God, and honouring the King? Alas! where are they to be found? Not surely in the two noble institutions which stand in hoary antiquity and unreformed grandeur on the Cam and the Isis mighty in intellectual power and glorious memories—yet rejoicing in ancient and exclusive privilege, and politely shutting their portals against every class but their own:-Not in the Colleges of the metropolis, chartered by the State, yet depending on the casual bounty of private munificence :-Not in the University of Dublin, admitting to its offices and its rich Fellowships but a small portion of the nation: Certainly not in the Universities of Scotland-overborne in the metropolis by the incubus of municipal control;-degraded in the provinces by internal abuse, and ecclesiastical domination; and impoverished everywhere by self-plunder, or national parsimony. We do recognize them, however, if not in the maturity of their fruit, at least in the freshness of their germ, in the IRISH COLLEGES, those lighttowers of knowledge which a wise Government has erected in a dark land; and which, we trust, will be the harbingers of a Grand Intellectual Reform, conferring the noblest of all political rights the franchise of a liberal and religious education upon every subject of the British empire.

But while it is necessary to educate our youth in national institutions, under men of undoubted genius and learning, and with a high yet liberal tone of religious feeling, there is yet another duty which belongs to the State-a duty which it owes to the world as well as to itself. The arts and the sciences demand from every Government a more than paternal care. Statute cannot create them by its enactments: nor can royal patronage allure them by its favours. They must be the slow growth of institutions which the State supports and the Sovereign honours. When creative genius has completed its apprenticeship in the schools, it must develop its energies in the closet for still higher functions, or it must exhaust them in the ordinary routine of professional labour. Hence it becomes the duty of the State to endow National Institutions like the Royal Institute of France and the Imperial Academies of Science at St. Petersburg and Berlin, where men of the highest attainments in science, literature, and the arts, shall be incorporated, and unite their talents in advancing knowledge, and in aiding government in every enterprise where theoretical or practical skill is required. Such has been the policy of almost every nation in Europe but our own. Royal Societies of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, have been, to a certain degree, substitutes for the endowed institutions of the Continent; while the Geological, the Astronomical, the Linnean, and other Societies, supply the defects of the parent establishment. But noble as these institutions are-accomplished

The

as are the men that guide them, and valuable as are the transactions which they publish, there is yet a want of unity in their efforts, and, to a certain extent, an antagonism in their pursuits. When the noble patrons of science, and its opulent amateurs, stand in the same rank with its highest functionaries and its most active cultivators, their joint action must be feeble, however common and well-directed be its aim. A heterogeneous body is as defective in moral as it is in physical power; and there is a reaction among its elements, which tends to corruption or decay. Cabals will arise-incapable office-bearers and unqualified members will be elected-a system of favouritism will spring up the rewards of invention and discovery will be improperly bestowed-and men of high principle will retire, in disgust, from an institution thus mismanaged and dishonoured.

If private associations, then, thus characterized, have hitherto failed to accomplish what national institutions everywhere secure, how unsuitable must they be in the present day, when science, in its theoretical and practical embrace, has grasped all the great interests of the State, and is the only safe guide to their future development, and their final safety. With steam-ships on every sea-with steam-power in every farm and factory-with a system of agriculture leaning upon science as its mainstay-with a network of railways demanding for their perfection the highest efforts of mechanical skill-the time has doubtless arrived when Government should summon to its aid, and unite in its service all the theoretical and practical wisdom of the country. An institution thus composed would not merely combine the living talent which is in active exercise around us: it would concentrate what is scattered, and rouse what is dormant; and under its fostering wing, as the Home and the Temple of Science, we might expect, without the excitement of a revolution, to nurse a race of sages, like the Baillys, the Carnots, the Cuviers, and the Fouriers of another land-men who united the characters of the statesman, the hero, and the philosopher, and who, in the hour of danger, were the best defenders of their country. In the erection of a Temple like this, our present patrons and amateurs of science would either occupy an honorary place in the pediment which adorns it, or crown as ornamental capitals the Corinthian pillars upon which it rests.

ART. VI.-The Dispatches and Letters of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson; with Notes by SIR NICHOLAS HARRIS NICOLAS, G.C.M.G. Vols. I.-IV. 8vo. London, 1844-45.

WE do not know any edition of a work of this sort better executed than this is on the whole; yet we know no other such publication, the editor of which is more liable to animadversion. So long as Sir N. H. Nicolas has limited himself to perform his office of editor, he has been eminently successful, and his industry deserves praise; but when, led away by admiration for his hero, he undertakes to defend deeds which have met with the reprobation of men of all parties and countries, he inflicts a severe blow, not only on the memory of his hero, but on his own judgment. We say, " on his own judgment," feeling satisfied, that, had not that judgment been warped by a bias for a man of so high a reputation as Nelson, Sir Harris would have been the last man to take on himself the awful responsibility of apologizing for conduct which has stamped an indelible stigma on Nelson's name -conduct which made his most distinguished biographer say, that "to palliate it would be in vain; to justify it would be wicked: there is no alternative for one who will not make himself a participator in guilt, but to record the disgraceful story with sorrow and with shame." Thus it is that the severity of history, in the case of so renowned a man as Nelson, is almost disarmed, and his crimes extenuated as foibles inseparable from human nature, and almost forgiven, if not forgotten. But when a man, like the editor of the work before us, is so far dazzled by admiration as to defend atrocities unequalled in Europe in our times, it behoves impartial men to expose the futility of the defence, and to hold up to the execration of all honest men the criminal. It is only by the fear of posterity and of infamy, that men placed by circumstances in a position which enables them to defy with impunity the laws of humanity, of nations, and of society, can be deterred from breaking them; it is an encouragement to future atrocities, to uphold those of former times. The more illustrious the criminal, and the more respectable in point of talents—and still more in point of characterthe advocate, the more is it requisite to expose the misdeeds of the one and the sophisms of the other, and prevent either of them from lending the weight of their names to the defence of what ought

* SOUTHEY'S Life of Nelson, chap. vi.

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to be abhorred. National honour, and consequently national interest, demand it equally. Should enormities like those of which Admiral Nelson was guilty, pass unreproved, then, indeed, the nation might be said to make herself a participator in his guilt." Fortunately for the honour of England, this cannot be said of her. Such eminent men as Southey, Wrangham, Brougham, Fox, Alison, Foote, James, Brenton, and a host of others, have been unanimous in casting the opprobrium of his deeds on the responsibility of the perpetrator. Even his biographers, Clarke and M'Arthur, men not particularly scrupulous in defending their hero, were nearly giving him up. Of all the distinguished companions-in-arms and friends of Nelson, some of whom are still alive, not one has had the courage to stand up for him. When Mr. Fox, in his place in the House of Commons, reproved the conduct of the British admiral, not a minister raised his voice in his defence; and when Nelson complained so bitterly of the attack thus made on him, though his complaints were communicated to a Cabinet Minister,† neither the Minister nor any of Nelson's friends ventured to allude to the subject in Parliament, or send what he supposed his defence to the newspapers. Sir Nicholas H. Nicolas is the first champion of name who undertakes to defend a cause which no one hitherto thought defensible; and flatters himself with "the exposure of ignorance, prejudice, and falsehoods that more or less pervade every statement on the subject."§ These are hard words. We shall show that they are utterly uncalled for; we shall prove beyond question that no one has committed more mistakes, or has shown himself more prejudiced, than the learned editor himself. Far from us to think him liable to the charge of ignorance or falsehood! As he himself publishes the documents that will serve to convict him, it is clear that he cannot be liable to either the one or the other of those two accusations.

Before entering on that, the most important part of our subject, we shall offer a few observations on the historical value of the Letters themselves, and on the edition now before us. There is no question that these Dispatches show great enthusiasm,

*Dispatches, vol. iv. p. 232. Clarke, ii. 266.

+ Clarke, in a letter to Foote, said that Nelson's "reasons for acting as he did were carried by Davison to Lord Grenville."-Vindication, p. 46.

Nelson himself took his seat in the House of Lords on the 20th of November, 1800, but he forgot to notice the attack on his character from such a man as Fox, in such a place as the House of Commons, though he felt when far off that he was "called upon to explain his conduct," and wished to be set right by others in public opinion.

§ Preface to vol. 3, p. viii.

patriotism, loyalty, courage, and determination in their writer; as a man, up to a certain period he seems to have been a good son and a good husband. To his friends and companions-inarms Nelson was warmly attached, so far as his rather suspicious temper and uncommon vanity allowed him; his foible for Lady Hamilton caused him to be guilty of very unfair conduct towards those whom she hated the more for having wronged them most cruelly. To the influence which that woman had over him must be attributed the sanguinary and ungenerous sentiments that he uttered towards the enemies of his country; at all events, in early life he was neither so virulent against them nor so certain that the cause for which he fought had justice on

its side.

The enthusiasm, which we have observed to be prominent in Nelson's character, led him sometimes to express himself in such terms as are either ridiculous or utterly indefensible. Struck by the horrors which attended the evacuation of Toulon, he says,

"Then," on the troops and royalists embarking, "began a scene of horror, which may be conceived, not described. The mob rose; death called forth all its myrmidons, which destroyed the miserable inhabitants in the shape of swords, pistols, fire, and water. Thousands are said to be lost. In this dreadful scene, and to complete misery already at the highest, Lord Hood was obliged to order the French fleet to be set on fire."-Vol. i., p. 342.

This jumble is the effect of an excited imagination; the following is the consequence of inordinate vanity.* He writes to

his wife :

"I have just received the Emperor of Russia's picture, in a box magnificently set with diamonds; it has done him honour, and me a pleasure to have my conduct approved."-Vol. iii., p. 381.

On another occasion, giving vent to his dissatisfaction, as he often does, at his services not being acknowledged as, in his opinion, they deserved, and to his fear that they will go unrewarded, he says,

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'My country, I trust, will not allow me any longer to linger in

Those who have known Nelson, agree in saying that he was very vain,—a weakness not seldom allied to great courage, though universally supposed incompatible with it. General Wolfe was very vain. Sir Harris Nicolas will not believe that Nelson once exclaimed, "Westminster Abbey or victory," as it is "a gasconade very inconsistent with his character," (vol. ii., p. 342.) Yet it is recorded that the same idea struck him before the battle of the Nile. CLARKE and M'ARTHUR, ii. 10. 8vo edition.