CURRENT LITERATURE.

I. Essays by a Barrister. Reprinted from the Saturday Review. London Smith and Elder.

THE art of combining amusement and instruction has reached a very high pitch of perfection in the weekly journals. A daily paper has to supply information as to facts, and to comment on them summarily from the one-sided point of view of the political party whose brief it holds. A monthly or quarterly review is too late to take advantage of the interest of the topics of the flying hour, and must rest its claims to attention on a more judicial summing-up, and a more complete statement of larger questions. Between the two lie the weekly periodicals, whose business it is to apply more general considerations and more elaborate criticism than can be found in the one to subjects too minute or too ephemeral for the other. They have for a special province what may be called the manners of society, the semi-official actions of statesmen, the common follies of the day, or the particular ones of sections and parties, and all the momentary and multifarious subjects of so-called middle articles. The success of these depends on the judgment with which they mix up their amusement with the seriousness. The most successful are unquestionably those which are purely ephemeral, which treat passing events according to the humour of the moment, and merge the general in the particular. But there is another kind which tries to be more than ephemeral, which dabbles in philosophy, and asks in effect of each event of the day, What lesson do we learn from this? The value of these is very questionable. They certainly seldom amuse, and if they do not instruct, they are nothing. Yet they are not often likely to have much instruction to give. Occasionally, of course, they are written by men who are masters of their provinces of thought, and take this means of insisting on points omitted in or capable of being detached from general statements of the whole subjects; but more commonly they are the tentative essays of those who have either no formed opinions or no special knowledge. But the views of young men, or of any men who have not made a careful and laborious study of that about which they write, however valuable they may be to their authors, are nearly worthless to the world. They consist of just those smart but immature and analogical notions which a further inquiry generally lays aside as fallacious and anticipatory. Either, then, they presume the presence of knowledge which is not at hand, and are more positive and certain than the real truth and certainty can be; or, if the temper of the writer is different, they consist of nothing but compromise and allowance, and balance opinions without arriving at any result. Whatever

temporary value they may have as a means of diffusing a sensible and liberal tone of thought, and of translating the accurate ideas of original investigators into a familiar and intelligible form of expression, they can seldom on their own merits deserve republication.

If any exceptions are to be made to this rule, the Essays by a Barrister, which have been reprinted from the Saturday Review, must be

placed amongst them, as having a more permanent value than most collections of the ideas of outsiders about abstruse subjects. Yet even these are valuable more for their tone than for their matter, as models of fair and liberal criticism rather than for any new or even definite results. The author's distinguishing merit is, that whilst he is free from mixed modes of thought and 'promiscuity' of notions, and therefore speaks from a clear and consistent point of view, he is careful never to go too far, or to commit himself to ill-considered enthusiasm. Every thing is under-stated, so as to be rather within than beyond the truth, and carefully limited and balanced by adverse considerations. The tyranny of a principle is checked by practical common sense, and the narrowness of facts corrected by reference to general principles which underlie or override them. The obscurity of the resulting conclusions is here and there happily cleared up by brilliant illustrations, and the effect of suggestive reflections is often heightened by a peculiar artifice of style, by which something more seems to be hinted at than appears on the surface, or than we can quite comprehend. On the other hand, the critical temper and balancing of considerations is not all clear gain. The perpetual limitations with which every statement is hedged round give a negative character to the whole effect, which is puzzling whilst we read, and absolutely fatal to the chance of a clear recollection of any definite result. A very minute or delicate idea is enveloped or expressed in a cloud of words, which fatigue the attention, and in some cases prevent our remembering any thing, or knowing which way the verdict has gone, or even what was the point under discussion. The interest of the essays is further impaired by the inordinate preponderance of moral over facts. The quantity of instances given is insufficient to sustain the weight of the elaborate reflections, and we recalcitrate against lessons taught too nakedly and abstractedly, instead of being insinuated and left to enforce themselves by a skilful array of cases A curious result occasionally follows from this laborious à posteriori analysis of particular social phenomena. As Hegelians have been said to confuse what has been with what ought to have been or ought to be, so a fact or custom philosophically explained sometimes becomes, by a kind of philosophical optimism, a fact or custom sanctioned by the constitution of things. According to the nomenclature of such a system, the acceptance of the fact as it stands is praised as positive philosophy, or the science of that which is, and the reprobation of it branded as metaphysical or à priori science of that which ought to be. The same feeling, though less absurdly expressed, shows itself in places in these essays. "It is surely" (we are told) "matter of great congratulation, that there is not an invariable alliance between prosperity and desert;" the advantage resulting therefrom being, that "as things stand now, we have the satisfaction of knowing that no one need be ashamed of his condition in life, because his presence in it proves nothing against him." There is certainly some credit in being especially 'jolly' in the face of a circumstance which is particularly perplexing to most people.

The best and most interesting of these essays are those which are devoted to an analysis of certain expressions such as 'geniality,'

'strength,' 'philanthropy,' which are current in popular criticism, and convey a confused implication of admiration and dislike. Nothing so good has been done in this way, except by Bentham, since the days of Plato. We are carried back in reading them to that exquisite induction of words which in the hands of Socrates laid the foundations of mental science. Yet nothing is so difficult as to lay bare the real grounds of popular praise or blame, and the origin of the associations, by which names of particular qualities, neither good nor bad in themselves, have grown to be representative of great principles and of distinct habits of thought. The essayist's clearness of mind has enabled him to disentangle happily the various ideas and feelings which have attached themselves to several of these expressions. There is only one mistake into which he has fallen, that of sometimes finding a great deal more in them than was ever dreamed of by those who used them. We are astonished to find how much more we meant than we had supposed, when we called a man genial, or used the apparently simple nickname of John Bull.

II. The History of Frederick the Second, Emperor of the Romans. From chronicles and documents published within the last ten years. By T. L. Kington, M.A., of Balliol College, Oxford, and the Inner Temple. In two volumes. Macmillan and Co.

The interest of the life of Frederick II., Emperor of the Romans, arises less from the vast extent of his dominions than from his wonderful strength of character, and the great questions of which he was a living part. If the last act of a tragedy be played out on the peasant's death-bed, what shall be said of the man whose life was a continual struggle before all Europe, and in the issue of which struggle all Europe was concerned? Inheriting from his mother Constance the kingdom of Sicily and South Italy, and as the son of Henry VI. standing first among candidates for the throne of the German empire, Frederick might seem to owe every thing to good fortune; whereas no ruler started with greater difficulties. An orphan, carelessly brought up by a Pope the natural enemy of the Hohenstaufen, surrounded by turbulent barons, selfish churchmen, jealous citizens, Frederick learnt from hard experience his kingcraft. He had to subdue nobles "who made war upon each other without scruple, built castles without license, seized on the royal domains, and usurped the right of criminal jurisdiction;" next to assert authority over prosperous burghers, more tenacious of hard-won civic rights than even grand seigneurs of swords and title-deeds. But the conflict which awaited the young king and emperor, the stone of stumbling to himself and his house, was of another and graver kind. The question of Frederick's age was the extent of obedience claimed by and owed to the see of Rome: how far the authority demanded in the highest Name and with awful sanctions was compatible with the rights of subjects and rulers. The prima dies leti was when Innocent III. approved the election of another Hohenstaufen to the headship of the German empire, and thereby united under one the government of Germany, a large part of mo

dern France, and nearly all Italy. Frederick was only seventeen when thus set on trial. Had he been less gifted with governing capacity, the prize must have slipt from him. When he returned at the age of twenty-six from the survey of his great Northern possessions, he had proved himself more than equal to meet whatever difficulties the Pope, citizens, and nobles might set in his way. His claim to a place among the world's great ones rests on his regulation of Apulia and Sicily in the following eight years. Frederick was true to his Norman birth. His wish and pride was to be "law animate upon earth." In an age of feudalism, when in France alone there were sixty different codes of local customs, it proved an iron strength of will and uncommon foresight to reduce to one digest the best customs of so many races, Italians, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Germans, and Jews; to curtail local privileges, to level distinctions, and thereby rivalries and enmities between cities (the fruitful cause of Italy's misfortunes to this day); to abolish podestàs, consuls, rectors,-all impediments to one authority; to summon deputies from forty-seven cities to a conference or parliament, "for the weal of the kingdom, and the general advantage of the State;" to subject the barons to law, and deprive them of the right of deciding criminal cases, whereby the lowest classes of the population had been at their mercy. The spirit of Frederick's measures went to establish a despotism, but legal and enlightened, which should deal out to all men impartial justice. When it is added, that Frederick chose for his counsellors and friends the ablest of the land, irrespective of their birth and standing, men like Peter de Vineis and Thaddeus of Suessa; that he delighted in the arts; that Italian poetry first found her voice at his court; that commerce had never before been so flourishing, or material prosperity so great,- -we can understand why Italians, and especially Sicilians, revert to the good old days of the Suabian house, to the wise and beneficent customs of Frederick II., "Cæsar of the Romans, Ever-august, Italicus, Siculus, Hierosolymitanus, Arelatensis, happy, conquering, triumphant."

These are the brighter aspects and memories of the life of the last. of the great Emperors. There are darker ones. In an age of intolerance we need not be surprised at any honest thorough endeavour to uproot heresy. We understand persecution carried on by Innocent III. and Dominic: the historian who reads human nature aright may even condone it. But there is no excuse for Frederick's persecutions, more cruel and treacherous than pope's or inquisitor's. Frederick was the worst of persecutors, as Dean Milman has remarked, for he was without bigotry. He trampled on innocent free-minded citizens under cover of the most malignant of the religious passions and superstitions of his time. In truth, with his father's crown he inherited his father's temper. The career of the Hohenstaufens is stained with cruelty and treachery, to which Frederick added a lewdness that even his age, not given to softness or delicacy of feeling, reprobated. Mr. Kington throws no veil over Frederick's life. He does not attempt to hide, or still worse to palliate, the treachery which gave charters to cities only to be recalled at the first opportunity, which promised with an imperial

oath pardon to citizens only that a more terrible vengeance might be wreaked upon them. Now that it has become the fashion to excuse crimes against humanity, as proceeding from something like divine inspiration, or to explain them away as necessary acts of state policy, we are glad that Mr. Kington, who has given in this work an earnest of the place he will one day take among historians, following in this, as in the fidelity and research of his narrative, the example of Dean Milman, tells his plain unvarnished tale. If Frederick's wise legislation is the instinct of his Norman birth, his numberless deeds of cruelty and treachery betray the taint of Hohenstaufen blood, and place him on a line for perjury with some monarchs of the nineteenth century.

But Frederick's offences against truth and mercy were not the causes of his failure. His power was too great for the security of the rest of Christendom, was more than one man in any age could be trusted with. The restraining element in society was the papacy, and with this Frederick's position, claims, and conduct rudely clashed. The rest of Christendom acknowledged obedience due to Christ's vicar upon earth; Frederick in spirit and in deed acknowledged none. As "the source of law, he was above law," and therefore exempt. "What! shall the pride of a man of low birth degrade the emperor, who has no superior or equal on earth?" Mr. Kington, in one passage, characterises the harsh policy of Rome towards Frederick as a policy of self-interest; elsewhere he shows plainly enough that it was a question of self-preservation. The pope was hedged in on every side by Frederick's superior force. France was not then what it is now; Spain was divided into, and weakened, by its five kingdoms; and, however much the gold of England might flow into papal coffers, the barons of England were distant cold-hearted defenders. The pope had little else but moral force, the belief of Christendom that his cause was right, to rely upon. That, and the few Lombard cities, were more than sufficient.

The great dissension is admirably related with all fulness of detail in Mr. Kington's second volume. Our sympathies may be with the emperor's brave encounter of his difficulties; our reason, calmly judging, will not regret that he gloriously failed. For the time had not yet come when Europe could dispense with that directing mediating force which the Papacy then was. The worst and most unscrupulous popes were yet witnesses to a Power which did not stand upon or prevail by strength, which, because it was so divine and spiritual, had a claim upon the consciences of men. What Mr. Mill thinks the Hebrew prophets were in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel; what, according to Dr. Wolff's Travels, the dervishes are still in Eastern countries; what the unanimous and enlightened vox populi is now among us-that was the Papacy to medieval Christendom, the single power before which rulers stood abashed, which could effectually protect the weak, desolate, and oppressed. It was less in the spirit of a Christian apostle than of a Jewish warrior that Innocent IV. fought for supremacy, and excommunicated Frederick at Lyons. Yet, in thus acting, he was in a manner the representative of Christendom, which spoke through him; and according to the then views of Christian duties and obligations, his

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