ART. III.-HISTOIRE DE FRANCE, Par M. MICHELET, Professeur suppléant à la Faculté des Lettres, Professeur à l'école Normale, Chef de la Section Historique aux Archives du Royaume. Tomes 1-6.

THE rivalry which exists between England and France has prevented the two nations from forming a just appreciation of one another. Each is guilty of looking with a jaundiced eye upon the other's excellencies; and as easily might rival beauties, in the heat of opposition, cease to mark each other's faults, as we and our neighbours, in the struggle of nations. There have been times when we have despised the French as a mere frivolous, grimacing race; and they have returned the compliment by detestation of English pride and cant. But, fortunately, the misapprehensions and hostilities engendered by war appear in some degree to have died away under the influence of peace; and though for the last thirty years our relations with France have been rather those of an armed truce than of cordial reciprocity, yet at last we are able to look at one another with some justness of sentiment, and to recognise those excellencies which have elevated England and France to the highest rank in the civilized world. To the French is due the merit of being the first to hold out the hand of fellowship. The researches of Thierry, Guizot, and Armand Carrel, into English History, testify the interest which the nation has taken in our affairs, even when it suited the tactics of party, for French orators to be most vehement against England. We believe that the good feeling is now reciprocal, and that there exists in England an earnest desire to study and to be just to the character of our ancient rival.

A nation is best described by its own writers. Travellers may tell us of the exterior of the buildings and the dresses of a people, but can hardly give an account of its mind; hence, to any one who desires to see the French, as described by themselves, this History of France by M. Michelet must be welcome. It is the work of a man of genius, who is not content with presenting to his readers a mere detail of facts, but who seeks to show them the workings of human nature at every period of history. The ardour of his

patriotism seldom offends against the dignity of History; and yet he gives such an interest to narrative that it is hardly possible to avoid the contagion of his enthusiasm for his country.

And how noble a History is that of France! From the fall of the Roman Empire to the days of Napoleon, France has been the centre of the European mind, the great leader of civilization, and the founder of kingdoms. Each epoch of modern history finds its fitting exponent in some French name. Charlemagne suppresses the Arian heresy-makes the Pope a temporal prince, and revives the visions of the Roman empire. A French monk, Peter the Hermit, rouses nations to recover Christ's Sepulchre. Godfrey of Bouillon leads the Crusaders. St. Louis is the model of a feudal king. The rise of the University of Paris marks the epoch of scholastic learning. Abailard is the hero of the schools. St. Bernard is the beau ideal of a monk. Calvin may dispute with Luther the glory of the Reformation. Descartes is the earliest name in modern philosophy. Voltaire and the Encyclopædists mark the tendencies of the 18th century. Louis XI. first employs a standing army. Richlieu begins the European system of diplomacy. Colbert represents science applied to commerce and taxation. The terrible Revolution displays the first European outbreak of democracy, and Napoleon towers far above all contemporary rulers; and if the last of the French, is the greatest man of modern times.

We may freely, and without envy, resign the chief glories of the past to the French, and acknowledge that in the arts of civilization they have been our instructors; for the present and the future belong to us. Paris is, undoubtedly the centre of European civilization; but London is the capital of the world. The discoveries of Columbus and Vasco de Gama have opened to us wider regions and grander scenes of policy than those in which France has played so mighty a part; and London is the centre of this wider reorganization of policy and adventure. France long has worthily led the rest of Europe in the race of civilization; but now, labour, arts, and commerce give our country the pre-eminence, which she seems destined to preserve for many a future age.

When we read the splendid historical works which are

written in Germany and France, we sigh for the reputation of our own writers, who seem content to live upon the labours of continental scholars. But is there not for the genius of Englishmen a nobler task than that of investigating past events,—that, namely, of writing on the surface of the globe, in ineffaceable characters, the glory and greatness of the English name? Our men of genius do not write like Niebuhr; but then their actions will form the subjects of investigation to future historians. Others may search the ruins of dead empires; 'tis ours to show the world a living spirit.

The early part of English History is certainly not gratifying to our national pride; the conquest of the country by Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans-the fact that our rulers spoke French up to the times of Edward the Third, and that we were the sport of Papal power in the reign of John-these are certainly no glorious reminiscences, and hence we may account for the coldness and neglect with which our early history has been treated. But far different was the case of France. When England was enduring all the hardships of her stern education under the Dukes of Normandy, France was the seat of that chivalric enthusiasm which makes the middle ages the heroic time of European civilization, and the seed-field of poetry, religion, and art.

M. Michelet's History, which, as far as yet published, extends only to the death of Louis XI., gives an elaborate account of these times; and certainly we never read so poetical and striking a view of the middle age as that given in his second volume. Perhaps History should be written with something of the Poet's inspiration, for it is only thus that the remote and the obscure can be invested with a visible and life-like form; and surely there is no literary task more difficult than to re-animate and re-present periods in which to the eye of most men there appear nothing but a few dry and isolated facts, and a few almost forgotten names.

The poet perhaps may

Call up him who left half told

The story of Cambuscan bold ;"

but the monumental effigies of our heroes have almost as much life as the accounts historians give of their actions.

But M. Michelet has in this volume, with a wonderful skill, brought before us the great men who lived in France from the 11th to the end of the 13th century. In this he had a task of great difficulty, for we smile at the superstitions, and crude ideas of past generations, as we do at the remembrance of those of our own infancy. The French have in this a great advantage over English Historians. We cannot pronounce with patience the claims which the Pope and clergy made to universal empire, and the exclusive care of man's salvation; but the Catholic historian of Catholic France sheds the light of imagination upon the ideas of a past age, and, placing before us the better side of the picture, teaches us that our indignant reprobation of the Roman Church is not altogether just, and that there was a time when it was one of the regenerating principles of the world. As a specimen of M. Michelet's style, we translate part of his description of the Mahomedan and Christian worlds at the time of the first crusade, vol. ii. p. 321 :

Such was the situation of Islamism. The Caliphate of Bagdad, enslaved by a Turkish guard-that of Cairo dying of corruption-that of Cordova dismembered and fallen in pieces. One thing alone was strong and living in the Mahomedan world—the horrible heroism of the assassins, a hideous power firmly planted on the old mountains of Persia, like the poignard near the head of the Sultan. How much younger and more living was Christianity at the time of the Crusades. Spiritual power, the slave of the temporal in Asia, balanced it, over-mastered it in Europe; it had re-invigorated itself by the chastity of the monks, and the celibacy of the clergy. The Caliphate fell, and the Papacy rose. Mahometanism was divided, Christianity united. The first could expect nothing but invasion and ruin; and, indeed, it only resisted Christianity by receiving the assistance of the Mongols and the Turks,—that is to say, by becoming barbarous.

The pilgrimage of the Crusade is not a thing new or strange. Man is a pilgrim by nature; it is long since he set out on his journey I know not when he will arrive at his destination. It does not require much to put him in motion; and, indeed, Nature leads him, like an infant, by showing a beautiful country open to the sun-by offering him fruit-as the vine of Italy to the Gauls, the orange of Sicily to the Normans-or it is under the form of a woman, that she tempts and attracts him. The first conquests are for the sake of women. First, it is the beautiful Helen; then morality having reached a higher standard, the chaste Penelope,

the heroic Brynhild, or the Sabines. The Emperor Alexis, when calling our French to the sacred war, did not neglect to boast of the beauty of the Greek women. The beautiful Milanese ladies were, it is said, partly the cause of the perseverance of Francis the First, in his attempts to conquer Italy.

"Our native land is another love after which we also run. Ulysses ceases not his exertions until he has seen the smoke on the roofs of Thrace. In the Roman Empire, the Men of the North seek in vain their Asgard, their city of the Ases, of heroes and of Gods. They found better ones. Running blindly, they struck against Christianity. The crusaders who marched with such ardent love to Jerusalem saw that the divine country was not at the torrent of Cedron, nor in the arid valley of Jehosaphat; they then looked above, and waited with melancholy hope for another Jerusalem. The Arabs were astonished when they saw Godfrey de Bouillon seated on the earth. The conqueror said to them sadly, 'Is not the earth good enough to serve us to sit upon, when we shall enter for so long a time into its bosom ?'They retired full of admiration. The West and the East had understood one another.

It was necessary, however, that the crusade should be accomplished. This vast and complex world of the middle age, which held in it all the elements of anterior worlds, Greek, Roman, and Barbarian, was destined also to re-produce all the strifes of the human race. It was necessary that it should re-produce in the Christian form, and in colossal proportions, the invasion of Asia by the Greeks, and the conquest of Greece by the Romans, at the same time that the Greek column and the Roman arch were bound together and raised to heaven in the gigantic pillars, in the airy arches of our Cathedrals."

Unless we are deceived, there is something more than mere eloquence in the extract we have given. It contains a description of the real state of the age and the motives which animated the crusaders; though they were conscious probably of no other desire than that of freeing the Sepulchre.

An interesting chapter might be written on the motives for which men have undertaken great enterprises; and, failing in their first endeavour, have accomplished other things than those they sought. Thus Columbus, when seeking a new way to India, by which facilities might be increased for converting the natives to Christianity, found America. Thus the Chaldeans seeking the knowledge of the destiny of Man in the stars, and worshipping them