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    February 9, 1856J THE LEADER. 139

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    THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF RUSSIA. Russia:...

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    ¦ LAMABTINE'S " CELEBRATED CHAEACTERS." ...

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    The Macaula.Y Controversy. ^^^£At^ N S }...

    own defence . He declared that he was a faithful subject of Kong Wilham and Queen Maiy , and that if he knew of any design against -them he would discover X . Departing from his Yea and Nay , he protested , ae hi the pr esence of God , £ at heknew of no plot , and that he did not believe there ™™ f g \™ lZ i & e ambitious projects of the French government might be ealled plots . Sidney amazed probably by hearing a person who had such an abhorrence of lies ihat he would not use the common forms of civility , and such an abhorrenee of oaths that he w ould not kiss the book in a court of justice , tell something very like a lie and confirm it by something very like an oath , asked how , if there were no plot , the letters and minutes which were found on Ashton were to be explained . This question Penn evaded . Mr . Dixon replies , quoting the letter , unabbreviated , in the margin : — I entreat Mr . Macaulay to re-read Lord Sidney ' s letter—the sole authority for his staiementa . There is no mention in it of any " hiding-place Sidney says , « I found him j list as he used to be , not at all disguised , but m the same cjothea and the same h umour I have formerly seen him in . " Sidney never hints that he was amazed " at Penn ' s words . Sidney never suggests that he thought Penn was telling « anything very like a lie . " Sidney evidently believes Penn ' s words . Mr . MTacaulay declares that— " He ( Penn ) assured Sidney that the most formidable enemies of the government were the discontented Whigs . Sidney ' s letter never names the "discontented Whigs . " Sidney does not say that he asked how the letters and minutes which had been found on Ashton were to be explained . " Mr . Macaulay makes Penn say , veiy nonsensically , " the Jacobites are not dangerous . " Sidney makes him say something very sensible and very true : that some of those who came over with William , and some of those who were the first to join him , " were more dangerous than the Jacobites . " Mr . Macaulay ' s third and fourth volumes are an elaborate vindication of the truth of Penn s statement . Surely this is clear , unless Mr . Macaulay has documentary evidence which he does not cite . For his next statement , that Perm exhorted James to descend on the English coast with thirty thousand men , he refers only to an anonymous paper , with which , Mr . Dixon tells us , there is a memorial , drawn up by Williamson , a Court spy , containing the passage , " used by Mr . Macaulay . " Further elucidation of this point is necessary . It is not enough to say that the idea is absurd . Mr . Macaulay , no doubt , has made a serious charge , corroborated by the slightest and least respectable testimony ; out Mr . Dixon ' s refutation would have failed , had not the ninth charge included the eighth . It is , that Penn did his best to bring a foreign army into England . Avaux ' s letter to the Trench king is adduced , with fragments , " which must have been part " of a letter from Penn to which Avaux had referred . ^ ow * in this letter , it is Avaux himself who suggests the " foreign army . He does not say that " Penn wrote to James V he merely refers to a letter m which Penn described the political condition of England , exactly as Mr . it in tne oi i

    Macaulay describes earner cnapiers ms umu vu » u »»« -. In this argument , Mr . Dixon has the advantage over Mr . Macaulay . He has concentrated his attention upon Penn . Mr . Macaulay has studied men j and events in groups . Mr . Macaulay allows his rhetoric to escape his facts ; ; Mr . Dixon tests every statement by a close and penetrating analysis . It would have been fortunate had the historians of every age been watched by critics as vigilant , and as largely informed- We think that Mr . Macaulay is ' bound to modify" liis assertions , or to authenticate them by additional evidence . At the same time , he may have judged from impressions produced by . a multiplicity of the flying satires of the day , and , as Mr . Dixon will acknow- j ledge , it is impossible by an exact reference to justify an impression . From j the facts that appear , however , and from , the inferences they permit , the general case against Penii has failed . , j Mr . Dixon ' s biography of Penn occupies a permanent place in the library I of historical memoirs . " It has passed out of the courts of criticism . " We . have therefore restricted our notice to the new preface , which deals with new , aspects of an old topic . The narrative itself is a masterpiece , pictorial , bright , and written with as much integrity as eloquence , and will increase in popularity as the study of English personal history becomes more general .

    February 9, 1856j The Leader. 139

    February 9 , 1856 J THE LEADER . 139

    The Rise And Progress Of Russia. Russia:...

    THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF RUSSIA . Russia : its Rise and Progress , Tragedies and Revolutions . By the Rev . T . Milncr , M , A . Longman and ( Jo . The war has produced a class of compilations , framed upon a false idea . It j has been supposed that , to authorise a new historical account of Russia , no fresh materials are necessary . One abridgment after another has been presented , with the same incidents invariably repeated , from the Legend of St . Andrew to Bestujeff ' s refusal of mercy . In spirit , in form , in detail , and in result , these books are but variations of one story . The reason is , not that the Russian aunals have been exhausted , but that compilers , as a body , are an indolent race , mechanical , inartistic , unwilling to search , unable to criticise . Thus , Mr . Milncr , who promises to describe tragedies and revolutions that have given « . distinct character to Russian history , enlarges on some that arc partially mythical , and neglects others of which the events are undoubted , llis new work is a rococo development of others that have preceded it , Unless we greatly mistake , he gave many of the facts , and some of the anecdotes , in a former volume . Ho has merits , but they are of an inferior lcind . lie writes freely and smoothly , gives way to no fanaticism , fosters no vulgar acrimony . But in a book which prptends to explain the causes of the rise and progress of an extraordinary empire , and the tragic episodes of its dynastic history , we have a right to expect more than fragments , ill-arranged and superficial . Taking the " tragedies " in order , as they have occurred since the accession of Peter the 1 ' irst a panegyrised by Voltaire and libelled by Du Mnrsais j—wlmt docs Mr . Milncr tell us of the insurrection of the Strelitx ? That the passions of the soldiery were inflamed by the artful representations of an ambitious family . "We hove no glimpse of the social state of the capital , ami few particulars ns to the relations between the army and the throne . From this point we follow Mr . Milner to the deatli of the " Great " Czar , and qfter his funeral arc forced to travel back that we may learn how ho poisoned his son . But it ia chiefly in the treatment of more recent events that Mr . Milncr exposes his wnnt ol the historical faculty . From a brief account of the invasion of Russia by Napoleon , we expect naturally to bo led with Alexander through the retributive campaigns that followed ; but these , says the writer , were European , not Russian events ,

    and so he dismisses them in three lines . Accordingly , the reader learns nothing of the military power of Russia , as it stood , after the burning of Moscow , in comparison with that of tie other nations . Again , upon the Emperor ' s death , Mr . Milner might have occupied a ground which his predecessors had neglected ; he might have explained the revolt that . followed . But he informs us , merely , that the written renunciation of Constantine was % him avowed , and that Nicholas then enthroned himself "to encounter an insurrection . " " Though far from being prepared for action , the conspirators determined to avail themselves of the change of sovereignty , and of the uncertainty respecting the succession , to attempt a revolution . Pestal was the military , and the poet Ryleief the civil head of the conspiring party . Who was Pestal ? If Mr . Milner were our only instructor we should know little of him or of " the poet Ryleief . " A few vagae words about " a new Russia bring us to the catastrophe , and within the space of two pages the insurrection is quelled , and Mr . Milner is soaring over Ararat , to declaim on the death of the giant Czar . In this imperfect and flimsy style the entire volume is constructed ; scarcely one statement is verified , nor has Mr . Milner , apparently , consulted any but the most obvious authorities . We see no reason why compilations of this nature should continue to be written , or to be read . Mr . Milner ' s slight chapter on the progress of Russia in Asia suggests an excellent text for an authentic and p icturesque history . Nothing would be more interesting than to trace the advance of Russian enterprise from the Ural to Behring ' s Straits , and from the Arctic Ocean to China . Fur stations , wooden forts , narrow roads—almost imperceptible ; such were the earliest indications of the approach of a great military power to the shores of the North Pacific . " The Kurile isles were reached , then Japan , and two Japanese appeared among the mongrel crowds at St . Petersburg . " The mines of Siberia were opened * and their produce carried eastwards and . westwards ; the frontiers of China -were reached , and the sentinels of the two imperial armies saluted one another at Maimachen . Russia encroached in this direction as the Hudson ' s Bay Company encroached in America , sending hunters and trappers to explore and rifle the forests , and gradually extorting tribute from the feeble tribes . In the middle of the seventeenth century a line of forts was built along the Amur , to secure an outlet on the narrow sea beyond , and thence on the Pacific . Two hundred years later these settlements are almost unknown to the English I nation , and ships are sent to discover what Russia is doing "in those parts ! ; It follows that the study of Russian history , on the broadest scale , is now ' essential . That young empire is greater than it is reckoned . It is fusing many races into one , and it is time that the process should be understood m | the West . But we must have better histories . Mr . Milner ' s volume , even as a manual , is deficient in many necessary qualities . ¦

    ¦ Lamabtine's " Celebrated Chaeacters." ...

    ¦ LAMABTINE'S " CELEBRATED CHAEACTERS . " Memoirs of Celebrated Characters . By Alphonse De Lamartine . Vol . III . * ~ BentleVv M . de Lamartine delights in contrast , turns from William Tell to Madame de Sevigne ' , places the mythical Antar b y the side of an imaginary Milton , and concludes his biographical series with Bossuet . We learned , from his former volumes , to consider him as an artist , not as an historian ; but in his art he is a master : he raises a glittering pedestal , sets on it a figure , and clothes and colours the figure so that it becomes , if not a reality , an idealisation , if not a portrait , a brilliant picture . Even his Swiss patriot is not the Tell of the mountain songs , or of Schiller , but the antique y u'ginius in a fisherman ' s garb . His Switzerland is a painted scene , dotted with ornamental cottages , quaint and fanciful as fairy land . Madame de Sevigne" is a fair-haired classic , lovely as Phryne , chaste as Cornelia .. She is the idol and t ] ie oracle of her age , with the wit of Mary Woxtley Montague , the fascination of Emma Hamilton , the delicacy of Jnne Grey , and the virtues of Rachel Russell . M . de Lamartine , before her image , becomes the Pygmalion of biography , adores the lady ; and adorns her name with the most richlywrought epithets , double and single . Her brow " reflected the light like a transparent thought , " her eyelids were " veined alabaster , " her nostrils had " rose coloured wings . " Haflz was never more rapturous ; but M . de Lamartine excels all poets , Persians or others , when he sings of Madame < ie Sevigne ' s fraemory " surviving" that of nearly all her contemporaries , Malherbe , Racine , Pascal , La Bruyeve , Fe " nelon ; and , though M . Steivenhart may protest , Bossuet himself . But it is M . de Lamartine ' s privilege to glow like the sunrise upon his subject ; he warms into red and violet the snow of the Alps ; he delineates the traditionary beauty of Thermadour ; he digs Confucius from the dust , and exhales from the blood of our First Charles a sacred perfume ; why not , then , gild and bejewel tho memory of Madame de Sevigne" ? The story is a charming one to read ; the paradox is picturesque ; the sounding and gorgeous style is neither too noisy to be musical , nor tco ornate for grace . When M . de Lamartine introduces rich lights and deep colours it is with such art that the tableau , if surprising , is not barbaric . To say the truth , we prefer his rhetoric to his criticism . Whom can lie offend by exalting the Lady of the Rocks , or by wreathing a hundred epithets into his character of Antar ? But it is otherwise wtoon great 1 mstorical names are treated , not with levity only , but with bitterness . ISO Trench writer , perhaps , is qualified to be the biographer of John Milton ; certainly M . de Lamartine is not , who , like the Count de Montalembert , so far misreads the history of our Civil Wars as to esteem Charles the tn-st no greater criminal than ' Louis tho Sixteenth . False parallels avc the sine ol too free and rapid writers ; and M . de Lamartine ia in this respect particularly unhappy . He compares the Counts of the German empire to , the Thirty Tyrants , Paradise Lost , obliquely , with the «*™ natlc >^ % , ^ * ° Theocritus , Bossuet to Cicero , Demosthenes , Chatham , Jtt . rabeau , and Ycnmiaucl in a cluster ; " Bossuet , " says M . do Lamartine , was the Bible fused into a man-the Bible alive ! Richelieu was at onco a Sojanus and ai Cromwell ; St . Vincent dc Paul was the "St . John of modern Christianity . From that burning zenith his imagination slowly declines , discovering Analogies between Tacitus and Tcrtullian , St . Augustine and Plato , and teaches the earth with Milton , with whom he dives into Contusion . Wot content with confounding his motives with those of Salmasius , he compares the cHsnya attributed to Charles— " Celestial Picas "—with the psalms ot

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 9, 1856, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09021856/page/19/