years are as yesterday when it is passed, and as a watch in the night.1

The news of Hampden's death produced as great a consternation in his party, according to Clarendon, as if their whole army had been cut off. The journals of the time amply prove that the Parliament and all its friends were filled with grief and dismay. Lord Nugent has quoted a remarkable passage from the next Weekly Intelligencer. "The loss of Colonel Hampden goeth near the heart of every man that loves the good of his king and country, and makes some conceive little content to be at the army now that he is gone. The memory of this deceased colonel is such, that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honour and esteem; a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, valour, and integrity, that he hath left few his like behind."

He had indeed left none his like behind him. There still remained, indeed, in his party, many acute intellects, many eloquent tongues, many brave and honest hearts. There still remained a rugged and clownish soldier, half fanatic, half buffoon, whose talents, discerned as yet only by one penetrating eye, were equal to all the highest duties of the soldier and the prince. But in Hampden, and in Hampden alone, were united all the qualities which, at such a crisis, were necessary to save the state, the valour and energy of Cromwell, the discernment and eloquence of Vane, the humanity and moderation of Manchester, the stern integrity of Hale, the ardent public spirit of Sydney. Others might possess the qualities which were necessary to save the popular party in the crisis of danger; he alone had both the power and the inclination to restrain its excesses in the hour of triumph. Others could conquer; he alone could reconcile. A heart as bold as his brought up the cuirassiers who turned the tide of battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as his watched the Scotch army descending from the heights over Dunbar. it was when to the sullen tyranny of Laud and Charles had succeeded the fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious of ascendency and burning for revenge, it was when the vices and ignorance which the old tyranny had generated threatened the new freedom with destruction, that England missed the sobriety, the self-command, the perfect soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude of intention, to which the history of revolutions furnishes no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone.

1 Ps. xc.

But

IF

BURLEIGH AND HIS TIMES

APRIL, 1832

NOTE ON THE ESSAY

F the essay on Burleigh is conspicuously inferior to either of the essays on William Pitt, "a strange, rambling performance," as Macaulay himself termed it, the reason may be found in the writer's imperfect sympathy with his subject and in his still more imperfect knowledge of his materials. Macaulay seldom turned to the history of the English Reformation without the wish to contradict Southey on the merits of Queen Elizabeth, or to the politics of the sixteenth century without the wish to contradict Hume who had represented the Stuarts as suffering simply for having governed according to the tradition of the Tudors. In this essay he gives too much time and trouble to showing that the Tudor sovereigns were not really despots and that Elizabeth might with advantage have tolerated the Roman Catholics. Burleigh did not interest him and is therefore dismissed as curtly as possible. Some of his remarks upon Burleigh, indeed, show his strong good sense and forestall the judgment of Burleigh's latest and most competent biographer. Burleigh, he observes, "paid great attention to the interests of the state and great attention also to the interests of his own family." "The first cause he served," remarks Major Hume, "was that of the state, the second was William Cecil and his house." Burleigh, according to Macaulay, never deserted his friends till it was very inconvenient to stand by them. "He was not generous or magnanimous," Major Hume tells us, "in his treatment of others when his own interests were at stake; and the sacrifice of Davison would probably appear to him a very small price to pay for helping England out of a difficult position and maintaining his own favour."

Equally acute is Macaulay's explanation of the popularity and success of Elizabeth as contrasted with the Stuarts. She did not treat the nation as an adverse party, as a party which had an interest opposed to hers, as a party to which she was to grant as few advantages as possible, and from which she was to extort as much money as possible.' But Macaulay has done meagre justice to the achievement of the Queen and her minister. England, when Cecil became Secretary, was hardly a second-rate kingdom. England, when Cecil died, held

the balance of Europe. Walpole, Pelham and Liverpool, whom Macaulay compares with Burleigh, came into office when England was at the height of power and had only to keep her there. The contest with Napoleon was in some respects as hazardous as the contest with Philip. But it was waged far more on the field and far less in the cabinet. Soundness of judgment in the degree in which it was possessed by Burleigh is a kind of genius. Indeed no other kind of genius is so indispensable in a ruler. Had Macaulay been less exclusively partial to Parliamentary government he might have appreciated more liberally so great a master of state-craft. Even so he scarcely had the knowledge of Burleigh's policy requisite to passing a final judgment, for most of the evidence upon which our estimate of Burleigh is based was then buried in enormous masses of unpublished and unsifted papers. Macaulay was also unfortunate in having to work upon so dull and diluted a book as that of Dr. Nares. Major Hume's Life has set before our eyes the real Lord Burleigh.

BURLEIGH AND HIS TIMES

Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honourable William Cecil Lord Burghley, Secretary of State in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, and Lord High Treasurer of England in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Containing an Historical View of the Times in which he lived, and of the many eminent and illustrious Persons with whom he was connected; with Extracts from his Private and Official Correspondence and other Papers, now first published from the Originals. By the Reverend EDWARD NARES, D.D., Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. 3 vols. 4to. London: 1828, 1832.

ΤΗ

HE work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdingnag, and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface: the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shalum. But unhappily the life of man is now threescore years and ten; and we cannot but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence.

Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all other labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations, is an agreeable recreation. There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini 2 and the

1 Spectator, No. 584.

Francesco Guicciardini, 1484-1540, a Florentine, distinguished both in politics and in literature, wrote the history of Italy from 1494 to 1534. By the war of Pisa