have no wife but of her choosing, interfered from George the Third, whose schemes successfully to thwart this project. Lord though Newcastle's ultimate removal from Waldegrave's remark on this transaction de- office was essential to them-were not yet serves to be quoted, as well from its intrinsic mature, induced him to remain and to drag value, and as it shows the notoriety of the re- his unrespected age through courts and antelation in which Lord Bute stood to the prin- chambers, till he was finally pushed off the cess (the cause of so many calamities to this stage by his insolent and successful rival. country), as because it has carefully been kept Much has been said of the expression inserted back by the optimists who have undertaken in the speech, and alluding to the fact that, to write the history of this humiliating epoch unlike his father and grandfather, George the of English story for these reasons, notwith- Third was born within the precincts of this standing the familiar tone in which it is island. But no notice that I recollect has written, it ought to find a place in the text been taken of the scandalously servile reply of the narrative. 'Here,' that is, in send--the result, no doubt, of Lord Bute's dictaing for the Prince of Wales on occasion of tion-made to the speech by the House of the proposed marriage, his majesty was Lords. "What a lustre does it cast upon the guilty of a very capital mistake; instead of name of Briton when you, sir, are pleased to sending for the prince he should have spoken esteem it among your glories." Strange lanfirmly to the mother, told her that as she guage for a powerful aristocracy in a free governed her son she should be answerable country, still reckoning Howard, Berkeley, for his conduct; that he would overlook what Somerset, Neville, Seymour, Cavendish, Stanhad past and treat her like a friend, if she ley among its technically noble; Bagot, Harbehaved in a proper manner; but, on the court, Wrottesley, Dering, Shirley, Courtenay other hand, if either herself, her son, or any among its unennobled members! Stranger person connected with them, should give any still, for the countrymen of Shakspeare and future disturbance, she should expect no Hampden, of Raleigh, Blake, and Marlquarter. He might then have ended his ad- borough, of Edward the Third, Elizabeth and monition by whispering a word in her ear Cromwell, to use to an ignorant, dishonest, that would have made her tremble.' Before obstinate, narrow-minded boy, at that very the ashes of George the Second were cold, two moment the tool of an adulteress and her circumstances disclosed the spirit and policy paramour!" of his successor: one, the favor shown to Lord Mr. Phillimore supports much of what he George Sackville, a strict friend of Lord Bute's, who had dishonored the English name says against Lord Bute by references to Bubb at Minden, and was, at the close of the last Doddington's Diary. These references have reign, in a state of just and complete dis- given us some trouble; and they are cergrace; the other, the terms of the speech, tainly, we will not say disingenuously made, and the minister by whom it was prepared. but not correctly made. The first one, quoted The first act of the king had been to put Lord at page 289, in one paragraph of nine lines, Bute in the cabinet. The speech was drawn with a single break, thus,. . . forms deby him without any assistance from the other tached portions of six paragraphs in our ediadvisers of the crown, and spoke with a pur- tion of the Diary, occupying two pages and pose not to be mistaken of a bloody and expensive war, and of obtaining a just and hon- a half. There is not much harm done by orable peace. In this state it was delivered this proceeding; but we do not know how to his colleagues, and it was not till after an the case may be with quotations which we are argument of three hours with Lord Bute that unable to verify at all. Mr. Pitt succeeded in changing the words so We will add here, that there is too much far as not to cast a direct censure on his pol- of a sneering tone throughout the volume, icy. Mr. Pitt must have been destitute of all penetration if he had not discovered the and an epigrammatic smartness without the spirit and complexion of the new reign. He epigrammatic point, which may be said to went to Newcastle, and urged him to make mar many a fair precedent. Speaking of the common cause against the favorite. New- last century, the author says,—“ In those castle impatient to shake off the yoke of Pitt's imposing genius, with his usual baseness and pusillanimous cunning, refused to take this course; and thus George the Third was almost enabled to establish royal power at once on the ruins of English honor and prosperity. Newcastle, indeed, affected a wish to retire from public life; but a few words, of course,

days it was usual for a clergyman of the English Church, even if he were a dean or a canon, to believe in the inspiration of the

Old and New Testaments." The inference

is, that deans and canons entertain no such belief now; and as future deans and canons are among the teachers of our youth, Mr.

Phillimore does not look for better things, that their writings were not based on a mere we fear, from their hands.

mercantile speculation!-as if "The Vicar of Wakefield" were not written with a view to

nella to Mr. Phillimore, in which he is a little wrong; but Fielding he accounts as "the Rubens of novelists," and in that he is abundantly right-a Rubens without a school.

But when Mr. Phillimore contrasts the Geor

"Great improvements in machinery, enormous shops, and the most intense study of the money it was to produce and the rent it entomology, are quite consistent with the de- was to pay. "Our greatest writers," he cay of all public spirit, and entire apathy to says, "were beyond the mob"; as if Milton the motives that animated the men who gave were not more the possession of the middle England her rank among the nations; nor classes, in all times, than of any other. We will incessant and boisterous panegyrics on do not know why he says, " Cicero, in our ourselves, and on the worst and coarsest parts of the national character, which are as dis- days, would have been a baron (not of the gusting to men of refinement as they are cap- exchequer) and Tacitus a baronet; " for it tivating to the herd of readers, avert any one is one of the commonest remarks that to litcalamity we have to apprehend, or remedy erary men are awarded the smallest measure one single evil under which we suffer. We of honors. One merit the older writers cermay do well to recollect the passage in which tainly had sincerity; they affected neither Plutarch describes the Athenian pilots. They gave great names to their ships-they had it not: but even an affectation of it, in religion, nor modesty, nor decency, if they called them Minerva, Neptune, Apollo-but they were cast away like other men.' Nor, a book which is to go among readers who if those entrusted with the education of youth know nothing of the author, is better than a among us (I am making, I know, an extrav- violation-if we only have the old wit with agant supposition) were more ignorant of the it. All modern novelists are leather and pruart of writing than they are, and have been, with few exceptions indeed, for the last forty years, would that, in my opinion, at all justify such a tone of exultation, or in any way improve the future prospects of the country. I have lost all the blood in my body,' says Dr. Sangrado's dying patient, and yet do gian dramatists with the older brethren of the not feel the better for it. If, instead of giving craft, we find him, in one sense, sadly astray. up their time to read, and servilely to repeat, He finds "overflowing wit and command of what the Germans have written about the classics, they studied the classics themselves language" in Etherege, the dullest of common-if they read Livy instead of Niebuhr, and place talkers of any of the fraternity. Of WyDemosthenes instead of Boeckh, if instead cherley he makes too little, of Congreve far too of cramming their pupils for examinations, much; and he sees in Sheridan an imitator bringing every mind to the same dead, tutor's of the latter, where we see a close imitator level, and so in nine cases out of ten stunting even of the incidents in Wycherley's comedies, the intellectual growth of the unhappy boys though Sheridan was incessantly praising the forever, they taught them to read Homer wit of Congreve, and even his indecency, proand Virgil and Cicero and Euripides as they were read by Milton and Dryden, by Addison testing that he would rather go without both and Barrow, and Atterbury and Fox-Eng- than have them separated. But Sheridan who land might hope to shake off the sleepy drench studied Wycherley so closely, had very good which, where gain or physical exertion are reasons for drawing popular attention to Connot concerned, has so long benumbed her faculties. Then, instead of the authors of Tract greve. Ninety, and the History of the British Beetle, and Biographies of Fox-hunters and Railway Contractors, men might arise in England who would recall the days when the Tale of a Tub, and the Vision of Mirza, and the Idea of a Patriot King, delighted the readers of Milton and Dryden and Shakspeare, and added splendor to a literature already glorious."

When treating of a bygone literature, and comparing it with the present, Mr. Phillimore advances some singular ideas, not unmixed with much truth. He traces much of the excellence of the old authors to the fact THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 1052

term in the mouths of many who never read As to "Congreve's wit," it is a cant a line of him, and who are none the worse for it. When Congreve was received for a wit, he was not censured for his indecency; but opinions have changed as to what is witty and decent. The preface to one of the wittiest of his comedies, "The Double Dealer," emphatically asserts its cleanliness, but you may read it through without being dazzled by more than a few sparkles, and you cannot read half a page without falling upon allusions that are disgusting.

We do not think so ill of modern English

literature as Mr. Phillimore does; even the brutality, she added dulness and gloom even men who search after the British Beetle" to the English court. The marriage was and write about it are witnesses to a healthy precipitated to prevent George the Third state of society, agents in promoting useful knowledge, and practical missionaries in developing the glory that resides in the meanest

of the works of God.

Nevertheless, we do not mean to say that Queen Charlotte was justified in preferring "Polly Honeycombe " to "The Double Dealer," for the reading of her daughters; though Miss Burney, who read the former aloud to them, was probably charmed with the mission assigned to her by a mistress, who is thus delineated by the unsparing pencil of Mr. Phillimore. The time referred to is before the royal marriage, when

from again soliciting the hand of a lady of a blest and most beautiful of his subjects, who, sweet and generous temper, one of the noby a lot the reverse of that which attended the royal bride, became the mother of a distinguished, high-minded, and intellectual race especially illustrious for two highly gifted men, in whose destiny it was, both by the pen and the sword, by the qualities which fit heroic courage and commanding genius, to men to lead in war and to rule in peace, by exalt the fame and extend the dominion of their proud but not very grateful country."

Grateful! What is gratitude? Mr. Phillimore presents the public with this portrait of Queen Charlotte, because of his comfort "The king gave a proof of his blind deference under the mild constitutional sway of Queen to his mother's wishes, which took all men Victoria. It would have been but justice if by surprise. While every thought was oc- he had added whatever little there may have cupied by the negotiation, the Privy Council been of bright and good in the older queen's was suddenly summoned to hear the king announce his intended marriage with the Prin- character. In a dissolute age, she set a virdess Charlotte of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz, tuous example, and a similar course reflects which soon afterwards took place. Colonel the greatest lustre on the crown of her grandGræme, a notorious Jacobite agent, had been daughter, one of a race of whom Mr. Philli sent to different states in Germany, to dis- more is pleased to say, that it is the reverse cover among the little states of that enslaved of that of which Lady Sarah Lennox was country some princess whose appearance, the mother,—the "reverse of distinguished, disposition, and understanding would be to the mother of her future husband a complete high-minded, and intellectual." guarantee against any dread of the loss of her Notwithstanding the drawbacks which we ascendency. For this purpose a better choice have indicated, this volume gives promise of could hardly have been made. The new a work which will deserve to be read. If queen was chaste; but if to watch over the there be a little too much of assertion, there education of her children and to promote is no want of argument; and if there be extheir happiness be any part of a woman's duty, she has little claims to the praises that aggeration of expression and sentiment, in have been so lavishly bestowed upon her as an exactly opposite direction to that taken the model of domestic virtue. Her religion by Mr. Massey-another historian of whom was displayed in the scrupulous observance we had occasion to speak recently-there is of the external forms. Repulsive in her as- no suspicion aroused that the censurer is expect, grovelling in her instincts, sordid in her ercising his right in any but an honest spirit. habits; steeped from the cradle in the stupid In intention, the book is good; in execution, pride which was the atmosphere of her stolid and most insignificant race; inexorably severe very good; unpleasant, perhaps, to the bigots to those who yielded to temptations from of all parties, but acceptable to every man which she was protected, not more by her who may be glad to know what an honest situation and the vigilance of those around thinker and a rough but able writer has to her, than by the extreme homeliness of her say about the times of George the Third. person; bigoted, avaricious, unamiable to

From The Reader.

THE BIBLE AND AMERICAN SLAVERY.

Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery? By
Goldwin Smith. (Oxford and London:
John Henry and James Parker.)

and that the Bible enjoins the slave at the present day to return to his master. If so, the law of England, which takes away the slave from his master directly his feet touch English soil, is a robber's law. If so, the great Act of Emancipation, of which we speak so proudly, was a robber's act; for, though a partial compensation for their loss was granted to the West Indian slave-owners, they were forced to give up their slaves notoriously against their will."

things were sure to be seen. And strange things are seen in America. By the side of the Great Salt Lake is a community basing itself upon polygamy. In the Southern States is a community basing itself upon slavery. Each of these communities confidently appeals THIS noble essay is expanded from a lecto the Bible as its sanction; and each of ture which was delivered at the Manchester them, in virtue of that warrant, declares its Athenæum. There is no place in which one peculiar institution to be universal and diwould more desire that sound principles re- vine. The plea of the slave-owner is accepted. specting American slavery should be unfolded Perhaps, if the Mormonite were equally an than in Manchester. There is no person object of political interest to a large party, his plea might be accepted also. whom one should more wish to expound them than an Oxford Professor. But might one to determine whether the slave-owner's "It is important in more ways than not the combination have been reasonably plea is true. The character of the Bible is dreaded? Would not some recent experi-threatened; and so is the character of the ence have warranted the apprehension that English law and nation. The Times says scholastical sophistries might be used to that slavery is only wrong as luxury is wrong, strengthen and deepen mercantile sophistries: that the selfishness of trade might have been supplied with plausible apologies from the seat of learning and religion? Thank God! such fears have been altogether confuted in this instance. Mr. Goldwin Smith has put forth no scholastical sophistries; he has turned a manly, graceful, unpedantical scholarship to its true service- that of exposing delusions, of vindicating freedom and truth. That his essay is written in pure masterly The argumentum ad hominem, "You deEnglish need not be said. That it shows ten-fend slavery as a divine institution; are you fold more acquaintance with Scripture in its ready to defend polygamy ?" might be used letter and its spirit, a far more reverent ap-by many writers to throw discredit upon the preciation of the Old as well as the New Tes- Hebrew institutions generally. Mr. Goldwin tament, than the writings of professed di- Smith appeals to it for a directly opposite vines, learned and popular-that it exhibits purpose. He recognizes in the tolerance of a political wisdom very rare in the speeches slavery, of polygamy, and of many other inof distinguished statesmen-ought to be said. stitutions, the sign of a Divine Teacher who Into the space of a few pages, which may be was educating his creatures to a knowledge easily read through in half an hour, the of what was good for them, not "putting reader will find thoughts and information human society at once in a state of perfection compressed which may confirm the convictions without further effort, political, social, or inand scatter the fallacies that have been grow-tellectual, on the part of man." The Mosaic ing in him for years. He may have to part" code of laws takes the rude institutions of with some favorite notions, which are current a primitive nation, including slavery, as they in South Carolina, and which the Times and stand, not changing society by miracle, which, the Saturday Review have adapted to the Eng-as has been said before, seems to have been no lish market. It may a little compensate this loss that he will receive fresh light on the history of nations, a defence of the Bible from the heaviest charge that has ever been brought against it, fresh proofs that good has triumphed over evil, fresh encouragements to believe that it will.

The opening of the essay is a specimen of the style in which it is written :

"When a New World was peopled, strange

part of the purposes of God. But, while it
takes these institutions as they stand, it does
not perpetuate them, but reforms them, miti-
gates them, and lays on them restrictions
tending to their gradual abolition.
less does it introduce any barbarous institu-
tion or custom for the first time"
(pp. 5
and 6).

Much

The author illustrates this doctrine by the cases of the Avenger of Blood, the Cities of

Refuge, the authority of the Parents in putting their Children to death, of Polygamy, of Wars, of the Power of the Monarch, of the Order of Priests, before he comes to the case of slavery. In every one of these instances he compares the provisions of the He-nical cruelty and lust of the white members of brew code with those of other ancient nations in a far more advanced stage of civilization, and shows how consistently it accepted contemporaneous forms of society, how consistently it provided remedies against their abuses and abominations, how it prepared the way for a nobler and freer life.