Blind Milton's Memories.

In the numerous imitations, and still more numerous traces, of older poetry which we perceive in Paradise Lost, it is always to be kept in mind that he had only his recollection to rely upon. His blindness seems to have been complete before 1654; and I scarcely think he had begun his poem before the anxiety and trouble into which the public strife of the Commonwealth and Restoration had thrown him gave leisure for immortal occupations. Then the remembrance of early reading came over his dark and lonely path, like the moon emerging from the clouds. Then it was that the Muse was truly his; not only as she poured her creative inspiration into his mind, but as the daughter of Memory, coming with fragments of ancient melodies, the voice of Euripides, and Homer, and Tasso; sounds that he had loved in youth, and treasured up for the solace of his age. They who, though not enduring the calamity of Milton, have known what it is, when afar from books, in solitude or in travelling, or in the intervals of worldly care, to feed on poetical recollections, to murmur over the beautiful lines whose cadence has long delighted their ear, to recall the sentiments and images which retain by association the charm that early years once gave them-they will feel the inestimable value of committing to the memory, in the prime of its power, what it will easily receive and indelibly retain. I know not, indeed, whether an education that deals much with poetry, such as is still usual in England, has any more solid argument among many in its favour than that it lays the foundation of intellectual pleasures at the other extreme of life.

(From the Literature of Europe.)

Hallam has not found a detailed biographer; the facts of his life must be sought for in the obituary notices of the Times, the Royal Society's Transactions, and Mignet's Notice Historique read to the French Academy of Sciences, Harriet Martineau's Biographi cal Sketches, and similar brief articles. There have been many editions and abridgments of his works.

Richard Whately (1787-1863), Archbishop of Dublin, was born in London, fourth son of Dr Joseph Whately of Nonsuch Park, Surrey, who was vicar of Widford, prebendary of Bristol, and lecturer at Gresham College. From a private school at Bristol, Richard in 1805 passed to Oriel College; at Oxford he gained the prize for the English essay (1810), and was elected a Fellow of Oriel (1811), where Copleston, Davidson, Arnold, Keble, and Hawkins were already Fellows, and Newman and Pusey were to be ere long. In his Apologia Newman has recorded that it was Whately who opened his mind and taught him how to think and reason. Become one of the college tutors (1815), he wrote for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana what he afterwards expanded into his popular treatises on Logic (1826) and Rhetoric (1828). had married in 1821, and accepted the living of Halesworth in Suffolk; and he had already given the world the first proof of his characteristic humour in Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte (1819)-an ingenious attempt to duce to an absurdity Hume's position that no testimony is sufficient to prove a miracle. In 1822 he delivered the Bampton Lectures at Oxford, on the Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Religion.

He

In 1825 he was appointed Principal of St Alban's Hall, and in 1829 Professor of Political Economy, but had only given a few lectures when in 1831 he was made Archbishop of Dublin. Whately, though a strong logician, had little of the speculative faculty, had no faith in metaphysics or dogmatic theology, read little but a few favourite authors, knew little French and no German, and contemned classical researches as much as he did modern art. But his acute intellect enlightened every subject that he touched, and his powers of exposition and illustration have hardly ever been surpassed. A Liberal in religion and in politics, he may be counted one of the founders of the Broad Church party. Broadly rational in temper, sober and impartial, he was a resolute opponent of the Tractarian movement, but to the Evangelicals he seemed little better than a Latitudinarian, for he supported Catholic emancipation and concurrent endowment, and laboured long, but in vain, to establish a system of unsectarian religious instruction. Still worse, he was more than suspected of holding unsound views on future punishment and the Sabbath question, and of being somewhat Sabellian on the nature and attributes of Christ; he was always an outspoken denouncer of Calvinism. His caustic wit, abrupt manners, and fearless outspokenness brought him no little unpopularity, but the sterling honesty of his nature, his charity, justice, and sagacity, gained him many friendships of unusual permanence and warmth, and conquered for him the respect of all Of his books may be named Essays on some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion (1825), Essays on some of the Difficulties in the Writings of St Paul (1828), Thoughts on the Sabbath (1830), Christian Evidences (1837), Essays on some of the Dangers to Christian Faith (1839), The Kingdom of Christ Delineated (1841), and his edition of Bacon's Essays, with annotations not unworthy of the text (1856), as well as Paley's Evidences and Moral Philosophy.

men.

From the 'Historic Doubts.'

Now this is precisely the point I am tending to, for the fact exactly accords with the above supposition, the discordance and mutual contradictions of these witnesses being such as would alone throw a considerable shade of doubt over their testimony. It is not in minute circumstances alone that the discrepancy appears, such as might be expected to appear in a narrative substantially true, but in very great and leading transactions, and such as are very intimately connected with the supposed hero. For instance, it is by no means agreed whether Bonaparte led in person the celebrated charge over the bridge of Lodi (for celebrated it certainly is, as well as the siege of Troy, whether either event ever really took place or no), or was safe in the rear, while Augereau performed the exploit the same doubt hangs over the charge of the French cavalry at Waterloo. It is no less uncertain whether or no this strange personage poisoned in Egypt a hospitalful of his own soldiers, and butchered in cold blood a garrison that had surrendered. But, not to multiply instances, the battle of Borodino, which is represented as one of the greatest ever fought, is unequivocally

claimed as a victory by both parties; nor is the question decided at this day. We have official accounts on both sides, circumstantially detailed, in the names of supposed respectable persons professing to have been present on the spot, yet totally irreconcilable. Both these accounts may be false; but since one of them must be false, that one (it is no matter which we suppose) proves incontrovertibly this important maxim: that it is possible for a narrative, however circumstantial, however steadily maintained, however public and however important_the event it relates, however grave the authority on which it is published, to be nevertheless an entire fabrication!

Many of the events which have been recorded were probably believed much the more readily and firmly from the apparent caution and hesitation with which they were at first published—the vehement contradiction in our papers of many pretended French accounts, and the abuse lavished upon them for falsehood, exaggeration, and gasconade. But is it not possible-is it not indeed perfectly natural—that the publishers of known falsehood should assume this cautious demeanour and this abhorrence of exaggeration in order the more easily to gain credit? Is it not also very possible that those who actually believed what they published may have suspected mere exaggeration in stories which were entire fictions? Many men have that sort of simplicity that they think themselves quite secure against being deceived provided they believe only part of the story they hear, when perhaps the whole is equally false. So that perhaps these simple-hearted editors, who were so vehement against lying bulletins and so wary in announcing their great news, were in the condition of a clown who thinks he has bought a great bargain of a Jew because he has beat down the price, perhaps from a guinea to a crown, for some article that is not really worth a groat.

With respect to the character of Bonaparte, the dissonance is, if possible, still greater. According to some he was a wise, humane, magnanimous hero-others paint him as a monster of cruelty, meanness, and perfidy; some, even of those who are the most inveterate against him, speak very highly of his political and military abilityothers place him on the very verge of insanity. But, allowing that all this may be the colouring of party prejudice (which surely is allowing a great deal), there is one point to which such a solution will hardly apply. If there be anything that can be clearly ascertained in history, one would think it must be the personal courage of a military man; yet here we are as much at a loss as ever at the very same times and on the same occasions he is described by different writers as a man of undaunted intrepidity and as an absolute poltroon.

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What, then, are we to believe? If we are disposed to credit all that is told us, we must believe in the existence not only of one, but of two or three Bonapartes; if we admit nothing but what is well authenticated, we shall be compelled to doubt of the existence of any.

It appears, then, that those on whose testimony the existence and actions of Bonaparte are generally believed fail in all the most essential points on which the credibility of witnesses depends: first, we have no assurance that they have access to correct information; secondly, they have an apparent interest in propagating falsehood; and, thirdly, they palpably contradict each other in the most important points.

Another circumstance which throws additional suspicion on these tales is that the Whig party, as they are

called the warm advocates for liberty, and opposers of the encroachments of monarchical power-have for some time past strenuously espoused the cause and vindicated the character of Bonaparte, who is represented by all as having been, if not a tyrant, at least an absolute despot. One of the most forward in this cause is a gentleman who once stood foremost in holding up this very man to public execration - who first published, and long maintained against popular incredulity, the accounts of his atrocities in Egypt. Now, that such a course should be adopted, for party purposes, by those who are aware that the whole story is a fiction, and the hero of it imaginary, seems not very incredible; but if they believed in the real existence of this despot, I cannot conceive how they could so forsake their principles as to advocate his cause and eulogise his character.

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After all, it may be expected that many who perceive the force of these objections will yet be loth to think it possible that they and the public at large can have been so long and so greatly imposed upon; and thus it is that the magnitude and boldness of a fraud become its best support the millions who for so many ages have believed in Mahomet or Brahma lean, as it were, on each other for support, and not having vigour of mind enough boldly to throw off vulgar prejudices and dare be wiser than the multitude, persuade themselves that what so many have acknowledged must be true. But I call on those who boast their philosophical freedom of thought, and would fain tread in the steps of Hume and other inquirers of the like exalted and speculative genius, to follow up fairly and fully their own principles, and, throwing off the shackles of authority, to examine carefully the evidence of whatever is proposed to them, before they admit its truth. That even in this enlightened age, as it is called, a whole nation may be egregiously imposed upon, even in matters which intimately concern them, may be proved (if it has not been already proved) by the following instance. It was stated in the newspapers that a month after the battle of Trafalgar an English officer, who had been a prisoner of war, and was exchanged, returned to this country from France, and, beginning to condole with his countrymen on the terrible defeat they had sustained, was infinitely astonished to learn that the battle of Trafalgar was a splendid victory: he had been assured, he said, that in that battle the English had been totally defeated, and the French were fully and universally persuaded that such was the fact. Now, if this report of the belief of the French nation was not true, the British public were completely imposed upon; if it were true, then both nations were at the same time rejoicing in the event of the same battle as a signal victory to themselves, and consequently one or other at least of these nations must have been the dupes of their Government; for if the battle was never fought at all, or was not decisive on either side, in that case both parties were deceived. This instance, I conceive, is absolutely demonstrative of the point in question.

'But what shall we say to the testimony of those many respectable persons who went to Plymouth on purpose, and saw Bonaparte with their own eyes? Must they not trust their senses?' I would not disparage either the eyesight or the veracity of these gentlemen. I am ready to allow that they went to Plymouth for the purpose of seeing Bonaparte-nay, more, that they actually rowed out into the harbour in a boat, and came alongside of a man-of-war, on whose deck they saw a man in a

cocked hat, who, they were told, was Bonaparte. This is the utmost point to which their testimony goes. How they ascertained that this man in the cocked hat had gone through all the marvellous and romantic adventures with which we have so long been amused we are not told did they perceive in his physiognomy his true name and authentic history? Truly this evidence is such as country people give one for a story of apparitions; if you discover any signs of incredulity, they triumphantly show the very house which the ghost haunted, the identical dark corner where it used to vanish, and perhaps even the tombstone of the person whose death it foretold. Jack Cade's nobility was supported by the same irresistible kind of evidence. Having asserted that the eldest son of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was stolen by a beggar-woman, became a bricklayer when he came to age, and was the father of the supposed Jack Cade, one of his companions confirms the story by saying, 'Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.'

Much of the same kind is the testimony of our brave countrymen, who are ready to produce the scars they received in fighting against this terrible Bonaparte. That they fought and were wounded they may safely testify; and probably they no less firmly believe what they were told respecting the cause in which they fought; it would have been a high breach of discipline to doubt it, and they, I conceive, are men better skilled in handling a musket than in sifting evidence and detecting imposture; but I defy any one of them to come forward and declare, on his own knowledge, what was the cause in which he fought, under whose commands the opposed generals acted, and whether the person who issued those commands did really perform the mighty achievements we are told of.

There is one more circumstance which I cannot forbear mentioning, because it so much adds to the air of fiction which pervades every part of this marvellous tale; and that is, the nationality of it.

Bonaparte prevailed over all the hostile States in turn, except England; in the zenith of his power his fleets were swept from the sea, by England; his troops always defeat an equal, and frequently even a superior, number of those of any other nation, except the English, and with them it is just the reverse; twice, and twice only, he is personally engaged against an English commander, and both times he is totally defeated, at Acre and at Waterloo; and, to crown all, England finally crushes this tremendous power, which has so long kept the Continent in subjection or in alarm, and to the English he surrenders himself prisoner! Thoroughly national, to be sure! It may be all very true; but I would only ask, if a story had been fabricated for the express purpose of amusing the English nation, could it have been contrived more ingeniously? It would do admirably for an epic poem, and indeed bears a considerable resemblance to the Iliad and the Ancid, in which Achilles and the Greeks, Æneas and the Trojans (the ancestors of the Romans), are so studiously held up to admiration. Bonaparte's exploits seem magnified in order to enhance the glory of his conquerors, just as Hector is allowed to triumph during the absence of Achilles merely to give additional splendour to his overthrow by the arm of that invincible hero. Would not this circumstance alone render a history rather suspicious in the eyes of an acute critic, even if

it were not filled with such gross improbabilities, and induce him to suspend his judgment till very satisfactory evidence (far stronger than can be found in this case) should be produced?

There are somewhat rambling Memoirs of Whately by W. J. Fitzpatrick (2 vols. 1864); the authoritative Life and Correspondence is by Miss E. Jane Whately (2 vols. 1866).

William Whewell (1794-1866) was the son of a Lancaster joiner, who intended him to follow his own trade; but he was early distinguished for intellectual aptitudes, and after passing with honour through the grammar-school at Lancaster, he qualified at Heversham School for an exhibition at Trinity College, Cambridge. Entering Trinity College in 1812, he graduated as second wrangler in 1815, became a Fellow in 1817, and in 1819 published a Treatise on Mechanics. He was ordained priest in 1826. In 1828-32 he was Professor of Mineralogy, in 1838-55 Professor of Moral Theology or Casuistical Divinity, and from 1841 till his death he was Master of Trinity. At Cambridge, in the Royal Society, and at the British Association he was equally distinguished, while his scientific works gave him a European fame. After contributing largely to reviews, in 1833 he published his learned and eloquent Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology. But his greatest work was his History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), followed in 1840 by The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. In 1853 he issued anonymously of the Plurality of Worlds: an Essay (doubtless one of the ablest of his works), in which he opposed the nów popular belief, maintaining that the earth alone among stars and planets is the abode of intellectual, moral, and religious creatures-long cherished convictions which, he said, had gradually grown deeper. Like Chalmers and Brewster, his friend Sir James Stephen thought the plurality of worlds was a doctrine which supplied consolation and comfort to a mind oppressed with the aspect of the sin and misery of the earth. But Whewell replied: 'To me the effect would be the contrary. I should have no consolation or comfort in thinking that our earth is selected as the especial abode of sin; and the consolation which revealed religion offers for this sin and misery is, not that there are other worlds in the stars sinless and happy, but that on the earth an atonement and reconciliation were effected. This doctrine gives a peculiar place to the earth in theology. It is, or has been, in a peculiar manner the scene of God's agency and presence. This was the view on which I worked.' In opposition to Dean Mansel, who held that a true knowledge of God is impossible for man, Dr Whewell said: 'If we cannot know anything about God, revelation is in vain. We cannot have anything revealed to us if we have no power of seeing what is revealed. It is of no use to take away the veil when we are blind.' Works on morals were his Elements of Morality (1845), Lectures on Systematic Morality (1846),

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England (1852), and Platonic Dialogues for English Readers (1859-61). And innumerable scientific memoirs, sermons, and miscellaneous pieces in prose and verse were thrown off by the versatile, polymathic, and indefatigable Master of Trinity. Probably, as Sir John Herschel said, 'a more wonderful variety and amount of knowledge in almost every department of human inquiry was never accumulated by any man.' 'Knowledge is his forte and omniscience is his foible,' was Sydney Smith's epigram on Whewell; and there are many anecdotes illustrating his claim to something more nearly approaching omniscience than is found amongst mortals once in a millennium. He died ten days after being heavily thrown from his horse.

See William Whewell: an Account of his Writings (2 vols. 1876), by I. Todhunter, and the Life and Correspondence by Mrs Stair Douglas (1881).

George Grote (1794-1871), born at Clay Hill near Beckenham in Kent, was educated at the Charterhouse, and in 1810 became a clerk in the bank founded in 1766 by his grandfather (a native of Bremen) in Threadneedle Street. He remained there thirty-two years, devoting all his leisure to literature and political studies; a 'philosophical Radical' and a friend of the two Mills, he threw himself ardently into the cause of progress and political freedom. In 1820 he married the highspirited Harriet Lewin, of Bexley; in 1822 conceived the idea of his History of Greece; and in 1826 mercilessly dissected Mitford's History in the Westminster Review. Head of his bank by 1830, in 1832 he was returned to Parliament for the City of London. During his first session he brought forward a motion for the adoption of the ballot, and continued to advocate the measure in keenly argumentative speeches until he retired from parliamentary life in 1841. In 1843 he retired from the banking-house also, and devoted himself exclusively to literature, mainly to the great History of Greece (12 vols. 1846-56). He was elected Vice-Chancellor of London University (1862), foreign associate of the French Academy (1864), and President of University College (1868). In 1865 he concluded an elaborate work on Plato and the other Companions of Socrates, which, with his (unfinished) Aristotle, was supplementary to the History. His brilliant and accomplished wife was throughout his literary and political life a sympathetic and stimulating helpmate. Grote was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The History of Greece was hailed as a truly philosophical work. It commences with the early legendary history of Greece, and closes with the fall of 'free Hellas and Hellenism' under the immediate successor of Alexander the Great. The first two volumes were not published till 1846; but at least as early as 1827 Grote was engaged on the work. The primitive period of Greek history-the expedition of the Argonauts

and the wars of Thebes and Troy-he treated as mere poetical inventions. Of the Homeric poems, he held that the Odyssey is an original unity, 'a premeditated structure and a concentration of interest upon one prime hero under well-defined circumstances;' whereas the Iliad 'presents the appearance of a house built upon a plan comparatively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by successive additions.' Both poems he fixes at the same age, and that age anterior to the First Olympiad. In the region of authentic history, Grote endeavoured to realise the views and feelings of the Greeks, and not to judge of them by a modern and English standard. His constant_aim—not always attained or attainable -was to penetrate the inner life of the Greeks, and to portray their social, moral, and religious condition, passing lightly over merely picturesque and romantic episodes. He traced with elaborate minuteness the rise and progress of the Athenian democracy, of which he was an ardent admirer; and some of the Athenian institutions heretofore condemned he warmly defended. Ostracism, banishment without accusation or trial, he conceived to have been necessary for thwarting the efforts of ambitious leaders; this exceptional measure was, he held, guarded from abuse by precautions such as that the concurrence of one-fourth of all the citizens was required, and that those citizens voted by ballot. Demagogues and sophists he vindicated, comparing the former to our popular leaders of the Opposition, and the latter to our teachers and professors. Even Cleon, the greatest of the demagogues, he held to have been unfairly traduced by Thucydides and especially by Aristophanes, who indulged in all the license of a comic satirist. 'No man,' said Grote, 'thinks of judging Sir Robert Walpole, or Mr Fox, or Mirabeau from the numerous lampoons put in circulation against them; no man will take the measure of a political Englishman from Punch or of a Frenchman from Charivari. Even the story of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand is retold by Grote with surprising freshness; and his narrative of the Peloponnesian War contains novel and striking views of events, as well as of the characters of Pericles and Alcibiades-whom he insisted on spelling Periklês and Alkibiadês, a method somewhat pedantically applied throughout (as in Sôkratês, Aristeidês, and the like, though Dionysius and Klearchus retained the Roman -us). In the later volumes important sections deal with the career of Epaminondas, the struggles of Demosthenes against Philip, and the success of Timoleon. From the epoch of Alexander the Great, Grote dates 'not only the extinction of Grecian political freedom and selfaction, but also the decay of productive genius, and the debasement of that consummate literary and rhetorical excellence which the fourth century before Christ had seen exhibited in Plato and Demosthenes.' There was, however, one branch of intellectual energy which continued to flourish

'comparatively little impaired under the preponderance of the Macedonian sword'-the spirit of speculation and philosophy. Grote's learning was sound, his research extensive and minute, but he was somewhat too confident in his capacity to discover the causes of all things, too ready to apply to Greek life and speculation his universal Benthamite standard. And his sympathies were as pronouncedly democratic as Mitford's had been aristocratic. Sydney Smith sarcastically said: 'Mr Grote is a very worthy, honest, and able man; and if the world were a chess-board, would be an

GEORGE GROTE.

From a Photograph by Messrs Maull & Fox.

important politician.' His main historic achievement was the explanation and vindication of the Athenian democracy, which most former British historians had grossly misunderstood. In his admiration of Athens, however, he was prone to underrate other Hellenic developments, and the injustice of his treatment of Alexander the Great has been noted by later writers like Professor Mahaffy. His style, like his thought, is vigorous; his presentment lucid rather than sympathetic; and there is some lack of that geniality which draws one to a favourite author. But the History shed much new and clear light on Greek history, marked an epoch in the study, and superseded the recently published and scholarly work by Thirlwall; it was careful, comprehensive, accurate, and not unfair in judgment, though not without constant and obvious bias.

Constitutionalism.

The theory of a constitutional king, especially as it exists in England, would have appeared to Aristotle

impracticable; to establish a king who will reign without governing-in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice of little or no effect-exempt from all responsibility, without making use of the exemption-receiving from every one unmeasured demonstrations of homage, which are never translated into act except within the bounds of a known law-surrounded with all the paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indications which he is not at liberty to resist. This remarkable combination of the fiction of superhuman grandeur and license with the reality of an invisible strait-waistcoat is what an Englishman has in his mind when he speaks of a constitutional king. When the Greeks thought of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenceless community exposed to his oppressions; and their fear and hatred of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were associated, in the democracy of Athens more, perhaps, than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most widely spread, a point of unanimity highly valuable amidst so many points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticise it by reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of England respecting kingship; and it is the application, sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this unsuitable standard which renders Mr Mitford's appreciation of Greek politics so often incorrect and unfair.

Xenophon's Address to the Army.

While their camp thus remained unmolested, every man within it was a prey to the most agonising apprehensions. Ruin appeared impending and inevitable, though no one could tell in what precise form it would come. The Greeks were in the midst of a hostile country, ten thousand stadia from home, surrounded by enemies, blocked up by impassable mountains and rivers, without guides, without provisions, without cavalry to aid their retreat, without generals to give orders. A stupor of sorrow and conscious helplessness seized upon all; few came to the evening muster; few lighted fires to cook their suppers; every man lay down to rest where he was; yet no man could sleep for fear, anguish, and yearning after relatives whom he was never again to behold.

Amidst the many causes of despondency which weighed down this forlorn army, there was none more serious than the fact that not a single man among them had now either authority to command or obligation to take the initiative. Nor was any ambitious candidate likely to volunteer his pretensions at a moment when the post promised nothing but the maximum of difficulty as well as of hazard. A new, self-kindled light and selforiginated stimulus was required to vivify the embers of suspended hope and action in a mass paralysed for the moment, but every way capable of effort; and the inspiration now fell, happily for the army, upon one in whom a full measure of soldierly strength and courage was combined with the education of an Athenian, a democrat, and a philosopher. ...

Xenophon had equipped himself in his finest military