besides the two females, and prudentially keeping a feather cushion before his stomach."

But absorbed in the customs of Westphalia and the contemplation of the old Hofschulze, we find we have forgotten the hero and heroine the lovers of the tale. A young Swabian count, who is incog. in Westphalia, and who has appeared in the above extracts as the hunter,' is the hero. A destiny seems to guide him; he grows up with an irresistible hankering after field-sports, and yet his gun is as sure never to hit the mark as that of Max in Der Freischütz.' At last he wounds by accident a young girl, called thefair Lisbeth,' who is a foundling, in the service of the old Baron Schnurr, and is on a visit to the Hofschulze. He is smitten with the most ardent love, and ultimately makes her his wife, in spite of all family considerations. Our readers must not imagine, because we have made such short work with this love story, that it is treated by the author as a mere connecting link, like the love stories in many of Scott's novels. On the contrary, it is one of the most highly wrought portions of the book: the prevailing feeling being a strange combination of mystical devotion and intense earthly passion. However, a selection was to be made, and other features in the work seemed to us more characteristic.

We close Münchhausen' with a mixed feeling. It was certainly a toil to get through it; we often lamented the pertinacity with which the author wore threadbare the subjects he took in hand; we often grumbled as we proceeded: but still in the better portions there is such vigour of colouring, such a strong reality given to the characters, that we part from them like familiar friends, and quit old Westphalia as if it were a place in which we had spent a holiday, pleasant on the whole, though a few rainy days may have rendered it tedious. Before we quite leave Immermann, let us take a glance at the very spirited portrait which forms the frontispiece to the book edited by Freiligrath.

The face would never strike the spectator as that of a poet. There is to be sure a fine expansive forehead, but the expression of the features is rather that of hardened sense than of genius; the compressed lips exhibit sturdy resolution, with a slight touch of irony. And is not this the characteristic of the writings of Immermann? He seems to us as one in whom the fountain of genius did not spontaneously spring forth; but who, having chosen the sphere of poetry as his world, sturdily resolved to work his way through it. Magnificent as his crude notions might be, the high ideal seems to have been above his reach; but where, as in the best parts of his Münchhausen, he had a firm reality to grasp, he seized it with muscular strength, and the result was such a picture asthe Peasant Life of Westphalia.

ART. II. Geschichte des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts und des Neunzehnten bis zum Sturz des französischen Kaiserreichs, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf geistliche Bildung. Von F. C. SCHLOSSER, Geheimenrath und Professor der Geschichte zu Heidelberg. (History of the Eighteenth Century, and of the Nineteenth to the fall of the French Empire, with especial regard to intellectual Cultivation). Heidelberg. 1836-1843. IN the work before us Professor Schlosser has enlarged and remodelled his summary of the same history published in 1823. Three thick and closely-printed volumes have already appeared, in which the history of Europe is brought down to the latter part of the American war, and the account of the literature of the time to the era of Herder, Wieland, Diderot, and D'Alembert. An addition to the third volume, including the literary history of France and Germany, down to the period immediately preceding the Revolution, has been announced, but has not yet (February, 1843) been received in England. From the year 1789 to the destruction of the empire, it is the intention of the author to confine himself principally to political occurrences. In the portion of the work which is already completed, he has devoted about a third part of his space to the history of the intellectual and literary condition of the time, deriving his materials, as he informs us, from lectures which he has for many years delivered on the subject, and consequently adopting a style more diffuse and familiar than that which characterizes his political narrative.

Even as a lucid and connected summary of the internal changes and the mutual relations of the states of Europe during the last century, Professor Schlosser's work supplies an important deficiency in historical literature. Extending as it does, not only to the Western States which occupied by hereditary right the foreground of history, but also to the new elements of the European system, Prussia and Russia, and even to the two Scandinavian kingdoms, which offered room for the by-play of faction and diplomacy, it was impossible that it should enter into minute details, or supersede the necessity of a fuller account of every particular country and period. Yet the ordinary reader will find in it a sufficient storehouse of facts, and the historical student will recognise the value of a continuous and comprehensive narrative, in which the materials which he has collected may find their proper place. The dullest annals are welcome, when they bring into a reasonable compass the successive and contemporaneous events of which it is necessary to have a general knowledge, before we can understand the details of any limited portion of them.

Schlosser's Historical Method.

25

It is fortunate that in the present instance, this external and positive value tends to secure the reception of a work which possesses merits of a higher and more peculiar order.

We are by no means anxious to determine the comparative rank to which Schlosser may be entitled as a writer; but we have no hesitation in determining the class to which he belongs. He is not one of the dry retailers of facts who report events as they have learned them, according to the order of time, and in the tone of contemporary narratives or documents: who discuss with obsolete interest an intrigue of Mazarin or Condé, or lament with Smollet that in a certain year the king's proclamation against vice and immorality failed to check the prevalent corruption of manners. Still less is he one of the far less useful essayists, who take a portion of history for the text of their discourses on morals and politics. Nor, although he possesses the learning and industry which becomes a German professor, is he a mere collector of the materials of history. As distinguished from all these classes he is fully entitled to the title of a historian. He writes evidently from a full mind, in which his knowledge has arrayed itself, and every portion of it found its proper place, independently of any purpose of communicating it to the world. He makes no parade of authorities, and enters into few controversies as to matters of fact, but plainly tells his story like a man who knows it, and who, therefore, attaches a meaning to every event as it explains what is past, or bears on what is to come. He tells every thing as far as the compass of his plan admits of it, but he does not dwell upon every event in proportion to its apparent material magnitude. He dismisses the battle of Fontenoy in half a page, because it led to little, and proved nothing except that the superiority of the Marshal de Saxe over the Duke of Cumberland was even greater than that of the English infantry over the French. But when a personal intrigue or a diplomatic conspiracy throws light on the state of national morality, or on the relations between governments and their subjects, he does not hesitate to illustrate it from any source, however homely or intrinsically worthless. That his estimate of the relative importance of events is always accurate we will not undertake to assert. In the case of England, where we feel ourselves most competent to form an opinion, we believe he is not unfrequently mistaken; but we are convinced that he is uniformly conscientious in dealing with facts, neither by a moral nor a theoretical standard, but according to their historical value, measured by their actual results. The so-called religious writer, who represents Providence as employed in the construction of edifying parables for the instruction of idlers; the philosophizing politician, who is ever on the watch for

some illustration of the wisdom of conservatism, or of the irresistible march of democracy; and the moralist who inquires whether actions are good or bad, and not whether their results are great or small; all equally mistake the true function of history. Schlosser deals little in the abstract terms, which are the pest of German literature, and which sometimes threaten to overspread our own. He is at least free from the weakness of grave generalizations. He knows that the French Revolution was the result of many principles and laws of human nature, which can be fully represented in no other form than that in which they actually developed themselves, in the previous history of Europe, and more especially of France.

The strictly historical character of the work is nowhere more conspicuous than in that portion of it which is devoted to literature. A history of books is almost always tedious, because the account.of the opinions of men has less interest than the narrative of their actions; but the influence of literature upon life was so peculiarly great during the eighteenth century, that a merely political history must recognise its importance, even at the risk of degenerating into literary criticism. It was necessary to inquire whether books were good or bad, before the results which they produced could be understood. It is Schlosser's merit to have conducted the inquiry with a view to the effect which they had, and not to that which they deserved. That Voltaire was not a great writer is a not uncommon paradox; but it would be utterly absurd to deny that he was a principal agent in the great changes of opinion which he lived to witness, and the chief representative of the doctrines which were held in his time by the higher classes throughout Europe. The account of the English latitudinarians may not be interesting in itself; the criticisms on the German writers before Lessing have a most unattractive subject; but in these cases, and in every other, the literature of each time and country was the exponent of an existing state of things, and a cause of future changes. Even the sects which formed themselves around the greater writers became identified with political parties. In a succeeding generation, when Robespierre had crushed the atheist party, he execrated Voltaire as the teacher of Hebert and Chaumette, and attributed to Rousseau the honour of his own religious zeal.

A foreigner is seldom a competent judge of the style and language of an author. It appears to us that Schlosser expresses himself with clearness and vigour, but that his language is frequently harsh and unfamiliar; like that of a writer who takes the readiest word to express his meaning, without regard to the technical or homely associations which may accompany it.

The

Character and Purpose of the Historian.

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sentences and paragraphs are sometimes ill balanced, the conclusions not bearing out the expectations of the beginning, as when a short anecdote is introduced by a long preamble. These objections however, are trifling when the work as a whole presents a unity and harmony which can only result from the definite completeness of the historian's view, and the grave earnestness of his purpose. His object is to teach not this conclusion or that, but the whole complex lesson which is to be learned from modern history; and he appeals with calmness and dignity to the motives which have influenced him in his task. Advanced in age, with little taste for general society, and removed from all objects of personal ambition, he declares, what few of his readers will disbelieve, that it was only from an overwhelming sense of duty that he undertook this laborious work. He certainly could not hope to please any party, for he is reserved in his praise, while his censures are severe, and almost universally applied. He is opposed to the ecclesiastical and conservative reaction on the continent, but by no means favourable to the contrary spirit which produced it. His purpose is only to do the work for which he finds himself qualified in his character as a historian. What belongs in his opinion to the office of historian may be collected from his eulogistic criticism on Hume, to whom he assigns a place to which we doubt his right, notwithstanding the authority of Gibbon.

But if Hume's neglect to enter into the spirit of the times which he describes, seems to us in many cases to destroy the value of his history, at present it is more necessary to guard against the opposite error. Any book, written by any man, from any point of view, except that which belongs to his own time and his individual character, is utterly worthless, except as an exercise of ingenuity: such as Swift's imitations of old ballads, or Washington Irving's Chronicle of the Conquest of Grenada.' The spirit of the age which he describes must be known, but not shared by the historian. Schlosser's censures are severe and tolerably general; but we believe that he distributes them with reference to the standards and opportunities possessed by the men whom he criticises. His judgment of political and historical results belongs to this generation and to himself. The history of the Eighteenth Century derives its unity on one side, from this serious and unaffected earnestness; but it has also an almost dramatic unity in itself. For ninety years, nothing of weight was done or said in Europe, which did not advance or delay, or cause or modify, the French Revolution. To us, who have the results before us, no portion of history appears more pregnant with meaning; but without the clue of experience, the separate sections of it would appear little more than random illustrations of the vanity of human intentions.