BOOKS.

PALGRAVR'S HISTORY OF NORMANDY.* IN an introductory preface, Sir Francis Palgrave not only gives an account of his theory of historical composition, and of the scope and plan of his intended History of Normandy and England, but enters upon a species of intellectual autobiography, somewhat on the text of " When first young. Mare in his boundless mind." At the outset of the historian's inception, when thinking of turn- ing to account the vast mass of original materials with which his official situation in connexion with " records " had made him ac- quainted, no fewer than three classes of the belles lettres seemed essential to his purpose. Events could be properly narrated in a history. after the usual fashion ; disquisition on the many topics in connexion with a nation's progress would properly fall into the historical essay ; the daily life of the people, their character and their feelings, would be better exhibited in the form of the his- torical romance. This idea was partially carried out in the " His- tory of the Anglo-Saxons," the " Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth," and the tale called" The Merchant and the Friar." But the experiment only convinced the author of the truth of the maxim "So vast is art, so narrow human wit." Even Scott could not do history in any other form than history. Ivanhoe was about as true a picture of the times of Richard the First as of those of Paradise. In Sir Francis Palgrave's opinion, "language, characters, incidents, manners, thoughts, are out of time, out of season, out of reason, ideal or impossible. When on the waters of the gentle Don there glided the swan with two necks, then Gurth, with the brass collar soldered round his one, so tight as to be in- capable of being removed except by the use of the file, tended swine in the woodlands of Rotheram."

Instructed alike by experience and observation, Sir Francis Pal- grave determined to abandon the vast design of his earlier projects, and henceforth to mingle anecdotes with Ristory, and put disqui- sition alongside of narrative. This plan originated in or was accom-

"ed by a peculiar theory of historical composition. Sir Francis

ddiissccaarr the " dignity " of history : properly enough, so far as an unvarying and artificial stateliness is concerned, for the manner should always assimilate to the matter ; but largeness and elevation are essential to history. The historian is dealing with a nation, not individuals; and though the narrative is concerned with the action of persons, they should be persons who either by their po- sition represent the nation, or illustrate an entire class of people by the force of their character or the peculiarity of their conduct. With the idea of rejecting. the dignity of history Sir Francis also entertains the theory of rejecting compactness of subject and close- ness of style. You are to take in antecedents and collaterals as well as the subject itself; and you are to tell it, if you please, in an expansive not to say familiar and gossiping style, such as a lecturer might use to his pupils when "talking over" the subject.

This theory of historical composition, or rather the frame of

mind which suggested this theory, bids fair to make the History of Normandy and of England to the accession of the Tudors a very elaborate undertaking. The first volume, now before us, proceeds no farther than the settlement of Rollo : but then, the reader gets a good deal more than the story of the Northmen. The work opens with two essays or disquisitions connected with what the author calls " the Fourth Monarchy," (of the prophet Daniel,) meaning Rome. The first essay is intended to prove that Rome was never conquered by the barbarians, but that they were politically and intellectually subdued by Rome, and that modern Europe is in- debted to the Empire not merely for much but for all. The second

uisition is a very valuable essay on language, and especially on the tin, its disuse, and the growth of modern tongues. This is followed by a chapter on the scope and object of the entire his- tory, with the reasons why the work embraces so many seemingly remote or introductory topics. The narrative proper then com- mences, with a notice of the empire and character of Charlemagne, and an account of the Carlovingian pedigree. This is followed by a history of Charlemagne's descendants, and the irruptions of the Northmen, till the final extinction of the Carlovingian dynasty, and the establishment of Rollo and his Northmen in Normandy. The peculiarity of the book is so dependent upon the nature of the author's mind, and the theory of composition which that nature has produced, that it is idle to wish the work other than it is. We do not object to the disregard of dignity or the fulness of detail ; for there is an attractive kindliness in the familiarity of the writer with his reader, and the minuteness conveys fuller inform- ation than a condensed narrative. Neither are his disquisitions ob- jectionable, or the distant subjects he treats of ; for the subjects are important and novel, and the author brings to them original and decided views, and the very pith of a knowledge arising from an almost lifelong familiarity with his subjects. The length to which the work will extend may probably be a drawback; but this length is owing to a theory of the author and a sound one too : you can- not learn history compendiously—you must make up your mind to study it. There is something in the style rather belonging to garrulity than diffusion, but the author's meaning is clearly ex- pressed; the style is often close and eloquent, and possesses the vital spirit which mastery of the subject and a hearty liking for it always produce. To say that the work is less a history than the author's idea of a history, is a merely critical distinction : if you

The History of NormanJy and of England. By Sir Francis Palgrave, K.H., the Deputy Keeper of her Majesty's Public Records. Volume I. General Relations of Mediaeval Europe ; the Carlovingian Empire—the Danish Expeditions in the Gauls —and the establishment of Rollo. Published by John W. Parker. learn, the form in which you acquire the knowledge is a secondary matter. The great fault is a discursiveness of topic and the in- troduction of peculiar opinions of questionable soundness. There is too much of religious or theological matter occasionally in- troduced ; reminding the reader of the substance of a sermon—and, sooth to say, somewhat of the style. This could be remedied by omissions ; but the parts are too closely dependent upon the au- thor's nature to receive excision. We must take him as we find him.

The great characteristic of the work is thoroughness. The author may not always be right ; but his errors do not spring from want of knowledge or want of consideration. We think his idea of the absolute and almost sole influence of Imperial Rome on the formation of the states, the society, and the opinion of modern Europe, too extreme. There is no doubt that Sir Francis PaJgrave" has very carefully studied the question; it is probable that the in- fluence of the Northern feelings and institutions was more sub- ordinate than it has been usually represented ; but we cannot go with him the whole way. The history is not far enough advanced for a full discussion of some singular opinions connected with the Conciueror,—as that he did not introduce the Norman feudal sys- tem into England, and never designed to do it : but to bring the world to this view, more of facts and argument will be necessary than Sir Francis always uses as regards the supremacy of Rome. Very often, instead of full proof, he substitutes a single fact or a sounding phrase, somewhat after the fashion of the late Mr. D'Israeli.

It may be inferred from what we have said that the history is rather discussional than narrative or philosophical. There is mar. rative, and a good deal of it ; there is also philosophy ; but com- mentary—the author's views along with the recorded facts—is the pervading characteristic of the -writer. The essayist lurks under the historian : perhaps the best parts are those which best admit of being treated in the manner of essay. A character of Charle- magne will exhibit this peculiarity'of the writer very well. " It is an insuperable source of fallacy in human observation as well as in human judgment, that we never can sufficiently disjoin our own individual- ity from our estimates of moral nature. Admiring ourselves in others, we ascribe to those whom we love or admire the qualities we value in ourselves. We each see the landscape through our own stripe of the rainbow. A fa- vourite hero by long-established prescription, few historical characters have been more disguised by fond adornment than Charlemagne. Each genera- tion or school has endeavoured to exhibit him as a normal model of excel- lence. Courtly Mezeray invests the son of Pepin with the faste of Louis Quatorze ; the polished Abbe Velly bestows upon the Frankish Emperor the abstract perfection of a dramatic hero ; Boulamvilliers, the champion of the noblesse, worships the founder of hereditary feudality; Drably discovers in the Capitulars the maxims of popular liberty ; Montesquieu, the perfect philosophy of legislation. But, generally speaking, Charlebiagne's historical aspect is derived from his patronage of literature. This notion of his lite- rary character colours his political character, so that in the assumption of the Imperial authority we are fain to consider him as a true romanticist—such as in our own days we have seen upon the throne—seeking to appease hun- gry desires by playing with poetic fancies' to satisfy hard nature with plea- sant words, to give substance and body to a dream. " All these prestiges will vanish if we render to Charlemagne his well-de- served encomiums : he was a great warrior, a great statesman, fitted for his own age. It is a very ambigious praise to say that a man is in advance of his age : if so, he is out of his place ; he lives in a foreign country. Equally so if he lives in the past. No innovator so bold, so reckless, and so crude, as he who makes the attempt (which never succeeds) to effect a resurrection of antiquity. " We may put by the book, and study Charlemagne's achievements on the borders of the Rhine : better than in the book may the traveller read Charle- magne's genuine character pictured upon the lovely unfolding landscape ; the huge dom-minsters, the fortresses of religion ; the yellow sunny rocks studded with the vine • the mulberry and the peach, ripening in the ruddy orchards; the succulent pot-herbs and worts which stock the Bauer's gar- den—these are the monuments and memorials of Charlemagne's mind. The first health pledged when the flask is opened at Johannisberg should be the Monarch's name who gave the song-inspiring vintage. Charlemagne's supe- riority and ability consisted chiefly in seeking and seizing the immediate advantages, whatever they might be, which he could confer upon others or obtain for himself. He was a man of forethought, ready contrivance, and useful talent : he would employ every. expedient, grasp every opportunity, and provide for each day as it was passing by. " The educational movement resulting from Charlemagne's genius was practical. Two main objects had he therein upon his conscience and his mind : the first was the support of the Christian faith ; his seven liberal sciences circled round theology, the centre of the intellectual system. No argument was needed as to the obligation of uniting sacred and secular learn- ing, because the idea of disuniting them never was entertained. " His other object in patronizing learning and instruction was the benefit of the state. He sought to train good men of business ; judges well quali- fied, ready penmen in his chancery ; and this sage desire expanded into a wide instructional field. Charlemagne's exertions for promoting the study of the Greek laneuage—his Greek professorships at Osnaburg or Wtzburg- have been praised, doubted, discussed, as something very paradoxical, where- as his motives were plain and his machinery simple. Greek was to all in- tents and purposes the current language of an opulent and powerful nation, required for the transaction of public affairs. A close parallel, necessitated by the same causes, exists in the capital of Charlemagne's successors. The Oriental Academy at Vienna is constituted to afford a supply' of individuals qualified for the diplomatic intercourse, arising out of the vicinity and rela- tions of the Austrian and Ottoman dominions, without any reference to the promotion of philology. We find the same at home. If the Persian lan- guage be taught at Haileybury, it is to fit the future writer for his Indian office. He may study Perdue' 'or Hafiz if he pleases ; but the cultivation of literature is not the intent with which the learning is bestowed."

The chapter on the Roman language is very, valuable ; full of information illustrated by able commentary. The manner in which classical Latin became corrupted even while the Roman power was dominant, is admirably shown ; condensing a great variety of in- formation in a small compass. Take for example the influence of slavery and soldiery upon the language of common speech, the lingua rustics, the vulgar tongue.

" Whilst the Romans triumphed in all the merciless insolence of baneful prosperity, another nation writhed in ceaseless anguish amongst and beneath

them —the vast nation of slaves, the crime, the cancer, and ultimately the punishment of Rome, constantly reunited by fresh captives, hundreds, and thousands, and myriads, and chiliads, and millions. The delicate matron and tender damsel of Corinth, the grey-haired senator of Epirus, the athletic Goth, the blue-eyed Teuton, the supple Sarmatian, the accomplished Lydian, the Greek emparadised by luxury and intellect, the barbarian who had ranged in the free delights of mountain and steppe, forest and wave, swept away from every country whioh had been lacerated by the fangs of the Ro- man wolf, or torn by the beak of the Roman eagle ; fit symbols of Roman power. " Each miserable importation, circumstanced like the Africans in European settlements, could only, obtain an imperfect knowledge of the language of their tyrants. Filling every employment from the lowest to the highest, swarming in every villa, congregating in every atrium; chained to every rich man's door, their modes of speech accustomed every ear to their locution and infected the vernacular tongue. This servile talk would readily combine with the vulgarisms of the mob;the proletarian populace of the great cities, but most especially of, that foul capital; the vicious pronunciations, the clipt vocables, the solecisms and blunders, the slang and emit, the obscenity and ruffianism, the corruptions of language corresponding to the debasement of the mind.

" In the midst of this dinning, tumult-of tongues, the classical Latin, the Latin of the standard authors, the Latin of literature, the grammar Latin, retreating amongst the higher orders of society, struggled for existence. So actively pervading-were the deteriorated dialects at Rome, that constant exertions were required to preserve the children of good families from the vernacular which constituted the language of the masses. Latin did not come. by nature at Rome, any more than Greek ; both were languages of eduration; both required to be bought and taught. To this effect are the instrpctions given by Saint Jerome in his most curious letter to Lmta, con- taining a complete system of education; his precautions for securing the in fant against the colloquial language of the nurse being scarcely less stringent

than those which might be considered needful for Calcutta at the present , day., Saint Jerome was anything rather than a precisian in style, but he was anxious that Lieta's daughter should speak honestly, as fitted her sta- tion, a Christian gentlewoman."

There is perhaps a shade of exaggeration in the following facts, and something more than a shade in the opinion that pervades their exhibition.

" Fourteen centuries have elapsed since the authority of the Roman Em- perors ceased in Britain yet scarcely does the farmer's ploughshare ever fur- row the soil where .a Roman city has flourished, or the stern Roman castra- mentation controlled the land—whether the down or heath be still sur- rounded by the vellum, or the memory of the station preserved by the No- title or the Itinerary—without turning up the medals bearing the laurelled head, the weeping captive, the trophy, or the triumphal car, the tokens of Rome's sovereignty. The husbandman's toil, the infant's busy band, the excavator's pickaxe, the crumbling cliff, the rush of the rain, have con- steady disclosed the Roman hoard during fourteen centuries ; and yet that hoard seems as inexhaustible as if throughout the whole length and breadth of our island the coin germinated in the ground. So vast are the quanti- ties: that the imaginative antiquary, baffled when he attempted to ascribe their multitude and dispersion to accident or chance, suggested the theory of design—the Romans, as our archaeologist tells us, purposely sowed and buried their mintage in the glebe, to the end that future ages might receive continual manifestations of their almost superhuman power. Fanciful as the theory may be, accept it as an expression of the effect produced upon the mind by the irresistible instinct which impelled the Romans to build in all things for historical eternity. "Such have been the results of the endeavours made by the Romans to impose their language upon the vassal world. The mastery of language is the mastery of thought. They strove for that mastery, gamed it, kept it, keep it : they dead and gone, that empire still is theirs. They would fain compel the subject nations to adopt their Leticia speech ; and the conquered obeyed, accepting the enjoined conformity as a high privilege, a bond of union, the creation of a new nationality."

The thoroughness of Roman conquest and occupation is more completely proved, however, than the influence of Imperial insti- tutions. Roman. remains are numerous in England, but our government exhibits smaller trace of Roman. imitation than any other government in Europe that dates from the middle ages.

Sir Francis displays a good deal of religious feeling; but while his theory is strict, his practical conclusions are not always so. Witness this courtly excuse for the unfaithfulness of the clergy in reference to the licentiousness of monarchs.

"Charlemagne may have received some private rebukes from his clergy, but never did they openly oppose his unbridled indulgence. There are sea- sons when popular sins are so universally condonated, so attractive, so re- commended by national pride, so palliated by fashion, so fascinating to in- tellect, so intimstPly conducive to the material interests and resources of society, so thoroughly assimilated into the body politic, that it seems as if the priesthood must, out of mere charity, yield to the universal hardness of heart ; refraining from their duty lest rebuke should aggravate iniquity by occasioning the worse transgression, of sinning against warning and know- ledge. Faith failing through irremovable ignorance, inveterate habit, or un- surmountable temptation, it appears impossible to correct the perceptions of the sinner, in whom a moral polarization of light has taken place—the black looks couleur-de-rose.

"Take home instances, familiar instances, stale, vulgar instances, dis- agreeable instances, humiliating instances, they show the truth more clearly. Can we conceive the possibility of any parochial minister gifted with the firmness, zeal, kindness, talent, and earnestness, which fifty years ago, com- bining in due proportions, would have enabled him to exhort against wreck- ing on the Cornish coast ? Did any one incumbent of Newmarket or Epsom ever reprove the crowds who to their temporal or eternal ruin, so thickly congregate upon the verdant turf of the Heath or the Downs ; or chide the pestilential profligacy fostered by the race-course-stand, the betting-room, and the roulette-table ? Influence and station may environ the offenders by circumstances which deter all but those who are raised up as special minis- ters of holiness. Whether a Charles, a James, or a William, listened or were suprosed to listen in the royal closet, no voice was ever heard from the pul- pit of Whitehall which could trouble the lovers of such charmers as Nell Gstynna or Mademoiselle de Querouaille, my Lady Castlemaine, Mistress Arabella ChUrchill, Miss Lue.y Walters or my Lady Orkney. Ward and Sheldotivere lulled into dutiful somnolence. Stilling,fleet and Tillotson, waging an uncompromising warfare against Socinian heresy and Po ish corruption, knew nothing whatever of the debaucheries perpetrated by King and Duke, which made the Wapping sailors cry, Shame ! The Revolution did not diminish their mildness ; and smiling over their velvet cushions, they practised the same toleration towards thephlegmatic amours of him of the ' glorious memory.' Hoadly, gently creeping up the Palace back-stairs in=search of the successive mitres of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Win- chester, and fully impressed with 'the unreasonableness of nonconformity' to. a Monarch's liaison, never startled during his ascent at the patched and painted Countesses of Yarmouth or of Suffolk, the bulky Baroness Killman- segg, or the gawky Duchess of Kendal. The awe inspired by Charlemagne, the respect for his active piety and zeal, his personal energy in the good cause, the gratitude earned by his munificence, the prestige of his poetical

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grandeur, subdued the clergy into a practical connivance, which would re- ceive a harder name were it not for the indulgence with which man is bound to judge of human infirmity. Nor can we escape from similar examples of moral debility in any cora. Creamer's docility reflects the accommodation. given by Pope Stephen. Desiderata is repeated in Anne of Cleves."