all must enjoy the honor of having once supported tify error. Powerful indeed was the sweep of his Voltaire's arm. Countless multitudes attended mind, fearful the blasphemous bon-mots inceshim to his apartments, and as he entered they santly retailed by him against God, and the Faith, knelt to kiss his garments. The cries of Vive and the Christ. If we concede that he was not Voltaire!' 'Vive la Henriade!' 'Vive Zaire!' an atheist, what was he? Did he know himself? pierced the air. The aged poet's heart was moved Is it not the fatal character of such natures that with tenderness. On veut' (he feebly cried)- they lie unto themselves, until the internal monitor 'on veut me faire mourir de plaisir! On m'étouffe ceases to indicate truth? Who can look on the de roses.'"-(P. 121.) correspondence between him and D'Alembert, and Franklin and Voltaire met on that occasion. pronounce it that of men of honor, truth, probity, The philosopher presented his grandson to Vol- common honesty, or virtue? With Frederick of taire, and asked a blessing. "God and liberty is Prussia, nothing can exceed his baseness and the only one fitting for Franklin's children," was meanness; to please Catherine of Russia, the the reply, a somewhat vague benediction, but father of the revolution appears amazingly anxious Voltaire ill understood the sacerdotal character. to stifle freedom in other countries, whatever he During his short stay at Paris, Voltaire busied claimed for himself in France. There will not himself in many literary works, on "Agatho- remain for the admirers of Voltaire much to set cles," another tragedy, prevailed on the French off against these heavy accusations: indifferent Academy to prepare its Dictionary, and at 85 scholarship, extreme inaccuracy of facts, wilful commenced with the letter A. But his labors lies, baseless authorities for baseless assertions. were too much for him, and he was seized with a His attacks on Christianity are all ill conducted, spitting of blood. Fresh exertions produced developing the grossest ignorance of Greek, of sleeplessness; this was attempted to be remedied Hebrew, of the cognate tongues, passages unby opium, and Condorcet says he died by the mis- fairly warped, even words surreptitiously introtake of a servant in one of the doses. This was duced in quotation; and though ridicule can never on the 30th of May, 1778. Four days before his be refuted, yet it does not follow that it is either death he wrote to Lally Tolendal to say that he based on reason or right. To him Christianity died happy on hearing the reversal of the decree owes a negative obligation doubtless,—that he against his father. Some verses, written to the occasioned numerous replies of high value by Abbé de l'Attaignant ten days before his decease, works which scarce merited refutation. We pass display extraordinary vigor. In his last illness the last and foulest page, the obscenity of his the clergy gathered around him, and he conformed works, the offence against good taste, his idol, as to the Roman ritual, in confession and absolution. well as against morality; and we think him forThe formula, however, that certified this not tunate in having so gentle a chronicler as Lord being sufficiently ample, the Abbé Genthur was Brougham, to whom he has affinities that, doubtrequested to get further details, with a threat that less, have to a certain extent endeared him; but the burial certificate would otherwise be withheld. the type fails on that one subject, the most imVoltaire recovered from his illness, but on his real portant of the earth, the Belief in the Revelation, a death-bed the curé insisted on a full confession. subject to which Lord Brougham has devoted his When he came to the article of the divinity of best energies, and thereby interposed, like the our Lord, which he was required to sign, he burst good Lord Kenyon, with a voice judicial, against forth into an exclamation that abundantly removed both obscenity and blasphemy. Ere we pass to all doubts of his infidelity. His remains were Rousseau, the next life, we must refer our readers consequently forbidden interment in consecrated to the appendix, for one anecdote told by Lord ground, but the ceremony had already taken place Brougham, with regard to Voltaire, stimulated by in a monastery of which his nephew was abbot. the passage in Rousseau, rising to look at the sun. We commend it to the attention of our readers, but there is something so repellingly horrid in the final expression that we cannot venture to shock their feelings by relating it. It is characteristic of the man, and of his unceasing hostility to the faith-how generated within him, and how justified, we have already shown. The great space we have occupied on Voltaire will prevent our dwelling with equal length on the remaining biographies. Rousseau is the next. Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, on the 28th June, 1712. Lord Brougham has followed the "Confessions" pretty closely, in the early events, which as they are well known we shall not particularize. It certainly does appear that the Romish Church of that period contributed in no small degree to the production of infidels. The first religious society into which Rousseau entered, the Seminary of Catechists for the Conversion of Heretics, was the most depraved spot conceivable; and the bigotry which demanded of the son the belief in the utter damnation of his mother, as an indispensable condition to his own reception into Romanism, is equally unlikely to have promoted any growth of good in Rousseau. We pass the details of his amour with Madame de Warrens, which are well known, as well as his

Such was Voltaire; and with every feeling to think well of many parts of his character, we consider Lord Brougham too merciful with respect to his general character. Allowing for the disgust produced by an ignorant priesthood-for the bigotry, the cruelty, and almost daily murders that marked its way, we cannot think Voltaire absolved, or even much extenuated in guilt. We admit the full force of a corrupt era, of an early run of evil misbelieving associates;-we can allow for temperament, wit, and sarcasm, but still there remains so powerful a mass yet to be removed from his memory, that we cannot admit him to our sympathy as misled, or our judgment as in the right. The parallel drawn by Lord Brougham between him and Luther, as two lords over a vast era of thought, does not hold. Luther said much, wrote much, did much, that we could wish forgotten, but he proselyted to an eternity, he cleared up the passage of the light to millions; and to Voltaire we stand indebted neither for accurate philosophy, true history, or genuine philanthropy. The fearful horrors that followed his era are decidedly traceable to him, and the blood on the hands of the murderous poissardes was originated in the high priest of that revolution, who had taught the people to despise religion and to sanc

a creature of low habits, who lived to take her stand at the door of the theatre, and beg at eighty years of age. She died in 1801. Though outraging common sense and just propriety, we allow that he was not an infidel of the pure encyclopædist blasphemy. The truth was that Christianity addressed herself so deeply to his feelings, that he could not but mistrust his infidel conclusions; and this led to the sarcasm of Voltaire, that he was half a Christian. An epitaph on him, never yet

intercourse with Theresa, by whom he had five | sion of 1,500 francs was conferred on his widow, children, and whom he ultimately married, disposing of all his children, one after the other, in the Foundling Hospital. How strangely were the genuine affections of the earth extinct in the breasts of the men of that period! In 1749, Rousseau gained the prize on certainly an extra-school, and felt a shrinking horror of their open ordinary subject for a literary institution, like the academy of Dijon, to propose, "The Mischiefs of Science." Rousseau rose into repute at first, however, more probably from his "Devin du Village," than any other cause. On his return to his native city, Geneva, Rousseau abjured Roman-published, written by Voltaire, is given by Lord ism, and became once more a citizen of Geneva. The spring of 1756, however, saw him again a resident near Paris, at Montmorenci. At this time the "Nouvelle Héloïse" appeared. On this work the remarks of Lord Brougham are judicious and sound :

"It charmed many; it enchanted both the Bishops Warburton and Hurd, as we see in their published correspondence; it still holds a high place among the works which prudent mothers withhold from their daughters, and which many daughters contrive to enjoy in secret; it makes a deep impression on hearts as yet little acquainted with real passion, and heads inexperienced in the social relations; it assuredly has no great charms either for the experienced or the wise, and is alike condemned by a severe taste in composition and a strict judgment in morals."-p. 163.

As for the heroine of this unnatural work, we can only say that, thank Heaven, such women are rare, and that they are still rarer in modern days than heretofore. Julie was exactly what Rousseau wished the entire sex to be; and for this he would have repaid them with the tenderness he evinced to poor Theresa's offspring. The "Emile" was published in the spring of 1762, and the "Contrat Social" followed. In the "Emile" Rousseau attacked revelation, but he does not abuse it nor ridicule it. This singular man was doubtless in a degree insane; he had that remarkable peculiarity of insanity-the belief that all the world was in league against him. Our country was favored by his presence as well as Voltaire's, but with reverse conclusions. Voltaire liked the English, Rousseau hated them, in common with the rest of his foes and his brother infidel Hume, who lured him over especially. After a ten months' residence he returned to France. There is a curious opposition between the reverses of Rousseau, and the successes of Voltaire, in England. Rousseau himself says:

"J'ai mis trop d'humeur dans mes querelles avec M. Hume; mais le climat d'Angleterre, la situation de ma fortune, et les persécutions que je venais d'essuyer, tout me jetait dans la mélancolie."

Brougham; not that Voltaire outlived his rival, for he died in the May of 1788, and Rousseau in the July of that year :—

"Plus bel esprit que grand genie,

Sans loi, sans mœurs, et sans vertu,
Il est mort comme il a vécu,
Couvert de gloire et d'infamie."

These were kind people to each other: the benevolence of the "Esprits Forts" is remarkable.

It falls unhappily to our lot to say, that the third life in this biography is also an infidel writerDavid Hume. This writer was born at Edinburgh, in April, 1711. Like Voltaire, he also was destined for the legal profession. On his refusal to embrace this, he was placed in a commercial house at Bristol, whence he retired to France, to prosecute his favorite studies of classic literature. At La Flèche, in Anjou, appeared the "Treatise on Human Nature," in 1737. After this, on his return to England, he accepted the post of companion to the imbecile Marquis of Annandale. This ill suited him, and he took the part of secretary to General St. Clair, in which occupation he was enabled to realize a thousand pounds, which was then a comparative independence. While in Turin, his "Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding" was published in London, a rifacimento of the Treatise on Human Nature." The same year, "The Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals" saw the light. All these attempts were eminently unsuccessful. Lord Brougham has drawn a great distinction with respect to Hume's writings. "They are," he says, "not purely skeptical but dogmatical." Thus on the important argument on Providence and a Future State, his lordship has the following just remarks:

"The question, and none other equal in importance can exercise the human faculties, is, whether we have or not, by the light of nature, sufficient evidence to make us believe in a Deity and the Soul's Immortality. His argument is, not that there is any doubt on the subject, but that we have no such evidence; consequently his position After various migrations this strange being must be that there is no ground for believing in a finally settled at Ermenonville. Six months be- God or a future state. It is easy to say Mr. Hume fore he died he sent out a circular, representing was not an atheist; and that neither he nor any himself in an utter state of destitution, and entreat- man can in one sense of the word be an atheist is ing to be sent to an hospital. It is needless to certain. If by denying a God we mean believing say that the poverty he pleaded was a lie; and that his non-existence is proved, there neither is had any one taken him at his word, then, as our nor can be an atheist, because there cannot possibly author justly remarks, he would have proclaimed be conceived any demonstration of that negative him as the consummator of the plot that had been proposition. To prove that a man asserted to be carried on against him over his entire existence. in existence, exists not, we must either show that He died of apoplexy at Ermenonville. Me. de he once existed, and has ceased to exist, or that he Staël hints at suicide, but this, however probable, never existed, but more certainly the former than is not substantiated. Those were glorious days the latter, because the former alone can be confor infidels, anarchists, and blasphemers. A pen-sidered to leave the proposition quite certain.

Now, clearly this kind of proof is inconceivable as to a Deity; consequently no man in this sense can be an atheist, if his understanding be sound. But we really mean by atheist as contradistinguished from skeptic, one who holds that there exists no evidence of a Deity, as contradistinguished from him who only entertains doubts on the subject -doubts whether there be evidence or no. Mr. Hume's argument, if solid, shows that there is no evidence, and not that there are doubts: consequently the inference from his argument is, not that we have reason for doubting whether or not there is proof, but that we have no proof, and, therefore, if consistent with ourselves, admitting his argument, we must not believe; that is, we must disbelieve. In the ordinary sense of the word, and as far as it is possible for the thing to exist, this is atheism, not skepticism. On miracles, no one has ever contended that the author's doctrine amounted only to skepticism. He does not doubt at all-he denies, and not only denies negatively that any miracle was ever proved by evidence, but affirms positively that none ever can be so proved. His whole argument goes to this; and between the impossibility of a miracle ever having been performed, and the total want of evidence of a Deity by the light of nature, we are left not to doubt, but to deny both Providence and a future state. The one argument shows supernatural evidence to be impossible; it shuts out light from above; the other shows natural evidence to be non-existent: it shuts out light from the world around us. The two together amount to plain and practical atheism, as far as such a belief is compatible with sanity of mind.”

Hume was certainly a rapid writer, and though we do not join in the recent invectives against him, he was undoubtedly often most inaccurate, and insufficient, and partial, independent of his Stuart bias-three charges of a strong kind against an historian; and to these may be added, though partially included in the above, a want of patient investigation, and an innate disregard of truth. The following remarks on his style are, however, strictly merited :

"It is not surpassed by Livy himself. There is no pedantry or affectation, nothing forced or farfetched. It flows smoothly and rapidly, according to the maxim of the critic, Currere debet et ferri.' It seems to have the lactea ubertas' of Livy, with the immortalis velocitas' of Sallust. Nothing can be more narrative; the story is unbroken, it is clear, all its parts distinct, and all succeeding in natural order; nor is any reflection omitted where it should occur, or introduced where it would encumber or interrupt. In both his narrative and his descriptions there is nothing petty, or detailed more than is fit or needful; there is nothing of what painters call spotty-all is breadth and bold relief. His persons are finely grouped, and his subjects boldly massed. His story is no more like a chronicle, or his views like a catalogue of particulars, than a fine picture is like a map of the country or a copy of the subject. His language is more beautiful and powerful than correct. He has no little tendency to Gallicisms. He has many very inaccurate, some ungrammatical phrases. In this respect he is far behind Robertson. The general effect, however, of his diction is unequalled. He cannot be said to write idioThe Political Discourses of this writer have matic English, being indeed a foreigner in that been always popular, and are not without great sense; but his language is often, nay, generally, merit. In the year in which he published them, racy, and he avails himself of the expressions, both 1752, Hume was appointed librarian by the Faculty the terms and the phrases, which he finds in older of Advocates at Edinburgh. This office furnish- writers, transferring them to his own page. In ing the means of access to an admirable library, this he enjoys a great advantage over Robertson, induced him to undertake a "History of Eng- who, resorting necessarily to Latin, or to foreign land." He began by way of feeler for his grand or provincial authors, could not manage such transdesign, with the "History of the Stuarts," in two fers, and was obliged to make all undergo the divols. The second appeared in 1756. The oppo-gestive and assimilating process, converting the sition to the reception of the work is described by him in the following words :

whole into his own beautiful, correct, and uniform style. Another reach of art Hume has attained, "I was assaulted,' says he, 'by one cry of and better than any writer in our language; he reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation. has given either a new sense to expressions, or English, Scotch, and Irish, whig and tory, church-revived an old, so as never to offend us by the man and sectary, freethinker and religionist, neology of the one process or by the archaism of patriot and courtier, united against the man who the other. With this style, sustained by his prohad presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate found philosophy, there can be nothing more beauof Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford.'" tiful than some of his descriptions of personal character, or of public feeling, or of manners, or of individual suffering; and, like all great masters of composition, he produces his effect suddenly, and, as it were, with a single blow."p. 217.

The second volume, however, gave less offence than the first; and between the publication of the first and second, appeared his "Natural History of Religion." Bishop Hurd thought this production worthy of a reply. Three years after the publication of his second volume of the Stuarts, appeared the "History of the House of Tudor," in three volumes. This also from the view given of Elizabeth, raised no small clamor against him. But Hume found this did the sale good, and it brought him to competency fast, as a man of moderate desires. The profits of publishers in those days were not small. Lord Brougham informs us, that for his " History of Scotland,"

When the publication of his history closed in 1761, he was 50 years old. At this period he accepted the office of secretary of the embassy to the British ambassador at Paris, Lord Hertford, and when the same ambassador went to Ireland as lord lieutenant, he was chargé-d'affaires part of the year. French society was much to his taste. He there met with no stern-minded Johnson, pointedly refusing, by his emphatic No, sir," all in"Dr. Robertson had only received 6007., the troduction to England's first historian, and the publishers having cleared 6,000l. For Charles convenances of society were there strictly attended V. he received 3,6007., and for America,' to, and these are convenient for infidels. In 1766 2,4007. (being in the same proportion,) while, no he was under-secretary of state in General Condoubt, 50,000l. at the least must have been real-way's ministry, and returned to Edinburgh pos ized by those works." sessed of 1,000l. a year. While in Paris he had

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there made the acquaintance of Rousseau, and induced him to come to England. In the quarrel between them, since Rousseau admitted, as we have seen, that he had been in fault, we may well believe him to have been so. Hume quarrelled with no man, from utter indifference to all. He resigned the office of under-secretary of state from ill health in 1769, when he returned to Edinburgh. In 1775 he was seized with a disease in the bowels, under which malady, however, he writes as follows:

--

"I now,' adds the philosopher, reckon on a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder, and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of my spirits; insomuch that, were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this latter period. I possess the same ardor as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation breaking out at last with additional lustre, I could have but a few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present.'

He further declared that he had no enemy, in his own nonchalant manner, except all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.

doubt that, with his opinions, even if justified in suppressing them, he never would have stood excused had he done anything to countenance and uphold what he firmly believed to be errors on the most important of all questions. Nor is it less manifest that he was justified in giving his own opinions to the world on those questions if he chose, provided he handled them with decorum, and with the respect due from all good citizens to the religious opinions of the state. There are but one or two passages in them all, chiefly in the Essay on Miracles, which do not preserve the most unbroken gravity, and all the seriousness befitting the subject.

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Like Voltaire, the fearful bon-mots of his order, against religion-the ceaseless carcasm he unfailingly poured forth against its adherents, cannot be too deeply reprobated.

Leland has refuted his " Philosophical Essays;" his " Providence, and a Future State;" the "Essay on Miracles;" and the "Principles on Morals ;" and therefore the poison of these works is now to a great extent superseded by a powerful antidote.

Before we proceed to the next writer we beg leave to refer our readers to the specimens given in the appendix, of Hume's corrections of style, by fac-simile extracts. They show the great care he took in composition; and that on his rhetorical passages he bestowed deep pains and high finish. We are enabled by Lord Brougham Few persons have met death so unprepared to contradict absolutely a statement in the "Quarand yet so easily as Hume. He died in the 65th terly Review" (vol. xxiii., p. 556.) A very year of his age; and Scotland has not been un- serious charge is there made against the ministers grateful to his memory. A conspicuous monu- of Edinburgh-that they encouraged his scoffs at ment on the Calton Hill commemorates her histo- religion, and echoed his blasphemies. A mass rian. Of shades of infidelity Hume, however at of invective is also exhibited; the heavy terms, times he may plead a lighter and less repulsive hue" betrayers of their Lord," and many others, than either Voltaire or Rousseau, is still a dogmatizer on infidelity. Infidelity that shocks us in a Frenchman, both shocks and disgusts more strongly still in an Englishman; and though Lord Brougham thinks Johnson by no means an irreproachable person, nor was he, yet look at the perpetual effort of his life, and that amid the tendencies of his age, and he becomes immeasurably superior to Hume. We allow his honest zeal for religion might do harm at times, but it also did essential, permanent, solid good to that cause. We have said that Hume varied from Voltaire and Rousseau in the character of his unbelief. We give Lord Brougham's extenuation of his infidelity :

are launched against their devoted heads, and the case considered proven. To all this, Lord Brougham says:

"I have caused minute search to be made; and on fully examining all that collection, the result is to give the most unqualified and peremptory contradiction to this scandalous report.

We now come to Robertson, a writer, whose fame is by no means on the increase; and to a certain extent this is justifiable. The writer who could give a "History of America," without being enabled to read the untranslated "Conquistadores," and any Spanish document, rather merited this partial neglect. Robertson was born at Borthwick, in Edinburgh, on September 19, "It is to be observed that the charges made 1721. His father was minister of the Scotch against Mr. Hume for his skeptical writings, and Kirk, in London Wall. He was a rigid Presbyfor the irreligious doctrines which he published to terian, and exacted from his son a promise that the world, are in almost every respect ill-founded. he would never enter a play-house; a promise He never had recourse to ribaldry, hardly ever to which, from filial affection, Robertson strictly invoked the aid even of wit to his argument. He adhered. Whether the injunction was right or had well examined the subject of his inquiries. wrong, may be matter of question; but the genHe had, with some bias in favor of the singularity eral educational process with Robertson, proor the originality of the conclusions to which duced the happiest results. He enjoyed the they led, been conducted thither by reasoning, high advantage of two most excellent parents.. and firmly believed all he wrote. It may be a question, whether his duty required him to make public the results of his speculations, when these tended to unsettle established faith, and might destroy one system of belief without putting another in its place. Yet if we suppose him to have been sincerely convinced that men were living in error and in darkness, it is not very easy His diligence in study was unremitting, and to deny even the duty of endeavoring to enlighten he pursued his education at the different classes: them, and to reclaim. But it is impossible to for eight years with indefatigable zeal. He had

Lord Brougham, from his relationship to Robert-son, reaches, in this life, almost to grounds of ar-gument from personal experience. We pass the boyhood of Robertson, and proceed to his university career, which began at twelve years old,, and occupied him eight years. Lord Brougham. says:

laid down for himself a strict plan of reading; and | "A graver charge than dissimulation and seof the notes which he took there remain a number verity as regards Mary is entirely suppressed, and of books, beginning when he was only fourteen, yet the foul crime is described in the same work. all bearing the sentence as a motto which so It is undeniable that Elizabeth did not cause her to characterized his love of learning, indicating that be executed until she had repeatedly endeavored to he delighted in it abstractedly, and for its own make Sir Amyas Paulet and Sir Drue Drury, sake, without regarding the uses to which it might who had the custody of her person, to take her be turned-Vita sine litteris mors.' I give this off by assassination. When those two gallant cavgloss upon the motto or text advisedly. His aliers rejected the infamous proposition with inwhole life was spent in study. I well remember dignation and with scorn, she attacked them as his constant habit of quitting the drawing-room dainty' and 'precise fellows,' 'men promising both after dinner and again after tea, and remain- much and performing nothing;' nay, she was with ing shut up in his library." difficulty dissuaded from displacing them, and employing one Wingfield in their stead, who had both courage and inclination to strike the blow.' Then finding she could not commit murder, she signed the warrant for Mary's execution; and immediately perpetrated a crime only less foul than murder, treacherously denying her handwriting, and destroying by heavy fine and long imprisonment the secretary of state whom she had herself employed to issue the fatal warrant. History, fertile in its records of royal crimes, offers to our execration few such characters as that of this great, successful, and popular princess. An assassin in her heart, nay, in her councils and her orders; an oppressor of the most unrelenting cruelty in her whole conduct; a hypocritical dis

In 1741 he was licensed, by the Presbytery of Edinburgh, to preach; and afterwards appointed minister of Gladsmuir. In 1751, he married his cousin, Miss Nesbit. He soon became looked upon as the head of the moderate party, in the Assembly. We extract the following remarks on his preaching

"As a preacher he was most successful. His language, of course, was pure, his composition graceful, his reasoning cogent, his manner impressive. He spoke according to the custom of the Scottish Church, having only notes to assist his memory. His notions of usefulness, and his wish to avoid the fanaticism of the high church party, (what with us would be called the lower church, or Evangelical,) led him generally to prefer moral to theolog-sembler to whom falsehood was habitual, honest ical or Gospel subjects. Yet he mingled also three themes essential to the duties of a Christian pastor. He loved to dwell on the goodness of the Deity, as shown forth not only in the monuments of creation, but the work of love in the redemption of mankind. He delighted to expatiate on the fate of man in a future state of being, and to contrast the darkness of the views which the wisest of the heathen had, with the perfect light of the new dispensation. He oftentimes would expound the Scriptures, taking, as is the usage of the kirk, a portion of some chapter for the subject of what is called lecture as contradistinguished from sermon; and in these discourses, the richness of his learning, the remarkable clearness of his explanation, the felicity of his illustration, shone forth, as well as the cogency and elegance of his practical application to our duties in life, the end and aim of all his teaching."

From 1753 to 1758, he had been occupied on his "History of Scotland;" it appeared in 1759, and met with a most cordial and well-merited reception. The portion connected with Mary, displeased the Jacobite party but Robertson, who could not screen the queen from the marriage with her husband's murderer, a fact she herself avouched, certainly contrived to clear her of the accusations of taking part in Babington's conspiracy, and to render her share in Darnley's murder doubtful; he further entered into a general vindication of many other points in her favor; Lord Brougham, however, justly remarks, both Hume and Robertson omit to notice the most extenuating point connected with her death-the utter want of right, on the part of Elizabeth, to condemn her, in which we fully participate. But surely it cannot be concealed, that it was a question which sovereign should perish; surely it cannot be doubtful, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, that Elizabeth's own position was most critical. Lord Brougham has few tendencies that lead him to favor deeply this great queen and the followfing passage exhibits the full force of his own feeltings:

frankness strange-such is the light in which she ought to be ever held up, as long as humanity and truth shall bear any value in the eyes of men. That she rendered great services to her subjects; that she possessed extraordinary firmness of character as a sovereign, with despicable weakness as an individual; that she governed her dominions with adinirable prudence, and guided her course through as great difficulties in the affairs of the state, and still more in those of the church, as beset the path of any whoever ruled, is equally incontrovertible; but there is no such thing as 'right of set-off' in the judgments which impartial history has to pronounce-no doctrine of compensation in the code of public morals; and he who undertakes to record the actions of princes, and to paint their characters, is not at liberty to cast a veil over undeniable imperfection, or suffer himself like the giddy vulgar to be so dazzled by vulgar glory that his eyes are blind to crime."

Is it not remarkable, then, if this powerful passage be as true as it is forcible, that writers like Hume and Robertson should give so different a verdict on the character of Elizabeth, when all their tendencies ran in opposite directions?

A few months previous to the publication of the "History of Scotland," Dr. Robertson, as he was then styled, having received his degree of D. D., from the University of Edinburgh, removed to that city, being presented to the Kirk of the Old Grey Friars. In 1762, he was appointed Principal of the University, and Lord Bute requested him to write the "History of England." The termination of Lord Bute's short ministry probably led to the abandonment of this undertaking. He was, however, appointed historiographer for Scotland in 1764. We regret that this work was not achieved by him. He had stipulated to finish his "Charles V." anterior to it. The " History of America" came out ten years after his "Scotland;" a work for which, in spite of his allowed graphic descriptions, extensive research, and beautiful style, he was much less qualified than for a "History of England,"