THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

FOR FEBRUARY, 1822.

Art. I. Repertoire Portatif de l'Histoire et de la Littérature des Nations Espagnole & Portugaise. Par le Chevalier Alvar Augustin de Liágno, Espagnol, aujourd'hui Bibliothécaire de S. M. le Roi de Prusse, et de S. A. R. Monseigneur le Prince Henri, Frére dụ Roi. Tome I. 8vo. pp. xvi. 508 Berlin. 1820.

THE Author of these memoirs is a Spaniard and a Protes

tant, a combination not a little remarkable; we fear almost anomalous.* We are unacquainted with the circumstances which led to his conversion to the Reformed Faith; but the enlightened and pious spirit which breathes through these volumes, leads us to believe that it is not a nominal or merely speculative change of sentiment, which has rendered irrevocable his exile from his native land. The ardent love of liberty, civil and religious, by which, in common with many of his fellow patriots and the Liberals of the Continent, he is actuated, is evidently subordinate, in his mind, to an attachment to the Gospel of Christ. His patriotism and his liberality are not the ebullition, the insurrection of the feelings, but principles of a truly Christian character. We rejoice to find that there is at least one such writer among the continental literati, and that as librarian to the King of Prussia, he has found an honourable asylum in a foreign land.

The portion of the Repertory at present before us, is occupied

*Among all the proscribed Spaniards,' says the Chevalier, I 'know not of one who has united himself to a Christian communion separated from Rome, except a learned ecclesiastic, now a member ' of the Church of England, and myself. Thank God, we both hold in horror the irreligious opinions which confound Christianity with the corruptions of the Papal court; but such is the force of prejudice, that, perhaps, Spaniards who partake of these opinions, and are ashamed of the Gospel, will be preferred above us in our own country.'

VOL. XVII. N.S.

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with a preliminary Essay on the history of the Spanish and Portuguese nations. It is, in fact, a spirited outline of their history, to which it is the Author's intention to annex in the form of illustrative notes, a series of historical essays on the different eras or portions into which the annals of the two nations are divided, together with supplemental memoires pour servir à l'histoire des reines Espagnoles et Portugaises.' These are to be followed up with remarks on the antiquities and medals of the Spanish and Portuguese nations; a notice of the writers whom it would be requisite to consult in prosecuting the study of Spanish and Portuguese history; and a chronology of the Spanish Peninsula, down to the death of Charles III. In the subsequent volumes, should the work meet with adequate encouragement, the Author designs to give the biography of celebrated men and writers, as well as their bibliography, extracts from their works, and a poetical anthology. I shall endeavour,' he says, 'to present to learned Europe, in five or seven ' volumes octavo, all that can be wished for in order to rectify, complete, and give a useful direction to the most diversified researches into the history and literature of two great nations, the study of which is perhaps as important as it is interesting.' The first epoch is that of the ante-historical age,-Spain in the time of the Phenicians and the Greeks, respecting which the little that is known, is wrapped up in fable, or blended with hypothesis. The tradition that derives the aborigines from Japhet through Tubal, is unworthy of serious examination. There is the highest probability, that the Peninsula was first peopled from Africa, and if so, by the descendants of Ham.

Spain overrun and partly subjugated by the Carthaginians, is the second epoch marked out by the Author for separate illustration. In pursuing the career of the great Hannibal,' he remarks, we shall have occasion to regret, that a man of such a genius and character was unable either to establish a prosperous and permanent empire in Spain, or to save Carthage.' 'Quelle leçon contre l'esprit de conquète! Quelle demonstration de cette vérité, qu'un grand conquérant est presque toujours un citoyen inutile pour sa patrie quand il n'en prepare pas la ruine entiére !'

The disastrous period during which Carthage and Rome made the Iberian soil the arena of their sanguinary contest, is very significantly adverted to, as replete with the most important instruction. The Author must be pardoned should he be thought to regard as somewhat similar, the long protracted contest on the same soil, between two nations whom he would perhaps designate as the modern Carthage and the modern Rome. In some important points, however, the parallel fails.

Speaking of the moral and political lesson to be derived from this part of the history of Spain, the Author remarks:

Two great nations contending for the empire of the world and the means of subjugating it, is a circumstance which must necessarily lead the historian to develop almost all the principles which ought to actuate nations and their sovereigns, in their projects, their enmities, and their alliances. As regards morality, what more useful lesson could the historian find, than that which is presented by the cruel strife between Carthage and Rome? At what other period has been. more evidently displayed the fatal opposition which so often separates moral honesty and state policy? Carthage and Rome were two rival states, both alike proud, unjust, and oppressive, and both, at the same time, alike hypocritical. The upright historian feels a secret pleasure in having been born at a period when he may in some degree avenge the victims of these two tyrants. The noble nations who inhabited Spain, were perhaps the most illustrious of those victims: alternately misled and overwhelmed, they attached themselves to their oppressors. In no other direction do we find a people aspiring to be really free. For the most part, the nations seemed to imagine themselves incapable of existing without a master: one was all enthusiasm for Rome, another admired and almost adored Carthage. The result of this state of delirium was that long series of combats and disasters which ultimately rendered Spain incapable of enjoying her rights, and of existing, as she deserved, independent and free. I judge that the European nations stand in need of reflecting upon this terrible period in the annals of the world.'

The fourth epoch, Spain consolidated into a Roman province under the first imperial Cæsar, was for a long time adopted by Spanish writers as the commencement of their era, being thirtyeight years earlier than the birth of Christ;-in Aragon till the year 1358, in Castile twenty-five years later, and in Portugal so late as 1415. The fifth section of the Author's plan would bring down the history of the Spanish provinces to the disastrous period, when the effeminacy of the children of Theodosius the Great produced, as a necessary consequence, the fall of the Roman empire.'

It is well known that those unworthy princes gave it up to the Scythians, to innumerable hordes of ferocious barbarians, whom history compels us to call by that name, although those same barbarians were our ancestors, the founders of the nations to which we belong. This is a terrible epoch; but it is most useful to recal it to mind in the present day, when Europe is so prone to forget the lesson it reads. us. It is by placing before her this period in her annals, that we shall be able to shew her the absurdity of some of the maxims which she proclaims, and the numberless evils which proceed from the corruption of Christianity, from a priesthood in hostility against its august Founder, from institutions and laws opposed to the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, and yet revered as the very spirit of the doctrine of that Divine legislator. It is beyond all doubt, and we flatter our

selves that we shall be able to demonstrate it in following the philo sophical historians who have preceded us, that this degenerate religion, frequently more anti-social in its character, than some modifications of paganism, and uniformly as corrupt, was the principal cause of the triumphs of the hordes of barbarians who succeeded in annihilating the empire of the West.'

In this view of the period in question, the Author avows himself completely at issue with those modern writers who speak of the Gothic ages as the golden reign of morals, religion, and heroism. The just and enlightened manner in which he speaks of that false Christianity which has so long enslaved his own country, retarding its civilization and intercepting the light of the Gospel, is very striking. Nothing has contributed more powerfully to provoke, and seemingly to justify the cavils of infidels against the religion of Christ, and to perplex ingenuous minds in the study of history, than the misapplication of such terins as orthodox and Christian to the semi-pagan monarchs, Roman, Greek, or Gothic, and the anti-christian priests and prelates of the fourth and subsequent centuries. A jealousy for the honour of certain names and titles associated with religion, but which, as they occur in history, are the signs of things as little connected with real Christianity, nay, as foreign from it as the titles of mufti or vizier, has, on the one hand, prompted the attempt to disguise or palliate transactions of the darkest character. On the other hand, the infidel philosopher has been eager to indentify the history of the pseudo Church, its saints, synods, popes, monks, and inquisitors, with the history of religion itself. In neither oase do we find things called by their right names.

After having been for some time the scene of a desolating struggle between the Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals, Spain, about the middle of the fifth century, fell under the dominion of the Visigoths, who retained possession of it till the commencement of the eighth. The history of this period and of the Moorish invasion, forms the sixth portion of the Author's arrangement.

In the annals of the Gothic monarchy, we shall have occasion to shew, to the praise of the Goths, that those barbarians knew how to divest themselves of their ferocious manners, and to give the conquered a code which, notwithstanding the imposing criticism of the great Montesquieu, deserves in many parts the admiration of the philosophical civilian. We shall have occasion to praise some other institutions of these successors of the Romans, and we shall find some examples worthy of imitation; but it will be our endeavour to inspire a salutary horror of the absurd and cruel superstition bequeathed, perhaps for ever, to Spain by those fanatics. In tracing the picture of their calamities, their ruin, and the evils which they have succeeded

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in rendering almost endemic in this beautiful Peninsula, we shall leave ample materials to the historian who shall be able and willing to oppose a sort of dyke to the re-action by which our contemporaries would bring back again those barbarous ages.'

The Moorish empire in Spain is the seventh epoch. The Author deprecates the pitiable bigotry which denies them the merit of having conferred on the country which they subjugated, the most important and permanent benefits. Among these he enumerates, their having either originated or carried to a high degree of perfection, every branch of public and domestic economy; the introduction of the culture of rice, of sugar, and of cotton; the construction of the canals (azequias) and reservoirs (norias), by means of which, in the kingdom of Granada and some other provinces, water is still distributed through barren and elevated tracts; the most valuable improvements in agriculture, and the most beautiful manufactures.

Finally, to complete the sort of epitaph which gratitude and conviction alike dictate, in honour of the Mauro-Spanish empire, we shall speak of their libraries, their public schools, and those among their writers who have procured for themselves a name in the annals of metaphysical science, of natural history, of medicine, and of the mathematics. We shall have no need to pause in order to extol the military, civil, and chivalrous virtues of this great nation: they will be sufficiently conspicuous in every page of their annals; and the disciples of the sanguinary Arabian impostor, will often put to the blush the nations professedly venerating the incomparable holy one of Nazareth.'

In the eighth portion of the historical essays, the Author proposes to go back to the era of the foundation of the Asturian monarchy, and to bring down the history of the kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, and Castile, to the union of their crowns with those of Aragon and Granada in the person of Isabella. More than once in the course of his researches, he was led, he says, to fear, that he should be compelled to give up as wholly apocryphal, the existence of the peerless hero whose piety, valour, magnanimity, and innocence shed so bright a lustre on the cradle of the Asturian monarchy. Pelagius, or Pelayo, is the Arthur of the Spanish annals. Our Author inclines to indentify him with Theodomir, the illustrious general who, after the fatal battle of Xeres, arrested the progress of the Moors, and concluded an honourable treaty with Abdalasis their leader. After separating the historical from the romantic, the deeds and character of this chivalrous hero still challenge our warmest admiration; and the Author expresses his high satisfaction at having arrived at the conclusion, that it is not in the power of the most severely sceptical criticism to efface his noble example from the annals of virtue, or to deprive his countrymen of the inspiring recollection.