defective in moral; encouraging a sentimen- | to us most unnatural. Such things may Finally, then, "Dombey and Son" has appeared in a great degree to restore our confidence as to the moral soundness of this author and his recovery from morbid tendencies; and, on the other hand, to convince us that his reverence for revelation has deepened and is deepening. The first quarter of this work, up to little Dombey's death, is one of the most exquisite things in all literature; the sequel has great beauties, but suffers much by coming after it. Though we cannot understand the father's horror of the sweet sister, we can well understand why she should fail in replacing little Paul: we cannot attach that vivid interest to her which we did to the odd and yet so natural child, whose life and death are, from beginning to end, in such wonderful keeping with one another, and constitute in themselves a work of the highest art. But we have no intention of devoting a careful criticism to Dombey and Son:" it is, in some respects, better written, though with more apparent labor than any of the works that have gone before it. Its general purpose, to teach the valuelessness in themselves of the greatest earthly possessions, is highly to be com mended; and the character of "Mr. Dombey," which elucidates this moral, is drawn with a master-hand, though the portraiture is exaggerated. "Mrs. Dombey" we think overdrawn, and her line of conduct appears have happened in real life, but "truth is stronger than fiction;" that is, incongruities are discovered in life which may not be permitted in works of art. The probable alone is the relatively true;, though, practically speaking, the all but impossible may have occurred. "Mr. Toots" is a delightful individuality in his way, and his union with "Miss Susan Nipper," despite her comparatively low origin, is highly satisfactory. Finally, "Dombey and Son" is, on many points, an advance; and, taken as a whole, evidence to us of yet higher powers residing in our author than he has till now exhibited; not that we believe he will exhibit these in straining after the romantic and poetical. No; unless correct principles, moral and intellectual, religious and political, broaden and deepen within his mind and soul, he will, in our opinion, retrograde in future works. But so much is certain-there is no standing still for Charles Dickens: if he adds to his stock of realized truths he will advance; if he does not, he will be driven to take refuge in exaggeration to avoid repetition; and then is sure to decline, perhaps to fall. And now let us turn our attention to his great, in some respects indeed greater, contemporary, who, however, cedes the palm to him in various qualities of high art. For, first, Thackeray, though he has an accurate perception of the outward world in his way, cannot paint and describe as Dickens can; he has not that strong instinct of locality; he rather tells us what has happened than places all the scenes actually before us, as does the author of "Dombey and Son." Then, again, though he writes in the spirit of love, and though he has decidedly more of the serpent's wisdom, he is comparatively deficient in the harmlessness of the dove, He does not understand childhood in its ideal and ofttimes real purity and innocence, as does Dickens; his is a harsher, sterner view. He directs our attention to that "original sin" which manifests itself in the young child at so early a period: he has given us, indeed, one wonderful childlike and yet manly character, superior to anything Dickens has achieved in that line, we mean "Dobbins;" but " Amelia," though meant to be innocent and amiable, is really mean and selfish; and after all his exaggerated encomiums, the author is compelled to confess as much himself. There is not much unity of design in "Vanity Fair," for to this we propose to confine our remarks. The "Snob Papers," the "Yellow-Plush Papers," the is very deep and very sweet, and none the less deep and sweet because used with a certain "retinue" and reserve; never "set in for," as it were, but appearing to come unsought circumstances of the tale, and generally conveyed in the most simple, plain, matter-offact language. Mr. Thackeray does not deal much in the flowers of fancy. Those of sentiment and thought spring spontaneously and constantly in his garden; he seeks for no hothouse plants, no exotics, however fragrant; nothing is forced, nothing artificial; the very gravel which strews the paths betwixt the flower-beds seems as if it must have lain there forever. Dickens, in music, would be a combination "Travels, Irish and Egyptian," "Jeames's Diary," "Christmas Tales," and various papers contributed to "Fraser's," have possessed great merit in their way, though this merit has been generally tinctured by flip-for, arising naturally and inevitably from the pancy, and sometimes attainted by downright want of taste; but they fall far below the level of this one great work of fiction, "Vanity Fair." It is called "a novel without a hero." It is scarcely a novel at all, for it is sadly deficient in unity. Could we regard "Dobbins" as the centre of interest, we should, indeed, secure a beginning, middle, and end; but he is too long removed from the scene, and only becomes very prominent towards the conclusion of the book. Its aim seems to be to castigate the follies and lighter vices of society. "Rebec-of "Meyerbeer" with "Bellini ;" that is, of ca," who reflects them in an exaggerated yet the latter's simple melody with the former's pleasant shape, is the type of the "sinful strong effects, startling and dramatic. Thackeuse or abuse of this world," which is held ray is more equable, perhaps more genuine, up to contempt. bearing a stronger affinity with "Mozart." Thackeray is, in truth, a far more power- And yet there is the fairy lightness of " Menful moralist than Dickens; he understands delssohn," in his happiest moments, to be grown men and women better, at least in traced in Dickens's creations; and we must society; of the poor, of any, indeed, beyond not be understood to place them beneath the what may be called the privileged classes, more thoroughly self-consistent "Vanity he has exhibited little cognizance. Unspar, Fair." Dickens certainly sinks far below ingly, and yet lovingly, has he mirrored all Thackeray at times; he has done so in the the conventional vices of modern life. Who greater part of "Dombey and Son;" but he can doubt that the life of young "Osborne," | also, at times, rises above him, and soars to as here presented to us, is calculated to effect a purer ideal. Nothing equal to little Paul more extensive good among thoughtless Dombey's visit, and the children's party, youths, proud of their capacities for vice, and his subsequent death-bed scenes has, we than might he wrought by the most power-think, proceeded from Thackeray's pen. If ful of pulpit orators? Selfishness, under we balance, then, these merits, it would be every guise, Thackeray delights to hold up hard to say on which side the balance preto contempt; but, perhaps, he has never ponderates. Shall we prefer a beautiful pilloried it with more evident "gusto" in the spring day, with all the sweetness of that act, than in his portraiture of this vain and season of youth and love, overclouded at rather heartless fast young Osborne," so noonday, but beauteous at its dawn and glomuch admired by the ladies, boasting of his rious at its eve? Or the genial happiness of "bonnes fortunes," lighting cigars with love-fresh, sunny, healthful, delightful autumn letters, and slavishly imitated and followed weather-say in October-a frosty kindliby the wonder-struck youngsters of his regi-ness in the air, no raptures of delight from ment. By repeated strokes of consummate art almost the impossible is achieved. Recklessness is made to appear despicable and license mean. Well may Mr. Thackeray rejoice in his endeavors to effect such ends. If conceived and carried on in a spirit of faith and love, we scruple not to declare that they shall be a crown of glory to him even here. Such things carry with them their "exceeding great reward." The pathos of our author bird or beast, but an universal sense of healthful enjoyment; a little haze, perchance, now and then, here and there, but, generally speaking, a glorious day, leaving a sense of deep content and gratitude behind it? Both, no doubt, are good and beautiful; and for both may we thank the Giver of good things. But true it is, that Dickens has more of spring and Thackeray more of autumn. May they long enjoy a sunny summertide! From the Edinburgh Review. THE DIPLOMACY OF LOUIS XIV. AND WILLIAM III. 1. Négociations relatives à la Succession d'Espagne sous Louis XIV.; ou Correspondances, Mémoires, et Actes Diplomatiques, concernant les Pretentions et l'Avênement de la Maison de Bourbon au Trône d'Espagne, accompagnés d'un Texte Historique et précédés d'une Introduction. Par M. MIGNET. Tomes I-IV. 1835-42. 2. Letters of William III. and Louis XIV., and of their Ministers. Extracted from the Archives of France and England, and from Family Papers. Edited by P. GRIMBLOT. 2. vols. 1848. WE trust that among the consequences of the Revolution of 1848, we shall not have to include the abandonment of the great historical undertaking of M. Mignet, which we have named at the head of this article. It forms one of the series known as the "Archives de France;" the publication of which was set on foot by M. Guizot when he held the Ministry of Public Instruction. Its conception was, doubtless, recommended to the Royalty of July, as an engine for familiarizing to the public mind that revival of family policy in Spain, which the late dynasty contemplated so long ago, which was so perseveringly followed up, and which, at the opening of the last year, seemed nearer than ever to a prosperous consummation. But the purely historical interest of the Spanish Succession in the last century does not require the adventitious support of cotemporary politics. The age of Louis XIV., after every allowance for its corrupting accessories, is one of which European civilization is fairly proud; and among its best literary memorials we may place this elaborate exposition of its diplomacy. M. Mignet had proposed to give a full history of the negociations that either directly or indirectly bore on the claims of Louis XIV. to the throne of Spain. At present he has not advanced beyond the peace of N.meguen, in 1679. M. Grimblot, again, has given us selec tions from the correspondence between the French and English governments during the attempted arrangement of this question by the Partition Treaties of 1698 and 1700. The literary value of this work, also, is very great. Though its contents may not substantially vary the judgments which an attentive reader might have formed from the materials already published in the Hardwicke and other collections, yet it abounds in new and interesting particulars. While it has the immense advantage of presenting for the first time, in an accessible and popular form, a mass of documents which will enable every one to appreciate the national importance of the interests involved in that great question, the gallantry with which William III. confronted the vast resources and the disciplined intelligence at the command of Louis XIV., and also (we grieve to add) the indifference and ingratitude with which the English people requited their great deliverer. We should not forget to remind our readers that M. Grimblot is a foreigner, publishing in what is to him a foreign language. But he has introduced the collection by a preface, written in a style singularly correct and easy. It retains something of that picturesque antithesis and aptitude for generalization which form so attractive a peculiarity in contemporary French literature; but its idiomatic accuracy would not discredit any English writer, nor need we expect to find in any a juster appreciation of the most important points in English history. The greater part of the materials, now first published by him, are drawn from three different sources. We have, first, the correspondence between Louis XIV. and Marshal Boufflers, which preceded the peace of Ryswick, and in which it was long supposed that the first idea of the Partition Treaty had been broached. The Bentinck family have | Frenchman though I be, I look upon Wilplaced in M. Grimblot's hands the confiden- liam III. as one of the greatest characters in tial correspondence that passed between history; and I willingly say with Mr. Hallam, William III. and their ancestor, the Earl of that a high regard for the memory of WilPortland; and no one can peruse these let- liam III. may justly be reckoned one of the ters without heartily sharing the editor's tests by which genuine Whiggism, as opregret that such a thorough justification of posed both to Tory and Republican princian eminent public servant should have been ples, has always been recognized.' Was it suffered to remain so long unknown. We not he, in fact, that accomplished the Revohave, finally, the letters, (originally trans- lution of 1688? And this Revolution, what trans-lution lated from the Dutch by Sir James Mackin- was it but the triumph of those principles,, tosh,) which passed between William III. which in the language of our day are styled and the Pensionary Heinsius. Liberal, over those of absolute monarchythe great cause, whose brilliancy is at times. eclipsed, but cannot be extinguished-which under different names is debated in every land-which, if it must be said, has been triumphed over but yesterday in France, and on which I had fixed all my hopes and thoughts for the welfare of my country. Time was when we were wont to say, that since France had had the misfortune to have her Stuarts, Providence had provided for her a William of Orange, in a prince whose calamities I deplore too deeply to feel at liberty to condemn him. I only regret that he had too much before his eyes the memory of his ancestor, rather than that of the great man whose career presents to the gaze of posterity a far different grandeur from the miserable satisfaction of placing a Duke of Anjou on the throne of Spain." (Grimblot, I. xi.) Before we proceed to a separate examination of the period to which these documents refer, we must quote the following admirable estimate of Louis XIV.'s diplomatic compositions, with the addition of M. Grimblot's feeling and dignified allusion to the very different fate which in our own day has waited on an attempt to imitate his policy. They (William III.'s correspondence) lose throughout by the side of the grand, brilliant, and glowing style of the dispatches of Louis XIV. It is the imposing grandeur of Versailles in contrast with the meaner edifices of Kensington or Loo. In reading these lengthened dispatches, with their flowing periods, elaborate expositions, and inexhaustible meaning, we are involuntarily reminded of Bossuet. It must not be thought that these State Papers were the composition of a secretary. Written by Torcy from notes taken in council, and carefully corrected by Louis XIV. as they were read to him, they bear the mark of his singular genius for grandeur and éclat. To be convinced that to him alone is the merit of their production to be attributed, it will be sufficient to compare them with the dispatches written by Torcy in his own name, or even with his Memoirs; although it must be admitted that all secretaries would not have succeeded so well in conveying the thoughts of their masters. But it was in some degree the language of the period. The dispatches of Tallard, Harcourt, and Villars are hardly inferior in style to those of Louis XIV., yet they were all military men, but scantily educated. May we not say, with M. Cousin, Tout est grand dans un grand siècle?' We are surprised that no English writer should have thought of analyzing, in its full development, the controversy that was interrupted, rather than closed, by the peace of Utrecht. Of course, no Englishman would have the same command as M. Mignet of the French State Paper Office; but the materials that already existed in the published correspondence and authentic memoirs of such statesmen as D'Estrades, Torcy, Temple, Villars, might have been compressed and generalized into what the Germans call a monographie on this subject; and might thus have given form and method to the fragments of negotiations which are scattered up and down the pages of Hume and Lingard; and might have ended with that systematic examination of the treaties of 1713, in which Lord Mahon's work on the Spanish Succession is so provokingly deficient; for the question has as essentially an English as a French or European interest. Through the whole period that elapsed from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover, while the fortunes of England were still trembling between absolutism and constitutional government, our foreign relations, and especially those which regarded the Spanish Succession, constituted our point of attack with Catholic and Monarchical France on the one hand, and on the other with the invigorating sympathies of a free and Protestant Commonwealth in Holland. They associated us to the old traditional policy-a policy to which even Charles I. was true which absolutely prohibited the establishment of a French viceroy at Antwerp or Ostend; which revived for a moment, when Sir William Temple achieved, in the Triple Alliance of 1668, the one creditable act of Stuart diplomacy; and which was illustrated by the genius and heroism called forth in the great war of 1702. All the later princes and statesmen whom English history has emphatically and deliberately convicted of treason to the fundamental principles of our free monarchy-Charles II., the Cabal ministry, James II., Queen Anne, Bolingbroke-all were false to us, especially in the matter of France and Spain. All the names which should be graven on English hearts, and for ever frequent in our mouths,' the Republican opposition to Charles II., the Whig leaders of the Revolution, William III., Marlborough, and Somers, are now chiefly remembered in connection with their brave struggle to prevent a disturbance of the European balance, and to arrest the territorial extension and diplomatic preponderance of France. With Louis XIV., again, the Spanish Succession was the great business of his reign. It coincides almost exactly with the limits of his European supremacy. The peace of the Pyrenees was the first public act in which he personally intervened: and the last great event of his life was the treaty of Utrecht, by which the Maritime Powers recognized his grandson as King of Spain. We propose taking advantage of the two works before us to sketch some of the main negotiations which, from 1660, the year of the English Restoration, and of Louis XIV.'s marriage with Maria Theresa of Spain, attended the development of this question, till its settlement at Utrecht in 1713; one year before the accession of the House of Hanover, and about two years and a half before the death of Louis XIV. It may be as well to state clearly the nature of his claims to Spain. Louis XIV. was, by the Spanish law of succession, in right of his wife, the direct heir to Charles II. M. Mignet has shown with, we think, needless pains, that the Salic law never existed in Spain. We are not aware, indeed, that ever any such ground of exclusion was pleaded against the Bourbon line; nor was it probable that such would be the case; for the competing houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Savoy, all, equally with France, derived their claim through females; the two former from a younger sister of Maria Theresa, the French Queen; the latter from Catherine, the great aunt of that princess. But Maria Theresa's claim was barred by a renunciation, executed on her marriage in 1660, of all her rights to the succession; and the whole question turns on the validity of this act. In the original draft of the treaty, Maria Theresa absolutely and unconditionally renounced all her right to any part of the Spanish inheritance. In the treaty, as actually signed, Cardinal Mazarin contrived that she should renounce it "moyennant" (in consideration of) the dowry which Don Louis de Haro had stipulated should be paid by the Spanish government. It was agreed, by France, that Maria Theresa should renew her renunciation immediately after her marriage. That renunciation, however, originally made on the 2d of June, 1660, was never renewed. On the other hand, it had been stipulated that the dowry should be paid in three instalments-the first immediately after the celebration of the marriage. But not one of these instalments was ever paid. Louis was careful to insist on this failure on the part of Spain; and to contrast it with his own exact observance of similar pecuniary engagements. Each party ultimately tried to throw on the other the odium of being the first to break the treaty; but, on a strict interpretation, Louis seems to have had the best of this dispute. Subsequently to the peace of the Pyrenees, he certainly procured the ratification of the renunciation in several of the French parliaments; while it does not appear that Spain took a single step to perform her part; content to rely on the general accidents of the public temper, and, in the nervous language of Bolingbroke, "to sue for empire, in forma pauperis, at the gates of every court in Europe." The real answer to Louis's claims, however, was that other powers beside Spain were interested that her provinces should not become the appanage of a French prince; and that all the great states of Europe had openly accepted the renunciation as a bona fide guaranty. Louis, indeed, is proved to have felt this, by the very pains he took, first, to familiarize the English and Dutch statesmen with the idea that the renunciation was originally invalid; |