and when he restores to the philosophic contemplation the truth we assume, in all moments of religious aspiration, of "the glorious liberty of the sons of God."

It was implied, in the nature of the present task, that Mr. Martineau's vindication should be polemic and controversial, rather than simply affirmative. The polemic temper strikes us sometimes as carried rather to an excess, as where he dwells on the senile infirmities of Comte, or pushes Herbert Spencer so hotly to his logical results. But this is also a help in giving precision and relief to a cast of thought apt to be declamatory, vague, and dim. Mr. Martineau's style of thought is somewhat abstract; his intellect is fastidious and refined; his diction, technical, scholastic, and hard. But for the zest of a visible encounter, the fine play of thought would dazzle and perplex. We are greatly obliged to him for dealing with antagonists of flesh and blood.

We find help in his argument, too, from the free play of a half-poetic fancy that multiplies images, sometimes with pure, artistic beauty or human tenderness, sometimes with a touch of the grotesque, enough to stir the sense of humor; for instance, in the exceeding relish of his reply to Mansel:

"The danger of such a comprehensive refutation always is, lest it should inadvertently include yourself. It is difficult to set so large an appetite to work, and stand yourself out of reach of its voracity. And we have serious fears that Dr. Mansel must, sooner or later, fall a victim to the hunger of his own logic" (p. 223). "Where the receptive power is at fault, it is vain to multiply and intensify communication: as well might you hang a blindasylum with mirrors, and expect, that, though the daylight was useless, the brilliancy at night would tell. Our author's logic in mowing down its thistle-field inconsiderately mows off its own legs. . . . He cleverly pursues and breaks the track of many a system of erratic metaphysics; but, fascinated with the hunt of delusion and incompetency, he pushes the rout too far, . . rides over the brink of the solid world, and falls into the abysses" (pp. 232-3). 'What, after all, is the amount of this terrible nescience, victoriously established by such a flourish of double-edged abstractions? Let not the dazzled observer be alarmed: with all their swift dexterities, these metaphysical whifflers draw no blood; if they do more than beat the air, they cleave only ghostly foes that need no healing, and are immortal" (p. 187).

...

66

J. H. A.

HISTORY AND POLITICS.

WE alluded, upon a former occasion, to Herr von Sybel's history of the revolutionary period from 1789 to 1795, and are glad to record that its worth has been recognized in England, by a translation published in London. The "Historische Zeitschrift," which he edits with so much ability, we have also called attention to, as a singularly valuable review of all contemporary historical research, a review which (we cannot omit the opportunity to repeat) is absolutely indispensable to an intelligent understanding of the present condition of historical

science.

The work undernoted* is made up of several short essays, all of them marked by the same vigor of thought and clearness of expression which characterize his elaborate writings. The political and social condition of the early Christians; the Germans, upon their appearance in history; Eugene of Savoy; Catharine II. of Russia; De Maistre; the uprising of Europe against Bonaparte; the polity of the early Christian Germans; the second Crusade; Edmund Burke and Ireland; the development of absolutism in Prussia, — such are the subjects he discusses,. and brings into clearer relief. If we should single out any one essay for especial commendation, it would be that in which he explains the career of Catharine II., and reconciles so many of the difficulties which arise in the study of her character. But there is, besides the papers we have enumerated, another upon the present condition, or rather function, of German historical writing, which we cannot suffer to pass without a word of objection.

There can be no doubt, that, within a couple of generations, immense progress has been made in all departments of learning; and though it may be somewhat extravagant to ascribe the beginning of modern historical writing in Germany to what is known as the regeneration of the nation in the wars with France, yet it is certain that the extraordinary upheaval which followed upon the footsteps of Bonaparte all over Europe was nowhere so marked as in its effects upon Germany: rending asunder the bonds of feudalism, and developing the sentiment of nationality which had almost died out under the suffocating pressure

*Kleine Historische Schriften von Heinrich von Sybel. München: Literarisch-artistische Anstalt der J. G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung. 1863.

of despotic princes and corrupt courts. The singular freshness and enthusiasm of the German character, surviving the desolating blight of war, displayed itself again in great intellectual activity. In the department of history, there was not only a vast deal of material accumulated; but, in the critical sifting of facts, no age has ever exhibited results so great as those which, within fifty years, have crowned the labors of German historians.

By his searching criticism, Niebuhr re-created, so to speak, the Roman world; by his masterly analysis of the political relations of the European States, Ranke lifted the veil from the diplomacy of three centuries; by his unflinching severity of method, Baur wrought a revolution in the treatment of the early Christian literature. Between the scholar and the rhetorician, the critical method has established a permanent separation. The courtly repose of the old writers is gone for ever. A severer discipline of thought, a profounder consciousness of the relations of the past to the present, a more vivid conception of the omnipresence of law and the reality of life, have given an inspiration to erudition, in comparison with which the wit of the dilettante writer is trivial and contemptible. The imposing affairs of state, the movements of armies, and the changes of ministries, can no longer usurp exclusive attention. The development of language and the course of literature, and the condition of the people in their social relations even to the minutest customs, have displaced the gossip of kings and the scandal of courts. In the field of historical jurisprudence, Savigny and Eichhorn have shown what may be done for the practical good of a people by abstract investigation; while, in the study of the ancient language of their country, the brothers Grimm have laid the foundations of a new science.

These general statements we suppose no one would dispute; but the true conclusion which, Herr von Sybel insists, is to be drawn from them, seems to us just the one damaging fault of recent German historians, to wit, that, in striving for this perception of connection between times remote and near, in attempting to establish this bond of personal human relationship between them, the historian is inevitably led so to mix up present political questions with past events, that he ceases to be impartial and therefore trustworthy. Let every writer, says Sybel, show his colors; let him be religious or atheistic, protestant or catholic, liberal or conservative, let him be any thing, only not disinterested and neutral. That does not seem to us ein höchst erheblicher Fortschritt, "a very important step forward."

It is true enough, indeed, that no one can be a genuine historian who is destitute of that moral sentiment which enables him to sympathize with his fellow-men. But it does not follow, that he is to assume a decided position in reference to what our author calls the great worldmoving questions of religion and politics and nationality. On the contrary, the first requisite of criticism is impartiality. It is only as one strips himself of his own personal affinities, that he is able to enter into the mind of another age, to understand its passions, and sit in judgment on its deeds.

If confined, however, solely to the history of Germany, Sybel's theory of the function of the historian may doubtless be somewhat less objectionable. We can very well understand, indeed, in his own case, how he has come to adopt it. Besides being a student, he has been for several years an active politician in Prussia, a member of what, by

a stretch of terms, we should call the National House of Representatives. In that capacity, he has become painfully conscious of the divorce which exists all over Germany between the men of learning and the men of affairs, the men of thought and action. The slavish torpor in which the nation is sunk the result on the one hand of the political impotence of the race itself, and on the other of centuries of division and war - has enabled the rulers to keep the power in their own hands. The only outlet for talent in the middle classes has been through the universities. Hence Germany has been flooded with scholars; men whose ambition it is to be famous for learning, because learning procures them respect, and procures them bread. For political affairs they care nothing; because, for the most part, they have no chance whatever of having any share in them.

Sybel would reform this unhealthy state of things. He would interest the men of learning in the life of the nation, by bringing learning to bear upon the government of the nation. More than all, in historical science he would accomplish the political unity of Germany in the future, by the illustration of its moral unity in the past. That is what he means when he says that every writer must have his tendency, his theory. Abstract truth! the Germans have had enough of it. It is the practical application of what every man of learning knows to the common concerns of daily life, that will alone save Germany from going down again before the lances of the Cossacks half a century or more hence, as it went down before the eagles of the French legions half a century and more ago.

In this struggle, however, to emancipate the men of letters from the

bondage which has so long made them almost useless in a political point of view, Sybel goes equally too far, it seems to us, in the other direction. It is not the fault of science that learned men have no place in the government, but the fault of the learned men; a fault which, it is easy for us to see, has its root in what one may perhaps call the hopeless impracticability of the German character. But to make the canons of historical writing bend to the exigences of German politics is requiring more than can be conceded. Mommsen and Düncker, Waitz and Giesebrecht and Droysen and Häusser, may all be sound politicians, at once liberal and conservative; Gervinus, on the left wing, may be finally driven into proper views by the force of his subject; even Höpfner, on the right, may at last wheel into line. And it may be very well for Germany, that she has such excellent writers who, at the same time, find favor with Sybel for their political views. But not one of these men will go down to posterity as a classic.

It is not with the strife of the hour, nor with the evanescent passions of men, that history has to do, but with truth. And the truth is not one thing with the Egyptian Rameses driving his war-chariots to the Euphrates, and another thing with the Corsican soldier crouching before his camp-fire on the frozen Volga.

H. J. W.

AMONG the brilliant women whom the liberal party in Europe counts among its adherents, there is hardly one, perhaps, who deserves better to be known than Dora D'Istria.* At an age when most clever women are content with the vapid admiration of the salon, her writings had begun to attract the attention, not merely of those thoughtful persons who sympathize with every aspiration for reform, but of the politicians and the diplomates, who are never slow to recognize talent when there is a possibility that they may be able to use it. Her later writings have more than confirmed the promise of her youth. And we cannot, perhaps, do a more agreeable service to the reader who has not yet made her acquaintance, than to direct his attention to her merits.

A French writer, in alluding to her descent, says that the blood of Alexander the Great and of Pyrrhus, of Scanderbeg and of Botzaris, flows mingled in her veins. That may be somewhat affected; but, nevertheless, she does come of the race that, under the name of

* Profils Contemporains: Mme. La Comtesse Dora D'Istria; par Armand Pommier. Paris: Lecrivain et Tourbon, Éditeurs, 1863.