same time to supply useful information to persons who have not opportunity to read his interesting account.

In order to render this justice to the author, and this service to our readers, we have also shunned the vortex of political discussion, to which the subject has such powerful attractions, especially as it has in this view of it been often very absurdly and calumniously treated. Very briefly then, we remark, that we judge this great scheme of colonization to have been expedient and for no other necessary than to relieve our country purpose from an obnoxious portion of its population. We are neither dazzled by the prospect of peopling a second grand division of the earth, nor allured by acquisitions of territory. Empires relax as they enlarge beyond the limits of their natural growth. Colonies must be expensive, and they seldom repay their cost. Extension of navigation, and improvements of commerce, are the only positive advantages to be expected from them: and these important objects, beyond the degrees to which they might otherwise be attained, we conceive to be adventitious, and even questionable. When colonies can support themselves they will no longer submit to controul. Their utility to the parent state, as seasonable checks to its repletion, is very small. Malefactors are the only class of our population that can be compelled to timely emigration. Malecontents, it may be hoped, will prefer it: but the more peaceable and industrious branches of a community commonly cleave to the native soil, till their transplantation becomes a matter of necessity, and consequently distressing and hazardous. They need, and they deserve every alleviation that can be derived from colonies already well established. The foundation of new ones is a suitable penalty for criminals; and the farther they are removed, cæteris paribus, the better. We owe to them provision for their immediate necessities; salutary restraints of government; means of moral and religious instruction; and full liberty to provide for themselves whenever they become capable of doing so. We are bound to no sacrifice, but for their preservation; we should demand no advantage but the continuance of that for which sacrifices have been made. Genuine economy is universally the duty of a state; but the hghest cost of transportation is in our judgment preferable to the multiplying of public executions, the thronging of our jails, or even to the aggravation of our poor's rates.

The more widely this colony spreads over the interior of Australia, the more efficient it will be for its proper purpose, and the sooner it will be likely to generate an internal traffic, which its remote distance from civilized countries renders of peculiar importance. Those who censure the position of the

colony, should apprise us of the existence of a navigable river that issues elsewhere on the coasts; and should ascertain the situation of its estuary to be more salubrious than the island of Walcheren, or the mouths of the Senegal and the Gambia. Should the river Macquarie reach the northern shore, there may be need of caution on this account. But we agree with Mr. Oxley, that "it would be as presumptuous as useless, to speculate on the probable termination of the Macquarie river, when a few months will, it is to be hoped, decide the long-disputed point, whether Australia, with a surface nearly as extensive as Europe, is, from its geological formation, destitute of rivers, either terminating in interior seas, or having their estuaries on the coast." (Preface, p. xv.) We learn, with pleasure, "that it is the intention of His Majesty's government to follow the course of the Macquarie river:" and we are confident that such an undertaking cannot be committed to a more effective agent than the author of the volume before us. Most heartily we wish him success, and a liberal reward for his zealous and arduous exertions in the public service. Whatever may be the result of his past, or of his future labours, he eminently deserves well of his country. We should neglect rendering honour to whom it is due, were we not also to acknowledge the obligations of the colony, and the British public, to the lively and constant attention of the Governor-General, Macquarie, to the discharge of his complicated duties. We doubt whether they were rendered at all less difficult by the stability to which the colony had previously attained, or will become so by its future progress. By this remark, we would in no wise disparage the well-earned credit of former governors, who very meritoriously surmounted numerous and formidable obstacles to the first establishment and the growth of the colony. Generally speaking, indeed, we think the conduct and character of those to whose charge our permanent or transitory possessions in remote parts of the world have within the same period been committed, have reflected honour upon themselves and on their country; and certainly not less on the higher authorities by which they were appointed to their respective stations.

ART. XVIII.—A History of England, from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII. By the Rev. John Lingard. 3 vols. 4to. Mawman. London, 1819. MR. LINGARD has undertaken a very arduous task, if a task can be rendered arduous, either by the greatness of the labour

new

requisite for its successful completion, or by the genius and talents of those who have already devoted themselves to the same employment. Some may perhaps think, that he would have done well to have exerted his industry and learning on a more neglected topic. Our native annals have occupied the pens of so many authors, that it may seem superfluous to examine or comment upon them now. No new facts, it may be said, at least none of any importance, can be discovered; for no fresh sources of information have been opened. Slight inaccuracies may be corrected; characters may be described in different language, and repainted with some slight variation in shade or colouring; events may be thrown into arrangement; the narrative may be expanded in one part, and condensed in another; it may be decked out in a fresh set of rhetorical ornaments: but in substance it must remain such as it is to be found in the authors of the last century. Observa tions like these, however plausible at first sight, have little solidity. If much has been accomplished in any department of literature, the greater should be our gratitude to him, who, with due preparation and adequate talents, attempts to improve upon the labours of his predecessors. The affairs of Greece had been the theme of innumerable writers, both French and English, many of whom possessed no mean reputation for genius and learning. Mitford, with the old materials before him, applied himself to the reconsideration of this trite subject. The result was a work, which throws a new light on the transactions of Greece; and, by holding up to all mankind a most striking delineation of the true tendency of democratical institutions, conveys lessons of political wisdom not to be found elsewhere in modern literature. It is not, we grant, every adventurer in the path of historical research, that can promise himself equal success, for few can match the sagacity and industry of the historian of Greece. But even when no radical errors are exposed, when the principal events retain the same form and colour as in preceding writers, there is always a probability that a fresh narrative may be an useful, if not a brilliant, addition to literature. For the transactions, though their essence remains unaltered, are contemplated in a different point of view, and with different feelings, by each different mind: so that a new narrative can scarcely fail to communicate ideas which no prior history would have excited. Still more does this hold true, when the writers belong to distinct epochs. A history written in the beginning of the nineteenth century will differ in many important respects from one composed eighty years ago. Each age has its prejudices, its sympathies, its systems, its fashionable and predominating truths. It has its

peculiar moral and intellectual atmosphere, which has a specific effect on the manner in which past events are surveyed by a contemplative mind.

For these reasons we deemed Mr. Lingard completely justified in supposing that the existing histories of Britain do not render his labours superfluous. These histories, if much more perfect than they are, would not take away the utility of new works on the same subject: but the truth is that we have no history of our native land which does not leave ample scope for improvement. Rapin cannot be considered as belonging to our literature, and is indeed no great ornament to the literature of any country. Our elder historians, such as Carte, are deeply tainted with historical party-spirit, to say nothing of the narrow confined views, which, though very excuseable a century or a 'century and a half ago, are extremely disagreeable to a reader of the present day. In short, Hume and Henry are the only classical writers on the general history of England. Hume's acuteness, elegance of narrative, and ingenuity of reflection, few can hope to rival. But is he not often inaccurate in his statements? Does he not omit important events? Is he not too apt to give way to historical theory? We admit the merit of Henry; but we suspect that he is more praised than read. He has brought together an immense mass of information, but he has breathed no life into it; it bears with all its vis inertia

upon the reader. The chapters on civil and ecclesiastical affairs are interesting: to wade through the other eight, requires much resolution. The arrangement which he has chosen may have added to the utility of his work; but has certainly diminished its attractions, by giving it an air of stiffness and formality. Besides, from the very nature of the plan, much repetition becomes necessary, and events are separated from all their natural connexions. A political intrigue may produce an important revolution in the church; or an ecclesiastical change may give rise to important political events. Henry gives us the cause in one chapter, with perhaps a slight hint of the consequences; but, for a full exposition of these consequences, we must transport ourselves into the middle of a subsequent chapter. In like manner, the details concerning government, laws, trade, manufactures, arts, manners, literature, all stand quite detached, instead of being woven into a continuous web. Henry's work, in fact, is not so much a history, as a collection of treatises.

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That portion of our history which precedes the settlement of the Saxons, has been treated very superficially by Hume. His narrative is just sufficient to connect the subsequent periods with that earlier antiquity, of which every thing may be guessed,

and nothing is known: but it leaves us strangers to the political division of Britain at the time of the Roman invasionto the government which that people established in it-and to the degree in which it influenced or participated in the revolutions of the empire. Of the little that is said, too much is said rashly. He represents all the inhabitants of the island as maintaining themselves by tillage or pasturage, though, in truth, a great proportion of them had not advanced beyond the state of hunters. Severus is made to repair Adrian's wall: the fact is, that he erected a new one, which, in the plain adjacent to the sea, ran parallel and close to that of Adrian; but, as it approached the hills in the interior of the country, forsook the old fortifications, and their windings among the valleys, in order to follow a more direct course. The inability of the Britons to protect themselves against the Scots and Picts, in the year 448, is ascribed in part to the misfortunes of Gratian and Constantine, who, having perished with the flower of the British youth, in their contest for the imperial throne, had despoiled the island of those who were best able to defend it. Mr. Hume forgets, that, as thirty years had intervened between the two epochs, the young men who followed Gratian and Constantine would have been old men in 448, and that there was abundance of time for repairing any loss that the popula tion might have sustained in that unlucky expedition. Mr. Lingard is free from the sins both of omission and commission, of which his celebrated predecessor may be accused. The first chapter of his work contains more information on the state of Britain before the settlement of the Saxons, than is to be found any where else in the same compass. The matter, which is necessarily multifarious, is extremely well arranged.

We pity both the writer and the reader, who are groping their way through the chaos of the Heptarchy. Admitting that Milton was right in comparing the transactions of that period to the combats of kites and crows, it is nevertheless necessary, in studying the history of England, to trace the steps by which the Saxons effected their establishment in the island, and the course of events by which a number of distinct principalities were gradually united under one head, and consolidated into one empire. This cannot be done without bestowing on the revolutions of each separate state more attention than their intrinsic importance would entitle them to. If, therefore, any should be inclined to accuse Mr. Lingard of tediousness in his second and third chapters, let them recollect that transactions, uninteresting in themselves, connect England as it appears under Alfred with England in the time of Vortigern. The plan adopted by Mr. Lingard is, perhaps, the most favourable to

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