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resources, and occasionally great power of rhetorical expression, with much felicity as a composer of mere historical narrative. The period embraced in his first work, from 1789 to 1815, was so rich in great events, and so crowded with great names, that the task of the historian was comparatively easy. Simply as a chronicler of the evolution of the several parts of the great drama then enacted, all the pomp and power of rhetorical skill and artifice were scarcely felt to be exaggeration, and the roused feelings of society rarely considered any language too bold in which to pourtray the lineaments of that Titanic era. But calmly to contemplate the greater victories of peace; to estimate with philosophic composure and acuteness the far higher triumphs of an advancing civilisation; to exhibit the rights and feelings of the hitherto neglected sections of society recognised, respected, and extended, and some of the great social lusts and passions held in check and driven from their footing in the high places they had attained, required an annalist of a higher order than the learned Sheriff of Lanarkshire.

Let Sir Archibald Alison confine himself to the picturesque details and grand incidences of military achievements, the tricasseries and intrigues of courts, the low ambition of vulgar statesmen, or some of the commanding exhibitions of higher-class minds-to the mapping-out of the more prominent features of scientific discovery and progress, or to a panoramic series of sketches of the literary men of his age, and his voluptuous and voluminous rhetoric, his broad and vigorous pencil, will illuminate and enrich the historic page, not perhaps with the lofty lights of an exalted philosophy, but at least with the graces and elegancies of a highly accomplished and wellstored and cultivated mind.

But the grand defect of this historian, is his inability to merge his individuality as a man and as a politician, and to reach that calm and philosophic isolation from the passions and prejudices of his day, and of his political caste, which is indispensable to secure the cool and deliberative verdict of well-elaborated history. For instance, in the volume before us, the narrative extends only from 1815 to 1819, a period of four years. But so eager is he to rush into the consideration of the vast questions and social changes that have distinguished the entire period of his historic meditations, that the first chapter is devoted to a "General Sketch of the whole period from the Fall of Napoleon to the Accession of Louis Napoleon." Into this area the learned Sheriff descends, not exactly ex Deo fit machina, as the sober inquirer and patient annalist, but as the impassioned litterateur of Blackwood's Magazine, and the violent political partisan. It would be difficult to point out in historical or political literature, a more curious melange of political and personal optimism than is contained in this chapter. It is, in fact, from beginning to end, a sort of lay sermon, or descant on the terrible evils of popular and even of constitutional liberty. Sir Archibald is, indeed, a finelypreserved specimen of a fossilised Tory of the good old times. Generations hence, some inquisitive antiquarian will unearth some of the disjecta membra of this political megatherium, and, by pious hands, if any such are left in such degenerate days, the precious remains will be duly enshrined in some national museum, to show the mighty mould of the men of the Tory ages. In his first work, touching on the causes of the French Revolution of 1789, he is obliged to admit many of the gross abuses which prevailed in every department of the administration of government. Friend and admirer of absolutism as he is, he could not overlook the gilded but grinding despotism of Louis the Fourteenth, the atrocious excesses of the Regency, or the pol

luted era of Louis the Fifteenth, with the fearful corruptions of religion, out of "whose stagnant marshes, as Hall beautifully remarks, arose the pestilential exhalations of modern infidelity." That such a concurrence of evil influences should have utterly demoralised a people, and that when they rose in their brute and blind strength, against their twin oppressors and corrupters, the church and the state, they should have struck down much that it would have been desirable to preserve, and gone far beyond all reasonable bounds, or that they should have wallowed for a time in the brutal ecstacy of their wild revenge, need have surprised no observer of human character and history, and ought rather to have excited his sympathy and compassion, than to have provoked him into an alliance with the real authors of this political deluge. So also, when the Bourbons returned to France in 1815, borne in upon foreign bayonets, did not the most acute of observers say of them, that "they had forgotten nothing, had learned nothing?" Their career was a ceaseless struggle betwixt their indelible ideas and principles of divine right, and their reluctant acquiescence in the forms of constitutional government. The French people, on the other hand, hated them as the representatives of a race and a system they had determinately thrown off, and which were forced upon them by foreign arms. This is the secret of the repugnance of the French to the Bourbon restoration, and in some degree also to the government of Louis Philippe, whose mean and selfish ambition disgusted them, and whose endeavours to restrict instead of extending their meagre constitutional liberties, had excited their jealousy and hatred. The historian says nothing of all this, but traces the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, entirely to a ceaseless and causeless conspiracy against the Bourbon princes. In the temporary excesses afterwards of the extreme Republicans and Socialists, he obviously finds an excuse and necessity for the crimes and perjuries of Louis Napoleon; overlooking the fact that these excesses were repudiated and severely punished by the Republican leaders themselves. Such is the animus of this impartial historian, which is equally visible when he speaks of the German and Italian revolutions of 1848. Not a word drops from his pen indicative of the least sympathy with the trodden down populations of Italy and Germany, or the atrociously bad faith of some of their sovereigns. The miserable and minikin despots of Naples and Florence escape even the mildest censure; and not a single remonstrance is drawn forth by the gallant struggle of the Hungarians, or the perjuries of the House of Hapsburgh towards that noble people. He can only afford to observe (page 24) when summing up, "that successful revolution, by whomsoever effected, under all imaginable diversities of nation, race, and circumstances, can end only in the empire of the sword." Or, still more coolly, in speaking of France, "such is the invariable result of unchaining the passions of a people, and of a successful revolt against the government of knowledge and property." It is always the people who are in the wrong, their divineright-rulers never! The former should have patiently waited until the Promethean torch of liberty was held out to them by their governors, an event likely enough to have taken place eight days or so before the day of judgment. Of representative institutions, he says, at page 55, "In truth, the present effects of representative government in the two countries where they have been longest established, and been most successful, may well suggest a serious doubt, whether, in their pure and unmixed form, they do not induce more evil than they remove." Sir Archibald would like them to be well diluted with aristocratic influence, "an aristocracy of land and commercial wealth, controlled by an energetic commonalty, such as obtained under the

old constitution of Great Britain, when all classes were adequately represented"!!! Did he ever hear, we wonder, of a certain character, singularly eminent for truth, one Fernand Mendez Pinto. Surely, he has taken a leaf out of this man's book, and spoken the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And this Tory litterateur pretends to write history! In fact, in exact proportion as the public liberties have been respected, public opinion deferred to, public burdens diminished, and class legislation avoided, has the security of the commonwealth been attained, the acquiescence in and respect for the constitution been extended amongst all classes, and a spirit of general contentment and social concord been shed abroad in society. In April 1848, when Europe rocked to its foundations with the volcanic action of the political earthquake, the surface of society in this country was comparatively calm and tranquil. No Gagging Acts, suspensions of the Habeas Corpus, or Green Bags big with conspiracy, were required. The policeman's staff kept order, because the people, knowing their rights, recognised in the constitution they had wrested from reluctant Toryism, the legitimate means of obtaining further concessions and improvements. Such are the results of timely reform. As might be expected, Sir Archibald Alison is as little satisfied with the course of matters at home as abroad. From the Catholic Emancipation Act, and the Reform Bill, to the melancholy catastrophe of 1846, when the people were enabled to buy their food in the cheapest market, all is nought in his prophetic eyes. His soul is big with the coming ruin of his country, and the publication of his lamentations, happily synchronises with the forced acknowledgment by a Tory and Protectionist Ministry, that the free trade system, or, as they mildly term it, unrestricted competition, though, "not wise, just, and beneficial," has produced effects, mirabile dictu, just as if it had been entirely so, upon the condition of the people and the country, both of which are acknowledged to be flourishing beyond example, and as a consequence of the very measures the historian so fiercely denounces. This is a very unkind cut at you, Sir Archibald, on the part of your friends, and singularly mal a propos! He complains of Sir Robert Peel's Banking Acts in 1819 and 1844, " as having changed the value of money fifty per cent., coupled with free trade, it has doubled it." No proof is, however, adduced; and he omits the important facts, of nearly thirty millions of taxes having been repealed since 1815, the reduction of the interest on the national debt, and the reduced cost of government. He thus alludes to the emancipation of the negroes in the West Indies, the noblest act in our national annals, "Eight hundred thousand slaves in the British colonies received the perilous gift of unconditional freedom. As a natural result of so vast and sudden a change, and of the conferring of the institutions of the AngloSaxons upon unlettered savages, the proprietors of these noble colonies were ruined, their affections alienated, and the authority of the mother country only preserved by force of arms." These "unlettered savages have shown themselves much fitter for constitutional freedom than their masters; nor has a whisper ever been breathed against their exercise of their newly conferred rights. And as for the ruin of their masters, much of it has been owing to their own obstinate tenacity to a system of cultivation which had worn itself out, and to their not meeting the difficulties of their case by adopting those means and appliances which modern discovery and science were offering to them. Only a few days since, a Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, formerly as doleful as himself, confessed in his place in the House of Commons, that the production of West Indian sugar is increasing, and the import of foreign sugar diminishing.

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Our limits will not, however, permit us to follow out the historian in his political and social Jeremiade over the fallen condition of his country. Whatever topic he touches upon in the political resume of events, that he has so injudiciously ventured upon at the beginning of his history rather than at its conclusion, he turns into an attack upon things as they are. Luckily for the nation, a gleam of hope falls upon the historic page, from the gold discoveries in California and Australia. The vast emigration going on to these countries, and which he grandiloquently terms "the second dispersion of mankind,” comforts the desponding prophet. Though our sun is visibly setting here, he says it is rising with redoubled splendour in our new empire at the antipodes.

We have no quarrel with Sir Archibald Alison, for we know him to be a kind and amiable man and a highly accomplished person; and in the volume before us, making due allowance for the jaundiced view which he takes of public affairs at home and abroad, there is abundant evidence of his ability as a historian, and the range of his general information. But there is a Spanish proverb which says, "he who spits against the wind, spits in his own face.' The world cannot be all wrong, and only the Sheriff of Lanarkshire right. The fifth chapter in the volume, which presents a panoramic view of "the progress of literature, science, the arts, and manners in Great Britain after the peace," is the best in the volume. It presents one of the finest series of literary and historical portraits ever put together. A refined taste, generous feeling, and acute criticism, distinguish this masterly sketch, which compensates by its rich and redeeming lights for some of the other faults of the historian. Of religion little is said, but, in a cold outline of social progress, it is admitted that the influence of religion has increased in Europe. Nothing is said as to the disruption in the Church of Scotland, the eruption of tractarianism in the Church of England, or the audacious pretensions of the Church of Rome, the most pregnant facts in the recent religious history of Great Britain.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. WILLIAM KIDSTON, D.D.

[We extract the following able and interesting sketch from the Discourse noticed in last Magazine, preached by the Rev. Dr John Macfarlane, in Campbell Street East Church, Glasgow, on the Sabbath after Dr Kidston's funeral. Large as is the space devoted to the extract, we have been compelled to omit two or three sentences of minor importance.]

DR KIDSTON was born in the village of Stowe, county of Edinburgh, on the 9th of September 1768. He was the fifth out of thirteen children,—all of whom are now in the eternal world. His father was the Rev. William Kidston, the Secession minister of Stowe, a man of God, who, in his generation, served the Lord Jesus Christ with faithfulness and success. He was indeed one of a class of Secession pastors, who lived in these days, of remarkable theological attainments, and widespread influential godliness. The savour of his life of faith is not even yet away from that interesting pastoral country, where for more than half a century he lived and laboured, and where also he died. After receiving the elements of a useful and classical education, first under Mr Doeg, of the Grammar School of Stirling, where he lodged with his paternal aunt, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh, he was admitted by the presbytery of Newtown (the village where the late venerable Dr Waugh, of London, was ordained) to the Divinity Hall. The professor at that time was the well-known and revered John Brown of Haddington, the grandfather of our own Dr Brown of Edinburgh. He, however, enjoyed the benefits of Mr Brown's professorship only for two sessions, those of 1785 and

1786, the venerable author of the Commentary on the Bible having died in the summer of 1787. The late Dr Lawson, of Selkirk, was chosen in his room by the Synod. After attending two sessions at Selkirk, he was licensed by his presbytery to preach the everlasting Gospel, on the 15th of April 1789, in the 21st year of his age. I have heard those who knew him in his youth say, that he was then an animated, somewhat rapid, and interesting speaker; and we have Dr Lawson's testimony that he was not only sound in the faith, but, for his years, exceedingly well versed in the theology of the Bible. He was what is called a popular preacher. In a short time he received no less than three calls, from Hawick, Lanark, and Kennoway in Fife. By the decision of the Synod, he was sent to Kennoway. Previous, however, to his ordination there, he received a call from this congregation-no, not from this congregation-for the congregation that called him are all in eternity, except the much-esteemed father of your sessionbut from the church at that time assembling here. The call came before the Synod. It was not sustained, because the deed of Synod as to Kennoway must be first carried into effect. He was therefore ordained by the presbytery of Dunfermline in Kennoway, on the 18th of August 1790. In the summer of 1791, the then congregation of Campbell Street brought out another call for him. He left the decision in the hands of the Synod, and by the Synod he was appointed to Glasgow. His connection with Kennoway lasted little more than one year; but I have often heard him speak of it with affectionate interest. Writing upon the subject, he says, "I was averse to submitting to ordination in Kennoway, and would have preferred either of the other congregations, Hawick or Lanark, and often spoke unadvisedly on this subject. During the short time of my connection with Kennoway, I enjoyed much comfort; my pastoral labours were kindly received, and seemed to be not unprofitable. My separation from them occasioned feelings more painful by much than I had anticipated." His induction into this charge by the presbytery of Glasgow took place on the 18th of October 1791-a day concerning which, not many weeks ago, he wrote, "A day which I well remember, and will remember with deep interest." He was your first minister, and by all accounts was unusually successful for these times. Speedily this large edifice was completely filled; and while health and strength were continued to him, the congregation flourished exceedingly. As a preacher, he was mainly characterised for very accurate theological views, expressed in simple and perspicuous language, logically arranged, and delivered with a degree of calm earnestness, which alike suited the dignity of the pulpit, and the solemnity of the theme. He kept to the doctrines of the cross, and to the precepts of the law; and was never known to condescend to any out-of-the-way topics for the sake of pandering to low tastes, or gaining a little self-importance. I have never known any man, whose nature was more completely free of all such imbecile longings after ephemeral applause, and who could take a more accurate measure of what was its real worth, or rather worthlessness.

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Strictly speaking, he was not eloquent-but this can be satisfactorily explained; for, as it has been well written by a much-respected friend, "the structure of his mind was analytical rather than synthetical. His forte was analysis. Every object of thought that came before him, whether in conversation or exposition, he was disposed to break down into parts-to view it on all sides, and in all lights, and to make it the subject of minute and accurate survey."

But Dr Kidston was equally diligent in the discharge of his other pastoral duties. He was an unwearied attendant in the house of mourning, and at the sick-beds and death-beds of his people. I have often heard that he excelled as a son of consolation. It is therefore an exceedingly pleasant thought, that, independent altogether of his pulpit ministrations, he was a master in those less public departments of his official duties, where the tear has to be wiped from the eyes of widowhood and orphanhood, where the broken heart is to be healed, and where the sighing of the mourner has to be changed into the song of praise. * * Many of his sermons are forgotten, and some there may be among you who never heard him; but I believe I will be supported by the testimony of not a few present, when I state, that after he was no longer able to lift up his voice like a trumpet in the pulpit, he could and did lift up that voice in the chambers of suffering, and did weep with

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