DR. JOHN GILLIES-SHARON TURNER-WILLIAM COXE-GEORGE CHALMERS-C. J. FOX.

While the first volume of Mitford's History was before the public, and experiencing that degree of favour which induced the author to continue his work, DR. JOHN GILLIES (1747-1836), who succeeded Robertson as Historiographer to His Majesty for Scotland, published The History of Ancient Greece, its Colonies and Conquests,' two volumes, quarto, 1:86. The monarchial spirit of the new historian was scarcely less decided than that of Mr. Mitford, though expressed with less zeal and idiomatic plainness. The History of Greece,' says Dr. Gillies, exposes the dangerous turbulence of democracy, and arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing the incurable evils inherent in every republican policy, it evinces the inestimable benefits resulting to liberty itself from the lawful dominion of heredi tary kings, and the steady operation of well-regulated monarchy.' The History of Dr. Gillic3 was executed with considerable ability and care; a sixth edition of the work (London, 1820, four volumes, 8vo) was published, and it may still be consulted with advantage. Dr. Gillies also wrote a View of the Reign of Frederick II. of Prussia,' a History of the World from the Reign of Alexander to Augustus' (1807-10), a translation of Aristotle's 'Rhetoric' (1823),

&c.

In 179, MR. SHARON TURNER, a London solicitor, commenced the publication of a series of works on English history. The first was a History of the Anglo-Saxons' (1799-1805); the second, a 'History of England during the Middle Ages (1814-15). In subsequent publications he continued the series to the end of the reign of Elizabeth; the whole being comprised in twelve volumes, and containing much new and interesting information on the government, laws, literature, and manners, as well as on the civil and ecclesiastical history of the country. From an ambitious attempt to rival Gibbon in loftiness of style and diction, Mr. Turner has disfigured his History by a pomp of expression and involved intricacy of style, that often border on the ludicrous, and mar the effect of his narrative. This defect is more conspicuous in his latter volumes. The early part of his History, devoted to the Anglo-Saxons, and the labour, as he informs us, of sixteen years, is by far the most valuable. Mr. Turner also published a Sacred History of the World,' in two volumes. So late as 1845, Mr. Turner published an historical poem, Richard III.' He latterly enjoyed a pension of £200 per annum, and died at his residence in London, February 13, 1847, aged seventy-nine.

History has been largely indebted to the persevering labours of the REV. WILLIAM COXE, Archdeacon of Wilts (1747-1825). In the capacity of tutor to young noblemen, Mr. Coxe travelled over various countries, and published Travels in Switzerland' (1778–1801), and Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark' (1778–84). Set

tling at home, and obtaining church preferment, he entered on those historical works, derived from family papers and other authentic sources, which form his most valuable publications. In 1793 appeared his Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole;' in 1802, Memoirs of Lord Walpole:' in 1807, History of the House of Austria;' in 1813, Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon;' in 1816-19, Memoirs of the Duke of Mar borough;' in 1821, Correspondence of the Duke of Shrewsbury; and in 1829, 'Memoirs of the Pelham Administration.' The last wai a posthumous publication. The Memoirs' of Walpole and Mariborough are valuable works, containing letters, private, official, and diplomatic, with other details drawn from manuscript collections. As a biographer, Coxe was apt to fall into the common error of mag. nifying the merits and sinking the defects of his hero; but the service he rendered to history by the collection of such a mass of materials can hardly be overestimated.

Resembling Turner and Coxe in the vastness of his undertakings, but inferior as a writer, was GEORGE CHALMERS (1742-1825), a native of Fochabers, county of Elgin, and originally a barrister in one of the American colonies before their disjunction from Britain. His first composition, 'A History of the United Colonies, from their Settlement till the Peace of 173,' appeared in 1780; and from time to time he gave to the world many works connected with history, politics, and literature. Among these was a Life of Sir David Lyndsay,' with an edition of his works; a Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, from the State Papers,' &c. In 1897 he commenced the publication of his Caledonia, of which three large volumes had appeared, when his death precluded the hope of its being completed. It contains a laborious antiquarian detail of the earlier periods of Scottish hi-tory, with minute topographical and historical accounts of the various provinces of the country.

CHARLES JAMES FOX (1749-1806), the celebrated statesman and orator, during his intervals of relaxation from public life, among other literary studies and occupations, commenced a History of the Reign of King James II., intending to continue it to the settlement at the Revolution of 1688. An Introductory Chapter, giving a rapid view of our constitutional history from the time of Henry VII., he completed. He wrote also some chapters of his History; but at the time of his death he had made but little progress in his work.

Public affairs, and a strong partiality and attachment to the study of the classics, and to works of imagination and poetry, were constantly drawing him off from historical researches; added to which, he was fastidiously scrupulous as to all the niceties of language, and wished to form his plan exclusively on the model of ancient writers, without note, digression, or dissertation. He once assured me,' says his nephew, Lord Holland, 'that he would admit no word into his book for which he had not the authority of Dryden.' We need

not therefore wonder that Mr. Fox died before completing his History. Such minute attention to style, joined to equal regard for facts and circumstances, must have weighed down any writer even of active habits and uninterrupted application. In 1808, the unfinished composition was given to the world by Lord Holland, under the title of A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II., with an Introductory Chapter.' An Appendix of original papers was also added. The History is plainly written, without the slightest approach to dantry or pretence; but the style of the great statesman, with all the care bestowed upon it, is far from being perfect. It wants force and vivacity, as if, in the process of elaboration, the graphic clearness of narrative and distinct perception of events and characters necessary to the histori n, had evaporated. The sentiments and principles of the author are, however, worthy of his liberal and capacious mind.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSHI.

As a philosophical historian, critic, and politician, SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH deserves honourable mention. He was also one of the last of the Scottish metaphysicians, and one of the most brilliant conversers of his times-qualifications apparently very dissimilar. His candour, benevolence, and liberality gave a grace and dignity to his literary speculations and to his daily life. Mackintosh was a native of Inverness-shire, and was born at Aldourie-house, on the banks of Loch Ness, October 24, 1:65. His father was a brave Highland officer, who possessed a small estate, called Kylachy, in his native county, which Sir James afterwards sold for £9000. From his earliest days James Mackintosh had a passion for books; and though all his relatives were Jacobites, he was a staunch Whig. After studying at Aberdeen-where he had as a college-companion and friend the pious and eloquent Robert Hall-Mackintosh went to Edinburgh, and studied medicine. In 1788, he repaired to London, wrote for the press, and afterwards applied himself to the study of law. In 1791, he published his 'Vindicia Gallica,' a defence of the French Revolution, in reply to Burke, which for cogency of argument, historical knowledge, and logical precision, is a remarkable work to be written by a careless and irregular young man of twenty six. Though his bearing to his great antago ist was chivalrous and polite, Mackintosh attacked his opinions with the ardour and impetuosity of youth; and his work was received with great applause. Four years afterwards he acknowledged to Burke that he had been the dupe of his own enthusiasm, and that a melancholy experience' had undeceived him.

The excesses of the French Revolution had no doubt contributed to this change, which, though it afterwards was made the cause of obloquy and derision to Mackintosh, seems to have been adopted with perfect sincerity and singleness of purpose. He afterwards de

livered and published a series of lectures on the Law of Nature and Nations, which greatly extended his reputation. In 1795, he was called to the bar, and in his capacity of barrister, in 1803, he made a brilliant defence of M. Peltier, an emigrant royalist of France, who had been indicted for a libel on Napoleon, then First Consul. The forensic display of Mackintosh is too much like an elaborate essay or dissertation, but it marked him out for legal promotion, and he received the appointment-to which his poverty, not his will, consented-of Recorder of Bombay. He was knighted; sailed from England in the beginning of 1804; and after discharging faithfully his high official duties, returned at the end of seven years, the earliest period that entitled him to his retiring pension of £1200 per annum. Mackintosh now obtained a seat in parliament, and stuck faithfully by his old friends the Whigs, without one glimpse of favour, till, in 1827, his friend Mr. Canning, on the formation of his administration, made him a privy-councillor. On the accession of the Whig ministry in 1830, he was appointed a commissioner for the affairs of India. On questions of criminal law and national policy Mackintosh spoke forcibly, but he cannot be said to have been a successful parliamentary orator.

Amid the bustle of public business he did not neglect literature, though he wanted resolution for continuous and severe study. The charms of society, the interruptions of public business, and the debilitating effects of his residence in India, also co-operated with his constitutional indolence in preventing the realisation of the ambitious dreams of his youth. He contributed, however, various articles to the Edinburgh Review,' and wrote a masterly Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy' for the Encyclopædia Brittanica.' He wrote three volumes of a compendious popular History of England' for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia,' which, though deficient in the graces of narrative and style, contains some admirable views of constitutional history and antiquarian research. His learning was abundant; he wanted only method and elegance. He also contributed a short but valuable life of Sir Thomas Morewhich sprung out of his researches into the reign of Henry VIII., and was otherwise a subject congenial to his taste-to the same miscellany; and he was engaged on a History of the Revolution of 1638,' when his life was somewhat suddenly terminated on the 30th of May, 1832. The portion of his History of the Revolution,' which he had written and corrected-amounting to about 350 pages-was published in 1834, with a continuation by some writer who was opposed to Sir James in many essential points. In the works of Mackintosh we have only the fragments of a capacious mind; but in all of them his learning, his candour, his strong love of truth, his justness of thinking and clearness in perceiving, and his genuine philanthropy, are conspicuous. It is to be regretted that he had no Boswell to record his conversation.

Chivalry and Modern Manners.-From the 'Vindicia Gallica.'

The collision of armed multitudes [in_Paris] terminated in unforeseen excesses and execrable crimes. In the eye of Mr. Burke, however, these crimes and excesses assume au aspect far more important than can be communicated to the by their own insulated guilt. They torm, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolution far more important than any change of government-a revolution in which the semiments and opinions that have formed the manners of the European nations are to perish. The age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe extinguishe i for. ever! He follows this exclamation by an eloquent eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy predictions of the future state of Europ, when the nation that has been so Jong accustomed to give her the tone in arts and manners is thus deba-ed and corrupted. A caviller might remark, that ages much more near the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours have witnessed a treatment of queens as little gallant aud generous as that of the Parisian mob. He might remind Mr. Burke that, in the age and country of Sir Philip Sidney, a queen of France, whom no blindness to accomplishment, no malignity of detraction, could reduce to the level of Marie Antoinette, was, by a nation of men of honour and cavalie: s,' permitted to languish in captivity, and expire on a scaffold; and he might add, that the manners of a country are more surely indicated by the systematic cruelty of a sovereign, than by the licentious frenzy of a mob. He might remark, that the wild system of moderu manners which survived the massacres with which fanatic sm had for a century desolated and almost barbarised Europe, might perhaps resist the shock of one day's excesses committed by a delirious populace.

But the subject itself is, to an enlarged thinker, fertile in reflections of a different nature. That system of manners which arose among the Gothic nations of Europe, of which chivalry was more properly the effusion than the source, is, without doubt, one of the most peculiar and interesting appearances in human affairs. The moral causes which formed its character have not perhaps been hitherto investigated with the happiest success. But to confine ourselves to the subject before us, chivalry was certainly one of the most prominent features and remarkable effects of this system of manners. Candour must confess that this singular institution is not alone admirable as a corrector of the ferocious ages in which it flourished. It contributed to polish and soften Europe. It paved the way for that diffusion of knowledge and extension of commerce which afterwards in some measure supplanted it. and gave a new character to manners. Society is inevitably progressive. In government, commerce has overthrown that feudal and chivalrous' system under whose shade it first grew. In religion, learning has subverted that superstition whose opulent endowments had first fostered it. Peculiar circumstances softened the barbarism of the middle ages to a degree which favoured the admission of commerce and the growth of knowledge. These circumstances were connected with the manners of chivalry but the sentiments peculiar to that institution cou'd only be preserved by the situation which gave them birth. They were themselves enfeebled in the progress from ferocity and turbulence, and almost obliterated by tranquillity and refinement. But the auxiliaries which the manners of chivalry had in rude ages reared gathered strength from its weakness, and flourished in its decay. Commerce and diffused knowledge have in fact, so completely assumed the ascendant in polished nations, that it will be difficult to discover any relies of Gothic manners but in a fantastic exterior, which has survived the generous illusions that made these manners splendid and seductive. Their direct influence has long ceased in Furope; but their indirect influence through the mudium of those cans s, which would not perhaps have existed but for the mildness which chivalry crented in the midst of a barbarons age, still operates with increasing vigour. The manners of the middle age were, in the most singular sense, compulsory. Enterprising benevolence was produced by general fierceness, galant courtesy by ferocious rudeness, and artificial gentleness resisted the torrent of natural barbarism. But a less incongruous system has succeeded. in which commerce, which unites men's interests, and knowledge, which excludes those prejudices that tend to embroil them, present a broader basis for the stability of civilised and beneficent manners.

Mr. Burke, indeed, forbodes the most fatal consequences to literature, from events which he supposes to have given a mortal blow to the spirit of chivalry. I have ever been protected from such apprehensions by my belief in a very simple truth-that