BOOKS.
PROFESSOR QOLDWIN SMITH ON MODERN HISTORY.* TEE five lectures contained in this volume were delivered at intervals
between 1859 and the present time. The series is not continuous— the first and last lectures being distinct and special in their subject- matter and the occasion of their delivery. The three other lectures have a certain connexion with each other; as parts of the author's exposition of his theory of history, but can hardly be said to be united together by the bonds of a consecutive chain of reasoning. All are marked by Mr. Goldwin Smith's usual ability, but they are rather unequal in their merit, and exhibit less concentration and grasp of thought than
the little treatise on Irish History from the pen of the same author, to which we recently drew attention. The "Inaugural Lecture" is too miscellaneous in its topics, and too special and local in some of them, for the more permanent form of publication in which it now appears. The lastlecture, "On the Foundation of the American Colonies," though clever and agreeable, is not original enough, and is of too slight a character for the prominence here given it as one of a selected " five." The other three lectures deal with the metaphysics, not of history alone, but of the universe, and we cannot but think were ill-adapted to the stage of thought and the mental capabilities of the young men to whom they were primarily addressed. They are, in fact, an elabo- rate and ingenious answer to the school of Comte and Buckle, and to the "phases of faith" of modern science. They are consequently too much mixed up with passing phenomena in the world of ethics, and too controversial to attain to the position of a calm exposition of the philosophy of history. We have no hesitation in speaking thus freely on the defects of this volume, in certain points of view, because its intrinsic merits, and the importance of the topics with which it deals, are such as will certainly command for it a consider- able amount of public attention and criticism, and because in some respects—especially in the matter of the theory of M. Comte—our own sympathies and convictions are on the author's side.
The special character of the "Inaugural Lecture" consists inits being a history and recommendation of the School of History, Jurisprudence, and Political Economy, recently instituted, or rather revived, at Ox- ford. The gist of the appeal is the necessity which exists for educating our landed gentry in the materials for sober and broad reflection on subjects of social and international interest, and on the comparative value of the study of modern history, with the kindred subjects in- cluded in this new school, as an instrument in accomplishing this desirable work. The lecturer is evidently placed in an awkward and uneasy position as the prophet of a new faith in the seat of adverse traditions, and there is, consequently, something rather apologetic and studiously guarded in his treatment of certain delicate points of Oxford belief, which contrasts curiously enough with the absolute defiance of the old spirit of Oxford which his pages present, and which must sometimes have startled not a little the echoes of those halls of learning. That such a panegyric as the following could have been pronounced at all within the academical walls of Oxford is a striking proof of the march of events and the force of historical truth :
"King George I., however, or his Minister, was not the first of English rulers who had endeavoured to draw direct from the University a supply of talented and highly-educated men for the service of the State. I almost shrink from mention- ng the name which intrudes so grimly into the long list of the Tory and High Church Chancellors of Oxford. But It was at least the nobler part of Cromwell's character which led him to protect Oxford and Cambridge from the levelling fanaticism of his party, to make himself our Chancellor, to foster our learning with his all-pervading energy, and to seek to draw our choicest youth to councils which it must be allowed were always filled, as far as the evil time permitted, with an eye to the interest of England and to her interest alone. Cromwell's name i
is always in the mouths of those who despise or hate high education, who call, in every public emergency, for native energy and rude common sense,—for no subtle and fastidious philosophers, but strong practical men. They seem to think that he really was a brewer of Huntingdon who left his low calling in a fit of fanatical enthusiasm to lead a great cause (great, whether it were the right cause or the wrong) in camp and council, to win Dunbar agiinst a general who had foiled Wallenstein, to fascinate the imagination of 'Milton, and by his administration at home and abroad to raise England, in five short years and on the morrow of a bloody civil war, to a height of greatness to which she still looks back with a proud and wistful eye. Cromwell, to use his own words, was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity;' he was educated, suitably to his birth, at a good classical school; he was at Cambridge; he read law ; but what was much more than this, he, who is supposed to have owed his power to ignorance and narrowness of mind, had brooded almost to madness over the deepest questions of religion and politics, and, as a kinsman of Hampden and an active member of Hampden's party, had held intimate converse on those questions with the profoundest and keenest intel- lects of that unrivalled age. And therefore his ambition, if it was treasonable, was not low. Therefore be bore himself always not as one who gambled for a stake, but as one who struggled for a cause. Therefore the great soldier loved the glory of peace above the glory of war, and the moment he could do so, sheathed his victorious sword; therefore, if he was driven to govern by force, he was driven to it with reluctance, and only after long striving to govern by nobler means ; therefore be kept a heart above tinsel, and, at a height which had turned the head of Ciesar, remained always master of himself; therefore be loved and called to his counsel-board high and cultivated intellect, and employed it to serve the interest of the State without too anxiously inquiring how it would serve his own ; therefore he felt the worth of the Universities, saved them from the storm which laid throne and altar in the dust, and earnestly endeavoured to give them their due place and influence as seminaries of statesmen. Those who wish to see the conduct of a real brewer turned into a political chief should mark the course of Santerre in the French Revolution. 1 hose who wish to see how power is wielded without high cultivation and great ideas, should trace the course of Napoleon, so often compared with Cromwell, and preferred to him ;—of Napo- leon, the great despiser of philosophers ; —and ask whether a little of the philosophy which he despised might not have mitigated the vulgar vanity which breathes * Lectures on Modern History, delivered in Oxford, les9-61. By Goldwin Smith, M.A., Regina Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. Oxford and London: J. II. and James Parker. through his bulletins, and tempered his vulgar lust of conquest with some regard for nobler things. It would indeed be a flaw in nature if that which Arnold called the highest earthly work, the work of government, were best performed by blind ignorance and headlong force, or by a cunning which belongs almost as much to brutes as man. The men who have really left their mark on England, the founders of her greatness from Alfred to the Elizabethan statesmen, and from the Elizabethan statesmen down to Canning and Peel, have been cultivated in various ways ; some more by study, some more by thought ; some by one kind of study, some by another • but in one way or other they have been all cultivated men. The minds of all have been fed and stimulated, through one channel or other, with the great thoughts of those who had gone before them ; and prepared for action by lofty meditations, the parents of high designs."
Those who remember the widely different judgment of Mr. Hallam in his contrast of Cromwell and Napoleon, cannot fail to be struck with the remarkable results of recent historical inquiry.
In his comparison between the effects of the study of the classics and of modem history—in the wider sense in which he employs the term—Mr. Goldwin Smith naturally leans to the side of his own subject, though he is not blind to the arguments which may be ad- duced in favour of the opposite theory. Perhaps these may be some- what strengthened if we consider for whom and under what con- ditions these rival schools of mental and moral discipline are insti- tuted. They are to be the schools of immediate thought and dis- cussion, and not of immediate action. It is quite impossible—. even if it were desirable—that any university could supply, within its necessarily restricted and monotonous circle of life, the materials for immediately coping with the great living and moving questions which agitate the world without. Its proper duty is to educate the mind of the future statesman and citizen gradually, and with a systematic sequence of mental training for the experiences of life which will form his supplementary training when he leaves college. Its great object, then, should be in its selection of subjects for collegiate study, to prevent the mind of the student from prematurely anti- cipating the passing questions of the day, and yet to avail itself of his natural and laudable desire to approach such subjects; to fix his mind, in the first place, on the consideration of events and questions, remoter in point of time but kindred in much of their substantial character; and, from a dispassionate estimate of these stages in the history of the world, to the just interpretation of which events have already supplied us with the key, lead him gradually down to the operation of similar or fresh causes in events and topics more closely• approaching our own epoch. Modern history, therefore, and the subjects joined with it in the new Oxford school, seem calculated to form the intermediate training between the scholastic discipline of earlier college days and the lessons and demands for immediate de- cision which are to succeed in the actual world without. Such a school is too closely connected with passing events to be a safe preli- minary study for young men, who are only too ready to imagine them- selves capable of solving off-hand the most difficult problems of the day. The study of classical antiquity, on the other hand, prepares them for a more mature consideration of such topics by forcing their minds back to ultimate causes, and leading them to dissever unessential and transient influences from permanent and intrinsic elements of human action. It is not so easy, either (at least in these days), to ape the sentiments and servilely adopt the cant language of antiquity, as it is to become the mere retlexion of the pet dogmatisms of a professor who is within the current of modern controversies. At any rate, we would much rather see a youth of seventeen or eighteen occupy- ing his mind with the Peloponnesian war or the days of Cicero than educating himself for immediate political convictions, even under the auspices of the able opponent of M. Comte and Mr. Buckle. The discussion of the main points broached in Mr. Goldwin Smith's three anti-Comte lectures would carry us far beyond the limits, not only of a newspaper notice, but also of the proper sphere of such a journal as this. Necessity and free-will can hardly be dealt with to advantage in such a fashion; nor are we disposed to follow our author into his controversy with Mr. Newman on the character of Christ. Again, we must leave untouched the Postscript to one of the lec- tures in vindication of Clarke's doctrine as to the identity of human and Divine justice in answer to the Bampton lecturer for 1858. What remains for us to say a word upon is the author's theory of the philosophy of history. In this he endeavours to place himself in a dis- tinct and antagonistic position as to two opposite schools of thought; first, to the scientific school, which seems to consider that history can be reduced to the operation of fixed and inevitable laws, similar to those which regulate the physical universe, and so would draw us away from the contemplation of individual action, except in its highest and typical form, and fix it on general phases of social pro- gress; and, on the other hand, to the providential school, which traces and points out the operation of Providence in every special event, and seems to limit and lower individual action by the operation of a necessarian though personal influence in everything. Against the former school Mr. Goldwin Smith does valiant and good service, hinting that the arrogant tone of the scientific school m these days, and the tentative assumptions which they are endeavouring to impose as articles of faith, are symptoms of their having overstepped their actual knowledge, and of a reaction, equally unsound, though not un- provoked, from the bigoted outcry against scientific researches with which England was agitated in the days of Dr. Buckland's geological innovations. Our author is scarcely so clear in his attack on the pro- vidential school, which, after all, seems to amount to little more than a protest against the exaggeration of the theory of a providential dis- pensation of events. Mr. Goldwin Smith himself fixes his philosophy of history "on the contemplation of two grand facts—the division of nations, and the succession of ages." But this is really nothing more than an escape from narrower and less conclusively established cases of- providential guidance to wider and more distinctly developed
features of the same. The exact line drawn by our author seems, in any other sense, arbitrary and unphilosophical. We must, there- fore, whatever his protest may be, rank him among the more en- lightened and cautious reasoners of this providential school. It is in the proper subordination of this theory to considerations of time and information rather than in its essential features that we can dis- cover a special and exceptional position for our author. The lectures are, it will be seen, in the main, for whomsoever they were originally intended, controversial, and addressed to the higher and more mature thought of the nation. In this point of view they will be read with interest, and are entitled to careful and thoughtful consideration.
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