were, of the history, of which the best writers of Rome, with the command of all the ancient annals and documents which have perished, seem either to have had no conception, or at least no clear or distinct knowledge. The axiom which is laid down by his more ardent partisans, that he who has long looked at one object with the steadiness and intensity with which Niebuhr has studied the history of Rome, must obtain a clearer and more profound insight into it, than those who have surveyed it with a more rapid and less concentrated attention, is in some degree balanced by the unquestionable fact, that the intellectual as well as the corporeal vision, when unremittingly fixed on one object, is apt to make that object assume a form and a colouring, as it were, from the sight itself. We see what we wish to see-not what is really before us. The imagination blends with the reality till we lose the clear and cloudless distinctness in which at first we saw the object. On the other hand, when we consider, that among the most fervent disciples of Niebuhr in England are those who have made the Roman history their peculiar study, we cannot but acknowledge that if there be any delusion it must be a very powerful one which has carried away so many and such distinguished proselytes.

We would, however, consider the history at present solely as illustrative of the character of the man; for to that character we are persuaded it owes, to some extent at least, its influence and authority.

We know no writer more rigidly conscientious than Niebuhr. In a curious letter in the second volume, written for the instruction of a youth who intended to devote himself to philology, he insists that no quotation should be made at second-hand, even if scrupulously verified, without naming the intermediate source from which it was derived. No writer was more firmly convinced of the truth of his own conclusions. We have given examples of this in his bold appeal to an ancient Roman rising from the grave. We could multiply such passages. He writes in these words to Savigny

'In its doctrines it now stands fixed, and not to be shaken throughout all ages-(jetzt in seinen Lehrsätzen unershütterlich für alle Zeiten fest steht). I scruple not to say that no discovery of any ancient historian can teach so much as my labours; and that whatever may come to light, which is ancient and genuine, will only afford confirmation and development of my views.'-vol. iii. p. 187.

It is this grave earnestness, this entire assurance of the solidity of his views, which not merely commands respect and deference, but blending as it does with our admiration of the sagacity, penetration, erudition, and concentrating powers of the writer, imposes

upon

upon us with the authority of a master, at times wrests our critical fasces from our hands, and makes us lay them humbly down before the feet of the dictator, in whose right to his office and authority we cannot but acquiesce.

It may appear a paradox to say so-but of all original writers Niebuhr seems to us the most superior to the love of paradox. Contrast him, for instance, with Warburton. The latter is an intellectual gladiator who has engaged himself to put forth all his courage and skill in a certain cause. In his own powers

he has the utmost confidence-in his cause, little or none. We are almost satisfied that he would change sides like a practised advocate, and confute himself with but little scruple. But of Niebuhr's boldest and most hazardous conjectures we feel that he is himself profoundly, intimately convinced; and hence there is an absolute charm in his positiveness, in his peremptory dogmatism, which in a less sincere and honest writer provokes a stubborn opposition. In all his most startling propositions, his most daring innovations, he is seeking truth, not labouring to convince; still less condescending to the paltry ambition of astonishing and enforcing the admiration of his reader. This impression is greatly strengthened by the severe and uncompromising fearlessness with which he constantly refers all actions and events to his high moral standard. We may differ from Niebuhr as to his moral as well as his historical judgments: according to our tenets and views, we may refuse our ardent admiration to one party in the Roman constitution, and consider that justice is not done to the other; but we shall differ, not on the lofty principles to which Niebuhr perpetually appeals, but on the application of these principles to the particular cases. In no writer is the sincere attachment to law and order more intimately blended with the assertion of freedom; no man more cordially abhors that state of violence and disorganisation, in which the wicked, the reckless, and the desperate prosper; no work more strongly expresses the eternal moral lesson, that public prosperity, happiness, and dignity can alone rise out of private virtue.

ART. VIII.-Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, written by himself, with a selection of his Correspondence. Edited by his Sons. In 2 vols. 2nd edit. 8vo. London. 1840.

WE

E have on former occasions stated our strong opinion that near relatives are the very most unfit editors of any man's biography. It is, in fact, a task which never should be undertaken by those whose natural and inevitable partiality to

their subject renders them at once more liable than any others would be to the jealousy of criticism, and more painfully sensitive under it. But this is more peculiarly true of the biography, and above all, of the autobiography, of a public character of recent times, which must necessarily involve topics still hot with the passions of party, and, what is even worse, still palpitating with individual sensibilities. We do not recollect any case to which these general objections are more strongly or more justly applicable than the present, and we say so with the less reserve because, except the mere fact of a too hasty and indiscriminate publication, we have no objection to make to the mode in which the editors of the work before us have performed their duty. Their short preface and few explanatory notes are written with judgment; but a better judgment would have been not to have published at all. We are well aware how tempting it must be to filial affection to pay an early tribute to those qualities for which it at least must feel an unmixed veneration-but affection is not, in such cases, a safe councillor-it sees but one, and that the bright side of a character, which may have many, and some of them of a darker hue: and in this particular case there is a painful peculiarity, the recollection of which, affection itself, we should have thought, would have been reluctant to revive. That, however, is more particularly their own concern. But much the larger portion of the work is very busy, and not very charitably busy, with the characters of other men. point the editors say

On this

'Some passages will be found in the parliamentary diary in which the conduct of various persons is animadverted upon; but wherever these have been retained they have been considered to relate exclusively to public character or public conduct, and to be such as the terms in which they are expressed, and the object for which they were written, entitled the editors to publish, and would not have justified them in suppressing.'-Pref., p. vi.

We know not what they may have suppressed, but we do know that they have published a great many things about a great many persons, which not only would they have been justified in suppressing, but which they were not justified in retaining, and we think that they themselves will, on reconsideration, doubt whether it was either decorous or prudent to incur the risk of such a conflict as every page of their father's parliamentary journal might not unnaturally produce. Can those of Romilly's political adversaries who still survive-or the children and friends of the departed-whose names are sneered at, whose motives are traduced, whose measures are misrepresented-can they-who met and repelled, face to face, the attacks of their living opponent, be expected

expected to lie down patiently under his posthumous imputations, rendered more solemn and therefore more offensive by coming as a voice from the grave? If they submit in silence, they belie their consciences and hallow the obloquy ;-if they replyhowever tenderly or delicately-they can hardly avoid impugning the character of the deceased, and retaliating on his surviving friends the pain inflicted on themselves. This is a dilemma into which men ought not to be forced. The generous sentiment that 'wars not with the dead' supposes, even in its most indulgent latitude, that the dead shall not be evoked to make war upon us; and however unpleasant or invidious may be the revival of obsolete feuds and factions, they only can be deemed responsible for the disagreeable results who have assumed the previous responsibility of the unnecessary and unseasonable aggression.

We have said so much by way of recording our general opinion on this class of publications, and to vindicate, in the particular case of Sir Samuel Romilly, our indubitable right to criticise, repel, and refute with whatever force or severity we may think necessary, many of the doctrines he advocated and much of the conduct he pursued, both dragged again, by this publication, into the arena of public controversy.

But though we thus broadly assert that right, our readers will find that we shall use it sparingly-indeed, the severest thing we shall say is that we deemed Sir Samuel's politics of no great weight or importance even when enforced by his own impressive utterance in the House of Commons, and that we certainly have no inclination to dig them up again from the obscurity of a tedious diary where we believe they are nearly as innocuous as any fresh refutation could render them. We shall therefore avoid, as far as we can, the controversy to which these volumes seem to invite us, and shall rather endeavour to forget our differences from the politician in the more pleasing recollection of the respectable man and eminent lawyer, who from humble beginnings raised himself to high rank and still higher consideration, by a rare and fortunate combination of industry and talents, accompanied by great purity of mind and a high and proud independence of personal character.

The publication is made up of the following materials:-1st, a narrative by himself of his birth, parentage, education, and life to 1789, which occupies not above a fourth of the first volume; 2ndly, a series of letters to friends, mostly foreigners, about equivalent to one volume; 3rdly, the diary of his parliamentary life. The Narrative, particularly the earlier portion of it, is written with candour and simplicity, and is, we think, much the most interesting portion of the publication the Letters, which

relate

relate for the most part to public and political events of the times from 1780 to 1803, are by no means lively—but in a remarkably good, clear, unaffected style, and showing very considerable information and sagacity. The Diary extends from March, 1806, when he became solicitor-general, to a short time before his death in the autumn of 1818; it consists of memoranda of his political and parliamentary life, written from day to day, and of course imbued with all the partialities and passions of the moment which no active politician can put off, and with a peculiarity of prejudice which seems to have been progressive in his honest but enthusiastic, and, even in his youth, somewhat saturnine disposition.

Sir Samuel Romilly's grandfather was one of the most respectable class of persons, as we think, recorded in historythe French refugees-who, on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, abandoned, for conscience' sake, fortune, kindred, and country, and prospered (as they generally did) in the land of their adoption, with no other resources than an elevated and pious spirit, and an intelligent and indefatigable industry.

Mr. Romilly, whose Christian name is not stated, settled in London, in the trade of a wax-bleacher. He married Judith de Monsallier, the daughter of another refugee, by whom he had a large family, of whom Peter-Sir Samuel's father-was the youngest. Peter also married a lady of a refugee family of the name of Garnault; so that it really turned out that the first man at the English bar, who, if he had lived, would probably have been Lord High Chancellor of England, and who, as his friend Dumont tells us, used to bless the tyranny of Louis XIV., which had made him an Englishman,' had not a drop of English blood in his veins a fact which might be detected in his fine but rather foreign countenance, and traced, we think, in his social habits, and on many occasions in the turn and tendencies of his mind. It is somewhat singular that while Romilly was leading the Chancery bar in England, Saurin, another branch of the refugee stock, enjoyed the same undisputed pre-eminence at the Irish Bar.

Sir Samuel was born 1st March, 1757. His father was a jeweller, and in business so respectable as to have calculated that his shop would be an adequate provision for Romilly and his brother. He had at one time thought of bringing him up as an attorney, but to that the boy himself (at the age of ten, as it seems) took, from the greasy looks, dusty residence, and scanty library of his intended master, an insuperable aversion. He then was instructed in arithmetic and book-keeping to fit him for a clerkship in the counting-house of Sir Samuel Fludyer, alderman and baronet. As Fludyer was both his godfather and cousin, being the son of Elizabeth de Monsallier, sister of Romilly's grandmother,