vary with every stage of infantile growth, that nothing but experience could convince us of the manner in which the chubby rotundity of childhood contains the germs of manly vigour or of feminine grace. And lastly, in glancing to the future, it may be permissible to express a hope that the study of every example of symmetry, for which the use of an autometric scale furnishes so powerful an instrument of analytic research, will not be suffered to pause until it enables us to indicate, in however dim and shadowy an outline, the principles that may hereafter be combined in a Canon of Descriptive Physiognomy.

ART. VII.-L'Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus réculés jusqu'en 1789, racontée à mes petits-enfants. Par M. GUIZOT. Vols. I., II., and III. 4to. Paris: 1874.

A NEW history of France from the beginning of all things to the great epoch opening on the infancy of our own generation a great work by a great man-might suggest lamentations on our own poverty in the literature of completed histories when measured with the wealth of other nations, but it is a more gracious task to rejoice with our neighbour and accept our own share in the prize, since the best complete history of France is a mighty boon to the whole republic of letters. The grandest of all national histories is that of France, and it is the most thickly crowded with great events both in the far past and in recent times. We do not underrate our own island as a land of just and old renown, nor treat lightly the great example it affords to the rest of mankind in the rise of its institutions and the political difficulties it has. conquered. No one would be less inclined to pardon us for the abandonment or the slighting of these memories than the illustrious historian of France himself. But it must be confessed that his country's annals are more tragic and picturesque. If the lights be not stronger, the shades are deeper. It has a closer connexion too with the rest of the civilised world, for even our greatness is fed and promoted by the pride of isolation.

But the history of France has a further claim to eminence by connecting the old world with the new. All that Britain had of the old world was swept away by the Saxon invasions and settlements. We know that for a period as long as that between the foundation of the House of Tudor and the present day, the greater part of Britain was a Roman province. Sub

stantial remains-the great walls and fortresses in the north, the mansions in the south, with their statues, their baths, and their tessellated pavements, show that they lived in strength and luxury. But all these things are completely cut away from our history. If literature did not tell us about the Romans, and enable us to identify the remains they had left among us, the origin of these remains would be as mysterious to us as the temples and statuary of Central America or the 'Druidical circles,' the cromlechs, barrows, and hill forts, that still perplex our local antiquaries.

France, however, carries down to us unbroken the sequence of Roman history, and brings with it a relationship to all the history in which Greeks as well as Romans were concerned. Marseilles was as thoroughly a Latin city, with its philosophers, orators, and poets, as any other city of the empire secondary to imperial Rome herself. The Roman remains in France are naturally more extensive than our own, but, what is more material, they have a structural genealogy down to existing times. We see in Northern France the Classic architecture passing gradually into the intermediate stage that afterwards transformed itself into the Gothic, and that with so close and curious a sequence that an unpractised eye would scarcely see the difference between the Roman forms passing into what is generally called the Norman in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Gothic forms passing back into the Classic in the Renaissance of the sixteenth. With us there is no such nice gradation. The Norman did not come to us until it had been fully formed as something distinct from the Roman.

Though invaded and colonised by Frank and Norman, yet Gaul handed down more thoroughly than any other nation the traditions of the old empire. It came to pass by a succession of accidents that the nominal empire had its centre in Germany, but what survived of its real succession was in France. Spain, though it also carried down the language, was remote and provincial. The centre of the civil half of the empire should, in the natural course of expectations, have been found in that Italy where its spiritual side has so long asserted the old central prerogative. But the invasions of the Normans and other local incidents broke up the land into separate principalities. Yet when that consolidation, for which France did so much, came to pass, it was observed that the vitality of the old Roman municipal institutions was materially available in the work of centralisation. The significance of the stages in European progress cannot be rightly felt with

out carrying with us a recollection of the municipal and other institutions of the empire. They had less influence in England than anywhere else, except it might be Scandinavia and Prussia Proper; but even in these territories they spread an influence when European diplomacy-a creation of the imperial systembrought the territories under its influence. But it is in the history of France that these institutions are to be found in their most vigorous life, and may be most profitably studied. We are too apt in this country in our instruction on Continental history to overlook that key to the character of institutions and the causes of events. Take for instance the notion to be obtained in the usual school histories of the empire under Charlemagne. It was not that he subjugated one nation after another, and brought each out of a state of chaos or of obedience to its own provincial institutions under one broad system of his own devising. The system was all in existence throughout the several provinces-it was the head that had been lost. Charlemagne was the first monarch who, partly by war and partly by other contingencies, found himself in possession of the machinery of the old empire; and he was a man with capacity to take advantage of his great opportunity. He was thus to be counted more as a successor to the organisations of others than an organiser himself, and those students lose the predominating conditions of his great reign who are taught his history as that of a conqueror and organiser like Alexander and Julius Cæsar.

That the illustrious author of the work before us was fully master of all this and of the other key-notes to the history of Europe was made known to the world many years ago. We have now the opportunity of seeing how he has employed his gifts, not merely in lectures and dissertations, where a man has in a great measure his choice of topics, but in a full history where all parts, great and small, demand their proper place, and must have it.

The first virtue in the historian is accuracy-the second is completeness. This is necessary for converting the accuracy into impartiality. Everything told truly, and receiving the measure of detail to which its merits entitle it-all is done. But when it is done, what is the merit of impartiality in a history? There is a stupid popular idea abroad that there can be no zeal or enthusiasm where there is impartiality. It is forgotten what large expenditure of zeal and energy, with corresponding splendour of result, is given to other sciences from the mere impulse of a zeal in the pursuit of truth. It is a chase that in many natures never tires or cloys. There are

In

intellects that have their chief enjoyment, and ambitions that have their chief aim, in searching for the truth in astronomy, anatomy, zoology, and geology--shall we not have the same in history? Here no doubt there are peculiar difficulties. The astronomer and the geologist had enemies to encounter; but with them it was a single battle, and then all over. history the difficulties are more tenacious. If history teaches philosophy by example, the tendency to make it teach the philosophy of our own politics is strong. Religion, which has to fight its battle single-handed against the men of science, here contracts a strong alliance with politics. The result of the struggle is that the most impartially-minded historian must give up part of a story he would fain tell. He describes a sequence of political events. He tells them truly as they occurred; but he would like also to tell-what he thoroughly believes is really true-that they were done in dishonesty or blundering honesty. How can he do so and retain any reputation for impartiality, when there are politicians of his day whose line of duty has no other definition but that it is the same that had been followed by those men of the old time?

If we are to apply the analogy of religion, the difficulties are still greater. That the historian should venture to say in this sphere whether men had acted rightly or wrongly is out of the question. The most vigorous efforts at impartiality would only plunge him deeper and deeper into the iniquity and folly in deciding who are in the way to salvation and who are in the way to perdition. Yet he should be thoroughly acquainted with all the sources of the religion or religions of the people about whom he writes, and should pursue their history and origin of creeds to the remotest sources. This duty falls upon him all the more heavily that there is in ecclesiastical history a systematic manufactory of falsehood. Churchmen are, of course, the chief writers on ecclesiastical historythey were at one time the chief writers of all history. It is the tendency of the churchman, that such as is the religious body to which he belongs, and in which he acts his daily part, such it has been in all times. It cannot be otherwise, for it is the embodiment of primitive truth. The more recent is the origin of the denomination to which he belongs, the nearer to the truth will generally be his supposition that it has never varied from a fixed standard. On the other hand, the church that is the oldest and the largest thus becomes the official recorder of the greatest body of falsities in ecclesiastical history. The Church decides not only on the truth that is to direct men's belief and worship in the present day, but it prejudges the

past, and excludes the hunter after historical truth from entering on that field; and it is a wide field, having been often enlarged by the removal of the landmark of its neighbour political history. Speak to a Romish bishop about the curious history of that age of the Church when bishops were not diocesan. You may as well invite an astronomer to discuss with you the laws of celestial motion at the period when the sun revolved round the earth.

No man has done more-we may at once say no man has done so much-as M. Guizot for clearing history of these impeding and misleading difficulties. He has accomplished this in his united capacity of statesman and historian, the one function aiding the other. He is a Protestant who has had to deal with Ultramontanists and Jesuits, a monarchist who has had to deal with republicans, a constitutional monarchist who has had to deal with divine-right legitimists and military despots. The spirit of his system of government is that tolerant one, not much esteemed among his countrymen that the destinies of a nation will take a direction, and it is the work of a government to put things in order in that direction, not to stop it and force a people into a system. In France he is not a republican, but he thinks republican institutions may be good in their right place. He thinks centralisation good too in its place; he has rather encouraged it in France, but yet he admires us for doing with a small allowance of it.

This spirit brought into history is a solution of many difficulties. In estimating the merits of acts done in previous ages, the historian is neither approving nor condemning what is done by the politicians of his own day. The conditions of one period are not to be the rule for those of another. What was done might have been quite right in the days of Francis I. and quite wrong now. Such estimates are tempered by a constant tendency to treat with a certain respect any opinions, or even designs, held by great bodies of people or great governing powers who have secured the obedience of the people. They may be as antagonistic as possible to the writer's own views of what ought to be, but they are great things that have had great influences, and should be treated with a certain deference or decorum. There is something in this like a remnant of the old chivalry that trained the bitterest enemies who were seeking each other's life, in the usage of certain mutual courtesies. It is a deference to great facts that leaves perfect freedom for the estimate of conduct and actions. Where there had been cruel oppression or persecution-where blood had been drawn in the spirit of tyranny or revenge, such acts stand on their