strengthening the rising spirit of Protestantism. The characters of the great actors in the terrible scenes that were played, their principles of action, and the parts they performed, are vividly described; but they must be read with all their striking details. Amongst these will be found the circumstances that gave rise to the famous nom de guerre "Gueux," and the picture of the hot-headed, fanatic Calvanists employed in destroying the interior of the cathedral of Antwerp. We turned to the memorable trials of Egmont and Hoorne, which are related with as much minuteness as their great importance demanded. The cruelty displayed towards these unhappy noblemen, the striking illegality of the tribunal which tried them, and the iniquity of their condemnation will leave a most melancholy impression in the minds of our readers. Mr. Prescott reviews their processes with great ability and impartiality. The following extract The following extract is eminently worth notice; it ably portrays the Duke of Alva's character. After mentioning that, on the one hand, it had been reported that Alva witnessed the execution of Egmont from behind a lattice of the very building in which he had been confined, and that, on the other hand, Alva had been so much moved by compassion as to shed tears as big as peas,-they must have been as big as crocodiles' tears, says Mr. Prescott, in a note,-the narration is thus continued : I must confess, I have never seen any account that would warrant a belief in the report that Alva wit nessed in person the execution of his prisoners. Nor, on the other hand, have I met with any letter of his deprecating the severity of their sentence, or advising a mitigation of their punishment. This, indeed, would be directly opposed to his policy, openly avowed. The reader may, perhaps, recall the homely simile by which he recommended to the queen-mother, at Bayonne, to strike at the great nobles in preference to the commoners. "One salmon," he said, "was worth ten thousand frogs." Soon after Egmont's arrest, some of the burghers of Brussels waited on him to ask why it had been made. The duke bluntly told them, "When he had got together his troops he would let them know." Everything shows that, in his method of proceeding in regard to the two lords, he had acted on a preconcerted plan, in the arrangement of which he had taken his full part. In a letter to Philip, written soon after the execution, he speaks with complacency of having carried out the royal views in respect to the great offenders. In another, he notices the sensation caused by the death of Egmont; and "the greater the sensation," he adds, "the greater will be the benefit to be derived from it." There is little in all this of compunction for the act, or of compassion for its victims. The truth seems to be, that Alva was a man of an arrogant nature, an inflexible will, and of the most narrow and limited views. His doctrine of implicit obedience went as far as that of Philip himself. In enforcing it, he disdained the milder methods of argument or conciliation. It was on force, brute force alone, that he relied. He was bred a soldier, early accustomed to the stern discipline of the camp. The only law that he recognised was martial law; his only argument, the sword. No agent could have been fitter to execute the designs of a despotic prince. His hard, impassible nature was not to be influenced by those from their purpose. As little did he know of fear; nor could danger deter him from carrying out his work. affections which sometimes turn the most obdurate A chapter is devoted to the two envoys from the Netherlands to Spain, the Marquis of Bergen and the Baron of Montigny. No authentic evidence of the measures taken against them existed until the archives of Simancas, the repository of the confidential papers of the kings of Castile, were lately laid open. Bergen escaped the mockery of a trial, lengthened im prisonment, and a judicial murder by dying of a fever. Philip clutched Montigny the more eagerly. Catholic though he was, he had yet been guilty of the unpardonable offence of advising the king to show mercy to Egmont and Hoorne, and to other misguided heretics. He was confined in prison, and brought to trial. In vain, like the two last-named noblemen, he insisted on his right to be tried by the members of the Toison d'Or, to which order he belonged; a jurist was appointed to defend him—an obscure man; he was found guilty of treason. The Duke of Alva proposed that he should be executed in Castile, to prevent further excitement in the Netherlands. Immense exertions were made to save him; but the king was inexorable. He suffered Montigny, however, to languish a whole year in prison. Being then on the point of marriage with his fourth queen, Ann of Austria, and deeming that Segovia, the place of Montigny's imprisonment, soon to be the scene of the marriage festivities, was not a fitting place for his execution; that 'the funeral baked meats would coldly furnish forth the marriage tables," for the obsequies were. performed in a manner suited to the rank and character of the deceased, who was presumed to have died of a fever, he had him removed to Simancas, where the executioner dealt with him in the dead of night in his cell. Philip, when advised to have him taken off by repeated doses of slow poison infused into his food, objected that justice would not be satisfied by that mode of punishment: he died by the garotte. The duplicity, more than Machiavellian, of the king -his callousness and cruelty-can never be sur passed; they would scarcely be credible, if they were not confirmed by the most circum stantial evidence. We cannot afford to enter upon the subject of the memorable siege of Malta, full as it is of striking incidents. Our defeated by the heroic defence made by the readers will see how the Turkish power was gallant knights and their soldiers, under the command of La Valette, one of those rare men whom Providence raises up at distant intervals. The last chapters of the work are occupied by an account of the unfortunate Don Carlos, prince of the Asturias, and the recognised heir of the Spanish crown; his arrest, imprisonment, condemnation, and death, followed by the death of Isabella within a brief space. Notwithstanding the fresh light thrown upon the history of these transactions by the laying open of the archives of Simancas, Mr. Prescott is unable to come to a conclusion on the real motives of Philip's conduct in this affair that satisfies his own mind. It is evident that Philip had an aversion for his son, whose wayward and violent temper, and undisguised excesses, shocked and provoked him. The imagination has had full play in assigning causes, for want of evidence that could be relied on. A leaning towards heresy, a criminal pas sion for his step-mother, a design to take away his father's life, have found advocates amongst all classes of writers. Mr. Prescott, if he absolutely acquits Philip of having ordered his son to be put to death, yet considers him guilty of such harshness towards him as to drive him to despair. There seem to be evident traces of eccentricity approaching to insanity in the prince, if the documents quoted are entirely trustworthy; and we see no reason to doubt them. Mr. Prescott has fully rescued Isabella's fair fame from the charges that have been brought against it. With these remarks we take our leave of this admirable work. Miscellanies: Prose and Verse. By W. M. THACKERAY. London: Bradbury and Evans. Ir has been laid against Mr. Thackeray as a very grave charge, and it has almost been imputed to him as a literary crime, that in his writings he invariably paints mankind in its darkest colours; that, with jaundiced eye, he only looks upon the revers de la médaille; that as an author, like Rachel as an actress, he can only delineate the bad; and that the good people of his works of fiction are invariably fools. But surely this objection must proceed from one-sided, or rather, one-sighted, critics, who see only the more sombre pictures, and, somewhat wilfully, close their eyes to the highest lights and genial colours shed here and there upon his delineations. An avowed satirist, Mr. Thackeray, we admit, flagellates folly and vice with an unsparing hand; but with what a kindly worship does he also appreciate the noble qualities! Even his darkest portraits have redeeming lights; and though the title, "Every one has his fault," might be affixed to each of his works of fiction, a second one might be attached of, "Not so bad as we seem." He certainly never paints nature in its best looks, with the flatter ing trick of a fashionable artist. He photographs her with more rigid truth; and photographs, we all know, are not pleasant in portraiture of the human species, they show, with awful plainness, the wrinkles, and the hollows, and the ugly features. We are told that the morose and cynical nature of Mr. Thackeray's writings has grown upon him, and that he had more milk of human kindness in him, more geniality, in his earlier effusions. To this it might be answered, that a closer and more experienced study of his subjects has naturally given him more truth of colouring; and poor human nature would not find itself much more flattered by the remark. 1855. But here we have before us a collection of Mr. On re-perusing these papers, I have found them so stupid, so personal, so snobbish, in a word, that I have withdrawn them from this collection. "The Book of Snobs" we look upon as the gem of the present unfinished collection of Mr. Thackeray's fugitive works. His sketches of the characters of the time, in all classes of society, are vividly drawn, and drawn to the life; they are highly coloured, without overcolouring; they are replete with humour, without caricature. Several of the papers constantly remind the reader of the delineations of characters of his day, drawn by Addison in the "Spectator;" but we will not say by this that those depicted by Mr. Thackeray are, in any way, imitations. The genre of picture is the same; but the handling is as different as the manners of the two epochs, leaving only the general resemblance common to weak human nature of all ages. The handling of our cotemporary lacks, perhaps, the finished quietude of the "Spectator," but, in return, possesses a greater animation of colour, a greater variety of lights and shades. There is a healthy moral pervading these papers, which must, in its day, have taught to many of the numerous readers of "Punch" an excellent lesson, and, we trust, may still teach it again in their present form. The satire is pungent-all the more pungent from its truth; but it is so pleasantly and humorously conveyed, that the dose is swallowed before we are aware of its bitterness, and its curative qualities probably felt before we are assured that we ourselves have taken physic. The banter is straightforward; but the sneer is generally conveyed so indirectly that it is only the consciousness that it is deserved that tells us it was given. We are very much mistaken if much good has not been done in the modification of the general tone of what is called "society," in latter years, by these very papers. Without being at all inclined to be optimists, we cannot but feel a conviction that false pretension has very much lowered its tone; that humbug has dropped many of its borrowed peacock's plumes; and that folly shakes its bauble with less effrontery in our faces in the last few years. We believe in progress; we have faith in our growing wiser as we grow older; but, at the same time, we are inclined to give Mr. Thackeray a good share in the general amelioration of manner and tone in society, and especially by the influence of the "Snob Papers." We must admit that the characters he describes are as true to the life to-day as they were some years since; but, if the portraits be as resemblant as ever, we are inclined to think that the family features are less common than they used to be. It is scarcely possible to give any extracts of character among the many delineated. They would lead us beyond our length; and the difficulty of choice, where each is true, and each is entertaining, is almost a still greater obstacle. But we cannot refrain from culling from those pages where good feeling and childlike tenderness of nature prevail, and where the satirist throws, if not lights-for we find but little darkness in these pictures at least softer tones into his colouring. How touching, even in the midst of the humour of a quasi comic picture, is the following sketch of the poor devoted wife of the "Raff," where reckless extravagance and want of principle have plunged his family into the lowest depths of abject gentility! The wretched woman is supposed to be living in that refuge for destitute swindlers," Boulogne: She is hidden away in some dismal garret, patching shabby finery and cobbling up old clothes for her children-the most miserable and slatternly of women. Or sometimes the poor woman and her daughters go about timidly, giving lessons in English and music, or do embroidery and work under-hand, to purchase the means for the pot-au feu; while Raff is swaggering on the quay, or tossing off glasses of Cognac at the Cafe. The unfortunate creature has a child still every year, and her constant hypocrisy is to try and make her girls believe that their father is a respectable man, and to huddle him out of the way, when the brute comes home drunk. - society of their own, the which it is very affecting to Those poor ruined souls get together and have a watch those tawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that jingling old piano; O, it makes the heart sick to see pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs. Diddler, and and hear them. As Mrs. Raff, with her company of they talk about bygone times and the fine society they kept, and they sing feeble songs out of tattered old music-books, and while engaged in this sort of entertainment, in comes Captain Raff with his greasy hat on one side, and straightway the whole of the dismal room reeks with a mingled odour of smoke and spirits. How much of milk of human kinkness, however, was stealthily infused, is to be found, also, in the words respecting Country Curates, given in the apology for the consecutive papers upon "Clerical Snobs and Snobbishness." From reading the works of some modern writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's life was passed in gorging himself with plum-pudding and port-wine; and that his Reverence's fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling of tithe pigs. Caricaturists delight to represent him so; round, short-necked, pimple-faced, apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat, like a black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus. Whereas, if you take the real man, the poor fellow's flesh-pots are very scantily furnished with meat. He labours commonly for a wage that a tailor's foreman would despise: he has, too, such claims upon his dismal income as most philosophers would rather grumble to meet; many tithes are levied upon his pocket, let it be remembered, by those who grudge him his means of livelihood. He has to dine with the Squire; and his wife must dress neatly; and he must "look like a gen tleman," as they call it, and bring up his six great hungry sons as such. Add to this, if he does his duty, he has such temptations to spend his money as no mortal man could withstand. Yes; you can't resist purchasing a chest of cigars, because they are so good; or an or-molu clock at Howell and James's, because it is such a bargain; or a box at the Opera, because Lablache and Grisi are divine in the Puritani. Fancy how difficult it is for a parson to resist spending a halfcrown when John Breakstone's family are without a loaf; or "standing " a bottle of port for poor old Polly Rabbits, who has her thirteenth child; or treating himself to a suit of corduroys for little Bob Scarecrow, whose breeches are sadly out at elbows. Think of these temptations, brother moralists and philosophers, and don't be too hard on the parson. The other prose papers contained in Vol. I. of Mr. Thackeray's "Miscellanies "we cannot but consider as inferior to the "Book of Snobs." Mr. Thackeray never loses, as all his readers may know, the opportunity of giving a gentle, sometimes an ungentle, slap at the Irish. These thrusts are sometimes given so suddenly in his writings, in such unexpected ways, and from such strange quarters, that they have frequently the appearance of a species of mania, bursting out when one is least prepared for it. Among the pieces in verse in this we have five under the head of "Lyra Hibernica," written in his richest brogue, full of humour withal, and, as minor satirical attacks, to be very well classed under the head of "Fair Play," not only as regards the objects of the playful satire, but the reader. But we consider the long series of papers, denominated "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan" as not entitled to the above-mentioned shield, more especially as regards the peruser of the pages. Major Gahagan is a species of Irish Baron Munchausen in India. As boys, we have laughed at the wonderful deeds of the original baron; and in later life we have admired the inventive powers of their compiler, which are not without their poetry. But, though a chapter or two of Major Gahagan" are amusing enough, the boastings of the Irish major become wearisome, when continued in so prolonged a series; the interest is insufficient for the length of the story; and the repetition of the same fatuities, without any of that extraordinary charm which has made the old baron a classical character, palls wofully upon the strongest appetite either for the marvellous, or for satirical attacks upon our brothers in the Emerald Isle. 66 Two other stories fill up the collection of prose writings in the first volume of the "Miscellanies." We are not well informed upon 66 the subject; but we should conjecture, from internal evidence, that they were written for Punch's Almanac." They are both divided into twelve chapters, each chapter bearing upon each consecutive month of the year; and we cannot sufficiently admire the ingenuity with which each phase of the story is contrived to have reference to each month, and the cleverness with which the title of each chapter is made to bear the same analogy. The first of them, "The Fatal Boots," spite of some touching passages, is to us utterly uncongenial; and there is not sufficient interest awakened in any of the minor personages of the tale to compensate for the disgust excited by the unredeemed selfishness of the brute who is the hero. The other, "Cox's Diary," is far more attractive, although the history of the poor tradesman's family, thrown into what is called "genteel society by an unexpected, but erroneous, heritage, is not otherwise than common-place. The sketches of character are drawn with so much humorous satire, and the personages have so many redeeming qualities to weigh in the balance against their follies and their faults, that the story may be read with interest, as well as great amusement. We have said but little of the pieces in verse, inasmuch as we consider them as inferior in value to Mr. Thackeray's prose writings in general. The larger ballads and tales in rhyme cannot be placed, for humour and entertainment, by the side of the "Ingoldsby Legends ;" and though, in general, we have a horror of comparisons, they bear so great a resemblance to the latter comic poems as to force the comparison upon us. They may, however, be read with pleasant amusement. We prefer, with all our dislike to slang, those which we cannot but call the "slang" ballads of Policeman X. These humorous versifications of celebrated police cases of the day in which they were written, all containing some wholesome moral truth, possess a charm of their own, very much to be attributed to the originality of their form. The power of creating rhymes is striking, also, in Mr. Thackeray, as evidenced in his Carmen Lilliense." As a specimen of Mr. Thackeray's quaint humour in verse, we extract, on account of its shortness, one little ballad,—the briefest of satirical "skits" on the German sentimental school : SORROWS OF WERTHER. 66 Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter. Charlotte was a married lady, And a moral man was Werther, And for all the wealth of Indies, Would do nothing for to hurt her. A Practical Treatise on the Use of the Microscope, including the Different Methods of preparing and examining Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Structures. By JOHN QUEKETT. Third edition. London: Bailliere. 1855. The Microscope: its History, Construction, and Applications; being a familiar Introduction to the Use of the Instrument, and the Study of Microscopical Science. By JABEZ HOGG. Second edition. London: H. Ingram and Co. 1855. The Microscope, and its Application to Vegetable Anatomy and Physiology. By Dr. HERMAN SCHACHT. Edited by FREDERICK CURREY. Second edition. London: Highley. 1855. THE appearance of new editions of the above to hounds, or of miles he can trot in an hour— works affords us an opportunity of introducing all of them acquirements of importance under an article upon the subject of microscopes and special circumstances. For general purposes, their literature. The popularity of the subject such qualifications are useless, nay, worse, for renders it unnecessary to apologize, if we ex- they are expensive, to boot. tend our remarks a little beyond the limits of a mere notice of the books. We are constantly asked, "Where shall I go to get a good microscope? and what ought I to pay for it?" Instead of replying to the question, we will beg consideration for the case of a person who has time and inclination for riding, and means to purchase a horse, but knows little or nothing about either the animal or its use. The creature he wants, if we mistake not, is a plain, useful, active animal, quiet either in or out of harness, and quite sound. Such an one he may get, of almost any colour he fancies, for a moderate price, if he asks a friend to guide him who understands the matter; but, if he trusts his own judgment, he will as suredly find himself taken in; that he has been attracted by the muscular development of a dray-horse, the light elegance of an Arab, the long legs and sleek coat of a thorough-bred, or the mane aud tale of a hearse-horse; and that he has paid as much for one that is of little use to him as would have bought two horses of the kind he wants. He does not require one that will, on the word of command, fire a pistol, or stand on his hind legs, or shake hands with you-all very entertaining tricks, and interesting as exhibiting man's ingenuity and perseverance and the horse's docility and tractability. He does not require one whose value in the market is influenced by the number of tons he can draw, of stone he can carry It is much the same with a person who goes to purchase a microscope without knowing anything about it. He is seduced, by his just admiration of contrivances invented to meet particular cases, and to enable certain objects to be more clearly seen, into purchasing, first, an expensive form of stand, because he will possess one to which he may fit on all the newest improvements as he feels inclined to purchase them; and, secondly, the said new improvements, partly because his friend next door has them, and partly because his microscope is not complete without them. The result is, that he finds he has spent the largest part of a hundred pounds; that he sets off, against any regret that the recollection of such extravagance may occasion, the thought that he has one of the best instruments ever made; that he begins to think it almost too good to be knocked about; and that he ultimately does that which he should have done at first, namely, buys, for one-eighth or one-tenth of the sum, a small, portable microscope, which is much more simply managed, and with which he can see at least five-sixths of all the microscopical objects ever made. It is much to be regretted that the makers of microscopes have so long persisted in charging such enormous prices for good instruments, because it has by so much retarded the progress of microscopical researches, and, hence, of science generally. The profits made by these |