Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

what could have been obtained without it. The strong persuasion of certain truths derived from its plain and palpable proofs is therefore often ascribed to the suggestions of creation. Men see divine objects so clearly in the light of revelation that they cannot imagine they would be hidden, if it did not shine. We appeal from the refined and pure conceptions of Christian philosophers, to the past and present condition of the heathen mind.

We should not satisfy our sense of justice, did we not earnestly recommend our theological readers to obtain these volumes. Whether philosophical, imaginative, or polemical, they will find much to instruct, edify, and delight. Seldom have we seen a local controversy so full of present interest and the promise of permanent results.

The History of England under the House of Stuart, including the Commonwealth. By Robert Vaughan, D.D. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Baldwin & Cradock.

The "Library of Useful Knowledge," as it was the first, so it is upon the whole, one of the best and cheapest of those many series, the object of which has been to bring the elements of science and literature within the reach of the masses. That the volumes which compose it, written by very different men, and on a great variety of subjects, should exhibit great inequality of merit, is perfectly natural; sometimes the society have mistaken their man, sometimes the man himself has mistaken the limits within which the subject must be treated, in order to answer the original ends of the society. Hence some numbers of the scientific portion of the library are as elementary, and others as little elementary as they can possibly be; so that it is quite impossible that the whole "library" can contain nothing but what is "useful" to all classes; and the "Library of Useful Knowledge" therefore, must be supposed to mean what is "useful" to some class or other. The very great difference in the modes of treating scientific subjects observable in different parts of the series, is easily accounted for. The society soon found that the portions of science, which can in fact be popularized, and made plain to the reader unversed or but very slightly versed in the mathematics, are very limited, and that it was necessary either not to treat a great many scientific subjects at all, or to treat them in a most superficial and "useless” manner, or to treat them as they ought to be treated, leaving them in the hands of the reader, to be understood or not, as his genius, his circumstances, and his fate might determine. The first of these alternatives would have destroyed the proposed Encyclopedic character of the library; the second would have retained it in name and destroyed it in reality, not to say any thing of exposing a large portion of it to contempt; the last preserved its character, but abridged the number of its general readers, or rather secured something to each and designed all for none.

The historical series of this "library" is, upon the whole, well worthy of comparison with the scientific. It already contains complete histories of the church up to the time of the Reformation; of France, of Spain and Portugal, of Greece, and now of England, during the most eventful and important portion of her history. A history of Rome, too, long since commenced, is now in rapid progress. Of these works several are truly admirable, which of all of them it may be said (and the remark applies to the scientific portions of the library as well) that, whatever their defects, they contain information in a very unsually large proportion, to the price demanded for it.

The history of the church, by Mr. Waddington, is not only characterized by great research, and written with great spirit, but also marked by a most commendable candour, liberality and impartiality. The history of Greece is a truly valuable compendium, while that of Rome, commenced many years ago by Professor Malden, (would that it could have been all completed by the same mature and accomplished scholar!) promises to be the best work, of a moderate size, on that gigantic subject, which our literature possesses.

The volumes which stand at the head of this article, and which are occupied with the English history from the accession of James the I. to the Revolution, are amongst the most important and interesting which the society has issued. Though the author's name does not appear on the title page, it will be found at the close of the brief preface, and is already very familiar to our readers;-familiar to them in many ways, and amongst others, as a writer on the very subject of which these volumes treat. It is that of Dr. Vaughan, whose well-known work entitled "Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty," was reviewed in this magazine many years ago. The fact of its being a second publication on the same subject will, on many accounts, be deemed an advantage to the present work. It implies a very prolonged and thorough study of the whole period; renewed and more extensive investigation of the most difficult and doubtful points; opportunity to consider any hasty judgment, and to correct any erroneous statements; it must have been prepared with the full advantage of that sort of familiarity with the subject which previously writing upon it can alone give, and must have rendered more wide, and minute research more easy, inasmuch as all the great outlines of the work were clearly laid down and familiar to the writer's mind. Excursions to the right and left are easy, and the danger of being lost in them slight, when the great lines of our route are well-known to us. Upon the whole, this work of Dr. Vaughan may be considered to embody the last, and revised opinions of the author on the great subject of which it treats; the fruits of many years of reading and research, of close and repeated investigation, and given to the world at a period of life when the judgment may be supposed mature, and the intellect in its full vigour. On the other hand, the very

fact that it is a second publication on the same subject, may be deemed by many a disadvantage to the present work. It may be supposed a mere republication of the former one, or a republication of it with a few paragraphs altered or rewritten, a few unimportant errors corrected, and a little more amplification and detail here and there indulged in. This would be a great misconception, and the answer to it is brief, full, and conclusive. The present deserves to be considered an entirely new work, the only advantage derived from the former being this-and assuredly it is an important one-that the author did not come as a novice to his subject, but had already spent much time, not only in the accumulation, but in the arrangement of his materials.

Not only is this work entirely rewritten, but it differs from the former in extent as much as in form; it contains, if we may judge by the number of pages and the size of the type, at least three times as much matter; and thus many of those portions of the history which in our author's first work were treated in a manner far too slight, are here dwelt upon with a fulness and particularity, commensurate with their importance.

It is matter of unfeigned gratification to us, not only that we have in this work a fair exposition of those principles which are so dear to us as Nonconformists, and which were originated or developed in the course of the seventeenth century, and an impartial estimate of the characters and doings of those who maintained them, but that the work from its being published and circulated under the auspices and patronage of an influential body, will be likely to be read by many, to whom we should otherwise have no appeal. The popular histories of England are, as every body well knows, full of the grossest misrepresentations of the principles, motives, and actions, of those who achieved the great work of our political and religious freedom. The writers on the side of truth and liberty have generally wanted those qualities of mind which are essential to a work of standard popularity, (showing by the way how important it is that truth should not be left simply to her own recommendation, and that falsehood with eloquence will often do as much as truth without it) or if their works have not been destitute of considerable merit as historical compositions, they have been neglected as the productions of men of the less favoured and proscribed classes-as the expositors of the views of a narrow section of religionists. Nor is it to be denied that no dissenter can write on such a theme except under very considerable disadvantages. He needs some extrinsic aid to secure him his proper influence. This, we flatter ourselves, Dr. Vaughan has in some measure obtained, in the patronage of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and we cannot but hope that many will thus be induced to listen to a candid, dispassionate, and impartial narrative of incomparably the most important period of our annals, who might otherwise have lived in ignorance or prejudice respecting it, all their days.

"

That Dr. Vaughan's history is most candid and dispassionate, we have no hesitation in saying. His former work was, indeed, characterised by a most commendable caution and sobriety of statement, and the present is marked by assuredly not less moderation. In fact, we think that, in some parts, if he has erred at all, it has been on the side of candour; but if so, it must be admitted, that that very candour gives his remaining statements all the force of the argument a fortiori.

In addition to the cardinal excellence of impartiality, without which, indeed, history is no history, but fiction, and fiction, too, of the most pernicious kind, Dr. Vaughan has imparted both authority and interest to the statements of the text, by giving, in ample foot-notes, not merely the references to the contemporary writers on whose authority he founds them, but citations from them. The copious reference to authorities, indeed, formed a commendable feature in his former work, and is one, and one of the most important indications of that spirit of impartiality which is his general characteristic. But in the present work he has made very numerous and judicious extracts (each, however, in itself brief) from these contemporary writers, and a most valuable and interesting feature of the work it is. Not only is the testimony of an eye witness, or a contemporary, generally conveyed with a picturesque grace, a life and vivacity, and a raciness of language, which on many accounts cannot be expected in the less impassioned and rapid page of the historian, but many little traits of character, many graphic touches of manner, many trifling but characteristic incidents are thus presented to the imagination, which could by no means be admitted into the text, but which, nevertheless, contribute in a most important manner (and that, of course, by their very circumstantiality) to give vividness and definiteness to the general picture; and the impression is still further aided by the very manner and phraseology in which such matters are described, being those, of course, of each successive age.

[ocr errors]

1

The following is Dr. Vaughan's preface to the present work :—

“The condition of England under the house of Stuart exhibits that point in our progress as a nation, toward which all the previous changes in English history converged, and from which the leading events of subsequent times have derived their complexion. If well understood it leaves little to be explained in relation either to the past or the present. The interval from 1603 to 1688 was marked by the appearauce of great men, by great events, and above all by a protracted struggle in the cause of great principles. It has been my aim that the present publication should not be deficient in any matter properly belonging to a complete history of that period; but my special attention has been directed to the history of political and religious parties, and to the progress of affairs as affecting the settlement of order, law, and liberty at the Revolution. It is now more than ten years since I began the study of this subject, with a view to authorship. In committing the result of my labour to the judgment of the public, I should have less anxiety if I could feel as satisfied with the execution of the work, as with the extent of my efforts to acquaint myself with the best sources of information, and the sincerity of my solicitude to make a candid and a wise use of the knowledge thus obtained. No attempt has been made to con

ceal my own views with respect to the great question at issue in those times; but in defending principles which I believe to be of the greatest importance to our social welfare, I have been anxious to avoid all unfairness toward the parties by whom those principles have been assailed. In this spirit my labour has been prosecuted,-not with the expectation of giving entire satisfaction to thorough partisans of any class, but in the hope of producing a work which might contribute, however imperfectly, toward a more general diffusion of sound views with regard to the great facts in our national history."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

༈ ་་,『4

We have spoken of the general merits of this work, and this is all that our space permits. A full analysis of it would occupy far more than the room allotted to our necessarily brief reviews. We think it however, only just to ourselves, to the reader, and to the author, to confirm our commendations, by selecting one or two extracts sufficiently copious to test them by, And for the sake of ourselves, as well as our readers, we shall select them from those portions of the work which treat of events most deeply interesting to us-which have been grossly misrepresented by those who are interested in misrepresenting them, and which cannot be impressed too frequently and too clearly on the minds of all enlightened and conscious Nonconformists. And first, let us hear what Dr. Vaughan has to say on that iniquitous transaction, the Hampton Court Conference :

“A few passages from Barlow's narrative will suffice to show the manner in which this debate was conducted, and will enable us to judge whether the review of it furnished any just cause of self-gratulation to the monarch,....... ེ ་ ་ ༈

"In the last reign there were certain meetings of the clergy for conference on religious subjects called prophecyings, which Elizabeth, with her wonted jealousy of freedom, had seen it expedient to suppress, but which, as exercises admirably adapted to train the clergy to proficiency in their vocation, found a strenuous advocate in no less a personage than the wise and cautious Sir Francis Bacon. The matter however was no sooner broached than James exclaimed If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agrees as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council. Therefore I reiterate my former speech, Le roi s'avisera. Stay, I pray you, seven years before you demand that of me; and then, if you find me grow pursy and fat, I may perchance hearken unto you, for that government will keep me in breath, and give me work enough. Having thus informed his auditory, with more freedom probably than was intended, of the devout motives which had induced the preference of an Episcopal to a Presbyterian Church, the king diverged to the question of the supremacy of the crown in ecclesiastical affairs, and for reasons which the following extract will sufficiently state: After Queen Mary had overthrown the Reformation in England, we in Scotland felt the effect of it. For thereupon Mr. Knox writes to the Queen Regent, a virtuous and moderate lady, telling her she was the supreme head of the church, and charged her, as she would answer it at God's tribunal, to take care of Christ's evangil, in suppressing the Popish prelates, who withstood the same. But how long, trow ye, did this continue? Even till by her authority the Popish prelates were repressed, and Knox, with his adherents, being brought in were made strong enough. Then they began to make small account of her supremacy, when, according to that more light wherewith they were illuminated, they made a further reformation of themselves. How they used the poor lady, my mother, is not

« AnteriorContinuar »