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PORTRAIT GALLERY.

HENRY HALLAM.

WE are told, by those who have turned their attention to the subject, that the grand difference between the Scotch and the English intellect is, that the former is intense and fervid, the latter equable, harmonious, and calm. All our greatest Scotchmen, from Wallace to Chalmers, have been perfervid; the grandest intellects of England, taking their rank with the highest in human history, Shakspere, Bacon, and Newton, have been surrounded with a majestic calm, like that which encircles Mont Blanc and his giant compeers. We shall neither affirm nor question the general fact, but we can scarce avoid remarking the prominent exhibition thereof, whether accidental or ethnological, which is presented by our present historical literature.

We do not read Hallam, as we read Macaulay, for the fascination of the style; but, when we come to Hallam as to a sage, for instruction which cannot be had elsewhere, we are not deterred by any frigid baldness in the form of its delivery. There are certainly few, if any, of the writers of the day from whose works more benefit is to be obtained; the grasp of mind demanded in order fully to comprehend his vast subjects in all their bearings, the philosophic truth and depth of many of his observations, his stately impartiality and fearless avowal of what he deems truth, and the pure and dignified style in which he composes, all unite to render the works of Hallam a rich and noble field for the true student; he who finds them insipid may question the manliness and health of his own mind.

To attempt anything like a summary of what Hallam has done as a historian, were, in our space, a simple absurdity; but we think we may not unprofitably glance at each of his great works in their order, indicating, as in a map, the vast regions he has explored, but not condescending upon particular features.

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The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages' was published in 1818. It embraces the period from the fifth century to the fifteenth, with the omission of the last twenty years of the latter. To the reflective mind, whose sympathies are so truly and so humanly tuned as to link it in living union and communion with bygone ages, perhaps no period could be more interesting than that here specified. At the beginning of the fifth century, or rather in its course, a page was being turned over in the history of man. That mighty empire, whose towers had so long and so grandly burdened the earth, was crumbling down into mere dust and debris, wet with the blood of those who had reposed within it; the Roman Empire, like a gigantic corpse, lay along Europe, and for a thousand years, of dissolution and new life, did modern civilisation struggle to arise from the mass. This thousand years is the period treated of by Hallam. By long

This century has produced four historians who rise in manifest pre-eminence over all others: two of them are Scotch, and two English; the former are Alison and Carlyle, the latter, Macaulay and Hallam. Alison, if not distinctively intense, is eminently animated; he always glows with a warm, undisguised fervour. Carlyle is the embodiment of fiery intensity; his eye cannot look upon a subject without setting it on fire; he scorns all logical apparatus, and cleaves his way right to the heart of his subject. Macaulay is invariably calm; with wide sympathies and vast knowledge, he gazes over nature and history, and brings from all quarters the choicest flowers to deck his mildly-beautiful page. Hallam is distinguished by a calmness, which is his characteristic quality, and which amazes, from the vastness of the stores of learning over which it presides, and the colossal magnitude of the tasks in which it leads him to delight. There is something immense about each of his works-something, so to speak, continental. His first was the 'View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages;' it is one of which the various departments comprise severally the general history of a nation-bondage and utter unacquaintance with war, the nations which treats of vast classes of events in their influence upon the destinies of humanity, which it is an effort to present clearly and at one view to the mind.

His Constitutional History of England' is certainly not of such gigantic dimensions as that which embraced all Europe, yet, from the difficulty of the subject, the endless lore required for its treatment, and the collateral questions it involves, it does also take its rank among the most important of literary undertakings. In the Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries,' we again have a work which is more than national, on whose stage nations are but dramatis persona, which treats of the forms and the movements of thought in one of the grand divisions of the world. This, we think, may be taken as one great mental characteristic of Hallam. His mind ranges over the history of the world, marking its leading epochs, its prominent phenomena, and tracing their causes and connections; the field which his mental vision embraces is vast, and, from his serene height, he notes not the flowers or the smiling little cottages, but the ridges and valleys of the mountains, or the main currents of the ocean. His calmness is allied to this width of vision; he rises out of the region of excitement, he can view his own generation in relation to other generations, and accord it simply its due place; speaking with the mighty of all ages, he is not deafened by the clamorous and vacant noises of the men around him. And so he walks majestically through the Hall of the Past, never turning to laugh or jest, and smiling, if at all, only with a grave and shaded smile. The small graces of style he does not court. He has none of that luxuriant though rare adornment which spreads such a charm over Macaulay's rhetorical pages; he is still farther removed from the poetic prose, whose every sentence seems intended to have a point, and where one is reminded painfully of a rose-bush where every green leaf has been taken away, and there is left only a blaze of flowers; his style is massive, stately, and clear, with an occasional metaphor, to give edge to a sentence, but in no sense ornate.

of Western Europe had become emasculated of every manly virtue upon which a national fabric is reared, or by which it can subsist; they were effeminate, false, cowardly. Like withered fields of what had once been fair and vigorous flowers, they stood there waiting for a blast strong enough to sweep them from the face of the earth: it came from the north in the form of the northern tribes, and was strong enough to change the face of the world. Gradually, from the general wreck, the feudal institutions shaped themselves; weakness disappeared; in the train of strength came the virtues of truth and valour, the lungs by which a national state draws vital air, and the European nations began their long season of pupilage. In connection with this part of the subject, Mr Hallam makes the following admirable remarks:-'But, as a school of moral discipline, the feudal institutions were perhaps most to be valued. Society had sunk, for several centuries after the dissolution of the Roman Empire, into a condition of utter depravity; where, if any vices could be selected as more eminently characteristic than others, they were falsehood, treachery, and ingratitude. In slowly purging off the lees of this extreme corruption, the feudal spirit exerted its ameliorating influence. Violation of faith stood first in the catalogue of crimes-most repugnant to the very essence of a feudal tenure, most severely and promptly avenged, most branded by general infamy. The feudal law-books breathe throughout a spirit of honourable obligation. The feudal course of jurisdiction promoted, what trial by peers is calculated to promote, a keener feeling, as well as readier perception, of moral as well as of legal distinctions. In the reciprocal services of lord and vassal, there was ample scope for every magnanimous and disinterested energy. The heart of man, when placed in circumstances that have a tendency to excite them, will seldom be deficient in such sentiments. No occasions could be more favourable than the protection of a faithful supporter, or the defence of a beneficent sovereign, against such powerful aggression as left little prospect except of sharing in his ruin.'

Glancing hurriedly at the Crusades, Mr Hallam details in full the causes of the decline of feudalism, and the gradual rise, through many concurrent agencies, of a middle rank in society. He concludes his masterly survey with the invention of printing, which he briefly characterises as the most important discovery recorded in the annals of mankind.' This it may unquestionably be called. The effect of the church was great in cementing the first basement of modern society; the influence of the municipal cities was important; feudalism and monarchy each played its part: but that simple invention of John Faust's was a more important historic agency in the moulding of the time that now is, that is to be, than any or all of them. The revolution it has worked, and is working, is so great, that we are only now beginning to be able to judge of or compute it; we believe that its ulterior effects may be such, that we have not yet the faintest surmise concerning them. We have been singing peans as yet around it; but what if, for a century or two now, we were to stint our jubilation, and at least join some trembling with our joy? One universal and resistless tendency of the press may be determined on-namely, its levelling tendency, its power to shake the system of ranks established in society; and we cannot but think that, in this sifting of the elements, the noblest, the strongest, the best, will in general rise highest; but neither can we hide from ourselves, that there are ulterior tendencies which may spring from this grand characteristic, upon which we can say nothing, or next to nothing. The effect of the press, as an historic agency, is one of the most interesting and difficult problems which could be presented to the philosophic historian.

The nature of the work at which we now glance renders illustrative quotation almost impossible; and we prefer selecting a passage, which cannot be called characteristic of the book, but which illustrates well a marked excellence of Hallam's, to one of a more general nature. It is the brief account of the Tribune Rienzi which occurs in the survey of Italy in the middle ages. Ere further remark, we shall present the passage to our readers:-Though there was much less obedience to any legitimate power at Rome than anywhere else in Italy, even during the thirteenth century, yet, after the secession of the popes to Avignon, their own city was left in a far worse condition than before. Disorders of every kind, tumult and robbery, prevailed in the streets. The Roman nobility were engaged in perpetual war with each other. Not content with their own fortified palaces, they turned the sacred monuments of antiquity into strongholds, and consummated the destruction of time and conquest. . . In the midst of this degradation and wretchedness, an obscure man, Nicola di Rienzi, conceived the project of restoring Rome, not only to good order, but even to her ancient greatness. He had received an education beyond his birth, and nourished his mind with the study of the best writers. After many harangues to the people, which the nobility, blinded by their self-confidence, did not attempt to repress, Rienzi suddenly excited an insurrection, and obtained complete success. He was placed at the head of a new government, with the title of tribune, and with almost unlimited power. The first effects of this revolution were wonderful. All the nobles submitted, though with great reluctance; the roads were cleared of robbers; tranquillity was restored at home; some severe examples of justice intimidated offenders; and the tribune was regarded by all the people as the destined restorer of Rome and Italy. Though the court of Avignon could not approve of such an usurpation, it temporised enough not directly to oppose it. Most of the Italian republics, and some of the princes, sent ambassadors, and seemed to recognise pretensions which were tolerably ostentatious. The King of Hungary and Queen of Naples submitted their quarrel to the arbitration of Rienzi, who did not, however, undertake to decide upon it. But this sudden exaltation intoxicated his understanding, and exhibited failings entirely incompatible with his elevated condition. If Rienzi had lived in our own age, his talents, which were really great, would have found their proper orbit; for his character was one not unusual among literary politicians

—a combination of knowledge, eloquence, and enthusiasm for ideal excellence, with vanity, inexperience of mankin unsteadiness, and physical timidity. As these latter qual ties became conspicuous, they eclipsed his virtues, and caused his benefits to be forgotten; he was compelled to abdicate his government, and retire into exile. After several years, some of which he passed in the prisons of Avignon, Rienzi was brought back to Rome, with the title of senator, and under the command of the legate. It was supposed that the Romans, who had returned to their habits of insubordination, would gladly submit to their favourite tribune. And this proved the case for a fer months; but, after that time, they ceased altogether to respect a man who so little respected himself, in accepting a station where he could no longer be free, and Rienzi was killed in a sedition.'

There is nothing striking in the style of this paragraph, and even the clear and easy, though condensed, narration of events might have been equalled by many: but the thorough insight into human nature, the intimate acquaintance with the inner beatings of the human breast, evinced in the brief but masterly sketch of Rienzi's character, is Hallam's own. The distinction between the literary man and the acting man, and the extreme rarity and difficulty of a combination of their powers, could have been so clearly, and by one stroke of the pencil, pointed out by only one other historian of the day. That other is, of course, Carlyle, whose penetration into the character of historic per sonages is unequalled. Such glances into the heart of man bear along with them their own evidence; we see at once how these revelations accord with our knowledge of human society and the human heart; like those oracular sentences which amaze us in the pages of Shakspere, we may never have fully embraced the truth they embody before, but, when once it stands revealed to us, we can no more reject it than if the heavens had opeted over our heads, and it had come forth. We must hasten on to the other works of Hallam, and leave 'The View d the State of Europe during the Middle Ages,' with the remark that it is a storehouse which will long delight and instruct the historical student, and that we can scarce co ceive a more manly or profiting mental occupation than its study, in connection with Guizot's History of Civilisation, and certain of the works of Sismondi.

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"The Constitutional History of England' forms the subject of one of Macaulay's noble essays, and his remarks upon Hallam's general qualities as an historian are so eloquent and so true, that they will be more acceptable to the reader than any observations of ours. Mr Hallam says his great brother historian, 'is, on the whole, far better qualified than any other writer of our time for the office which he has undertaken. He has great industry, and great acuteness. His knowledge is extensive, various, and profound. His mind is equally distinguished by amplitude of its grasp, and by the delicacy of its tact. Hi speculations have none of that vagueness which is the com mon fault of political philosophy. On the contrary, they are strikingly practical, and teach us not only the general rule, but the mode of applying it to solve particular cases. In this respect they often remind us of the 'Discourses of Machiavelli.' The manner of the book is, on the whole, not unworthy of the matter. The language, even where most faulty, is weighty and massive, and indicates strong sense in every line. It often rises to an eloquence, not florid or impassioned, but high, grave, and sober; such as would become a state paper, or a judgment delivered by a great magistrate-a Somers, or a D'Aguesseau. In this r spect the character of Mr Hallam's mind corresponds strikingly with that of his style. His work is eminently judicial. Its whole spirit is that of the bench, not that of the bar. He sums up with a calm, steady impartiality, turning neither to the right nor to the left, glossing over nothing, exaggerating nothing, while the advocates on both sides are alternately biting their lips, to hear their conflicting mis-statements and sophisms exposed. On a general survey, we do not scruple to pronounce the Constitutional History' the most impartial book that we ever read.'

1

Mr Hallam published this work in 1827. It embraces the period extending from the reign of Henry VII. to that of George II., and shows the gradual rearing and cementing of that fabric of social freedom under which we live. The subject is surely a noble one. In 1641, when the period of glory and of gloom which we call the Puritan era was commencing, Milton thus wrote:-There is no civil government that hath been known-no, not the Spartan, not the Roman, though both for this respect so much praised by the wise Polybius-more divinely and harmoniously tuned, more equally balanced as it were by the hand and scale of justice, than is the Commonwealth of England; where, under a free and untutored monarch, the noblest, worthiest, and most prudent men, with full approbation and suffrage of the people, have in their power the supreme and final determination of highest affairs.' In 1850, Thomas Carlyle, in his far-famed-Pamphlets, vociferously exclaims:-British liberty produces-what? Floods of Hansard Debates every year, and apparently little else at present. If these are the results of British liberty, I, for one, move we should lay it on the shelf a little, and look out for something other and farther. We have achieved British liberty hundreds of years ago, and are fast growing, on the strength of it, one of the most absurd populations the sun, in his great Museum of Absurdities, looks down upon at present.' Now we must think that the words British Constitution and British Liberty are worthy to stir our hearts to-day as much as in the day when Milton struck that lofty note in their praise. The slow growth of ages, and grouping around it countless traditions, the British Constitution is not a mere name; its roots strike far down into the rock-foundations of the past, and we repose peacefully under its lordly shadow. Without an exception,' remarked a writer in the Times' about a year ago, all the new paper constitutions fabricated, sworn to, guaranteed, and inaugurated, within the last four years, have been ripped up with the sword, and rolled into cartridges, to give better effect to monarchical powder and shot.' The nations all strive after constitutions, and have as yet striven in vain; while the constitution of Britain, steadfast and tenacious of life as a gnarled old oak, has stood every blast. Mr Carlyle tells us the nations are all chasing a phantom, that our constitution comes to 'anarchy plus a street constable,' and that they, if they attained their object, would find themselves in mistake and disappointment. And we shall not deny that, if we direct our gaze obstinately upon one set of phenomena, upon one side of the picture, and if, especially, we have made strength our sole, or at least by far our chief deity, we must perceive much to sigh over in the state of our affairs. We believe Mr Carlyle to have opened our eyes to many important phenomena; but we must also, with deference, hold that he has been misled by a too great intensity, and has failed fairly and fully to present, either to his own mind or to his readers, the whole view of the matter. We care not, we contend not, for names; by the British Constitution, we mean that national system, civil, social, ecclesiastical, in which we live and move; and we maintain that there are portions of its workings upon which we can look with a smile of satisfaction and proud and cheerful hope. Is it nothing that we dwell in a state of calmness and national rest, untroubled by the tempests which periodically sweep the Continent, and that every energy can find its sphere by its own natural unimpeded force? that the various worlds within our world-the worlds of commerce, of agriculture, of letters-can each grow, and work, and prosper? With all the softening influences of a mellow and perhaps too ripe civilisation, can we deny the grand consoling fact, prominently characteristic of our age and nation, that individual power will find its level that the quarryman or the weaver will rule men, if fitted by nature for the task? Can we deny that he may learn to read and to write, and so may address his fellow-men, and that, if his word is one of might, it will arouse and fire his brethren as the word of the rapt hermit of the eleventh century did? Can we close our eyes to the fact, that the scale of ranks in our land is adjusted

with an approximation to nature's intention, and a gently blending harmony, which can be equalled in no other part of the globe? And, to sum up all in one great question, Is it not yet possible within our island that a happy Christian home may exist? Possible! it is a fact, to which we cannot, as we dare not, shut our eyes, that in the flowery meadows of England, by the heath-broidered streams of Scotland, and even by the fair lakes of Erin, there are cottages and families which every virtue warms and secures, where mutual affection lights every eye, and where generation softly passes into generation, in health. and peace, and joy! The flower of civilisation is home, and our little island will be well worth every drop of our blood, while within her borders can peacefully flourish a Christian family.

It was a noble task, worthy of a noble and a great mind, to trace the rise and consolidation of what is at least the topmost ridge of this great social fabric-the highest mountain range from which the streams that water the plains below flow down-the British Constitution. This work Hallam has done, and in the way which we have seen characterised by Mr Macaulay. In his pages, we see our freedom endangered by the griping avarice of Henry VII.; trembling, almost prostrate, before the ironheeled tyrant Henry VIII.; safe, though in a stern restraint, under the 'imperial Lioness,' in whose gait was such grandeur, and in whose smile was such winning majesty, that even those who feared, loved her; clouded and struggling, and finally arraying itself in battle harness, during the great Puritan era; and at last emerging in safety at the revolution. In the pages of Hallam, we see not the great movements which were transacted, so to speak, out of doors; these make up a shaded but effective background: we see distinctly only what is done in the ca binet and the Houses of Parliament. Yet the essential characteristics of each great actor are necessarily brought

out.

Admiring much the liberal impartiality and the manly common sense of Hallam, and finding in the work before us a most useful and important mass of information and instruction, we must hint at one or two traceable defects and shortcomings. We cannot think that Mr Hallam has fully entered into the spirit of the Puritans; the day when the heaven-breathed energy, and valour, and devotion of these men were stigmatised as fanaticism and bigotry is, we trust, past; and though we do not receive Carlyle's general deliverance on the matter as final, yet we do think that he has penetrated far more deeply than Mr Hallam into the character of that age, and its leading men. We cannot discern in the pages of the work of which we now speak that sympathy with the religion of the Puritans which, in one form or other, we deem absolutely necessary to understand them. We know the weight of this objection, but we deliberately make it. Our second culpatory remark is less general, and relates to the following paragraph:- There seems to be something in the Roman Catholic discipline (and I know nothing else so likely) which keeps the balance, as it were, of moral influence pretty even between the two religions, and compensates for the ignorance and superstition which the elder preserves; for I am not sure that the Protestant system, in the present age, has any very sensible advantage in this respect; or that, in countries where the comparison can fairly be made, as in Germany or Switzerland, there is more honesty in one sex, or more chastity in the other, when they belong to the Reformed Churches. We think there is here a sort of slipshod superficiality and carelessness unworthy of Mr Hallam. The surface is skimmed in every part. We are not shown how the discipline of Rome-and it is the Confessional which is specially referred to-is connected with, and promotes, the national virtues of honesty and chastity; and we cannot consider this so settled and so universally known, as to render remark superfluous. Again, is it pardonable to usher in by such words as 'I am not sure,' the profoundly important remark, to the effect that the moral influences of Romanism and Protestantism are on a level? The Proclaimer of the Christian

religion has given us our great test, from which we cannot deviate; to say that Protestantism bears no more fruit than Popery, is to set them in an equal rank as embodiments of Christianity. And, we rejoice to say, as Mr Hallam, by earnest scrutiny, should have said for us, the voice of fact decides here in favour of Protestanism. It is a well-known fact-to which, we believe, Mr Macaulay has given publicity-that the Swiss cantons which are Protestant present to the traveller an aspect, as compared with the Roman Catholic cantons, of general prosperity, comfort, and rural wealth. Of chastity we speak not particularly; but, if any induction can be relied on by the historian, it is, that prosperity is the result of those virtues by which a state subsists-industry and truth. Mr Hallam must know that the excelling prosperity of the Swiss Protestant cantons must be directly traceable to the excelling energy and honesty of their inhabitants; and experience shows us that indirectly it is traceable to the Protestant faith. We think this whole passage indicative of carelessness and haste, and can hardly think the historian would have let it pass, had his mind been in its calmest analytic mood.

Mr Hallam's last work, entitled an Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries,' has the characteristic magnitude of dimension, but is in another department from those in which he had formerly exerted his powers. It is still engaged with the affairs of nations, but now the strict subject is the course of thought in each; and no lengthened investigation of the work is necessary to convince any one that it is stamped by the resistless energy, and enriched by the vast erudition, and crowned by the masculine sense, of Hallam. The work is thorough; one feels that its dicta can be relied on, can be laid deliberately in the storehouse of the mind to be drawn thence at any emergency, or to furnish continual matter for reflection. In illustration of this, we would point the reader to the account of Bacon and his philosophy. This carries its own evidence; you know you look upon the man in all his dimensions, and have presented to your mind in one view the suggestive outline of his work as a thinker. Nor would an illustration be less in point if we referred, for proof of our assertions, to the lengthened criticism of Shakspere-profound, comprehensive, discriminating-which occurs in the second volume.

numerous traces, of older poetry which we perceive in Paradise Lost,' it is always to be kept in mind that he (Milton) had only his recollection to rely upon. His blindness seems to have been complete before 1654; and I scarcely think that he had begun his poem, before the anxiety and trouble into which the public strife of the Commonwealth and the 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 me mory, in the prime of its power, what it will easily receive and indelibly retain. I know not indeed whether an edu cation 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.'

We have finished our cursory glance at the various intellectual performances of Hallam, and trust that we have said enough to make it manifest, that he is a man who deserves well of his country, and who is an honour to his age. We conceive it a moral impossibility, that any one should study his whole works with that sustained and marked attention which they demand, without finding his intellectual grasp strengthened, his intellectual vision cleared, and his knowledge either consolidated or ex tended. The study of such works is of noble use in in parting that sober and manly contentment to the mind which results from an ability to compare the present with the past; it prevents true energy and earnestness from degenerating into vociferous intensity; it gives the grand power of viewing our own age in relation to other ages, and leads us shrewdly to suspect that it is a chaques-racteristic of each generation, as of each man, and per haps conspicuously of our generation, as it rests for a time in this spinning world, on its journey to eternity, to over-estimate its own relative importance and attainments, and exclaim, 'What a dust I do raise!'

To present any epitome of the work is out of the tion, but we shall make two short quotations, as illustrative of that delicate taste, that fine perception, and that happy imagery which characterise Hallam's best manner, and which, we think, are nowhere exhibited so often as in the work now before us. Each extract speaks for itself. If Hallam's mind is of a very high order, but not of the we place Tasso and Spenser apart, the English poetry of highest; it is not poetic. His vast stores of knowledge Elizabeth's reign will certainly not enter into competition cannot be said to be all united by force of poetic energy. with that of the corresponding period in Italy. It would When we contemplate the vast intellectual stores of a require not only much national prejudice, but a want of Plato, a Shakspere, or a Milton, they seem joined in har genuine aesthetic discernment, to put them on a level. monious unity, and to glow all over with poetic light; But it may still be said that our own muses had their the temple is covered with fine gold. But this is only charms; and even that, at the end of the century, there saying that Hallam is not among the mightiest sons of was a better promise for the future than beyond the Alps. earth; he has the clear, comprehensive vision of the his We might compare the poetry of one nation to a beauty torian, if not the fusing fire of the poet, and he can ar of the court, with noble and regular features, a slender range, in fair and fitting order, the vast treasures of his form, and grace in all her steps, but wanting a genuine mind. Mr Macaulay has well remarked, that his sympa simplicity of countenance, and with somewhat of sickli-thies lie with principles, and not with men, and we think ness in the delicacy of her complexion, that seems to indi- his faults, as well as his excellences, may be connected cate the passing away of the first season of youth; while that with the fact. of the other would rather suggest a country maiden, newly mingling with polished society, not of perfect lineaments, but attracting beholders by the spirit, variety, and intelligence of her expression, and rapidly wearing off the traces of rusticity which are still sometimes visible in her demeanour.' Quite unconnected with this is the following, which is remarkable neither for originality nor for power, both of which could be vindicated for Hallam by other passages, but which possesses a certain delicacy of thought and grace of expression which are not so common in his pages; we make no apology for the commonness of the subject: In the numerous imitations, and still more

We cannot lay down our pen without referring to that gentle and noble being, Arthur Hallam, the son of the subject of our sketch, and the tender and well-beloved friend of Tennyson. We need scarce remind our readers, that the poet has embalmed his sorrow for his friend in his last great work, In Memoriam.' We shall not, of course, characterise that poem here; but we cannot with hold the remark, that Tennyson has made a private sorrow generally and immortally interesting; that he has clothed sadness in a garb of angel-like beauty; and that, when men in after times speak of the beautiful friendships of other days-of Jonathan and David, of Damon and Py

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