the long series of north-east voyages; but their hopes were grimly disappointed. Sir Hugh and all his men perished [A.D. as pioneers of England's navigation and of voyages to the ice-encumbered sea which bounds Europe and Asia on the north. Innumerable other marine expeditions have since then trodden the same path, always without success, and generally with the sacrifice of the vessel and of the life and health of many brave seamen. Now, for the first time, after the lapse of three hundred and thirty-six years, and when most men experienced in sea matters had declared the undertaking impossible, was the North-East Passage at last achieved. This has taken place, thanks to the discipline, zeal, and ability of our man-of-war's men and their officers, without the sacrifice of a single human life, without sickness among those who took part in the undertaking, without the slightest damage to the vessel, and under circumstances which show that the same thing may be done again in most, perhaps in all years, in the course of a few weeks. It may be permitted us to say that under such circumstances it was with pride we saw the blue-yellow flag rise to the mast-head and heard the Swedish salute in the sound where the Old and New Worlds reach hands to each other. The course along which we sailed is, indeed, no longer required as a commercial route between Europe and China, but it has been granted to this and the preceding Swedish expeditions to open a sea to navigation, and to confer on half a continent the possibility of communicating by sea with the oceans of the world. Voyage of the "Vega" (1882), chap. xi. APOSTROPHE TO HIS DECEASED WIFE ROBERT BROWNING (b. 1812). ["The Ring and the Book is a wonderful production-the extreme of realistic art, and considered, not without reason, by the poet's admirers to be his greatest work. As the product of sheer intellect this surpasses them all. It is the story of a tragedy which took place at Rome one hundred and seventy years ago. The poet seems to have found his thesis in an old bookpart print, part manuscript--bought for eightpence at a Florence stall. A book in shape, but really pure crude fact, The versified narrative of the child Pompilia's sale to Count Guido, of his cruelty and violence, of her rescue by a young priest, the pursuit, the lawful separation, the murder by Guido of the girl and her putative parents, the trial and condemnation of the murderer, and the affirmation of his sentence by the Pope,-all this is made to fill out a poem of twenty-one thousand lines; but these include ten different versions of the same tale, besides the poet's prelude, in which latter he gives a general outline of it, so that the reader plainly may understand it, and the historian then be privileged to wander as he chooses."-E. C. STEDMAN.] O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird, Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart, When the first summons from the darkling earth To toil for man, to suffer or to die, This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, From "The Ring and the Book," 1. 1391-1416. FAME. See, as the prettiest graves will do in time, "Sang...out," out-sang. + Their highest aspirations and farthest goal. THE FATHER OF HISTORY. THOMAS BABINGTON (LORD) MACAULAY (1800-1859). [The "Essay" from which this selection is made appeared in the Edinburgh Review for May 1828. It represents Macaulay's style after three years of brilliant achievement as a reviewer. The excuse for the article was Henry Neele's "Romance of History;" but in Macaulay's review neither Neele nor his book is even once referred to. The doubts here thrown upon the historical value of the later narrative of Herod'otus have been to a very great degree dispelled by recent research, and his account of the Persian war is now generally accepted as authentic. Take at hazard any three pages of Macaulay's Essays or History, and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Your neighbor, who has his reading and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble, precious toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description."-THACKERAY.] Of the romantic historians Herodotus is the earliest and the best. His animation, his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators. He re minds us of a delightful child. There is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no writer who makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. At the distance of three-and-twenty centuries we feel for him the same sort of pitying fondness which Fontaine and Gay are said to have inspired in society. He has written an incomparable book. He has written something better, perhaps, than the best history; but he has not written a good history, he is, from the first to the last chapter, an inventor. We do not here refer merely to those gross fictions with which he has been reproached by the critics of later times. We speak of that coloring which is equally diffused over his whole narrative, and which perpetually leaves the most sagacious reader in doubt what to reject and what to receive. The great events are, no doubt, faithfully related: so probably are many of the slighter circumstances; but which of them it is impossible to ascertain. The fictions are so much like the facts, and the facts so much like the fictions, that, with respect to many most interesting par ticulars, our belief is neither given nor withheld, but remains in an uneasy and interminable state of abeyance. We know that there is truth, but we cannot exactly decide where it lies. The faults of Herodotus are the faults of a simple and imaginative mind. Children and servants are remarkably Herodotean in their style of narration. They tell everything dramatically. Their says hes and says shes are proverbial. Every person who has had to settle their disputes knows that, even when they have no intention to deceive, their reports of conversation always require to be carefully sifted. If an educated man were giving an account of the late change of administration he would say, "Lord Goderich resigned, and the king in consequence sent for the Duke of Wellington.' A porter tells the story as if he had been hid behind the curtains of the royal bed at Windsor. "So Lord Goderich says, 'I cannot manage this business; I must go out.' So the king says, says he, 'Well, then, I must send for the Duke of Wellington, that's all.” This is the very manner of the father of history. Herodotus wrote as it was natural that he should write. He wrote for a nation susceptible, curious, lively, insatiably desirous of novelty and excitement; for a nation in which the fine arts had attained their highest excellence, but in which philosophy was still in its infancy. His countrymen had but recently begun to cultivate prose composition. Public transactions had generally been recorded in verse. - The first historians might therefore indulge, without fear of censure, in the license allowed to their predecessors the bards. Books were few. The events of former times were learned from tradition and from popular ballads; the manners of foreign countries from the reports of travellers. It is well known that the mystery which overhangs what is distant, either in space or time, frequently prevents us from censuring as unnatural what we perceive to be impossible. We stare at a dragoon who has killed three French cuirassiers, as a prodigy; yet we read, without the least disgust, how Godfrey slew his thousands, and Rinaldo* his ten thousands. Within the last hundred years stories about China and Bantam, which ought not to have imposed on an old nurse, were gravely laid down as foundations of political theories by eminent philosophers. What the time of the Crusades is to us, the generation * * Godfrey (Godefroi) de Bouillon, Crusader, Duke of Lorraine, King of Jerusalem 1058-1100 A.D.-Rinaldo, the Achilles of the Christian army in Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." of Croesus and Solon was to the Greeks of the time of Herodotus. Babylon was to them what Pekin was to the French academicians of the last century. For such a people was the book of Herodotus composed; and if we may trust to a report, not sanctioned, indeed, by writers of high authority, but in itself not improbable, it was composed not to be read, but to be heard. It was not to the slow circulation of a few copies, which the rich only could possess, that the aspiring author looked for his reward. The great Olympian festival-the solemnity which collected multitudes, proud of the Grecian name, from the wildest mountains of Doris* and the remotest colonies of Italy and Libya*. was to witness his triumph. The interest of the narrative and the beauty of the style were aided by the imposing effect of recitation, by the splendor of the spectacle, by the powerful influence of sympathy. A critic who could have asked for authorities in the midst of such a scene must have been of a cold and sceptical nature, and few such critics were there. As was the historian, such were the auditors-inquisitive, credulous, easily moved by religious awe or patriotic enthusiasm. They were the very men to hear with delight of strange beasts and birds and trees, of dwarfs and giants and cannibals, of gods whose very names it was impiety to utter, of ancient dynasties which had left behind them monuments surpassing all the work of later times, of towns like provinces, of rivers like seas, of stupendous walls and temples and pyramids, of the rites which the Magi performed at daybreak on the tops of the mountains, of the secrets inscribed on the eternal obelisks of Memphis. With equal delight they would have listened to the graceful romances of their own country. They now heard of the exact accomplishment of obscure predictions; of the punishment of crimes over which the justice of Heaven had seemed to slumber; of dreams, omens, warnings from the dead; of princesses for whom noble suitors contended in every generous exercise of strength and skill; of infants strangely preserved from the dagger of the assassin to fulfil high destinies. As the narrative approached their own times the interest became still more absorbing. The chronicler had now to tell the story of that great conflict† from which Europe dates its intellectual and political supremacy-a story which, even at * Doris, a central state of ancient Greece. -Libya, ancient Africa. |