ment of the moral and social powers of the nation. France was ill-governed, but not, in the strict sense of the term, oppressed, and she had lost neither her lustre, her prosperity, nor her greatness. The day came at last when this intellectual freedom of the country, controlled by an authority too mild and too weak to resist it, imperiously demanded freedom of conscience and freedom of government in the name of the rights of man and of the people. From that day to the present, France has been tossed by storm after storm across the pathless seas, and it is still a problem whether she will ever reach that haven for which she started, and which she has twice appeared to have attained. But thanks to that intellectual freedom which she has ever retained, and thanks to the temperate policy of her kings, she has encountered these trials in the full possession of her powers; she has borne them without perishing; and she has wrested from those frightful convulsions results of no common value. She has reformed the internal condition of society, she has emancipated the industry of the country from internal restrictions; the administration of public affairs, and what may be termed the mechanism of society, has attained a high degree of perfection; freedom of conscience, though ill-defined and imperfectly secured by the law, is nevertheless established. In spite of her mistakes and her reverses, France has a right to believe that she has not yet seen the close of her achievements any more than of her trials; and that the efforts and the progress she has made in the last three centuries will never be complete until she has secured, by public liberty, the pledge of her triumphs and realization of her hopes. The destinies of Spain are more melancholy and more obscure. That noble people remained for three hundred years doomed to stagnation by its spiritual and temporal tyrants, and it submitted to its fate until the insults and the arms of a foreign invader roused it from its lethargy. But the victory secured to the Spanish nation in that contest by the alliance of England gave birth to no lasting principle of political regeneration. The burden of centuries of apathy, sterility, and decay is less easily shaken off than the burden of foreign oppression. The Spaniards may pursue their task, but has Europe sufficient reason to place confidence in the result? In thus endeavoring to trace the princi ples and the results of the distinct systems of policy which have, for the last three hundred years, disputed the empire of modern society, we have confined these observations to three States of Western Europe. But this survey might be carried further; the same political systems might be compared in the States of Northern and in those of Southern Europe, or in the British and Dutch colonies and the colonies of Spain, both in America and in Asia. Everywhere the results are the same; everywhere the same answer must be given to the same interrogatories. Wherever Catholic absolutism has reigned, it has stopped and congealed the life of society; it has stricken the nation, with barrenness; by stifling freedom, it has established an authority without real coherence and force-an authority which has never prevented the occurrence of great days of trial, and which, those trials having begun, fails to curb their excesses, and proves to be almost equally incapable of reform and of stability. Wherever, on the contrary, Protestantism has prevailed, as in England, Holland, or in the North of Europe; or even the more moderate and enlightened form of Catholicism, as in France, Belgium, and a part of Germany, where the Church of Rome has not been either the instrument or the mistress of the civil power-moral activity, social energy, public prosperity, have spread and increased, under different shapes and with various success, but always with fruits beneficial and glorious to mankind. These nations may have committed great faults or great crimes, they may have endured great sufferings, their progress has been more or less rapid, more or less complete; but they have not fallen into decrepitude or extinction; through all the aberrations of their course and the vicissitudes of their destiny, they have remained or have become capable of the highest culture. These abundant results, though sometimes in appearance contradictory, are in reality the harmonious. product which fulfills the task of humanity and satisfies the wants of society; and thus they have continued to advance toward that boundless future which is the sublime goal of Christian civilization, and the mark of its divine origin. The two works which stand prefixed to this article have for their subject the earlier scenes and the most prominent actors in the great European drama which we on any point whatever, I shall always be ready to give it you." Even in his retirement at Yuste, the Emperor occasionally received Sepulveda, who was also living in retirement at a small country-house near Cordova, his birth-place, and writing his book as his master was closing his life, at a distance from the world, but not detached from it. There is no reason to suppose that Philip II. granted the same familiarity or the same freedom to his historiographer Herrera. These official historians, however, and especially Sepulveda, are not only important as contemporary and well-informed witnesses, but they have a good deal of that unconscious impartiality which proceeds from an accurate knowledge of the persons and events they describe. In the history of Philip II. by Cabrera, which has no official character, and only the first part of which has been published, some traits of the character and secret policy of the King are to be found, so true and forcible, that the author himself appears scarcely to have felt their whole significance. In addition to these contemporary writers, several subsequent authors, such as Gregorio Leti in the seventeenth century, and Watson in the eighteenth, wrote the history of Philip II., but without having access to any new authorities. In our own time, fresh materials have been discovered in great abundance: have here sought to follow in its plot and its significance the Spanish monarchy in its gloomy splendor, and the Commonwealth of the United Provinces in its bloody origin-Philip II. and William of Orange-Catholicism and Protestantism -contending with equal fury and under their most indomitable champions. Starting from different points, and arriving at different periods, in this memorable history, Mr. Prescott and Mr. Motley relate the same tale. Both of them being Protestants, the one has chosen for his principal subject and the centre of his narrative the King and his Catholic court; the other, the Prince and the people of the Reformed faith. The work of Mr. Prescott is to comprise the whole reign of Philip II.; but the two first volumes, which alone are now before us, contain no more than the first twelve years of that period, from 1556 to 1568. Mr. Motley has taken the life of William of Orange as the standard of his book. He opens it with the accession of Philip, and closes it in 1584, when William fell by the pistol of an assassin paid by the King; and Philip exclaimed on the arrival of the intelligence, "Had that blow been struck two years ago, the Catholic Church and I should have gained by it." Philip had cause to temper his exultation with regret; for, though William of Nassau was no more, the Commonwealth of the United Provinces was founded. in Spain, in Holland, in Belgium, in France, These publications have been seasonably undertaken; for the evidence necessary to a full and entire comprehension of the events and the men they describe has only become accessible in our own times. Not, indeed, that earlier chroniclers were wanting to record them. Charles V. and Philip II. had both taken especial care to provide this class of writers, and even to furnish them with information. Three Spanish historians and one Neapolitan, contemporaries of the period, Sepulveda, Herrera, Cabrera, and Campana, have left voluminous narratives of their reigns. Sepulveda and Herrera were the regular historiographers of Charles V. and Philip II. respectively, and the former seems to have enjoyed from his master a degree of independence equal to his opportunities of observation. On one occasion, he wished to read to the Emperor some fragments of his work. "No," said Charles, "I will neither hear nor read what you have written about me. Others will read it when I am gone; but if you require information the public archives have been searched; diplomatic correspondence, private memoirs, the most authentic and secret documents have been dragged to light and abandoned to the curiosity of the learned and the idle. Three great collections more especially, the archives of the house of Nassau, published at Leyden by M. Groen van Prinsterer; the correspondences of Charles V., Philip II., and William the Silent, which M. Gachard has published either textually or by extracts from the archives of Simancas and of Brussels; and the papers of Cardinal Granville inserted in the great collection of unpublished historical documents relating to the history of France, which was begun in 1833 by M. Guizot, then Minister of Public Instruction, have in the last twenty-five years poured a flood of light on the history of this period; and we may now be almost as well acquainted with the transactions of the sixteenth century as if the living men of that age were speaking and acting before us. To these numerous documents, which unswerving fairness is even more meriwere already known to the public, Mr. torious. Prescott and Mr. Motley have added some new and hitherto unknown results of their own researches. Their books are not mere compilations from other books; they have prosecuted these discoveries in public libraries, in archives, in private collections of MSS.; each of them gives a careful account in his preface of his own sources of information, of the courteous assistance he has received, of the results which he hopes to have attained; and their works fully confirm, by their close and conscientious study of the subject, that confidence which the mere statement of their labors at once inspires. As we proceeded in the history of Philip II. by Mr. Prescott, this confidence steadily increased. He has given us not only a complete and accurate narrative, but a narrative which is remarkably impartial; and this impartiality is not only the strict impartiality which consists in speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but the generous impartiality of a liberal mind, which enters into opinions and feelings it does not share, assigns a fair place to diversity of situation, to disinterested motives, to traditional prejudices, to irresistible circumstances; and treats the memory of historic personages, whose principles and actions it execrates, with the equity and forbearance of an upright and humane judge passing sentence on their lives. Philip II. and the Duke of Alva, even Margaret of Parma and Cardinal Granvelle, sometimes put Mr. Prescott's virtue to a severe trial; but his virtue is never at fault. It does great honor to Protestant civilization that it has furnished historians thus prepared to render full and free justice to its bitterest enemies. This impartiality, just without effort, is the result of a sincere homage to truth, of an earnest sentiment of Christian charity, and of the security of a cause al ready won. Nor is this honorable moral distinction peculiar to Mr. Prescott; it may be traced in several of the Protestant historical researches which have recently been directed to the Catholic Powers of the sixteenth century, and especially in the dissertations prefixed by M. Groen van Prinsterer to his " Archives of the House of Nassau." From a Dutchman and a zealous Protestant, busied in the records of the sufferings and the heroic struggles of his forefathers, this scrupulous and Considered as a literary work, independently of this high moral appreciation of persons and of events, Mr. Prescott's "History of Philip II. " has other merits which, rare as they are, are not always remarked. The structure of this book is ingenious and well arranged. Mr. Prescott has not bound himself to follow in strict succession the chronological order of events; he has classed them according to their characters, and divided them into groups, which follow their respective and distinct course, without, however, losing the thread which connects them, or ceasing to form a whole. Thus, the accession of Philip, and his first wars in France and Italy-his return to Spain, and his administration of the kingdom-the condition, the revolt, and the struggle of the Low Countries under the government of Cardinal Granvelle, Margaret of Parma, and the Duke of Alva-the trials and the death of Egmont, Horn, and Montignythe story of Don Carlos and Elizabeth of France-form a series of complete pictures, at once distinct and well connected together, and the general history of the King's reign may thus be grasped in its grander masses, instead of rolling the incoherent links of a broken chain. This style of writing places the moral succession of causes above the material succession of events, and supersedes, by a loftier chronology, the chronology of the almanac. The master of all historians, Tacitus, has left us, in his Annals and in his Histories, examples of either method; and although he has, in both his works, shed the splendor of his genius with equal lustrè over the details he relates, their diversity and their unequal beauty as works of art are extremely striking. Amongst the group of events which fill the two first volumes of Mr. Prescott's book, there is one, interesting enough in itself, but so disproportioned to the rest of the work as to impair its general harmony and effect--we mean the four chapters he has devoted to the Knights of Malta, and to the siege of Malta by the Turks in 1565. This brilliant incident filled too small a space in the history of Philip II., and Philip II. himself filled two small a space in the history of the siege, for Mr. Prescott to have assigned to it so large a portion of his book. He has evidently been led away by the charm of his subject, and by the pleasure of painting | ence. Thus, his account of the marriage in detail that glorious passage in the long of William, in 1561, with the Princess struggle of Christians against the Infidel, Anne of Saxony, a daughter of the great the character of the gallant veteran, Jean Elector Maurice, and of the religious Parisot de la Valette, who was then equivocations of the Prince in the negotiGrand Master of the Order, and the im- ation of this alliance, is a model of obstipetuous valor of his Knights. nate and skillful pleading to screen the weak side of a good cause and a great man. Thus excited by alternations of extreme aversion and strong predilectionwhich, however reasonable in themselves, have obtained absolute possession of Mr. Motley's mind-this writer does not handle his subject with the perfect fairness and comprehensive grasp of Mr. Prescott; nor does he, like his eminent contemporary, descend into the ranks or search the hearts of his enemies, to understand and to describe their conduct with strict impartiality. To this merit of a well-arranged history Mr. Prescott adds that of an easy, unaffected, though somewhat frigid, power of narration. He belongs to the historical school of Robertson, judicious rather than profound in its general views, and more remarkable for simplicity than for descriptive power. The pictures Mr. Prescott has given us are never wanting in truth, but they are sometimes wanting in life. History only becomes dramatic on two conditions; it must have either the passion of the politician or the imagination of the poet. Mr. Prescott has neither one nor the other; he is a calm and enlightened philosopher, an accomplished man of letters; he is well read in the history of Philip II., and he relates it with fidelity; but he has studied it after the lapse of three centuries, in all the serenity of his own reflections and the tranquillity of a New England study-faithfully, therefore, as these events and these personages are described by him, he leaves them where he finds them, in their tombs. Mr. Motley has more vehemence; not that of a politician engaged in the struggles of party and the responsibilities of office, but that of a Republican, a Protestant, an honest man, who hates, as if he saw them before his eyes, the outrages and persecutions inflicted on civil and religious liberty, centuries ago, in a far country, and lashes with all his heart the authors of these crimes. His admiration for the champions of the liberal and Protestant cause is not less keen. As much as he execrates Philip and the Duke of Alva, he loves William of Orange: he describes him, he praises him, he defends him as if he were personally interested in his fate and in his fame. William is to Mr. Motley what his illustrious descendant is to Mr. Macaulay-not merely a hero, but a hero of his own. Too well-informed to overlook the imputations which rest upon the memory of that great Prince, and too conscientious to conceal them, Mr. Motley scrutinizes every detail, and argues the cause of his client with unbounded confid His strong and ardent convictions on the subject of his work have also affected its style and literary character; his narrative sometimes lacks proportion and forbearance; he dwells to excess upon events and scenes of a nature to kindle in the mind of the reader the excitement he himself feels, and he studiously withholds from the opposite side the same amount of space and of coloring. His style is always copious, occasionally familiar, sometimes stilted and declamatory, as if he thought he could never say too much to convey the energy of his own impressions. The consequence is, that the perusal of his work is alternately attractive and fatigu ing, persuasive and irritating. An accumulation of facts and details, all originating in the same feeling and directed to the same object, mingles our sympathy with some degree of distrust; and although the cause he defends is beyond all question gained, we are not impressed with the judgment of such an advocate. With these merits, and with these imperfections, the "History of Philip II." and the "History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic," are undoubtedly two important works, the result of profound researches, sincere convictions, sound principles, and manly sentiments; and even those who are most familiar with the history of the period will find in them a fresh and vivid addition to their previous knowledge. They do honor to American literature, and they would do honor to the literature of any country in the world. From the North British Review. MRS. BROWNING'S POEMS.* THE poetical reputation of Mrs. Brown- | means of marking some progress in her ing, late Miss Barrett, has been growing other attempts." We will only say conslowly, until it has reached a height which cerning these and some other youthful has never before been attained by any essays, that we think the authoress modern poetess, though several others mistaken in supposing that the "machihave had wider circles of readers. An nery of the press" will give them the intellect of a very unusual order has been deprecated perpetuity, unless she herripened by an education scarcely less un- self continues to reprint them; and that usual for a woman; and Mrs. Browning their value " as a means of marking some now honorably enjoys the title of poetess progress in her other attempts," is of a in her own right, and not merely by kind which her personal friends will apcourtesy. preciate much better than the world, for whom, we presume, she writes and publishes. The poems before us are divisible into three tolerably distinct classes; first, the imaginative compositions, which form the bulk of Miss Barrett's poems, and several of which Mrs. Browning tells us she "would willingly have withdrawn, if it were not almost impossible to extricate what has once been caught and involved in the machinery of the press." Secondly, the poems which have immediately arisen from personal feeling and personal observation. Of these the chief are the socalled "Sonnets from the Portuguese," and "Casa Guidi Windows." Thirdly, the novel-in-verse, or present-day epic, called "Aurora Leigh." Besides the poems belonging to these three classes, there are several " occasional pieces" of more or less significance. Pieces which the authoress confesses that she "would willingly have withdrawn," are, by that confession, almost withdrawn from criticism. We imagine the two dramas, "a Drama of Exile," and "the Seraphim," are among the number of those which Mrs. Browning, in her last edition, introduces with "a request to the generous reader that he may use their weakness, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening, less as a reproach to the writer, than as a Mrs. Dismissing the whole of the first volume of the "Poems" as containing very little that is worthy of the authoress's matured powers-although much that would be remarkable in any other recent poetess— we come, in the early part of the second volume, to one of Mrs. Browning's most beautiful pieces, "Bertha in the Lane." It contains a most skillful and touching delineation of disappointed affection, and the workings of that feeling. This poem is not only "simple, sensuous, and passionate," as Milton said that poetry should be; but it is also very artistical in its form and contrasted details, and in the construction of the measure, which beautifully answers to the feeling. Browning will, probably, be popularly remembered as much by this little poem as by any she has written; and, excellent as it is in its present state, its value might be, at least, doubled by condensation and a more thoroughly polished diction. No poet of Mrs. Browning's rank should condescend to the use of capital letters to give emphasis to her words, or to change an adjective into a substantive, or to the introduction of such expressions as "feverbale," when a little trouble would have supplied others, suited to the simplicity of grief, and the laws of the English language; nor can we understand how a writer, capable of such a strain of strong and simple feeling, could mar it at the end by |