oughness of investigation, and the rich, varied, complete, final results to which it has led, on the part of the combined authorship. It is rarely the case that all conceivable advantages can be gained without subjecting us to some incidental loss. A practical wisdom will balance the one against the other, and rest satisfied in what on the whole, furnishes a preponderance of beneficial results. This very aspect of the question before us may well derive an illustration, and by analogy, a species of proof from the science of political economy, above adverted to. Division of labor there, while generally advantageous to the community, in a very high degree, may yet subject the individual operator to the loss of somewhat in the versatility and compass of his own powers; which detriment should in other ways be compensated to him, as a member of that very community which is profited by the success, to secure which, such division is indispensable. So in the case now under consideration; what each dull reader may lose, by the absence of personal sympathy with the individuality of a single author, is fully repaid in the aggregate advantages which the diligent student of history derives from the joint labors which here more amply enrich his mind.

Having occasion just here to advert to the admirable work of Monsieur Augustin Thierry, we may as well at this point as any other, furnish the few paragraphs which our space will allow in reference to the author, and the kindred historical work whose title we have introduced at the head of this article along with the Pictorial History. Thierry was born at Blois, in France, a little more than half a century since, and from the humble rank of a poor student, the son of parents able to give him no other advantages than the course of Academic instruction in his native town, he has raised himself by his own indomitable industry, and the wise direction of the fires of an early kindled genius, to the rank of one of the most distinguished living historians. To him, perhaps, more than to any single individual, may be traced the germ of that mighty and happy revolution in historical writing which has marked the last twenty years, on the European Continent, and to some extent in Great Britain and America. He has purchased with the loss of his sight, worn out over old texts and manuscripts, the honor of having been

one of the first to raise the standard of historical reform. In this respect, and in some others, his resemblance to our great Milton helps to awaken a livelier interest for the person of the author, as well as a more genial sympathy with that mental and moral opulence, which spreads its riches around all the productions of his amply furnished mind. The same spirit of enlarged and liberal devotement to the whole field of literary research, which led Scott and Alison to attempt portraying the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon, and Guizot to re-examine and anew exhibit the English Revolution of 1640, seems to have impelled Thierry to undertake the more remote but eminently rich field, the central point of which is the Norman Conquest, but which in its preparation and its results, stretches through a much wider extent of the English annals. In the words of the author in his Introduction, the history "will be found to contain a complete narrative of all the details relating to the Norman Conquest, placed between two other briefer narratives-one, of the facts preceding and preparing that conquest; the other, of those which flowed from it as necessary consequences." He divides the main or central portion of his work into five epochs, reaching from the middle of the eleventh century, to the early part of the thirteenth. Every one at all conversant with this portion of English history, will readily understand how rich and important is this field, over which research and genius here combine to shed a most inviting light.

The spirit of the author is at once liberal and sufficiently conservative. His evident and kindly sympathy with the weaker, the oppressed and suffering party in the great contest which he chronicles, cannot fail to awaken a genial glow of approval in the minds of those who do not succumb to the old axicm of tyrants, that "might makes right." Thierry is by no means insensible of the good result, which, under God's all-wise, but to us often inscrutable providence, has educed a high and benign purpose, even from these iniquitous instrumentalities. It is His blessed prerogative to make the wrath and the folly, the selfishness and the baseness of man, subservient to his own glory and the good of our race. But while indulging in reflections thus consoling, it is always important to guard against that mitigating tendency to the

strenuous condemnation of wrong, even successful wrong, to which the weakness of our nature sways us. This golden mean is happily preserved by the French historian.

As to the method of his procedure, which seems to us a model in such a historical excursus or episode as he has thus presented, we will make room for a few sentences of his own description.

"I have consulted none but original texts and documents, either for the details of the various circumstances narrated, or for the characters of the persons and populations that figure in them. I have drawn so largely upon these texts, that, I flatter myself, little is left in them for other writers. The national traditions of the less known populations and old popular ballads have supplied me. with infinite indications of the mode of existence, the feelings and the ideas of men, at the period and in the places whither I transport the reader. I have preserved throughout the narrative form, so that the reader might not abruptly pass from an old tradition to a modern commentary, or my work present the incongruous aspect of fragments of chronicles, intermingled with dissertations." Again, as to the general temper of mind in which the work has been done, he says, "While necessarily relating their revolutions [the Welsh, Irish of pure race, and Scotch,] in a summary manner, I have done this with that sort of sympathy, with that sentiment of pleasure, which one experiences in repairing an injustice."

It would be quite impossible to indicate the high value which these thorough and independent researches furnish in regard to the races, the languages and idioms, the intellectual and social state, and the civil rights of that great, noble stock from which we trace our descent.

Such separate works as this, and Mackintosh's Revolution of 1688, and some of Scott's episodes of Scotch history, which, bating his too strong Tory and High Church predilections, have great value, will not be entirely superseded even by the great Pictorial History of the British Isles. To some additional notices of this work we now return; and, as may be more befitting our place as Christian reviewers, we will just glance at the history of religion in the several periods into which the work is divided. This task is both more difficult and more necessary, because the several chapters are entirely without such headings

VOL. XIII.—NO. XLIX.

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as indicate their summary contents,-and the ample chronological index of some fifty pages, which is to terminate the work, has not yet been issued. Indeed that minute examination of the chapters, embracing the history of religion, which we have made for this very purpose, has accumulated upon our hands a large amount of notes, quite too extensive for insertion here. But we will venture the intimation, that any one disposed to gain a clear, connected and sufficiently compendious view of this subject from the earliest times, cannot fail to find the second chapter of each of these nine books of the history a more satisfactory exhibition of this subject than is elsewhere attainable. Still, to derive all possible benefit from it, the corresponding chapters in each part should be studied simultaneously with this, as they throw light upon each other.

In book first, covering more than 500 years, reaching from B. C. 55, to A. D. 449, the chapter on the History of Religion, embraces two sections; 1. Druidism, of which a clearer and more intelligible view is here presented than we recollect to have elsewhere met with. As a joint result of Brahminism and the religion of Egypt, many points in its philosophy, its history, its polity, are here touched upon, evidently by the hand of a master. 2. We have the original introduction of Christianity into Britain; in which the little that is known, and much more that is guessed at and supposed, are both discriminatingly set forth.

The second book,-stretching down 600 years later, from the arrival of the Saxons to that of the Normans, gives us the religious history, again divided into two parts. 1. Saxon Paganism,-Odin and the Edda, with all its dark mysteries, and its commingled character. 2. Christianity in its corrupted, diluted, attenuated state, as found by the Saxons; a strange compound of Druidism and Christianity, especially in some parts of England. Then we have that Christianity which was afresh introduced by Augustin from Rome, in the close of the sixth century. After the signal success of this Popish legate in some portions of the island, we have a very distinct notice of his repulse by the Christians of Wales, because Augustin required of them conformity to Rome in the keeping of Easter, in their baptism, and finally coöpera

tion with him, and under his direction, in the work he had already begun of converting the entire body of the Saxons. This they stoutly and unanimously refused. He, in the appropriate spirit of the persecuting church he served, uttered his malediction on them, which was speedily accomplished by a terrific massacre of all the ecclesiastics of Bangor, against whom this prelate's spite seems to have been most rancorous. With characteristic fraud, the Romanists, by interpolating a line into the his-" tory of the venerable Bede, strive to convey the impression that this took place after Augustin's death, thus seeking to screen him from the reproach of cruelly fulfilling his own prediction. [See Thierry, Vol. I, pp. 39, 40.] In the latter portion of this period, the history and exploits of Saint (?) Dunstan fill a considerable space, and strikingly illustrate the character of the times and the infamous trickery of the Romanists.

Book third, covering 150 years, to the death of King John, in the year 1216, may be termed the Norman period. Its religious aspect shows a continued struggle with the pope. Under a picture of the baptism of the mother of Becket, there is the emphatic and incontrovertible statement;-"Entire or partial immersion was a part of the old mode of baptism: immersion, indeed, continued to be practised in the English church till after the Reformation." Hence the frequently recurring testimony of baptism in the rivers, throughout this period. The corruption and disorder resulting from the nonresidence and pluralities of the higher clergy, appointed by the pope, and chiefly foreigners, now began conspicuously to manifest itself. New orders of monks were now established in Britain. In the times of Henry I, the half or more of the clergy were married; but from the twelfth century, celibacy (or at least the profession and pretence of it) was the practice as well as the law. Near the close of the period now contemplated, religious zeal and fanaticism found new vent and excitement in the crusades.

Book fourth, covering the reigns of the third Henry, the first three Edwards, and Richard second, comes down 160 years later. The papal dominion here reaches its height. Troops of religious mendicants, the frequent bulls of popes, and the degradation of rulers and subjects to ghostly supremacy, fill up the disgusting picture till