the church door. As you enter, though it seems dim at You cross the fields again on your way back to Some people like to go to church a second time; some go for a long walk in the afternoon; they have only to choose. Park, and lawn, and common, hills, and dales, lie before them; and though the distance begins to fade into the soft gray mist of an English March, yet even the mist is gentle and beautiful, and the air is moist and refreshing, and the brown turf yields under foot with a delightful spring. Old Kensington. off many and many a landmark and memory. Last year only the old church was standing in its iron cage at the junction of the thoroughfares. There was the old painting of the lion and the unicorn hanging from the gallery; the light streaming through the brown saints over the communion-table. In after-life, the children may have seen other saints more glorious in crimson and in purple, nobler piles and arches, but none of them have ever seemed so near to heaven as the old Queen Anne building; and the wooden pew with its high stools, through which elbows of straw were protruding, where they used to kneel on either side of their aunt, watching with awestricken faces the tears as they came falling from the widow's sad eyes. . . . The sing-song of the hymn would flood the old church with its homely cadence: Prepare your glad voices; sang the little charity children; poor little Israelites, with blue stockings and funny woollen knobs to their fustian caps, rejoicing though their pastures were not green as yet, nor was their land overflowing with milk and honey. However, they sang praises for others, as all people do at times, thanks be to the merciful dispensation that allows us to weep, to work, to be comforted, and to rejoice with one another's hearts, consciously or unconsciously, as long as life exists. Fishing Village in Normandy. We have all of us, in the course of life's journeys, sometimes lived for a little while in places which were wearisome and monotonous to us at the time; which had little to attract or to interest; we may have left them without regret, never even wishing to return. But yet, as we have travelled away, we may have found that, through some subtle and unconscious attraction, sights, sounds, and peculiarities which we thought we had scarcely noticed, seem to be haunting us, as though unwilling to let us escape. And this peculiar distinctiveness and vividness does not appear to wear out with time and distance. The pictures are like those of a magic lantern, and come suddenly out of the dimness and darkness, starting into life when the lamp is lighted by some chance association; so clearly and sharply defined and coloured, that we can scarcely believe that they are only reflections from old slides which have been lying in our store for years past. Petiport in Normandy, a dull little fishing-town upon the coast, stands almost opposite to Ryde in the Isle of Wight. The place is quite uninteresting, the district is not beautiful, but broad and fertile, and sad and pleasant together. The country-folks are high-spirited and sometimes gay, but usually grave, as people are who live by the sea. They are a well-grown stately race, goodmannered, ready and shrewd in their talk and their dealings; they are willing to make friends, but they are at the same time reserved and careful of what they say. English people are little known at Petiport-one or two had stayed at the Château de Tracy 'dans le temps,' they told me. But the strangers who came to lodge in the place for the sake of the sea-bathing and the fine sands, were from Caen and Bayeux for the most part, and only remained during a week or two. A quarter of a century ago the shabby tide of progress had not spread to the quiet old suburb where Lady Sarah Francis's brown house was standing, with its many windows dazzling as the sun travelled across the oldfashioned house-tops to set into a distant sea of tenements and echoing life. The roar did not reach the old house. The children could listen to the cawing of the rooks, to the echo of the hours, as they struck on from one day to another, vibrating from the old brown tower of the church. At night the strokes seemed to ring more slowly than in the day. The church clock is silent now, but the rooks caw on undisturbed from one spring to another in the old Kensington suburb. There are tranquil corners still, and sunny silent nooks, and ivy wreaths growing in the western sun; and jessamines and vinetrees, planted by a former generation, spreading along the old garden walls. But every year the shabby stream Five o'clock on a fine Sunday-western light streamof progress rises and engulfs one relic or another, carrying | ing along the shore, low cliffs stretching away on either Except just on fête-days and while the bathing time lasted, everything was very still at Petiport. Sometimes all the men would go away together in their boats, leaving the women and children alone in the village. I was there after the bathing season was over, and before the first fishing fleet left. The fishermen's wives were all busy preparing provisions, making ready, sewing at warm clothes, and helping to mend the nets before their husbands' departure. I could see them hard at work through the open doors, as I walked up the steep little village street. side, with tufted grasses and thin straggling flowers growing from the loose arid soil, far-away promontories, flashing and distant shores, which the tides have not yet overlapped, all shining in the sun. The waves swell steadily inwards, the foam sparkles when the ripples meet the sands. The horizon is solemn dark blue, but a great streak of light crosses the sea; three white sails gleam, so do the white caps of the peasant women and the wings of the sea-gulls as they go swimming through the air. Holiday people are out in their Sunday clothes. They go strolling along the shore, or bathing and screaming to each other in the waters. The countrymen wear their blue smocks of a darker blue than the sea, and they walk by their wives and sweethearts in their gaycoloured Sunday petticoats. A priest goes by; a grand lady in frills, yellow shoes, red jacket, fly-away hat, and a cane. Her husband is also in scarlet and yellow. Then come more women and Normandy caps flapping, gossiping together, and baskets, and babies, and huge umbrellas. M. LOCKHART, late captain 92d Highlanders, has written two popular novels-Doubles and Quits and Fair to See. JOHN SAUNDERS is author of Guy Waterman, One Against the World, and Israel Mort, Overman. The last has a rough strength and force which fixes the attention of the reader: Israel Mort is a miner, who raises himself to be successively overman, manager, and owner of a mine. MR JAMES PAYN has written several excellent works of fiction-Lost Sir Massingberd, At Her Mercy, The Best of Husbands, Walter's Word, Fallen Fortunes, By Proxy, &c. MR R. FRANCILLON is author of Olympia, Pearl and Emerald, A Dog and his Shadow. AUGUSTUS GEORGE SALA-EDWARD JENKINS- One of the best imitators of Dickens was GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA (born in London in MRS MACQUOID-HESBA STRETTON. 1828), whose contributions to Household Words MRS KATHARINE S. MACQUOID has written were highly amusing, and scarcely distinguishable many novels, but never surpassed her first, Hester from those of his model. As special correspondKirton, a story containing fine sketches of char-ent for the Daily Telegraph, Mr Sala has thrown acter. Her other works are-Diane, The Evil Eye, Petty, My Story, Lost Rose, &c.; also a pleasant volume, Through Normandy (1874). HESBA STRETTON is author of several tales-The Doctor's Dilemma, Hester Morley's Promise, &c., and some excellent stories for children. FLORENCE MARRYAT-ELIZABETH WETHERELL R. D. BLACKMORE-L. W. M. LOCKHART-JOHN | | off innumerable sketches of life and public events in foreign countries-in France, Italy, Spain, Russia, and America. A series of papers in the Cornhill Magazine (since published in one volume) on Hogarth, display familiarity with art as well as with history and general literature, and constitute perhaps the most finished of Mr Sala's works. He is emphatically a ready writer and traveller, at home in most countries and most phases of life. The written with a moral purpose-Ginx's Baby, littérateurs-poet, novelist, art-critic, traveller, Shakspere's England during the Reign of Eliza- evinces the historian's determination to think for beth, &c. He worked on till within a few days of himself, and not to sacrifice his convictions to his death, which came suddenly; the result,' | adds the Athenæum, ' of over-brainwork.' Another victim to excessive literary labour and anxiety was MR MORTIMER COLLINS, who died in 1876 at the early age of forty-nine. He was author of several novels-Sweet Anne Page, 1868; | The Ivory Gate, 1869; Vivian Romance, 1870; Marquis and Merchant, 1871 ; &c. He published also a volume of Poɛms, and latterly was a regular and popular contributor to Punch. HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS. party. In describing the causes which led to the French Revolution, he also enumerates fairly the enormous wrongs and oppressions under which the people laboured; but with singular inconsistency he adds, that the immediate source of the convulsion was the spirit of innovation which overspread France. Carlyle more correctly assigns famine as the 'immediate' cause the unprecedented scarcity and dearness of provisions; but, of course, a variety of other elements entered into the formation of that great convulsion. Some of the features of the Revolution are well drawn by Alison. The small number of persons who perpetrated the atrocities in Paris, and the apathy of the great body of the citizens, he thus describes : At the close of the French revolutionary war, The French Revolutionary Assassins. countless multitudes were drawn from every part The small number of those who perpetrated these of Europe to Paris to witness the meeting of the murders in the French capital under the eyes of the legis allied sovereigns in 1814. Among them was 'one lature, is one of the most instructive facts in the history young man who had watched with intense interest of revolutions. Marat had long before said, that the progress of the war from his earliest years, and with two hundred assassins at a louis a day, he would who, having hurried from his paternal roof in govern France, and cause three hundred thousand heads Edinburgh on the first cessation of hostilities, then to fall; and the events of the 2d September seemed conceived the first idea of narrating its events, to justify the opinion. The number of those actually and amidst its wonders inhaled that ardent engaged in the massacres did not exceed three hundred'; spirit, that deep enthusiasm which, sustaining and twice as many more witnessed and encouraged their him through fifteen subsequent years of travel proceedings; yet this handful of men governed Paris and study, and fifteen more of composition, has at thousand armed warriors afterwards strove in vain to and France, with a despotism which three hundred length realised itself in the present history.' The effect. The immense majority of the well-disposed work thus characteristically referred to by its citizens, divided in opinion, irresolute in conduct, and author, MR (afterwards SIR) ARCHIBALD ALISON, dispersed in different quarters, were incapable of arrestis The History of Europe, from the Commencement ing a band of assassins, engaged in the most atrocious of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the cruelties of which modern Europe has yet afforded an Bourbons, ten volumes, 1839-42, and which has example-an important warning to the strenuous and the since, in various forms, gone through nine editions. good in every succeeding age, to combine for defence the It has been translated into all European languages, moment that the aspiring and the desperate have begun and even into Arabic and Hindustani. A work to agitate the public mind, and never to trust that mere so popular must have substantial merits, or must smallness of numbers can be relied on for preventing supply a want universally felt. Having visited reckless ambition from destroying irresolute virtue. It most of the localities described, many interesting is not less worthy of observation, that these atrocious minute touches and graphic illustrations have been fifty thousand men were enrolled in the National Guard, massacres took place in the heart of a city where above added by the historian from personal observation, and had arms in their hands; a force specifically destined or the statements of eye-witnesses on the spot; to prevent insurrectionary movements, and support, and he appears to have been diligent and con-under all changes, the majesty of the law. They were scientious in consulting written authorities. The so divided in opinion, and the revolutionists composed defects of the work are, however, considerable. The style is often careless, turgid, and obscure; and the high Tory prejudices of the author, with certain opinions on the currency question-the influence of which he greatly exaggerates-render him often a tedious as well as unsafe guide. His moral reflections and deductions are mostly superfluous, and quite unworthy of the author of the narrative portions of the history.* In a few instances he has been accused by his own Conservative friends of extracting military details from questionable sources, and forming rash judgments on questions of strategy. Thus he maintains that, in the great campaign of 1815, Napoleon 'surprised, out-manoeuvred, and out-generaled' both Wellington and Blucher-a position which does not seem well supported, but which at least *Mr Disraeli touches sarcastically on these defects: 'Finally, Mr Rigby impressed on Coningsby to read the Quarterly Review with great attention; and to make himself master of Mr Wordy's History of the Late War in twenty volumes, a capital work, which proves that Providence was on the side of the Tories.' Coningsby, Book III. c. 2. so large a part of their number, that nothing whatever was done by them, either on the 10th August, when the king was dethroned, or the 2d September, when the prisoners were massacred. This puts in a forcible point of view the weakness of such a force, which, being composed of citizens, is distracted by their feelings, and actuated by their passions. In ordinary times, it may exhibit an imposing array, and be adequate to the repression of the smaller disorders; but it is paralysed by the events which throw society into convulsions, and generally fails at the decisive moment when its aid is most required. Another specimen of the author's style of summary and reflection may be given: The Reign of Terror. Thus terminated the Reign of Terror, a period fraught with greater political instruction than any of equal duration which has existed since the beginning of the world. In no former period had the efforts of the people so completely triumphed, or the higher orders been so thoroughly crushed by the lower. The throne had been overturned, the altar destroyed, the aristocracy levelled with the dust: the nobles were in exile, the clergy in captivity, the gentry in affliction. A merciless sword had waved over the state, destroying alike the dignity of rank, the splendour of talent, and the graces of beauty. All that excelled the labouring classes in situation, fortune, or acquirement, had been removed; they had triumphed over their oppressors, seized their possessions, and risen into their stations. And what was the consequence? The establishment of a more cruel and revolting tyranny than any which mankind had yet witnessed; the destruction of all the charities and enjoyments of life; the dreadful spectacle of streams of blood flowing through every part of France. The earliest friends, the warmest advocates, the firmest supporters of the people, were swept off indiscriminately with their bitterest enemies; in the unequal struggle, virtue and philanthropy sunk under ambition and violence, and society returned to a state of chaos, when all the elements of private or public happiness were scattered to the winds. Such are the results of unchaining the passions of the multitude; such the peril of suddenly admitting the light upon a benighted people. The extent to which blood was shed in France during this melancholy period, will hardly be credited by future ages. The Republican Prudhomme, whose prepossessions led him to anything rather than an exaggeration of the horrors of the popular party, has given the following appalling account of the victims of the Revolution : in In this enumeration are not comprehended the massacres at Versailles, at the Abbey, the Carmes, or other prisons on September 2, the victims of the Glacière of Avignon, those shot at Toulon and Marseille, or the persons slain in the little town of Bedoin, of which the whole population perished. It is in an especial manner remarkable in this dismal catalogue, how large a proportion of the victims of the Revolution were persons the middling and lower ranks of life. The priests and nobles guillotined are only 2413, while the persons of plebeian origin exceed 13,000! The nobles and priests put to death at Nantes were only 2160; while the infants drowned and shot are 2000, the women 764, and the artisans 5300! So rapidly in revolutionary convulsions does the career of cruelty reach the lower orders, and so wide-spread is the carnage dealt out to them, compared with that which they have sought to inflict on their superiors. The facility with which a faction, composed of a few of the most audacious and reckless of the nation, triumphed over the immense majority of their fellow-citizens, and led them forth like victims to the sacrifice, is not the least extraordinary or memorable part of that eventful period. The bloody faction at Paris never exceeded a few hundred men; their talents were by no means of the highest order, nor their weight in society considerable; yet they trampled under foot all the influential classes, ruled mighty armies with absolute sway, kept 200,000 of their fellow-citizens in captivity, and daily led out several hundred persons, of the best blood in France, to execution. Such is the effect of the unity of action which atrocious wickedness produces; such the ascendency which in periods of anarchy is acquired by the most savage and lawless of the people. The peaceable and inoffensive citizens lived and wept in silence; terror crushed every attempt at combination; the extremity of grief subdued even the firmest hearts. In despair at effecting any change in the general sufferings, apathy universally prevailed, the people sought to bury their sorrows in the delirium of present enjoyments, and the theatres were never fuller than during the whole duration of the Reign of Terror. Ignorance of human nature can alone lead us to ascribe this to any peculiarity in the French character; the same effects have been observed in all parts and ages of the world, as invariably attending a state of extreme and long-continued distress. The death of Hebert and the anarchists was that of guilty depravity; that of Robespierre and the Decemvirs, of sanguinary fanaticism; that of Danton and his confederates, of stoical infidelity; that of Madame Roland and the Girondists, of deluded virtue; that of Louis and his family, of religious forgiveness. The moralist will contrast the different effects of virtue and wickedness in the last moments of life; the Christian will mark with thankfulness the superiority in the supreme hour to the sublimest efforts of human virtue, which was evinced by the believers in his own faith. A continuation has been made to this workThe History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852, eight volumes, 1852-59. The author, however, had not exercised much care in this compilation. It is hastily and inaccurately written, and is disfigured by blunders, omissions, and inconsistencies. Some of the author's opinions or crotchets are pushed to a ridiculous extreme, as his delusion that most of the political changes of the previous thirty years-the abolition of the cornlaws, Catholic emancipation, and parliamentary reform may all be traced to the act of 1826 which interdicted the further issue of £1 and £2 banknotes! The diffuse style of narrative which was felt as a drawback on the earlier history, is still more conspicuous in this continuation-no doubt from want of time and care in the laborious work of condensation. The other writings of our author exclusive of pamphlets on Free-trade and the Currency-are a Life of Marlborough, 1847 (afterwards greatly enlarged in the second edition, 1852), and Essays, Political, Historical, and Miscellaneous, three volumes, 1850. These essays were originally published in Blackwood's Magazine, to which their author was a frequent contributor. The other works of Sir Archibald are Principles of Population, 1840; Free Trade and Protection, 1844; England in 1815 and in 1845, &c. SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON was the eldest son of the Rev. Archibald Alison, author of the Essay on Taste, &c. His mother was Dorothea, daughter of Dr John Gregory of Edinburgh. He was born at Kenley in Shropshire in 1792. His father having in 1800 removed to Edinburgh to officiate in the Episcopal Chapel in the Cowgate, Archibald studied at Edinburgh University, was admitted to the bar in 1814, and in 1834 was appointed sheriff of Lanarkshire. He had distinguished himself professionally by his Principles 569 of the Criminal Law of Scotland, 1832, and his Practice of the Criminal Law, 1833. He was successively Lord Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Glasgow University, and subsequently the title of D.C.L. was conferred upon him by the university of Oxford. In 1852 he was created a baronet by Lord Derby's administration. He died on the 23d of May 1867. W. H. PRESCOTT. volumes. A decision of the House of Lords, however, annulled this bargain. It was found that no American, not domiciled in England at the time of the publication of his book, could claim the benefit of our copyright law. If Mr Prescott had thought proper to have resided in England during, and for a certain time before and after the publication of the book, he might have reaped the full benefit of its great success on both sides of the Atlantic. But he would not take this course. At a great pecuniary sacrifice, he preferred to present the world with one signal example more of the injustice to which the writers of England and America are exposed by the want of a reasonable system of international copyright-a want for which the American legislature appears to be wholly responsible.'* Two volumes of Philip II. appeared in 1855, and the third volume in 1858. In the interval the author had experienced a shock of paralysis, and another shock on the 28th of January 1859 proved fatal. When sitting alone in his library, the historian was struck down by this sudden and terrible agent of death, and in less than two hours he expired. His remains were followed to the grave by a vast concourse of citizens and mourners. As an historian, Prescott may rank with Robertson as a master of the art of narrative, while he excels him in the variety and extent of his illustrative researches. He was happy in the choice of his subjects. The very names of Castile and Aragon, Mexico and Peru, possess a romantic charm, and the characters and scenes he depicts have the interest and splendour of the most gorgeous fiction. To some extent the American historian fell into the error of Robertson in palli career of the Spanish conquerors; but he is more careful in citing his authorities, in order, as he says, 'to put the reader in a position for judging for himself, and thus for revising, and, if need be, for reversing the judgments of the historian.' The celebrated American historian, WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796. His father was an eminent judge and lawyer. While a student in Harvard College, a slight accident threatened to deprive the future historian of sight, and in the result proved a severe interruption to his studies. One of his fellow-collegians threw a crust of bread at him, which struck one of his eyes, and deprived it almost wholly of sight, while the other was sympathetically affected. He travelled partly for medical advice, and visited England, France, and Italy, remaining absent about two years. On his return to the United States, he married and settled in Boston. His first literary production was an essay on Italian Narrative Poetry, contributed in 1824 to the North American Review, in which work many valuable papers from his pen afterwards appeared. Devoting himself to the literature and history of Spain, he fixed upon the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and commenced his history of that period. He had only, however, commenced his task when his eye gave way, and he enjoyed no use of it again for reading for several years. His literary enthusiasm, however, was too strong to be subdued even by this calamity; heating the enormous cruelties that marked the engaged a reader, dictated copious notes, and from these notes constructed his composition, making in his mind those corrections which are usually made in the manuscript. Instead of dictating the work thus composed, he used a writingcase made for the blind, which he thus describes: 'It consists of a frame of the size of a piece of View of Mexico from the Summit of Ahualco. paper, traversed by brass wires as many as lines are wanted on the page, and with a sheet of car-marched forward with a buoyant step, as they felt they Their progress was now comparatively easy, and they bonated paper, such as is used for getting dupliwere treading the soil of Montezuma. cates, pasted on the reverse side. With an ivory They had not advanced far, when, turning an angle or agate stylus the writer traces his characters of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which between the wires on the carbonated sheet, more than compensated the toils of the preceding day. making indelible marks which he cannot see on It was that of the valley of Mexico, or Tenochtitlan, as the white page below.' In this way the historian more commonly called by the natives; which, with its proceeded with his task, finding, he says, his picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultiwriting-case his best friend in his lonely hours. vated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was The sight of his eye partially returned, but never spread out like some gay and gorgeous panorama before sufficiently to enable him to use it by candle-light. them. In the highly rarefied atmosphere of these upper In 1837 appeared his history of Ferdinand and regions, even remote objects have a brilliancy of colourIsabella, in three volumes, and the work was emi-ing and a distinctness of outline which seem to anninently successful on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1843, The Conquest of Mexico, three volumes, and in 1847, The Conquest of Peru, two volumes, still further extended Mr Prescott's reputation, and it is calculated that latterly he received from £4000 to £5000 a year from the sale of his writings. The successful historian now made a visit to England, and was received with the utmost distinction and favour, the university of Oxford conferring upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. In 1854 his History of Philip II. was ready for the press, and he was to receive £1000 for each volume of the work, which, it was supposed, would extend to six hilate distance. Stretching far away at their feet, were seen noble forests of oak, sycamore, and cedar, and beyond, yellow fields of maize, and the towering maguey, intermingled with orchards and blooming gardens; for flowers, in such demand for their religious festivals, were even more abundant in this populous valley than in other parts of Anahuac. In the centre of the great basin were beheld the lakes, occupying then a much larger portion of its surface than at present, their borders thickly studded with towns and hamlets; and in the midst-like some Indian empress with her coronal of pearls-the fair city of Mexico, with her white towers *Memoir of Prescott, by Sir William Stirling Maxwell, in Encyclopædia Britannica. |