have deified their heroes and martyrs, but by a plain and faithful record of their lives and actions.

There is, however, one illustrious name yet scarcely redeemed from the united hold of bigotry and ignorance which nothing, not our consciousness of utter inability to honour as it ought to be honoured, shall induce us to abandon altogether to the chance of more accomplished advocacy. An enthusiast, yet unboundedly tolerant of creeds the most opposed to his own; a republican, yet averse to every act of violence against the legislature, equally as against the executive, sir Henry Vane employed the whole superiority of his commanding and penetrating intellect, in fashioning, as necessary implements, every baser aim of selfish natures "hard to be spelled," in the promotion of the public cause. His early youth had been embittered by episcopal, his mature life was exercised with presbyterian, intolerance; his whole career was one unending hour of strife with both. On his first appearance as a statesman, he had honourably sacrificed even the legitimate emoluments of office; and up to the last moment of his active existence, no personal ambition, expectation, or interest, had ever cast its shadows on his course. One circumstance was wanting to his glory. His triumphs had been those of a civilian; his integrity (for he never showed a want of moral courage) had unfitted him for eminence when rank was guilt, and had, or has, since, exposed him to the charge of timidity from those in whose estimate audacity is heroism. This mean reproach was signally falsified, and a final test applied to his undaunted integrity, by the success of the most shameless perfidy. But who was the suborner of that act? Who was the "mean betrayer of his brother's blood"-the wretch who, if his soul had comprehension or credence for that virtue which disdained submission that fortitude which equally disdained escape-thought only how to turn the noble qualities he hated, to the ruin of the breast that nourished them? It was Clarendon--the good lord Clarendon. It was he who, when the first (Convention) Parliament of Charles II, aristocratic and presbyterian as it was, yet excepted not Vane from the indemnity, without petitioning in concurrence with the peers that the royal promise should be pledged for the safety of his life at least-accepted for the king that petition, and in the king's name returned that promise. It was he who, when the arts of intrigue and delusion had made the second parliament a royalist assembly, suggested, or at any rate approved, a new petition from both Houses for the solemn violation of the solemn pledge which had been given by their predecessors, thus imperturbably pursuing his slow

track to revenge, although revenge was to be bought with dishonour, and involving in the same dishonour King, Lords, and Commons. The character of the murdered was to be written for posterity. The murderer had the pen in his hand; and, with the same infernal skill which had contrived the doom, he could blacken, for a while, the very memory of his victim.* But men have now begun to distrust the "solemn plausibilities' of history to discern where imagination, interest, antipathywhere any thing but Truth has held the pen-at length to discriminate their foes from their friends, and to celebrate, at least

*That Clarendon should have passed over in silence the murder of sir Henry Vane in his "Life," where with so much of elaborate diffuseness and particularity, he endeavours to refute the other charges against his character, is of itself a strong presumption of his share in that atrocity. He knew the world believed (what he himself affirmed), that he had long been omnipotent in the councils of Charles II, and he inust, therefore, take the blame of every royal delinquency which was committed during the plenitude of his power, and which he has not thought fit to disavow, whether there is evidence or not of his actual and direct participation in it. In the present case, there is evidence enough, and to spare. Not only are we told by Clarendon himself, that every measure of the court (and this of course among the number) was arranged before its being broached in parliament by himself and the treasurer, "in conference with some select members of the House of Commons ;" and that "parts were assigned to other men whom they found disposed and willing to concur in what was to be desired-and all this without any noise"-but we have the following letter of the king to Clarendon [see Harris's Lives, Vol. v. p. 32], demanding advice upon this very subject:

"The relation that hath been made to me of sir H. Vane's carriage yesterday, in the Hall, is the occasion of this letter; which, if I am rightly informed, was so insolent as to justify all he had done, acknowledging no supreame power in England but a parliament, and many things to that purpose. You have had a true account of all; and if he has given new occasion to be hanged, certaynly he is too dangerous a man to lett live, if we can honestly put him out of the way. Thinke of this, and give me some accounte of it to-morrow: till when I have no more to say to you."

"To the Chancellour."

Here, then, is a virtual and implicit acknowledgment, under the king's own hand, of the promise he had made to spare the life of Vane, coupled with a hint of his extreme desire to find occasion" honestly to break it. It is in short the indolent baseness of the master, appealing for advice and assistance to the energetic baseness of the slave. This passage admirably illustrates the saying, reported by the duchess of Cleveland, that Charles always chose a greater beast than himself to govern him. Who so fitted ex officio as the keeper, to satisfy the scruples of the royal conscience? They were satisfied. Vane was executed that day week.

The formal character of Vane, by Clarendon, is written with that calcu lated candour which has gained applause for many of his portraits. It is only in the narrative part of his work, where he treats in detail of the actions of his enemies, that his quiet stream of calumny flows out with freedom.

with posthumous praise, the few statesmen who have cared for their happiness.

On looking over what we have written, we find that we have not said much of Cromwell. Not much needed to be said. İntelligent readers of history have fixed their judgment of his character entirely from his actions, which speak a plain and intelligible language. Others who adore alike the powers of good and evil, will, of course, adore Cromwell to the end of time, along with his more modern counterpart, Napoleon. We should be sorry to disturb their devotions. But we may just remark the pleasing unanimity with which Whig and Tory writers have of late years eulogised the former of these hateful oppressors. Men of either party, who have wished to obtain a sort of cheap character for liberality, without the inconvenience or the indecorum of supporting any tangible principle-while they have spoken of the really honest men of the Commonwealth with affected contempt, or with undisguised rancour, have usually treated Cromwell with forbearance-with respect. The reason is sufficiently obvious. He did more service to the few as a traitor, than he had ever done them mischief as an honest man. We have seen that the lawyers and the clergy found their own account in aiding and abetting his tyranny; and though the royalists, par excellence, assuredly did neither, yet they openly rejoiced at it as leaving no bar to the return of kingship, but the life of an usurper. Most enlightened serviles! they perceived in his dominion every hopeful germ of counter-revolution. They marked with genuine rapture his encroachments on established, his resistance to proposed, reforms. They watched with sure prophetic exultation his revival of old ornaments, and titles, and ceremonies; in short, viewed the whole process as a national rehearsal for the glorious twenty-ninth of May-when, at length, from long habitudes in hostile lands, with the conscience of a Jesuit, and the heart of an alien, the madly-welcomed heir of royalty returned amongst us-returned with every harpy satellite, himself the male Celano of the obscene band -returned to tread out the latest hope of improvement even Cromwell had not dared extinguish-to desecrate the tyrant's relics to consecrate the tyrant's work-in one wide emphatic mischief-meaning word to RESTORE.

Incidentally, we trust we have already done justice to the general accuracy and good-faith of the work which has served for our text; and the reader has been enabled, by our extracts, to decide whether years have dulled the sharp and powerful style of the Enquirer. There is no want betrayed in these volumes of research into original documents, or of "fair and

severe examination of evidence ;" and the whole design is animated with a sincere desire of truth. Will these elements suffice to accomplish the character of an historian? Not entirely there must be dignity and calmness of expression-perfect absence of egotism or passion in the manner-close coherence and luminous arrangement in the matter of history; none of which qualities are constantly (though all of them occasionally) united in the work of Mr. Godwin. In some of his speculations upon forms of government, he appears to have mistaken words for things; in others, he has expressed himself in terms so general and so vague, that we are sometimes at a loss for his exact meaning. But his errors are the errors of a man of genius, indirectly more useful in suggesting truths, than the most irrefragable common-places of correct mediocrity.

ART. IV. The Epicurean. By Thomas Moore.

THIS volume will, no doubt, be infinitely acceptable to the ladies "who make the fortune of new books." Love, very intense; mystery, somewhat recondite; piety, very profound; and philosophy sufficiently shallow; with the help of

new mythological machinery,

And very handsome supernatural scenery;

strung together with an infinity of brilliant and Howery fancies, present a combination eminently calculated to delight this very numerous class of readers. It is a production in the best style of M. de Chateaubriand.

In the reign of the emperor Valerian, Alciphron, a young Epicurean philosopher, is elected chief of that school in the beginning of his twenty-fourth year, a circumstance, the author says, without precedent, and we conceive without probability.

Youth, however, and the personal advantages that adorn it, were not, it may be supposed, among the least valid recommendations to a sect that included within its circle all the beauty, as well as wit, of Athens, and which, though dignifying its pursuits with the name of philosophy, was little else than a pretext for the more refined cultivation of pleasure.' pp. 1, 2.

Here is a circumstance, which, the author says, never before occurred; which, therefore, according to his own showing, never occurred at all, excepting in fiction; and which most assuredly never did or could occur, followed by very goodly reasons to show that it must naturally and necessarily have occurred always. For if women were the electors, and youth

and its personal advantages the recommendations of a candidate, it is not easy to perceive how a simple elderly gentleman, like Cicero's Patro, who had no better recommendation than that of being qualified for his office, could have had any chance against such a competitor as Mr. Moore's hero.

The character of the sect had indeed much changed since the time of its wise and virtuous founder, who, while he asserted that Pleasure is the only Good, inculcated, also, that Good is the only source of Pleasure.'—p. 2.

Alciphron should have added, that Epicurus did not bandy about the two words like a shuttlecock, but took the trouble of explaining very clearly what he meant by both.

The purer part of this doctrine had long evaporated, and the temperate Epicurus would have as little recognized his own sect in the assemblage of refined voluptuaries who now usurped its name, as he would have known his own quiet garden in the luxurious groves and bowers among which the meetings of the school were now held.'-p. 2.

This is a great misrepresentation of the character of the later Epicureans.

Many causes, besides the attractiveness of its doctrines, concurred at this period to render our school the most popular of any that still survived the glory of Greece. It may generally be observed, that the prevalence in one half of a community of very rigid notions on the subject of religion, produces the opposite extreme of laxity and infidelity on the other; and this kind of re-action it was, that now mainly contributed to render the doctrines of the garden the most fashionable philosophy of the day. The rapid progress of the Christian faith had alarmed all those who either from piety or worldliness were interested in the continuance of the old established creed; all who believed in the deities of Olympus, and all who lived by them. The consequence was, a considerable increase of zeal and activity throughout the constituted authorities and priesthood of the whole Heathen world. What was wanting in sincerity of belief, was made up in rigour; the weakest parts of the Mythology were those of course most angrily defended, and any reflections tending to bring Saturn or his wife Ops into contempt, were punished with the utmost severity of the law.'-pp. 2, 3.

As a light touch of satire, glancing from the past to the present, all this is very well; but the concluding sentence, if intended to be at all taken as the assertion of an historical fact, is decidedly incorrect.

In this state of affairs, between the alarmed bigotry of the declining faith, and the simple and sublime austerity of its rival, it was not wonderful that those lovers of ease and pleasure who had no