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    own defence . He declared that he -was a faithful subject of King "William and Queen Mary , and that if he knew of any design against -them he would discover it . Departing from his Yea and ! Nay , he protested , as in the presence of God , ¦ that he knew of no plot , and that he did not believe there was any plot , unless lie ambitious projects of the French government might he called plots . Sidney , amazed probably by healing a person who had such an abhorrence of lies that he would not use the common forms of civility , and such an abhorrence of oaths that he would 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 an d 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 statements . There is no mention in it of any " hiding-place . " Sidney says , " I found him j -ust as he used to be , not at all disguised , but in the same clothe 3 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 . Macaulay 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 , very 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 lias documentary evidence which he does not cite . For his next statement , that Penn 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 lip 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 , lias made a serious charge , corroborated by the slightest and least respectable testimony j but 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 French king is adduced , with fragments , " which must have been part " of a letter from Penn to which Avaux had referred . Now , in this letter , it is Avaux himself who suggests the " foreign army . " He does liot say that " Penn wrote to James- * * ' he merely refers to a letter in which Penn described the political condition of England exactly as Mr . Macaulay describes it in the earlier chapters of his third volume .

    In this argument , Mr . Dixon has the advantage over Mr . Macaulay . He has concentrated his- attention upon Penn . Mr . Macaulay has studied men 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 his assertions , or to authenticate them by additional evidence . At the same time , he may have judged from impressions produced by . a multiplied of the flying satires of the day , and , as Mr . Dixon will

    acknowledge , it is impossible by an exact reference to justify ail impression . From the facts that appear , however , and from , the inferences "they permit , the general case against Penii has failed . Mr . Dixon ' s biography of Penn occupies a permanent place in the'library of historical memoirs . It has passed but 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 .

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    LAMABTINE'S " CELEBRATED CHARACTERS . " 3 Iemoirs of Celebrated Characters . By Alphonse De Lamartine . Vol . III . Bentley . 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 biogi-aphieal 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 "Virginius 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 the oracle of her age , with the wit of Mary Wortley 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-de

    Sevigne ' s fraemory " surviving" that of nearly all her contemporaries , Malherbe , Racine , Pascal , La Bruyexe , 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 enn he offend by exalting the Lady of tlie Rocks , or by wreathing a hundred epithets into his character of Antar ? But it is otherwise when great historical names ave treated , not with levity only , but with bitterness . No French writer , perhaps , is qualified to be " the biographer of John Milton ; certainly M . de Lamartine 13 not , who , like the Count de Montalembert , so far misreads the history of our Civil Wars as to esteem Charles the First no greater criminal than ' Louis the Sixteenth . False parallels ave the sins of too free and rapid writers ; and M . de Lamnrtine is in this respect particularly unhappy . He compares the Counts of the German empire to the Thirty Tyrants , Paradise Lost , obliquely , with the Ucnriadc , St . Pierre to Theocritus , Bossuet to Cicero , Demosthenes Chatham , Utirabeau , and Ycrgniaud in a cluster ; " Bossuet , " says M . dc Lamartine , was the Bible fused into a man—the Bible alive I Richelieu was at onco a Sejanus and ai Cromwell ; St . Vincent dc Paul was the "St . John of modern Christianity . " From thait burning zenith his imagination slowly declines , discovering analogies between Tacitus and Tcrtullian , St . Auguatinc and Plato , and reaches tho earth with Milton , witli whom he dives into Confusion . Not content with confounding his motives with those of Salmasius , he compares tho essays ) attributed to Charles—" Celestial Pleas "—with the psalms of

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    and so he dismisses them in three hues . Accordingly , the reader learns nothing of the military power of Russia , as it stood , after the burning of Moscow , in comparison with that of the other nations . Again , upon the Emperor ' s death , Mr . Milner might have occupied a ground which bis predecessors had neglected ; he might have explained the revolt that . followed . But he informs us , merely , that the written renunciation of Constantine was by 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 vras 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 vague words about " a new Russia ' bring us to the catastrophe , and within the space of Uvo pages the insurrection is quelled , and Mr . Milner is soaring o \ ex 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 3 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 Maimacben . Russia encroached in this direction as the Hudson ' 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 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 in the West . But we must have better histories . Mr . Blilner ' s volume , even as a manual , is deficient in many necessary qualities . ¦

    THE RISE AND PROGRESS OP RUSSIA . liussia : its Rise and Progress , Tragedies and . Revolutions . By the Rev . T . Milner , M , A . Longman and Co . The war has produced a . class of compilations , framed upon a false idea . It 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 arc but variations of one story . The reason is , not that the Russian annals have been exhausted , but that compilers , as a body , are an indolent race , mechanical , inartistic , unwilling to search , unable to criticise . Thus , Mr . Milner , who promises to describe tragedies and

    revolutions that have given « . distinct character to Russian history , enlarges on some that are partially mythical , and neglects others of which the events are undoubted . Ilis 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 kind . He writes freely and smoothly , gives way to no fanaticism , fosters no vulgar acrimony . But in a book which pretends to explain the causes of tlie rise and progress of an extraordinary empire , and the tragic episodes of its dynastic history , we have a right to expect move than fragments , ill-arranged and superficial . Taking the " tragedies " in order , as

    they have occurred since the aeccssion of Peter the First , panegyrised by Voltaire and libelled by Du Mai-Baia;—wlmt does Mr . Milner tell us of the insurrection of the Strolitse ? That the passions of the soldiery were inflamed by the artful representations of an ambitious family . "We have no glimpse of the social state of the capital , and few particulars na to the relations between tho army and the throne . From this point we follow Mr . Milner to tho death of the " Great " Czar , nud qfter his funeral arc forced to travel back that we may learn how ho poisoned his son . But it is chiefl y in the treatment of more recent events that Mr . Milner exposes hia want of the historical faculty . From a brief axecount of the invasion of Russia by Napoleon , we expect naturally to bo lud with Alexander through tho retributive campaigns that followed ; but these , says tlie writer , were European , not Russian events ,

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    February 9 , 1856 . J THE LEADER , 139

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 9, 1856, page 139, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2127/page/19/