of leather, which he beat smooth for the purpose; while Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated | be natural and unaffected, and to wear her talents, eclipses on his plow handle.

As in other ages when a period of great | chives which issue at intervals from our deeds has been succeeded by a season of repose, the forty years which have followed the Peace have been prolific in contributions to our history. The care of the state and the industry of many persons have been employed during all this time in illustrating the national life of England, or in giving it historical form and consistency. The noble edition of the statutes at large which was first published in 1819, and which, as Mr. Froude very justly observes, is the best contemporary evidence of our annals, has been followed by the labors of the Record Commission, and by the epitomes or transcripts of our ar

State Paper Offices. As might have been expected, such a field for investigation has not been allowed to lie fallow or barren, and a great number of men of genius have enriched it in parts with the choicest culture. The novels of Bulwer and of Mr. Kingsley, and the volumes of Mr. Froude and Macaulay attest, by splendid yet varying proofs, the great increase of our historical materials, and how brilliantly art and industry have adorned them. It is remarkable, however, that while the history of England has been thus successfully dealt with in fragments, so few attempts have hitherto been made to condense our recent acquisitions in this province into something like a collective form, and to place the reader in a point of view from which he can see our anuals as a

19

whole, as modern researches present them to him. With scarcely an exception our later historians have preferred elucidating particular periods, to tracing our national life from its source until it reaches its full development; and the result has been that the general reader is often as ignorant as formerly of the subject. All competent persons have long ago agreed that the work of Hume is shallow and inaccurate; yet it still retains its hold upon the public; and this is because it has not been supplanted by any digest of equal ability which embodies, for all the period it embraces, the latest discoveries in English history.

that history does not obey the impulse of laws readily discoverable by us; and, accordingly, to the school of Vico, he may seem wanting in the power of generalization. It is also true that, in our judgment, opposed as it is to historical dogmatism, he might have defined with more clear precision one or two epochs of change in our annals, and might have suggested more fully than he has done the influences which produced those transitions. And, as it is obvious when treating a subject which requires not only a breadth of view and a sound judgment in forming conclusions, but a vast range of special knowledge, that it is idle to expect complete

To supply this want in our present lite-ness of information in an equal degree rature, and, without attempting a formal narrative, to place before the reader, in clear miniature, the whole features of English history, as recent researches have led us to see them, is the main object of the volumes before us. Subordinate to this is the secondary object of tracing out concisely yet boldly the causes which have formed the national existence, and of estimating, and setting in proper significance, the influences which have shaped the destiny of the empire. For reasons which will be obvious to some of our readers, we have delayed to pronounce our judgment upon the manner and style in which Dr. Vaughan has so far succeeded in carrying out these important aims. But as, with a few very trifling exceptions, these volumes have met with a cordial reception from the organs of public opinion, we think that it would be a prudish mistake to defer any longer our notice of them. We feel assured our readers will believe that our criticisms always follow the rule," that truth is be preferred to Plato;" that what we really and honestly think will be set down without respect to persons.

This being premised, we feel free to express our judgment upon these two vol umes, which, though only a part of the whole design, contain a review of the his tory of England from the age of Cæsar to that of Elizabeth. That judgment is, that no other book fulfills, in nearly an equal degree, the important purpose the author sets forth with, or details with equal accuracy and picturesqueness the great phases in our national life, and the various causes which have affected it. It is true that, in following out his plan, Dr. Vaughan seems to have been of opinion

upon all topics, so we shall not assert that in all respects Dr. Vaughan's work is entirely trustworthy, or gives all events their proper proportion. In short, that ideal philosophic insight, and that thorough mastery of numberless acquirements which would make a work of this kind perfection, are of necessity more or less deficient in these volumes; and, accordingly, some insufficient judgments, some views in part inaccurate and hasty, some partial estimates, and some errors of fact, undoubtedly may exist in them. So, too, a captious and sneering critic might hin occasional blemishes in their method; and their diction, though always vigorous and natural, and sometimes very pleasing and animated, admits, perhaps, of a higher polish. Making every allowance, however, for these drawbacks, this work presents, we think, the best summary extant of the life of this nation, viewed as a whole, in its long course from its Celtic independence to the eventful close of the sixteenth century. No other work so clearly sets forth the important changes which Celtic Britain underwent at the Roman and Saxon invasions, or gives a more satisfactory solution of the real ef fects of the Norman Conquest. If somewhat deficient in its description of our legal and constitutional progress before the accession of the House of Tudor, no other work gives so good an account of our social life in the Middle Ages, of our old commercial and industrial organizetion, and of the movement which originated with Wycliffe. The chapters upon the England of Henry VIII., upon the growth of our early Protestantism, upon the character of our first Reformation, and of the personages who guided its

issues, upon the double Revolution which | lives betrayed the tendencies of the Celtic followed, and upon the rise of Puritanism nature. As for the Roman influence upon among us, are eminent for ability and this island-even if we reject the theory judgment; and, indeed, the whole view of of Spence and of other critics of that the Tudor period not only contains much school, that much of the so-called Saxon new information, but is very valuable institutions had in fact a Celto-Roman from its display of sound criticism, and original-still, if we remember that the clear discrimination. We should also add, Christian Church was planted in Engthat we were greatly struck with the un- land by Roman hands, that for somewhat assuming and moderate tone which char- more than three hundred years a Roacterizes every part of the work, as well man colony occupied England, and that as with its impartial spirit, its genial tem- many of our towns, existing at this time, per, and its warn humanity. owe their rise to Roman and Imperial civilization, we can scarcely doubt that it is idle to deny that this race has deeply affected our destiny. We agree, therefore, with Dr. Vaughan, in tracing the elements of our national life to the period of Cæsar and of Agricola, and we think that, had he not gone so far back, his work would have wanted logical unity.

In seeking an answer to the question, how the life of England was evolved in the past, Dr. Vaughan, we think, was perfectly right to refer briefly to Celtic Britain, and to trace the effects of the Roman conquest. It has been the fashion with a class of writers who identify national being with institutions, to place the commencement of English history at the pe- Who, then, and what were the Celtic riod of the Saxon invasion, and Lord tribes who wandered over our English Macaulay, from a different reason, has plains at the time when Cæsar first saw arrived at nearly the same conclusion. our cliffs, and Agricola led his legions to Now, although it is true that the Celtic conquest? Lord Macaulay, adopting the tribes no longer occupy the English soil, tone of the Commentaries, says: "When that Druidism and its kindred jurispru- first they were known to the Tyrian madence have become forgotten things of the riners, they were little superior to the past, and that the visible traces of the natives of the Sandwich Islands." There Roman colonists, and of their settlement is reason to question the fidelity of this in this island, have been overlaid by the account, since, long before the invasion dust of centuries, it is equally certain that of Cæsar, the inhabitants of Britain are indirectly the influence of these races has described as half-civilized, and, as Dr. been great in forming the type of the Vaughan observes justly, even if it be English people, and in giving a stamp to true of the Britons of Cæsar, it can not the national character. For setting apply to the Britons of Tacitus. It is aside the important fact that if we would quite certain that the various races who view the empire as a whole, the Celtic inhabited this island, toward the close of element even now is dominant in Wales, the first century, were, at least all along Ireland, and one half of Scotland-it is the southern counties, very far removed quite clear, as Dr. Vaughan has shown, from primitive barbarism, and were not that the Celtic race has mingled with the ignorant of agriculture and commerce. Saxon within even England, properly so This, of course, was owing to the proxcalled, in a greater degree than has gen-imity of Gaul, which, subdued before the erally been supposed, and has therefore formed one main stem from which to derive our national existence. To which we might add, that the two sovereigns who perhaps have left their mark most visibly on the frame of our institutions and polity, namely, Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, were in part, at least, of Celtic origin;* and, singularly enough, in their acts and

* This fact was laid to the charge of the House of Tudor repeatedly. It was often said by malcontents in their days, that "Cadwallader's blood" had no right in England.

Christian era, and reduced to the shape of a Roman province, opened channels for trade to her British neighbors, and taught them perhaps a perilous culture. Dr. Vaughan's description of these British tribes, as they appeared to the Romans of the age of Vespasian, is very full, graphic, and interesting. Though presenting marked differences between themselves--the Silurian race showing traces of the south, while the others were more of the type of the Gael - and not combined in an uniform government, they were bound together by the strong ties of the