scholar wants also; so that satire, sagacious enough in detecting the weak points of every character, has often held them both up to ridicule? They have wanted what is the essential accompaniment to all our knowledge of the past, a lively and extensive knowledge of the present; they wanted the habit of continually viewing the two in combination with each other; they wanted that master-power which enables us to take a point from which to contemplate both at a distance, and so to judge of each and of both, as if we belonged to neither. For it is from the views so obtained— from the conclusions so acquired—that the wisdom is formed which may really assist in shaping and preparing the course of the future.

Antiquarianism, then, is the knowledge of the past enjoyed by one who has no lively knowledge of the present. Thence it is, when concerned with great matters, a dull knowledge. It may be lively in little things; it may conceive vividly the shape and colour of a dress, or the style of a building, because no man can be so ignorant as not to have a distinct notion of these in his own times; he must have a full conception of the coat he wears and the house he lives in. But the past is reflected to us by the present; so far as we see and understand the present, so far we can see and understand the past; so far, but no farther. And this is the reason why scholars and antiquarians, nay, and men calling themselves historians also, have written so uninstructively of the ancient world; they could do no otherwise, for they did not understand the world around them. How can he comprehend the parties of other days who has no clear notion of those of his own? What sense can he have of the progress of the great contest of human affairs in its earlier stages, when it rages around him at this actual moment unnoticed, or felt to be no more than a mere indistinct hubbub of sounds and confusion of weapons? What cause is at issue in the combat, he knows not. Whereas, on the other hand, he who feels his own times keenly, to whom they are a positive reality, with a good and evil distinctly perceived in them, such a man will write a lively and impressive account of past times, even though his knowledge be insufficient and his prejudices strong. This, I think, is the merit of Mitford, and it is a great one. His very anti-Jacobin partialities, much as they have interfered with the fairness of his history, have yet completely saved it from being dull. He took an interest in the parties of Greece, because he was alive to the parties of his own time; he described the popular party in Athens just as he would have described the Whigs of England; he was unjust to Demosthenes because he would have been unjust to Mr Fox. His knowledge of the Greek language was limited, and so was his learning altogether; but because he was an English gentleman who felt and understood the state of things around him, and entered warmly into its parties, therefore he was able to write a history of Greece, which has the great charm of reality; and which, if I may judge by my own experience, is read at first with interest, and retains its hold firmly on the memory.'-(P. 108.)

If the meaning of this passage only were, that the historian is better qualified for his task whose mind is rich in the knowledge of the world he lives in, (which seems to have been a part at

least of Dr Arnold's conception, from the instance he afterwards gives of Sir Walter Raleigh,) no one could hesitate to admit its truth. But if it is meant that a good historian must also be interested in modern controversies, and make his history subservient to the object of influencing the convictions of his readers respecting them, it may, perhaps, be questioned whether he is not rather describing what has been called the philosophy of history, than history itself. And it would assuredly require a very severe and vigorous judgment—indeed, a greater degree of impartiality and inaccessibility to passion and prejudice than we can fairly expect from man-for a historian, who has the present full in sight, and strongly exciting his imagination, to be calm and just in his review of the past. Mitford's History of Greece may, for ought we know, be an attractive work, and so may Cobbett's History of the Reformation; but, after all, the interest they excite is much the same with that of a clever political pamphlet. But it could not be said of Gibbon, Hume, or Robertson, or Ranke, or even Dr Arnold's great master Niebuhr, that they display the habit of continually viewing the past in combination with the present; and yet, who will venture to call them mere antiquarians? Histories such as theirs have all the excellence which belongs to the ablest order of conversation;-where the speaker, while he condenses the information which he has to impart, leaves, at the same time, gracefully but incidentally, the impression of the fulness of his knowledge on other subjects. History, such as Dr Arnold would prefer it-and his own historical works afford examples of the kind—would rather resemble the brilliant talk of very clever speakers, who cannot tell us what we want to know without adorning the narration with inferences and illustrations drawn from a hundred distant sources.

We prefer, to this attempt to fix the true historical character, the following pointed sketch of the characteristics of style in different historians; and its importance as an indication of the degree of value to be reposed in them as authorities. Any reader who is conversant with this branch of literature, will readily find names to fit the following characters:

The main thing to look to is, of course, his work itself. Here the very style gives us an impression by no means to be dismissed. If it is very heavy and cumbrous, it indicates either a dull man or a pompous man, or at least a slow and awkward man; if it be tawdry, and full of commonplaces enunciated with great solemnity, the writer is most likely a silly man; if it be highly antithetical, and full of unusual expressions, or artificial ways of stating a plain thing, the writer is clearly an affected man. If it be plain and simple-always clear, but never eloquent-the writer may be a very sensible man, but is too hard and dry to be a very 2 B

VOL. LXXVI. NO. CLIY.

great man. If, on the other hand, it is always eloquent, rich in illustra tions, full of animation, but too uniformly so, and without the relief of simple and quiet passages, we must admire the writer's genius in a very high degree; but we may fear that he is too continually excited to have attained to the highest wisdom, for that is necessarily calm. In this manner the mere language of an historian will furnish us with something of a key to his mind; and will tell us, or at least give us cause to preume, in what his main strength lies, and in what he is deficient.'(P. 384.)

We cannot place the distinction between the antiquary and historian exactly where Dr Arnold places it; but without endeavouring at present to establish another, it is enough to say that the attempt to draw it is very characteristic of the writer. The faults of his manner (for such we would call them, if faults they are, rather than faults of style, which in all his writings isgood) arise from over-eagerness in illustration and comparison. If blemishes in historical composition, they are peculiar merits in the work of education. They are among the talents by which he was so eminently successful in exciting the enthusiasm of the young, in the studies to which he directed them. What we may term the youthfulness of his manner-his luxuriant discursiveness, when a passage in Livy invites him to a discussion of the physical geography of the Roman Campagna, or a chapter of Thucydides to speculations on the politics of modern repub lics;-this constituted its great charm to the temper of younger

men.

And, therefore, those very qualities which possibly detracted from his excellence in the sober character of a historian, were such as to render him the most effective and useful of teachers in a lecture-room. This is one of the many respects in which his loss must be felt, and felt as at present irreparable, in that university to which he had been, for so brief a space, attached as a Professor. Not Oxford only, but England, has need of minds such as his, in respect of all those higher qualities which we have endeavoured faintly to delineate. Men who can follow truth with a devotion so exclusive as to leave room for no other idol-men who can enter eagerly into all the great controversies of their day, and yet allow no exclusive sect or faction the honour of counting them as adherents-men who do not shun the entanglements of party spirit from cowardice or from apathy, but who resist it as a temptation, and despise it as a weakness-men whose whole life and conversation bear testimony to the deep importance they attach to religious truth, and yet free from every taint of controversial unfairness and theological rancour ;such men are scarce and precious in all times, and the absorb

ing nature of our party interests seems to render them scarcer every day. But at present, we are only regarding the promise which he was giving of a scarcely inferior kind of usefulness, in helping to turn, if possible, the very mischievous direction which has been given to youthful thought and enterprise of late years, and especially in his university.

Almost every one has taken an interest in the recent theological controversies which have had their birth in Oxford; few have looked to the effect which the controversial spirit has produced on the tone and character of that university as regards its primary object-education. When first the theological movement' began that is to say, about ten years ago there was excited at the same time in both universities, but especially in Oxford, a strong feeling of dissatisfaction with the existing studies and occupations of the place. It was the common language of all those who deemed that the frame and temper of society needed an extensive renovation, that this renovation must begin with the young. The presumptuous turn of mind, the reliance on intellectual ability, supposed to result from instruction addressing itself to the intellect alone, were to be corrected by a strong diversion in favour of a more subjective course of study. The student was to be imbued with principles and tastes, rather than positive acquirements. The main object of the instructor was to be the formation of moral character by habit, not the imparting what is commonly called learning. Nay, much was to be unlearnt—much rubbish taken down before men could begin afresh on the old foundations-much of the sciolism of recent centuries removed;-natural science and literary acquirement to be brought down from that undue exaltation to which they had been raised in modern times, by generations wanting in the habits of reverence and earnestness of feeling. Catholic theology, and Moral Philosophy in accordance with Catholic doctrine, were to be the main foundations of the improved education of these newer days; science and literature were not, indeed, to be neglected, but to be cultivated as in subordination only to these great architectonic' sciences, and discarded wherever they could not be forced into such subjection. And thus a new generation was to be trained, in which inferiority in respect of mere objective knowledge, if such should really ensue, was to be far more than compensated by the higher cultivation of the immortal part-the nobler discipline of piety and obedience. Such aspirations may be traced in most of the many writings on the university system which the crisis of those days brought out; while those who are acquainted with the practical details of the subject, know full well how deep a tincture has been introduced into the actual stu

dies and habits of both places, but especially of Oxford, by the prevalence of views such as these, expressed by energetic men, in language at once startling and attractive.

Nor do we imagine that those views are altered now. We have no reason to suppose that their authors would agree with us as to the consequences which we cannot but believe to have proceeded from the practical realization of their wishes. Yet that the facts themselves, of which we complain, exist, they would hardly deny. Their endeavour was undoubtedly a lofty one; and how far it may prove a vain one, must as yet be in great measure matter of conjecture. It remains to be proved, whether or not they have not proceeded on a forgetfulness of the real importance and value of mere positive knowledge in the moral education of man. Because the connexion between intellectual and moral cultivation is not obvious and direct, it is easily passed over. Nor do we suppose that it can ever be fully appreciated, except by those who are prepared, with ourselves, to recognize the great principles;-that all learning is discipline-all discipline self-denial-all self-denial has the nature of virtue: and that, by consequence, however wide or strange the corollary may seem, he who knows the first propositions of Euclid is, in so far, better than he who does not; ay, though both may have been equally untaught to pray, and may have formed of their Creator no more than the confused terrific image entertained by the wildest of savage minds. But, even without going thus far, few can have failed to observe the importance of the acquisition of positive knowledge, in withdrawing the mind from over contemplation of self and its attributes. It gives the faculties another world to work in, besides that microcosm within which the influences of hopes and fears, pride, ambition, vain-glory, are continually working to retain them. It corrects the passions, by substituting an excitement of a different order; it encourages generous sentiment, because it has no immediate object but truth, irrespective of advantage; it encourages candid and honest habits of mind, because the truth which it holds out is one which party feeling and prejudice have comparatively little interest in perverting. It has, of course, like every human pursuit, its own temptations to vanity and presumption; but how infinitely less engrossing and dangerous than those which attend on studies which directly interest the heart, and provoke its stronger feelings!

To substitute, therefore, as the main instruments of education, for the studies of science, history, and literature, those which have for their immediate object the awakening and strengthening of the moral perceptions, is to abandon that discipline which has an