the sarcasm, the one-sided statement, the perplexing reference, the qualified concession, the bold-faced lie,-all these we could well illustrate by samples of the latest crop. From these, and from all semblance of disingenuousness, Mr. Vaughan is wholly free the spirit of his book is excellent, and he has abstained even from that just and licensed asperity which the mean and malignant temper manifested by some who have travelled over the same ground might well have provoked. He has described with so much correctness the scope and object of his work, that we feel amply justified in adopting his statement as a fair exhibition of its claims to public approbation. He has been adverting to the Revolution of 1688, as the result of a severe and protracted contest, maintained, under doubtful and depressing circumstances, by the firm advocates of public right, against the partizans of uncontrolled and irresponsible authority; and after demanding for the 'Puritans' their due share of consideration, as the main strength of that glorious conflict in its earlier stages, he proceeds as follows.

Should it be inferred from these observations, that the ensuing narrative will be found to consist of indiscriminate censure on the one hand, and mere eulogy on the other, the perusal of a few chapters will probably be sufficient to correct this misapprehension. That division of the moral or religious virtues which is implied in this too frequent method of setting forth the history of England during the seventeenth century, does not belong to the present state of existence. According to one of our popular writers,—and in this, he is merely the echo of a host,-the Puritans were a compound of " barbarism, intolerance, and madness”, and animated by a restless malignity against every thing great, and good, and beautiful. They did infinite mischief, and always from a pure love of doing it: a little good they also did; but it was ever with an intention to do evil. Their weakness was marvellous, and the fittest object in the world for ridicule, had it not been allied to wickedness still more remarkable, and deserving far other means of correction. Such, in substance, is the character of the English Puritans, as given in the volumes recently published under the title of "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First". To the class of readers who can derive pleasure from fictions of this description, when substituted in the place of history, the present work will be in no way acceptable. At the same time, it will not surprise the writer to learn, that there are ultras on the other side, to whom the opinions sometimes expressed in these sheets will not be quite satisfactory. He has not cared to become a caterer for the morbid passions of any party. His object has been to induce a just estimate of the sentiments of devout men in former times, and to promote that enlightened attachment to the principles of freedom by which those men were generally animated. That view of religion is defective and false, which does not make the love and the veneration of man a natural consequence of devotedness to his Maker.'

Mr. D'Israeli's work above referred to, has been, in part, noticed by us; but we have felt small inclination to continue cur criticism of a publication distinguished more by inordinate vanity and inveterate prejudice, than by any of the higher qualities of composition. At the outset of his literary labours, that gentleman was fortunate enough to hit upon a vein in the great mine of literature, which had been neglected by his fellow workmen. To all who had made themselves generally acquainted with the writers of France and Italy, there was little novelty in his researches, and nothing especially impressive in his way of giving their results; but with the great mass of readers the case was different. They were delighted with a process that gave them, at no cost whatever of thought or discrimination, a superficial knowledge of names and things, high in the estimation of the learned, and demanding a far more vigorous handling for their adequate illustration. In this sense, Mr. D'Israeli's earlier Ana have been and still are deservedly popular; but he is miserably mistaken if he flatters himself, as it should seem he does, that they are, or can ever be, materials for history: they are books of the boudoir, not of the study; the companions of a listless hour, not the guides of opinion and investigation. In a mood of higher ambition, and without the slightest misgiving concerning his qualifications for the task, he ventured on the elucidation of that precise portion of English history which demands for its fair discussion a large allotment of those very qualities in which he is most deficient. It has been hitherto expected from the historian, that he should exhibit in his writings, intellectual vigour, resolute impartiality, and enough, at least, of self-knowledge to put him on his guard against his own infirmities. How much of these indispensable gifts Mr. D'Israeli may possess, admits of an easy calculation, if we are to adopt his own estimate of his philosophic and literary character. He describes himself with delightful naïveté, as a simple philo'sopher, a calm speculator on human affairs',--an ultimate referee, as it should seem, in matters relating to policy and morals. Alluding to himself as the passionless student of ancient history, 'who judges the man, regardless of the party', he assumes to himself the sole impulse of the jealousy of truth', while he imputes to those who may doubt his infallibility, the mere irritation of party. All this may gratify the infirmity of Mr. D'Israeli, but it will hardly procure for him anything beyond the guarantee of the Quarterly Review. Of that impartial arbiter he may boast the unqualified eulogy: it vouches, in all the dignity of its unswerving rectitude, for the impartiality of Mr. D'Israeli. All this is miserable work; but such is human nature: simple vanity chaunts its own praises, and knavery, to forward its own purposes, thrusts simplicity into office.

Were we to regard the importance of the subject or the nature

of Mr. Vaughan's illustrations, we should engage extensively in the discussions connected with what may be justly considered as the turning-point of English constitutional history; the crisis to which dispositions and events had been tending through a long series of years; the term from which England was to start anew and with renovated vigour, in the career of freedom, intellect, science, and social improvement. It is not, however, convenient, at the present moment, to enter upon protracted dissertation, and we must content ourselves with a brief notice and a warm recommendation.

The reign of Elizabeth was a stirring and stimulating season. There was in the character of that monarch, notwithstanding its Tudor brusquerie and feminine jealousy of power, an energy and a consciousness of intellectual vigour, which led not merely to administrative measures, but to modes of popular appeal, calculated to rouse the national spirit, and to bring in question the claims of arbitrary rule. During the period of her government, this temper in the people was of little comparative consequence, for the lieges loved and revered their high-minded queen, and she repaid their attachment by a parental feeling, which kept her anxieties constantly awake for their welfare. She was, moreover, in her habits of thought, emotion, and expression, a thorough Englishwoman, of strong mind and determined act; a fit ruler for the reflective and resolute nation which Providence had placed under her sceptre. Disastrous visitations and infirmities of temper clouded the evening of her life; and she could not but feel that she had survived much of that popularity which had cheered its dawn and its meridian. Still, however much of weakness and of error may have obscured the brightness of her reign, enough of its higher qualities are conspicuous to make evident, how disadvantageous it was for the feeble-minded pedant who succeeded her, to come into immediate comparison with her master-spirit.

It has become of late a kind of fashion, with some from affectation, with others in the perverseness of partizanship, to praise our first James to the very skies. That he was, in some sort, learned, is undeniable: as the pupil of Buchanan, he could not fail to profit by the instructions and stern discipline of that profound scholar. But of original faculty he seems to have possessed but a slender portion. With much mental activity, he had little intellectual vigour. He was a profuse talker, but a sorry reasoner: his manners were coarse, and his pleasures gross. That he was cruel, might be shewn by numerous instances; but we shall satisfy ourselves with the production of a single case, as given by Mr. Vaughan in illustration of the firmness of Sir Edward Coke. That eminent lawyer had opposed as illegal, the exaction of a benevolence'.

6

This circumstance, and some others, had rendered the chief justice less acceptable at the council-board than formerly, when the case of Peacham, a puritan minister in Somersetshire, involved him in fresh collision with his colleagues. A sermon was found in the study of this clergyman, never preached, and, as it appeared upon his trial, never intended to be preached, but in which were some heavy censures on the extravagance, and general character, of the court and the government. James entered warmly into this business as a case of treason; but as it was impossible to construe the discovery of this paper into a compassing or imagining of the king's death, it was resolved that no pains should be spared to ascertain the advisers or accomplices of its author. At the command of the sovereign, the old man-more than sixty years of age-was examined "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture". But nothing was elicited by this illegal and inhuman process. The resentment of James was increased by this mortifying result, and he now insisted that the mere composition of such a paper involved the guilt of high treason. Coke not only maintained that the guilt of the offender should be limited to defamation, but objected to the separate and verbal applications which were now made to the judges on this point, as contrary to the customs of the realm. Peacham was, nevertheless, condemned as a traitor. But his prosecutors appear to have shrunk from the odium of inflicting the sentence obtained, and the unhappy man, after lingering a few months in prison, expired.'

James's forte, as his imbecile vanity induced him most firmly to believe, lay in nothing so conspicuously as in ecclesiastical concerns; and accordingly, in nothing did he make a more absurd and disgusting exhibition, than in his continual intermeddlings with theological controversies and matters of church discipline. In the statement and elucidation of these points, Mr. Vaughan is especially skilful, as might have been expected from a man of ability, thoroughly versed in the subject before him; and herein lies much of the peculiar value of his work. The strange ignorance, in these particulars, of the great mass of our historians, and the prejudices which, almost without exception, have beset them concerning religious things, render them altogether unworthy of trust, in all that relates to the affairs of the Church. Always preserving the separation of politics from clerical business, the present Writer yet shews distinctly their connexion and mutual influence. The 18th, 19th, and 20th chapters of his first volume are singularly interesting. The first of these sections contains an able exposition of Lord Bacon's views respecting the Puritans and their doctrine, which is closed with the following just and moderate inference.

If the reader will bear in mind the cautious and courteous temper of Lord Bacon, and his high hope of favour with the new sovereign, when these sentiments were made public, it will perhaps appear as probable, that, in what was thus expressed, the writer has advanced

but little in favour of the weaker party, compared with what he could have honestly recorded, and would have recorded, under other circumstances. It would have been well for the peace of the king, and of the established church, had the counsels thus modestly proffered been fully acted upon. They are to be attributed, evidently, to a fixed persuasion of their practical worth; and without such a conviction, it is probable, that however just they might have appeared, they never would have seen the light.'

Charles came to the crown under many and severe disadvantages. He had been educated by his father in all the prejudices of the jus divinum; and it is probable that to his early initiation into the mysteries of king-craft, may be assigned much of the evasive policy which proved, in the end, even more injurious to his cause, than were the high-handed enforcements of his regal claims. In addition to these disqualifying prejudices, he had the misfortune or the imprudence to select Buckingham as his political adviser, and, in ecclesiastical business, to place implicit reliance on Laud. The former of these favourites has, we believe, had few direct defenders; but the memory of the latter has been fiercely vindicated. It might waken surprise, to meet with this forward advocacy of an odious cause, were it not that experience furnishes but too frequent and familiar illustration of the lengths to which men will go under the perverting influence of party feeling. We shall not agitate the question anew, nor recapitulate the glaring facts on which the proof of Laud's delinquency is founded. But it is of high importance, in the attempt to form a correct estimate of the character of Charles, that we keep in view that strange and consistent perverseness which almost invariably directed Charles to the wrong men and to the worst measures. His choice of Strafford as his minister, was a declaration of war against the party which had been deserted by that able but unprincipled statesman, and which in return, held him in deadly hatred. The selection of Laud as his counsellor in church affairs, was a virtual manifesto against religious liberty. The error of this policy lies in this, that it is extreme; it wears an aspect of firmness in its bold rejection of compromise and mezzo-termini, but its perilous nature is evident, in that it admits of no return. If, as is the greater probability, it leads, in the result, to concession on the part of him who adopts it, he gives way under circumstances more than dangerous; he stands accused of weakness or perfidy; and the foundation of mutual trust is taken away. In the case before us, this fatal policy rendered vain every effort to conciliate, every approach on the part of Charles to a more gracious deportment. The people had lost confidence in their king; the party in opposition had learned to regard him as a mere temporising partizan, resolute to effect, sooner or later, by lawful or unlawful means, an injurious purpose; and this feeling