succession, the reader in despair shuts the volume, with hardly any recollection of the thread of events. He recollects only that almost all the kings appear to have been wicked, almost all the nobles ambitious, almost all the priests cruel, almost all the people ferocious. There is nothing which tends so strongly to make us satisfied with our own lot, and inclined to return thanks to Heaven for having cast it in our age, as the study of the crimes, disasters, and sufferings of those which have preceded it.

But still "the mighty maze is not without a plan." In the midst of these hideous crimes and atrocities, of this general anguish and suffering, fixed laws were operating, a silent progress was going forward, and Providence was patiently and in silence working out its ultimate designs by the free agency of an infinity of separate individuals. A great system of moral retribution was unceasingly at work; and out of the mingled virtues and vices, joys and sorrows, crimes and punishment, of previous centuries, were slowly forming the elements of the great and glorious French monarchy. It is in the development of this magnificent progress, and in the power of exhibiting it in lucid colours to the eye of the spectator, that Michelet is chiefly deficient in his later volumes. This seems at first sight inexplicable, as in the early ones, relating to Gaul under the Romans, the settlement of the Franks, and the early kings of the Merovingian race, his powers of generalisation and philosophic observation are eminently conspicuous. They form, accordingly, by much the most interesting and instructive part of his history. But a closer examination will at once unfold the cause of this difference, and point to the chief changes of the graphic and antiquarian school of history. He generalised in the earlier volumes, because his materials were scanty; he has not done so in the later ones, because they were redundant. In the first instance, he saw objects at a distance in their just proportions; and, not being distracted with details, he threw broad lights and shadows over their great features; in the last, the objects were so near the eye, and the lights so perplexed and frequent, that he has in some degree lost sight of all general effect in his composition, or at least failed in conveying any lucid impression to the reader's mind.

VOL. III.

2 E

In common with all later writers who have observed much or thought deeply on human affairs, M. Michelet is a firm believer in the inherent and indelible influence of race, both on the character and destiny of nations. His observations on this subject, especially on the peculiarities of the Celtic race, and their vital difference from the German, form one of the most interesting and valuable parts of his work. He traces the same character through the Scotch Highlanders, the mountaineers of Cumberland and Wales, the native Irish, the inhabitants of Brittany, and the mountaineers of Gascony and Béarn. On the other hand, the same national characteristics may be observed in the German race, under whatever climate and circumstances; in Saxony as in England; in the Swiss mountains as in the Dutch marshes; in the crowded marts of Flanders as in the solitude of the American forest. Of the inherent character of the Celtic race, he gives the following animated description

"The mixed races of Celts who are called French, can be rightly understood only by a study of the pure Celts, the Bretons and Welsh, the Scotch Highlanders and Irish peasants. While France, undergoing the yoke of repeated invasion, is marching through successive ages from slavery to freedom, from disgrace to glory, the old Celtic races, perched on their native mountains, or sequestered in their far distant isles, have remained faithful to the poetic independence of their barbarous life, till surprised by the rude hand of foreign conquest. It was in this state that England surprised, overwhelmed them;-vainly, however, has the Anglo-Saxon pressed upon them-they repel his efforts as the rocks of Brittany or Cornwall the surges of the Atlantic. The sad and patient Judea, which numbered its ages by its servitude, has not been more sternly driven from Asia. But such is the tenacity of the Celtic race, such the principle of life in nations, that they have endured every outrage, and still preserve inviolate the manners and customs of their forefathers. Race of granite! Immovable, like the huge Druidical blocks which they still regard with superstitious veneration.

"One might have expected that a race which remained for ever the same, while all was changing around it, would succeed in the end in conquering by the mere inert force of resistance, and would impress its character on the world. The very reverse has happened, the more the race has been isolated, the more it has fallen into insignificance. To remain original, to resist all foreign intermixture, to repel all the ideas or improvements of the stranger, is to remain weak and isolated in the world. There is the secret of the Celtic race-there is the key to their whole history. It has never had but one idea-it has communicated that to no other nations, but it has received none from them. From age to age it has remained strong but limited, indestructible but humiliated, the enemy of the human race, and its eternal stain. Woful obstinacy of individuality, which proudly rests on itself alone, and repels all community with the rest of the world.

"The genius of the Celts, and above all of the Gauls, is vigorous and

fruitful, strongly inclined to material enjoyments, to pleasure and sensuality. The pleasures of sex have ever exercised a powerful influence over them. They are still the most prolific of the human race. In France, the Vert Galant is the true national king. We know how marvellously the native Irish have multiplied and overflowed all the adjoining states. It was a common occurrence in Brittany, during the middle ages, for a seigneur to have a dozen wives. They constantly praised themselves, and sent forth their sons fearless to battle. Universally, among the Celtic nations, bastards succeeded even among kings, as chief of the clan. Woman, the object of desire, the mere sport of voluptuousness, never attained the dignified rank assigned to her among nations of the German descent.

"No people recorded in history have resisted so stubbornly as the Celts. The Saxons were conquered by the Normans in a single battle; but Cambria contended two hundred years with the stranger. Their hopes sustain them after their independence is lost: an unconquerable will is the character of their race. While awaiting the day of its resurrection, it alternately sings and weeps its chants are mingled with tears, as those of the Jews, when by the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept. The few fragments of Ossian which can really be relied on as ancient, have a melancholy character. Even our Bretons, though they have less reason to lament than the rest of their race, are sad and mournful in their ideas; their sympathy is with the Night, with Sorrow, with Death. 'I never sleep,' says a Breton proverb, but I die a bitter death.' To him who walks over a tomb they say, 'Withdraw from my domain.' They have little reason to be gay; all has conspired against them: Brittany and Scotland have attached themselves to the weaker side, to causes which were lost. The power of choosing its monarchs has been taken from the Celtic race since the mysterious stone, formerly brought from Ireland into Scotland, has been transported to Westminster.

"Ireland! Poor first-born of the Celtic race! So far from France, yet its sister, whom it cannot succour across the waves! The Isle of Saintsthe Emerald Isle-so fruitful in men, so bright in genius!—the country of Berkeley and Toland, of Moore and O'Connell !-the land of bright thought and the rapid sword, which preserves, amidst the old age of this world, its poetic inspiration. Let the English smile when, in passing some hovel in their towns, they hear the Irish widow chant the coronach for her husband. Weep! mournful country; and let France too weep, for degradaton which she cannot prevent-calamities which she cannot avert! In vain have four hundred thousand Irishmen perished in the service of France. The Scotch Highlanders will ere long disappear from the face of the earth; the mountains are daily depopulating; the great estates have ruined the land of the Gaul as they did ancient Italy. The Highlander will ere long exist only in the romances of Walter Scott. The tartan and the claymore excite surprise in the streets of Edinburgh: they disappear-they emigrate; their national airs will ere long be lost, as the music of the Eolian harp when the winds are hushed.

"Behind the Celtic world, the old red granite of the European formation, has arisen a new world, with different passions, desires, and destinies. Last of the savage races which overflowed Europe, the Germans were the first to introduce the spirit of independence; the thirst for individual freedom. That bold and youthful spirit-that youth of man, who feels himself strong and free in the world which he appropriates to himself in anticipation -in forests of which he knows not the bounds-on a sea which wafts him to unknown shores-that spring of the unbroken horse which bears him to the Steppes and the Pampas-all worked in Alaric, when he swore that an unknown force impelled him to the gates of Rome; they impelled the Danish pirate when he rode on the stormy billow; they animated the Saxon outlaws, when under Robin Hood they contended for the laws of

Edward the Confessor against the Norman barons. That spirit of personal freedom, of unbounded individual pride, shines in all their writings-it is the invariable characteristic of the German theology and philosophy. From the day when, according to the beautiful German fable, the Wargus' scattered the dust on all his relations, and threw the grass over his shoulder, and, resting on his staff, overleapt the frail paternal enclosure, and let his plume float to the wind-from that moment he aspired to the empire of the world. He deliberated with Attila whether he should overthrow the empire of the East or West; he aspired with England to overspread the western and southern hemispheres.

"It is from this mingled spirit of poetry and adventure, that the whole idealism of the Germans has taken its rise. In their robust race is combined the heroic spirit and the wandering instinct-they unite alone the 'Iliad' and Odyssey' of modern times-gold and women were the objects of their early expeditions; but these objects had nothing sensual or degrading in them. Woman was the companion, the support of man; his counsel in difficulty, his guardian angel in war. Her graces, her charms, consisted in her courage, her constancy. Educated by a man-by a warrior —the virgin was early accustomed to the use of arms-' Gothorum gens perfida, sed pudica; Saxones crudelitate efferi, sed castitate mirandi.' Woman in primitive Germany was bent to the earth beneath the weight of agricultural labour; but she became great in the dangers of war-the companion and partner of man, she shared his fate, and lightened his sorrows. 'Sic vivendum, sic pereundum,' says Tacitus. She withdrew not from the field of battle-she faced its horrors-she turned not aside from its blood. She was the Goddess of War-the charming and terrible spirit which at once animated its spirit, and rewarded its dangers-which inspired the fury of the charge, and soothed the last moments of the dying warrior. She was to be seen on the field of blood, as Edith the swan-necked sought the body of Harold after the defeat of Hastings, or the young Englishwoman, who, to find her lost husband, turned over the dead on the field of Waterloo."Vol. i. p. 150, 175.

"O si sic omnia!" The mind is rendered dizzy; it turns round as on the edge of a precipice by the reflections arising out of this animated picture. În truth may it be said that these observations demolish at one blow the whole revolutionary theories of later times-they have turned the streams of French philosophy by their source. It was the cardinal point, the leading principle of the whole political speculation of the last half of the eighteenth century, that institutions were everything, character nothing; that man was moulded entirely by the government or religion to which he was subjected; and that there was no essential difference in the disposition of the different races which had overspread the earth. The first half of the nineteenth century was spent in the practical application of this principle. The French Jacobins conceived themselves adequate to forge constitutions for the whole world, and sent forth their armies of starving republicans to force them at the point of the bayonet on all mankind. Less vehement in their constitu

tional propagandism, the English have been more persevering, and incomparably more pernicious. Their example allured, as much as the horrors of the Revolution repelled, mankind. The ardent, the generous, the philanthropic, everywhere sighed for the establishment of a government which should give them at once the energy of the British character, the glories of the British empire. And what has been the result? The desolation of Spain, the ruin of Portugal, the depopulation and blasting of South America. Vain have been all attempts to transplant to nations of Celtic or Moorish descent the institutions which grew and flourished among those of Anglo-Saxon blood. The ruin of the West India Islands proves their inapplicability to those of Negro extraction;-the everlasting distraction of Ireland, to those of unmixed Celtic blood. A century of bloodshed, devastation, and wretchedness will be spent ere mankind generally learn that there is an essential and indelible distinction of character between the different races of men; and, in Montesquieu's words, that "no nation ever attained to durable greatness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit."

Nor is there any foundation for the common observation, that this presents a melancholy view of human affairs; and that it is repugnant to our ideas of the beneficence of an overruling Providence to suppose that all nations are not adapted for the same elevating institutions. Are all nations blessed with the same climate, or soil, or productions? Will the vine and the olive flourish on every slope-the maize or the wheat on every plain? No. Every country has its own productions, riches, and advantages; and the true wisdom of each is found to consist in cultivating the fruits, or developing the riches, which Nature has bestowed. It is the same in the moral world. All nations were not framed in the same mould, because all were not destined for the same ends. To some was given, for the mysterious but beneficent designs of Providence, excellence in arms, and the ensanguined glory of ruthless conquest; to others supremacy in commerce, and the mission of planting their colonies in distant lands; to a few excellence in literature and the arts, and the more durable dominion over the thoughts and minds of men.

What sort of a world would it be if all