ditary associations it possessed, and the prescriptive reverence it so long enjoyed. But its last activity was only to render its fall the more decided; and it sunk without one among the people to sing its requiem. Neither its ministers, nor any of the population it kept in ignorance, knew anything of the learning which civilizes and refines the world-the arts that instruct, or the manufactures that enrich it. There was, in truth, no one single institution, principle, or system, that had any foundation in the affections of the people, or which, being in unison with their habits, might have been permitted through custom. Unity of feeling only existed in the people to find relief to misery by revenge; and Knox appeared upon the stage when the utter corruption of all morals, and the destruction of all social virtues threatening the total dissolution of social life, announced the approach of a time, in which a tottering society would right itself, by one of those convulsive changes in which history makes ridicule of fiction, by assorting new and strange destinies to mankind.

In the quiet solitude of Geneva, Knox descried the coming change, and with his usual decision he hurried to the scene. He was just the man peculiarly suited to the times. His actions bore the stamp of a far-reaching sagacity. A leader was necessary to give coherence to popular feeling, and to prevent it being frittered away in painful, disjointed, and fruitless effort,-to inspire a young nation with courage, and to mould them by fostering watchfulness into a reflecting people. Let us do justicebare justice to the men who effected the Reformation. After that event, we read less of the commission, and more of the punishment of adulteries, and the many crimes that occupy the attention of magistrates and the hundred mouths of scandal. We find a people from whom complaint was universal,—who had lost their independence and even buoyancy of spirit,-the manners, the character, the habits of a free people, elevated at once to a position, from which they could look proudly around on the depression of continental serfs. The orgies of superstition were followed by the celebration of the mysteries of that religion, which they left to a late posterity. They established schools, and purified our colleges; and learning, which had hid itself in long retirement, came forth from its inglorious retreat. Out of the grave of fallen superstition and ruined barbarous philosophy, emerged a gentle spirit, which amalgamated a society convulsed, and created institutions harmonious in their parts, simple in their pretensions, and pure in their character, which still exist, as living testimony to the just and philosophical foundation on which they rest.

The placid stream which now flows in a gentle current, bearing on its breast the fruits of an enlightened freedom, had once

been scattered in fruitless waste in a thousand rills. To direct their powers to a right convergence, was the duty to which the Reformers in resigning themselves, acquired their honourable immortality. It may be true, that in the herald's college they have no blazonry of arms, and their labours cannot therefore extract from sentiment a word of commendation, or their sufferings cause one tear to flow. But they had a pedigree to render them illustrious, and descendants to keep their spirit in existence. They could point for ancestors to the picture gallery of the wise of past generations, who had preceded them in rescuing mankind from the degrading thraldom, by which priests and kings, or the prejudices of a people, have kept in bondage human thought; and for descendants, they will find myriads ready to defend their memory when maligned. The degradations they suffered, were neither caused by forfeiture of public confidence or public affection; they were neither courted by folly or merited by crime; they arose from that iniquity of fortune, which, in the mixed lot of human life, will attend the best of actions, and which, endured with patience or met with fortitude, become the visible rhetoric of their virtues.

It was through them that the happy change came over the moral and mental character of society. Through their instrumentality the universal law of decay, which makes establishments, like life, decline, and whose corrosive influence was gnawing away the vitals of the commonwealth, yielded to the medicinal influence of a better system, which has given us so much healthy feeling, many centuries of ever increasing prosperity, the civilizing influence of literary and commercial greatness, and enabled us to outstrip the nations of the world in all the essentials which constitute a country's happiness. And yet the change was accomplished within the compass of a single life, by a people arriving at maturity, without the dull season of probation, or the inconveniences of adolescence.

Mr. Tytler, in drawing the character of Knox, has no sympathy with moral greatness. He feels not the high supremacy of the virtue of adherence to truth, amid the sneers of friends, the depression of exile, or the terrors of persecution. His heart is cold to the heroism of principle. He cannot appreciate the scene, when the humble minister confronted the Privy Council, deriving additional lustre from his intended degradation, and shewing us how a great man may be ill-treated, but not dishonoured. For the ruin of rank, and beauty, and ancient name, he excites our sympathies, and invokes the full volume of our compassions and our sorrows. He changes the accuser into the accused, and inverts the morality of actions, to obtain a judgment consistent with his prejudices. "On many occasions," he

66

tells us," Knox acted upon the principle (so manifestly erroneous and unchristian) that the end justified the means."-(Vol. vii., p. 331.) In vain have we read the History for occasions when he is said to have exemplified the principle, except the death of Rizzio; and in vain will Mr. Tytler urge that charge again upon a startled public. He will deal with it, as he did with his attack on the memory of the martyr Wishart, whom, in an early work, he accused as accessory to the death of Beaton— a charge which in his history he has abandoned, or frittered away in insinuation, which carries with it its antidote; and there we leave it. But he farther tells that Knox us, was fierce, unrelenting, and unscrupulous."-(Vol. vii, p. 331.) Fierce and unrelenting he ever was-but nothing more than a good man ever must against any thing that had the appearance of the conventional moralities of Mr. Tytler's heroes, or the crimes of which his heroine was accused. But that he displayed such feelings, as is intended to be conveyed, against what was right, is a charge which not one among the thousand calumniators, who have exhausted their time in invective and investigation, can place upon other authority than their own assertion. In the like spirit we meet the charge of being unscrupulous, which, resting as it does in the vagueness of generality, may be safely left with a general contradiction.

Nine-tenths of the Scottish people will read such things with indignation, and-were it not for the high respectability of the author-with feelings of contempt. They will find some palliation for them in his hereditary prejudices. They will consider it natural enough, that one who has worked eighteen years amid the mouldering records of other days-without being able, after all, to see the importance of that Reformation, which renders its history interesting not only to Scotland, but to mankind—has no sympathies with the recollections of departed worth, which shone out in a high and single-minded philanthropy to the last. They will look upon the author's performance, as they would they would upon any other of a school, which speaks any language of religion and morals consistent with the innocence of Mary and the infamy of her accusers; and when the interest attached to a new publication, by subsiding, shall have allowed this history to sink to its place of rest, the author will find, to his regret, that his fierce invectives have ruined nothing but the fame he is so anxious to acquire.

Far be it from us to act as the indiscriminate eulogists of Knox. Let his faults be censured with unsparing rigour, but let not his generous sacrifices and his manly courage be forgotten. In condemning justly the severity of his language, let it be remembered that it was a common failing, into which even Erasmus fell; and

in an impartial estimate of his character, do not omit the loveable nature of the man-his humour-his vigorous humanheartedness-the absence of all cant, or affectation, or maudlin extravagance-the utter want of all selfishness, which made him decline a bishopric from the best of princes-and his Christian humility, though the correspondent and friend of monarchs and their ministers. Do not sink into oblivion the fact, that flattery could not diminish his perseverance; that threats increased his ardour; that hatred, obloquy, and scorn-from power, that had the instruments to avenge-from friends, whose attachment was the first object of his affections-and from " his very familiars," whom his generosity had enriched-were the result of the sacrifice to duty; how he knew the cost, and, to the eternal honour of his memory, paid it to the full.

An impartial writer would narrate how, in the grand carnival of the age, strange masquerades were seen. It was through the Reformer's influence that feudal enmities disappeared-ancient party shibboleths were forgotten ancient enemies resigned their hatred. The people heard-became convinced-and, by their actions, told the sincerity of their convictions. All former contests were cast aside; all the past wrongs of clanship, transmitted from age to age as a family inheritance-all the license of a demoralized society-were swept away in the new current of enthusiasm, which left the deserted churches of popery, the funeral mementos of departed superstition.

We have now exhausted all our space for any particular examination of Mr. Tytler's history. We could have wished, had we been able, to follow him during the reign of James, when the tide of religious fervour had subsided, and the whole power of Government was employed to raise a bulwark against its flow a second time. This, however, we must leave to the judgment of Mr. Tytler's readers, and shall, at present, close our strictures with a few observations on the general characteristics of the later volumes of this History.

In reading the account of the Reformation, its causes and its results, one's feelings of indignation at the perverted narrative yield to an artistic feeling of anger, at the mode in which the author has spoilt so fine a subject. We would have submitted to abuse had it been boldly done; and the history of the Reformation would not have appeared so utterly distasteful if we could find a thorough appreciation of its importance, whether for good or evil. But the historian seems entirely to have overlooked it. He gives us a few biographies, and forgets the history of a people; and the parties honoured are, of course, the illutrious who had handles to their names. It is absolutely amazing,

VOL. IV. NO. VII.

D

with Robertson's introduction to the history of Charles V. before him, how he missed the finest subject for historical dissertation yet left to modern industry. What a noble chapter it would have made, if, instead of all this rubbish of quotation from the letters of Lord Mighty and the Duke of Craft, and the Queen of Policy, he had patiently set himself down to inform us of the state of social existence, and religious feeling and learning, in the eventful years which preceded and followed the Revolution. How interesting it would have been had he followed the example of Robertson with regard to the state of Germany in the days of Luther; had he taken each class of the community and told their story-the private lives of the clergy, for example-their virtues or their venality, their ignorance, their profligacy of manners, their persecuting spirit. How admirably he could have displayed his learning, and amused his readers, by entering their libraries and giving us a peep of the foolish literature lying there; or by introducing us to the conversation of these gross and lazy priests, who slumbered and woke to eat and drink and slumber again. His readers would have laughed with him at their mutual accusations and recriminations; and following them into their private chambers he could have told us many a moral lesson from their secret doings. People are never so wicked as during a general mortality, or the ravages of the plague; and sailors get drunk as the vessel sinks. Hence the numerous incidents such as that which marked the close of the Popish Bishopric of Aberdeen, in which the holy bishop accused the Chapter of lukewarmness towards heresy, and they retorted by calling upon him to cause his churchmen" reform their shameful lives, and remove their open concubines;" and more especially that he, the Apostolic Father himself, "would have the goodness to show an example by abstaining from the company of the gentlewoman with whom he was greatly slandered.”—(Keith, pref, p. 11.) Nay, it might not be uninteresting to add a sketch of that most consummate of Popish abominations, auricular confession; and the clamorous canon of a provincial council might be quoted, wherein the confessors were directed to hear the penitent patiently, and not to look too often in the face, particularly if a woman. He could have added, at the same time, a short account of the mode of generation of new saints, and the concoction of holy relics; and a graphic narrative might be given of the mode in which the humble votaries at the many shrines gazed with wonder at the priestly jugglers, deposited

*

"In audiendo confessionem, sacerdos habeat vultum humilem, et oculos ad terras demissos; nec sæpius indiscrete faciem respiciat confitentis, et maxime mulieris."-Can. 76 of the Canons published by Hailes.