Roscoe entered into French, and Italian languages. After the complebusiness in Liverpool, and took an active part in every scheme of improvement, local and national. He wrote a poem on the Wrongs of Africa, to illustrate the evils of slavery, and also a pamphlet on the same subject, which was translated into French by Madame Necker. The stirring times in which he lived called forth several short political dissertations from his pen; but about the year 1789, he applied himself to the great task he had long meditated, a biographical account of Lorenzo de' Medici. He procured much new and valuable information, and in 1796 published the result of his labours in two quarto volumes, entitled The Life of Lorenzo de Medici, called the Magnificent. The work was highly successful, and at once elevated Mr Roscoe into the proud situation of one of the most popular authors of the day. A second edition was soon called for, and Messrs Cadell and Davies purchased the copyright for £1200. About the same time he relinquished the practice of an attorney, and studied for the bar, but ultimately settled as a banker in Liverpool. His next literary appearance was as the translator of The Nurse, a poem from the Italian of Luigi Tansillo. In 1805 was published his second great work, The Life and Pontificate of Leo X., four volumes quarto, which, though carefully prepared, and also enriched with new information, did not experience the same success as his Life of Lorenzo. The history of the reformation of religion,' it has been justly remarked, 'involved many questions of subtle disputation, as well as many topics of character and conduct; and, for a writer of great candour and discernment, it was scarcely possible to satisfy either the Papists or the Protestants.' The liberal sentiments and accomplishments of Mr Roscoe recommended him to his townsmen as a fit person to represent them in parliament, and he was accordingly elected in 1806. He spoke in favour of the abolition of the slave-trade, and of the

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