These passages I have inserted, because such a testimony from this great man will at least be thought impartial.'—p. 7-9.

After all, our critic has not quoted the strongest testimony which Johnson might have afforded him. When he put forth his early writings he was a poor scholar, a total stranger to cultivated society; and he framed a purely artificial standard of elegance for himself. In after days, when his genius had raised him to universal honour, and he moved habitually among men and women of the world, Burke, Reynolds, Mrs. Thrale, &c. &c., he had too much good sense and good taste, (which, indeed, is only one application of good sense,) not to see that his young academical fancy had misled him; and we may easily trace the effects of this in all his later works. Compare, for example, such of the Lives of the Poets,' as were written in his years of toil and penury, with those of the same series that bear the date of Streatham. We venture to say that these last are not only, in substance, the most valuable specimens of the combination of biography and criticism ever yet given to the world, but entitled to admiration for the vigour and elasticity of their idiomatic English.

We cannot conclude without expressing our hope that Mr. Sharp may be stimulated to further efforts, by the success which is sure to attend this publication. It is impossible, in particular, to read the names of his correspondents, without thinking what rich materials he must have for a volume of literary and political Reminiscences.

ART. II.-Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit; von Friedrich von Raumer. Six volumes. 8vo. Leipzig. 1825.

TH

HE recent advertisement of a translation of Letters from Paris, illustrative of the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,' seems like a tacit reproach upon our neglect, in not having made known to our readers the important work which established nearly ten years ago their author's (Von Raumer) reputation as an historian. It is not, perhaps, too late; for, except within a small, though, we trust, expanding circle, even the most distinguished names in Germany obtain as yet but a slow and precarious circulation in this country. The commencement of another historical composition from the same able hand, which we may take an early opportunity of introducing to the notice of our readers, warns us to lose no more time in giving some account of a work which fills up an important chasm in the annals of Europe, and embraces a highly interest

History of the House of Swabia and their Times.

305

ing period, as yet unoccupied by any author of extensive or lasting popularity. It is, however, of a work like the present-(of which the historical narrative fills four large volumes, and the very valuable collections on the laws, customs, manners, and arts of the period, on the constitutions of the German empire and the Italian cities, two more)—that journalists of our own class find it most difficult to give a fair and satisfactory account. The merit of the work does not lie in detached passages of brilliant eloquence or high-wrought description; but in the general effect of the whole, which impresses the character of the age with remarkable force and clearness upon the mind. Though, as we shall hereafter observe, some subsidiary parts occupy a disproportioned space, it is, in general, remarkable how boldly and yet how harmoniously the main figures stand out from the historic canvass. Few modern histories are so full and copious in their details-yet the interest rarely languishes; the distinctness of the general impression, and the marked features of the more prominent characters, are not lost and shaded away in the minuteness of the narrative. The tone of sentiment which prevails throughout the work is that of a calm and unimpassioned observer, though of one far from deficient in quick and lively sensibility. The author's imagination is by no means dead to the romantic and picturesque effect of which his subject is capable, yet, in his moral judgments, he does not forget that sober philosophy which ought to be expected from a writer in the present day. He at once remembers that he is writing of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but in the nineteenth. Nor is he less impartial in his discrimination between the influence of their age upon the leading personages whom he depicts, and that which more strictly belongs to their personal character. He does equal justice to popes and emperors, but permits neither the tiara nor the crown to obscure the individuality of lineament which belongs to each; they are men as well as feudal sovereigns and imperious churchmen. This is high praise; and if we add true German diligence in the collection of materials, and a style, if we may presume to judge, more easy and agreeable than that of most German historians, we shall have assigned a distinguished rank to this work among the historical compositions of the day. But in proportion to the merit of the work, is our difficulty in justifying our opinion by the rapid outline of its plan and contents, for which alone we can afford space.

The history of the imperial house of Swabia, the race of the Hohenstaufen, comprehends the termination of the great, and, for a time, decisive contest, between the spiritual and the temporal, the papal and the imperial dominion. As yet, the splendid vision of a vast moral supremacy, to be established by the successors of St. Peter over the principalities and thrones of the world—that vision

which

6

which had dawned upon the mind of the first Gregory, and expanded into a commanding and systematic form under the seventh, the famous Hildebrand-might still impose itself upon men of the most exalted capacities and most generous motives, as a wise scheme for the civilization of barbarous Europe, and for the general religious government of mankind. The crimes, the vices, the injustice, the feuds of kings as well as of people, were to be repressed by an universal sacerdotal dominion, of which Rome, the metropolis of the Christian world, was to be the seat and centre. The pope, by the claim which he had assumed, of investiture to all ecclesiastical dignities, was, in fact, to regulate the appointment of the clergy throughout the western world; a clergy, by the strict law of celibacy, set apart from all the common ties and interests of society; and, by this simultaneous and irresistible agency, to govern the universal mind of man. According to the lofty theory of the papal autocracy, (as, no doubt, in justice as well as in charity, we may suppose it to have presented itself to the high-wrought imagination of its more eminent supporters,) it was to establish on the firmest basis, and extend to the utmost limits, the temporal and religious welfare of mankind. I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile:' such were the last words of Gregory VII. As yet, at least, papal ambition was entirely occupied by the advancement of the power and influence of the Roman see. It had neither degenerated into the desire of personal aggrandizement, nor into disgraceful nepotism. It had nothing of sordid individual interest. Though unbounded in its pretensions and unscrupulous as to the means of supporting them, it had ever in view what might, and did no doubt, appear a salutary and sacred end; if it violated justice-as, for example, when it twice arrayed father against son, in its contest with the imperial house which immediately preceded that of Swabia,-still, it was in a bold and open spirit of invasion on the rights of mankind, which were to be sacrificed for a time, under a stern and inevitable necessity, to higher ultimate good. As yet, there was none of the low Machiavellian policy of later times, when the supreme head of Christendom was lost in the petty and intriguing Italian potentate. The Christian world was to become one great theocratic monarchy; and—although such schemes of empire appear altogether repugnant to the character of churchmen, as in direct opposition to the pure religion of Christwe know not why they may not be advantageously compared with those of the temporal sovereigns who have aspired to universal dominion-the Alexanders, the Charles the Fifths, and the Napoleons, from whose admiration mankind is not yet disenchanted.

At all events those spiritual conquerors might cherish, on better grounds,

grounds, the fond illusion, that they were establishing the salutary despotism of intellectual superiority over brute force; that in advancing their own supremacy they were advancing that of peace and religion, and even of civil liberty. For it must be remembered, that at this time the mass of mankind were crouching in miserable servitude, or groaning in helpless oppression, under the tyranny either of a stern monarchy, or more often of an armed and irresponsible aristocracy. The popes were for a considerable time the allies and protectors of Italian freedom. To them, as to the more noble-minded Italians of all ages, appeared, as the distant but legitimate scope of their earthly ambition, the exclusion of Transalpine influence from the peninsula. We must not, however, allow ourselves to be tempted into the great question, how far, at this period, the Christian church, by assuming the strength and consistency of a monarchical government, might, at least incidentally, greatly contribute to the establishment and preservation of social order, and the best interests of mankind-how far it may have operated as a corrective to the fierce barbarism of the manners, the laws, and the governments of feudal Europe. With the impartiality of our author, we must be neither Guelph nor Ghibelline. We would only impress on our readers this important consideration, that both the policy of the papal government, and still more the characters of the popes themselves, must be carefully distinguished in the various periods of history. The successors of Gregory VII. were men of a very different order from those mere bishops of Rome who were raised to the chair of St. Peter by the suffrages of a fierce and turbulent populace, and by their lawless and profligate leaders, the Theodoras and Marozias; and not less so from the worldly and demoralized prince-pontiffs, whose vices as well as spiritual tyranny accelerated the Reformation, when, in the person of Alexander VI., the supreme head of the Christian world appeared as the perfect model of unchristian vice. The prelates who, between these extreme periods of papal weakness and papal wickedness, carried the pretensions and the authority of the Vatican to their height, and waged a successful contest with the Empire, were men, in general, of austere, if not ascetic morals, of high endowments, and of commanding minds.

The chief founder of the spiritual autocracy, Hildebrand, lies beyond the sphere of the present history; we await with eager interest the long-promised life of him by M. Villemain. But among the opponents of the Swabian emperors, rank, perhaps, the ablest as well as the most ambitious of his descendants, Innocent III.; and that extraordinary pontiff, Gregory IX., who, ascending the papal throne when past the age of eighty, for nearly twenty years waged an obstinate and almost incessant strife with the most

active,

active, powerful, and daring of the Cæsars of Germany. His successor, Innocent IV., pursued with equal vigour and address, and with better fortune, his hostile policy, until the fatal blow which eventually led to the extinction of the house of Hohenstaufen, or, as out of Germany it is usually styled, of Swabia.

On the other hand, this family, from the time that it emerged from its peaceful valley, and exchanged its rock-hung castle, first for the seat of Prince of the Empire, afterwards for the imperial throne of Charlemagne, gave birth to a succession of princes worthy to cope with their spiritual antagonists in that great contest. Though at length worsted, they fell with dignity. The severe and impartial truth of history cannot but do justice to their high and kingly qualities.

' Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni.’ The two Fredericks, Barbarossa, the warlike invader of the liberties of Italy, and the accomplished Frederick II., are among the most remarkable men of the middle ages. Barbarossa was the model of a feudal sovereign. Brave, generous, jealous of his imperial rights, and impatient of any infringement of his supremacy by plebeian and commercial burghers; still, even in the fierce warfare which he waged against the Lombard republics, he displayed the placability no less than the haughtiness of a lofty mind, bearing prosperity without insolence, and discomfiture with dignity. Frederick II. was born at least two centuries too early; forced by the circumstances of the time, and by his own bold and inquiring mind, into a premature discovery of the mysteries of ecclesiastical tyranny, which led only to a vain struggle, and involved himself and his line in ruin-had he fallen on the age of Charles V. by placing himself at the head of the then mature and inevitable reformation, he might, perhaps, have spared Europe a long period of bloodshed and anarchy.

The rise and fall of the house of Swabia are singularly adapted to form a great and harmonious historic composition. The subject offers a distinct and definite whole. As the rise of the Hohenstaufen line was rapid and brilliant, so was its termination abrupt and complete. The history of this kingly family might form a great Shakspearian drama; it has within itself a perfect unity of interest; or rather, it might spread out into a trilogy, a succession of historic dramas, rising in gradual development to the height of interest through the reigns of the two Fredericks-attaining the crisis of its grandeur in the victories of the second-and closing in the deep and tragic catastrophe of the scaffold of Conradin. The papal power might be represented as the divine Nemesis, the stern and inexorable destiny ever hovering over the devoted house, darkening the years of its highest might and splendour, and at length

quenching