strong enough not to disturb the statue of James II. in the court of Whitehall; and the reproduction of Thomas à Becket's escutcheon is mere history, implying neither fear, reverence, nor worship. M. de Montalembert confounds Christianity with Papacy, and mistakes strength for weakness. His description of the mode of conducting business within the House is, we will not say copied, from that of Auguste de Stael (in his Letters on England, 1825), but there is a considerable, sometimes even a verbal, resemblance between them; M. de Montalembert, if he be a more brilliant painter, is a less accurate observer, and he does not scruple here, as elsewhere, to sacrifice notorious facts to his own theories: It is worthy of remark that the English Parliament-the arena in which one might expect hereditary rank and political eloquence to be all powerful-is by no means extensively or abusively influenced either by birth or eloquence. History shows that from Walpole to Peel the greatest parts have been performed by men whose birth was inferior to that of the majority of their hearers and followers, and who would not have belonged to what is called the Noblesse on the Continent.'-p. 134. There are here several inaccuracies both of expression and of fact, the more remarkable, because the author has, in the preceding pages, stated the matter very truly and clearly. The English Gentry, as he had just told us, is equivalent to the general body of Continental Noblesse, and to that class almost every distinguished Minister or Parliamentary leader has belonged. Walpole himself, Wyndham, Pulteney, Pelham, Carteret, Lyttelton, Legge, Murray, the two Townshends, the two Grenvilles, the two Pitts, the two Foxes, North, Windham, Gray, Perceval, Castlereagh, Liverpool, all belonged to either the nobility or the higher Gentry; Addington, Canning, and Peel were the only Ministers whose ancestors were not of that class; and all were either the first, or in the very first line, of the Parliamentary speakers of their respective days. Influenced naturally enough by a predi lection for his own rather boursoufflé style, M. de Montalembert hardly admits that any of our speakers are orators, though he candidly enough admits that, for the despatch of business, they are somewhat better; but we do not think that he does justice even to the style of speaking of our statesmen; and the last item of the following short critique on them has a slight, but remarkable, touch of his peculiar prejudice :— Sir 'Neither Lord Castlereagh nor Lord George Bentinck were what can be called orators. Robert Peel was not much of one-the Duke of Wellington not at all; and I do not think that Lord Palmerston has been so more than once in his life.'—p. 135. Lord Castlereagh never affected eloquence, and was very careless, and sometimes even slovenly, in his expressions; but neither words nor matter were ever wanting, and when occasionally excited he was spirited and impressive: his air and manner were, above all, distinguished and captivating. Sir Robert Peel seemed rather disdainful of rhetoric than incapable of it: his mind was richly stored with elegant and solid acquirements, his language was easy and pure, his reasoning perfect, and he had a natural fund of pleasantry and power of sarcasm which his good taste was generally on the watch to restrain, but when he chose to let it loose it was powerful; he did not care to dazzle, he was satisfied to convince and to prevail. Lord George Bentinck had never turned his thoughts to public speaking, and had in fact never spoken, till, by a concurrence of accidents, he found himself acclaimed as leader of his party-a position which his modesty would have declined, but his generous public spirit would not allow him to refuse. His career was too short to enable us to guess how he might have succeeded in a longer race. The Duke of Wellington, it is well known, limited himself to the few wise and weighty words which on each occasion he was satisfied to hit the nail on the head, and disdained all superfluous accessories. The single occasion on which M. de Montalembert's monomania thinks that Lord Palmerston rose to eloquence was probably his speech in favour of Catholic Emancipation in 1829-a very good one, no doubt, but it has been for thirty years followed by a multitude of others, many of at least equal ability, and which have fairly earned and fully justify the high position that he holds in the House of Commons. M. de Motalembert however can remember nothing that does not connect itself with some triumph of Catholicism. But the most marvellous specimen of déraisonnement and inconsistency which the whole work affords is a chapter (xvii.) headed England and Spain,' which contrasts the former and present conditions of these two countries, and attempts to explain the causes which have produced so remarkable a counterchange as they exhibit. The design is happy, the main facts are for the most part true, the language sometimes rises to eloquence, and it really might pass for a fine piece of rhetoric in a school where logic had not been taught; but as a train of reasoning, and especially for the purposes to which M. de Montalembert applies it, a more absurd and suicidal delusion could not have been imagined for it proves, with the whole force of the author's talent, the absolute and indisputable contrary of what he intends : 'Let us compare England and Spain, such as they were after the Middle Ages and before the Reformation-the one under Henry VII., the other under Charles V.-and let us then see their present condition. 'In 1510 England-exhausted by the War of the Roses, stripped of her possessions in France, not yet united with Scotland, not yet enriched by colonies, not yet protected by a naval superiority-is hardly reckoned amongst the important powers of Europe. In 1510 Spain-delivered, after seven centuries of struggles unparalleled in history, from the yoke of the Moors, constituted as a nation by Ferdinand and Isabella, mistress of a new world through Christopher Columbus, mistress of the Low Countries and of half of Italy-towers above all other Christian kingdoms. Ximenes governs her, St. Theresa is about to be born, Gonsalvo of Cordova fights her battles. She is on the verge of universal empire.'-p. 258. St. Theresa about to be born! Of all the miracles we have ever read of this is the most wonderful-that St. Theresa should have had some kind of influence on the greatness of Spain several years before she was born! We will not trust ourselves to say more of such an ingredient in an historical disquisition than that the only thing that we remember to have seen that bears any resemblance to it is that mysterious dispensation of Providence' before. so seriously and solemnly mentioned by M. de Montalembert (ante, p. 545), by which the heart of St. Elizabeth of Hungary was carried to Cambrai in the year 1232, to wait for the heart of Fenelon, which was destined to meet it there in 1715. Perfectly true. But what gave England political liberty'? What enabled her to extend, consolidate, and maintain it? The plain, the natural, indeed we will assert the only possible answer is what M. de Montalembert calls blasphemy. It is really wonderful that a man of the author's abilities, and, on other subjects, sagacity, should approach the truth so close as to touch it, and yet so obstinately refuse to see it. He literally knocks his head against it. He asserts that at the time specified the institutions of Spain were as free and even better organized than those of England, that the character of her people was in every point superior to ours. What new element came in to disturb this Spanish pre-eminence ?— Bad kings,' says M. de Montalembert, and unworthy favourites.' But M. de Montalembert thinks equally ill of our reformed princes and their favourites-so that even on his own showing the result is, that the only essential difference in the cases was the REFORMATION; and that, according to all the rules of reasoning and all the analogies of graded the people and sovereigns of Spain, experience, Catholicism besotted and dewhile Protestantism instructed and ele vated the people and sovereigns of England: and this, in truth, M. de Montalembert himself is forced to confess, only that he confounds causes and effects, and will not see that Catholicism and Despotism are as certainly allied as the Reformation and liberty. While M. de Montalembert's zeal is thus He then contrasts the proud attitude of busily employed in covering historic facts England in 1800 with the prostrate condi-ing badigeon, or distemper of ultra Cathoand material objects with an indiscriminattion of Spain 'England has advanced from greatness to greatness, and disputes with France the first place in the affairs of the world. 'Spain is nothing! All is gone. Institutions, politics, riches, credit, influence, army, navy, commerce, industry, science, literature all simultaneously vanished! 'On the one hand life! on the other death! 'How can we explain such a difference? 'Protestants, and all those who look on Luther's Reformation as an era of progress, have a ready answer: Protestantism makes England's greatness; Catholicism causes Spain's decline. licism, he loses sight, to a great degree, of the main title and professed object of his work-the political Future of England. Of the present state of England-of our manners and institutions, the more prominent, and even some of the more delicate features of our society and government, are copiously and brilliantly, and-with the exception of the frequent intrusion of the monomaniac topic-sagaciously treated; but to the political Future he allows a comparatively small share in his dissertation, and what he does say is so vague, so • inconsistent, that he leaves us at the last, and thinking portion of the English people pages almost as ignorant of what he either attribute the stability and glory' which he advises or foresees as we were at the out- panegyrises to those very causes which he set. For this there are probably two stigmatises as incompatible with her liberty causes: one that most of the purely politi- and even her existence. Sometimes he cal views of his book were more particu- seems to think our aristocracy invincible, larly aimed against the present régime of and builds on it his prognostics of our fuFrance, and that England, though first in ture salvation. And this seems to be his his mouth, occupied very naturally but a own personal wish and hope. He sees in second place in his thoughts; the other, the tenacity and innate vigour of our instithat when he came to wind up the various tions-our schools and colleges, our peerand often discordant ideas that he had col- age and gentry, and above all, in the intellected about England, he either did not see ligent popular and powerful influences of very distinctly what to say, or was, as we our landed interests, all of which he derather think, reluctant to say it. His par- scribes and dwells upon con amore, a pledge tiality, we may say his kindness, towards for their stability; but in several other England, cannot be doubted, nor that he passages he expresses a reluctant, but still was originally a legitimate-monarchist. very decided, opinion of the steady proWhat changes may have been effected in gress and ultimate triumph of Democracy;' his opinions by his transit through the two and recognises in the hearts of the present last republics and his dealings with Louis generation of men a deep and impetuous Napoleon we know not, but we suspect under-current of revolutionary spirit, the that he now thinks constitutional monarchy most insatiable, implacable, and formidable a falling cause even in England—an opi-instrument of mischief;' and he proceeds nion which he seems to us alike reluctant to indicate symptoms of its secret and terto admit, and not bold enough to deny. rible strength,' and of its irresistible force' He sets out by telling us that he is confi- (p. 42). So that, gratified as we are by dent that this great country is not doomed the favourable picture which he draws of to perish that she will maintain her place our past and present England, we must among nations; but he is still more certain confess that, if we had much reliance on that she will not be the same England his political sagacity, we should be a good that she now is, and that she can only save deal alarmed for our futurity under that herself by a gradual but extensive trans-transformation' which looms so portenformation, and by prudent compliances tously through the awful energy of the with the advancing spirit of the age (pp. epithets he employs, and which seems to 31, 298); but by what transformation or us but another word for a democratic Revowhat compliances he nowhere more pre-lution—a conclusion disagreeably enforced cisely indicates than by hints that they on our mind by the style in which our Momay safely be of the same nature as the narchy is mentioned as a kind of scenic deCatholic Emancipation of 1829 and the coration and the Sovereign herself as a Parliamentary Reform of 1832-in both puppet moved by the Ministry at the irof which measures his own Roman Catho-resistible will of the People- the House lic zeal sees nothing either revolutionary of Commons' being already, as M. de Monor indeed beyond the usual working of our talembert records, the real Sovereign of constitutional system. This prepossession the country!' (p. 63-4). -shared, we are confident, by neither Lord Grey nor Lord Brougham, nor Lord John Russell himself, who frankly called his Reform a revolution—throws a singular degree of confusion over the whole of M. de Montalembert's dissertation on England. Emancipation, Reform, and the abolition of the Corn-laws may have been just or necessary; they may be beneficial, and may lead us to still higher destinies; but they had nothing to do with the Old England of M. de Montalembert's idolatry. These changes may produce a better Eugland, but not the England which won his early admiration. Moreover, he wholly leaves out of his account that a vast number, perhaps a majority, of the educated In order to palliate in some degree the manifest inconsistency between his alternate denunciations and welcomings of democracy, M. de Montalembert has recourse to the expedient of imagining two democracies,'' one that recognises the laws of honour and equity, and which has already the good wishes and help of all honest men' (p. 32). The other democracy is jealous, rancorous, furious, the daughter of Envy,' &c., but he nowhere tells us where the innate and essential difference between the two democracies lieshow they are to be discriminated how balanced; and after a careful consideration of the whole work, the only solution we can arrive at is that his good democracy is neither more nor less than what the rest of for we have little confidence in his judgthe world usually calls an aristocracy. If ment of either men or things, and we look this be not his meaning, we at least can on his work as a mere half-fanatical, halffind no other. And on the whole the best rhetorical essay-eloquent, picturesque, conjecture we can make from these various and impressive, but, to use his own phrase, and conflicting hints is, that his prospect, sovereignly illogical' and utterly inconboth for England and France, tends to- clusive; of which we really doubt how wards some species of aristocratic democracy, much may be serious conviction, how much which he seems to think might be equ- personal pique, vanity, or ambition, or how ally well combined with a constitutional much the expansion of an imaginative, imMonarchy or a moderate Republic' (p. pressionable, and irregular mind. 33). But whatever be the form of secular government, about which M. de Montalembert speaks so ambiguously, it is evident that in his Utopia all spiritual power and universal and sovereign supremacy must be à la de Maistre, in the successor of St. Peter, and that entire, absolute, and exclusive obedience to that authority is what M. de Montalembert understands by, and so enthusiastically advocates as religious liberty. The church, of whatever country, is to owe no allegiance to the State, and Rome is to have proprio jure all, and more than all, that bulls or concordats have ever yet arrogated. But we repeat that, if we were able to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of what M. de Montalembert really expects as the Political Future of England, it would afford us little comfort if favourable, and not much increase our alarm if adverse, If in our examination of the work we have dealt largely with its religious element, it is because not only does it appear to us the most important, but we are convinced that it was the prime motive and object of the author's own solicitude; and if, as members of the Church of England, we have expressed ourselves strongly, we beg it may be remembered that M. de Montalembert was a volunteer and violent aggressor, and the less pardonably so because he professed not to treat the religious subject at all. We have still, as we had in 1852, a congenial feeling towards the Comte de Montalembert, whom M. Guizot characterised as a Christian and a Conservative,' though we cannot but look with some distrust at parts of his political conduct, and are constrained by both common sense and conscience to disclaim all sympathy with the disciple of De Maistre and Lamennais. B. Bacon, Lord, apophthegms of, 9. Bagot family, Memorials of the, 157, 172. Bower-bird, the, 126, 127. British Family Histories, 157; use of, 157, 158; E Eagles, effect of confinement on, 121. F. Fielding, Henry, the Life of, with notices of his · as magistrate, ib.; Tom Jones,' 70, 78; Ame- C. Catholicism in England, 296; and see Montalem- Chimpanzee, particulars of the, 122, 123. Conversation, dissertation on, 12. Cumberland's translation of Aristophanes, 43. D. Davy, Sir H., intimacy of, with Southey, 263. Drummond, Henry, arrival of at Geneva, 201. Gardening, 102. G. Great Eastern steam-ship, the, 235; material and Guizot, M. Wm., Essay on Menander,' 86, 37. |