and Arlington hated each other at all times, broke down, these men, so thoroughly corrupt, yet so remarkably agreeable, were turned for the time into friends. "The Lapland knots are untied," wrote Ashley to a friend," and we are in horrid storms; those that hunted together now hunt one another; but at horse-play the master of the horse must have the better." Alluding to Buckingham's appointment as master of the horse.

After the dismissal of Lauderdale and the impeachment of Arlington, Shaftesbury, whose conduct on this occasion has been defended (and it requires defence) retired to his seat at St. Giles's, Wiinborne, Dorsetshire. Here he lived with dignity and hospitality. He was one of the most fascinating men of his time, and his conversational powers were such that Charles II. delighted in his society. Therefore we may imply that his discourse was not of the most straightlaced character. In his leisure Shaftesbury occupied himself in beginning an improvement of the Liturgy for the consideration of the bishops, for he conceived that it was not so sacred "being drawn up by men the other day," that it might not be improved. Amongst the fragments of his papers there is a selection of psalms for particular services in the church, said to be admirably chosen. Such and so various was his knowledge, and so true was King Charles's remark "that Shaftesbury had more law than all his judges and more divinity than all his bishops." But the days of Shaftesbury were not destined to be passed in peaceful lucubrations. In 1676-7 he was imprisoned in the Tower with Buckingham for a breach of privilege of the House of Lords, and was confined there long after his fellow-prisoners had been released. He calls himself, in one of his letters at this time, "an infirm old man shut up in a winter's prison." And, indeed, his confinement was a most oppressive act. But he was henceforth the subject of plots, and the victim, a sturdy one nevertheless, of cabals and intrigues; and his conduct, in relation to the Bill of Exclusion, drawn by Shaftesbury, and his espousal of the cause of the Duke of Monmouth, sent him again to the Tower. This time he was followed by crowds of well

wishers among the people.

"God

bless your lordship," cried one of them," and deliver you from your enemies." "I thank you, sir," replied the aged statesman, with a smile, "I have nothing to fear; they have. Therefore pray to God to deliver them from me.'

A few days afterwards, on receiving a visit from one of the Roman Catholic lords, he observed, in reply to a question pretending surprise at his being in the Tower, "I have been lately indisposed with an ague, and came hither to take some Jesuits' powder" (bark). He was indicted for high treason, but the grand-jury, consisting of London citizens and merchants, threw out the bill, and bonfires and bells celebrated his safety, as the safety of the Protestant religion in England. Charles, as it is well known, was greatly irritated at his defcat. "I am the last man," he remarked, bitterly, "to have law and justice in the whole nation." So blinded does the moral sense become; nor did the monarch deem it beneath him to suggest to Dryden, then starving, the poem of the Medal, in which, for a hundred broad pieces, that great perverted genius penned another anathema against Shaftesbury. The Medal was dedicated to the Whigs. "Rail at me abundantly," said Dryden, in his dedication; "and not to break custom, do it without wit."

He

Shaftesbury was playing at cards with his countess when he was informed that the bill was thrown out. He then braced himself for action, and endeavoured to incite the people to an insurrection. Such were now -so mutable is human nature-the sentiments of a man who was once in the dark secrets of the Cabal. jested upon his age and infirmities, and, offering to head the revolt, remarked that he could not run away, but could die at the head of the people better than on a scaffold. He was soon obliged to fly the kingdom, and, disguising himself as a Presbyterian minister, he took a last leave of his lady and his friends, and escaped to Harwich, and thence to Amsterdam. Ilere he intended to reside, but fate willed it otherwise. He was attacked by the gout, and died an exile from his country, as, unhappily, too many better men than he in those days

were obliged to do, on the 21st January, 1683. A ship, hung with mourning and adorned with streamers and escutcheons, conveyed his remains to England. Inconsistent and scheming, yet not venal, Shaftesbury has found some advocates. He was, however, a subtle, if not a bad man, of doubtful patriotism, which only sprang up when court favour deserted him, and of principles dubious in all things. That he was the friend and patron of Locke is the best eulogium; that he was the promoter of religious toleration his clearest merit. Yet it was, perhaps, too truly said of Shaftesbury that "he made the pretences of liberty the stirrup to get up, and religion the steed he rode in pursuit of his monstrous designs." To Shaftesbury we owe the Habeas Corpus Act, and an endeavour, at that time unsuccessful, to render the judges independent of the crown. His forbearance, or indifference to the satires of Dryden, who makes him the hero of his Absalom and Ahithophel, is worthy of admiration, *for severe was the law of libel in those days.

In his religious opinions Shaftesbury was suspected of deism. One day, as Speaker Onslow relates, he was speaking in a low voice to a friend whilst a female relation sat in a distant part of the room. Forgetting the lady's presence, Shaftesbury at last remarked, "Men of sense are all of one religion." The lady turned round quickly, " And what religion is that ""That, madam," answered the earl, quickly, "men of sense will never tell." It is remarkable that the son of this gifted man was nearly a fool, and that nature, resting awhile, as it seemed, produced not until the next generation an intellect worthy of being akin to that of the first Earl of Shaftesbury.

Such was the Cabal. "For awhile it had sailed with a prosperous gale," so says Rapin, whom the interest of the subject has betrayed into a simile, on a shore famous for shipwrecks without meeting any impediments.

66

But at last they were stopped in their course by a rock which it was not possible to avoid-I mean the parliament." The Cabal was dissolved 1672-3, when the utter shamelessness of the men who composed it was manifest. Shaftesbury, as we have seen, gave up his former associates upon pretext of patriotism; Arlington disgracefully deserted his party; Clifford resigned his office as treasurer and died; Buckingham, by all manner of treacheries and falsehoods, saved himself from impeachment. When the king and the Duke of York heard the debates in the House of Lords, at which it was then customary for the royal family to attend, the latter whispered to his royal brother while Shaftesbury was speaking, "What a rogue have you of a lord-chancellor !" To which the king replied, "And what a fool of a lord-treasurer !"

To return to the Lauderdales, the defeat of the Cabal broke one proud heart in Ham House, and, sinking under the weight of age, vexation, and infirmities, the duke died in August 1682. He was succeeded by his brother as Earl of Lauderdale, but his English titles became extinct.

The duchess lingered at Ham, where she, too, died in 1698, during a weary widowhood, for no third claimant to her hand appeared. Her eldest son, Lionel Talmache, succeeded her; and her second, Thomas, distinguished himself at the taking of Athlow and the battle of Aghrim. He was killed, however, at Brest, four months previous to his mother's death.

A long line of the Talmache family, all named Lionel, have since been the owners of Ham House, yet the glory of the place has been in some measure diminished, for Helingham has been the chief seat of the family since the death of the Duchess of Lauderdale. James II., upon the arrival of his son-in-law the Prince of Orange, was ordered to retire to Ham House, but he deemed an abode so near the metropolis unsafe, and fled to France.

HOMER, who, in the course of his "many-wandering" life, had seen many kinds of men, speaks of a surpassing thief, Autolycus by name,—

Ος ἀνθρώπους ἐκέκαστο

Κλεπτοσύνη.—Odyss. xix. 396 ;

and no one can doubt that the exploits of this gentleman were worthy of historic record. But Homer knew nothing of our modern literature, or he would have hesitated before awarding the kleptic palm to any Autolycus. We have brought to perfection the "art to steal."

To

steal? "Convey, the wise it call." There is no pillage which, in adroitness or shameless audacity, can equal that of the modern bookmaker.

And yet as the old Greeks could find excuses for the successful thief, so would we deal leniently with the successful bookmaker. So that he who robs does no great wrong to his victim, and does some good to the public, we, as the public's watchdogs, need not bark. In this category we must place Mr. Morell. Although a genuine descendant of Autolycus in the art of" conveyance," although a bookmaker utterly without conscience, yet there is so little evil in him, such calm, quiet procedure, and his purpose is so evidently the laudable one of instructing the public, that we cannot be severe. He is mildly unscrupulous; innocently, almost naïvely, ignorant of the "usages" of literature; acts dishonestly, but "means well." There is a sort of patriarchal simplicity in his tone which mitigates the censure which his procedure would otherwise suggest.

The Historical and Critical View of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century has been warmly praised by contemporary, who rarely praises any thing; and among other merits selected are," the extensive range of reading and extraordinary grasp of mind." These are truly the two greatest merits such a work could

possibly possess. Unhappily, the

work has neither. It is a review

article in two bulky volumes, and not a good article. It has neither the necessary erudition, nor the necessary grasp of mind. It has not even the necessary workmanlike ability which a bookmaker should display.

These assertions we shall proceed to verify. With respect to erudition, any person at all conversant with the subject would at once detect its slender pretensions. Except the English writers, and Cousin and Jouffroy, there is no evidence whatever of the author's having any direct acquaintance with the works of the philosophers treated of in his pages,-that is to say, all the German and French philosophers of note. The Italian he does not mention. We beg the reader to observe, that we by no means assert Mr. Morell to be utterly ignorant of their writings; but we do assert that he has given no evidence of any thing more than, at the most, a superficial acquaintance with some few, and with the majority of them absolutely no acquaintance at all. For the Germans, he has taken Michelet's History of Modern Philosophy in Germany; Chalybäus' Historical Developement of Speculative Philosophy; Remusat's De la Philosophie Allemande; Ott's Hegel et la Philosophie Allemande ; Sainte's Vie de Kant, and Histoire du Rationalisme; and one or two other popular manuals. For the French, he has taken Damiron's Essai sur l'Histoire de la Philosophie en France au XIX. Siècle; and only this one book, simply because no others were to be had! One peculiarity in Mr. Morell's work is, that he never directly quotes these his authoritiesnot, at least, as such. He nowhere gives the reader to understand that he is but quietly adapting from their pages such expositions as may suit his own. He once (vol. i. p. 206) acknowledges that he is indebted to Chalybäus for an illustration of Kant's views, an illustration, by the way, which is in Kant himself! as Mr. Morell would have known had

he been "indebted" to Chalybäus for no more than that. But he nowhere gives any intimation of his having used common manuals in the quiet and unscrupulous manner in which he really has used them. In his preface, this is all the acknowledgment he makes, "With regard to originality, the author makes very little pretension to any thing of the kind. He has used very freely the opinions and the arguments of other people." From this we are given to suppose, that although indebted to others for opinions, he is never indebted to them for erudition, since he is anxious to disclaim originality in the one, and does not mention the other. Poor M. Damiron, who alone is made to defray the "erudition" of more than two-thirds of the French portion, towards the close of the second volume, thus gains his meed of gratitude :

"The work, however, by which he is best known, and to which I beg now to acknowledge my own obligations, is entitled, Essai sur l'Histoire de la Philosophie en France au Dix-neuvième Siècle. This work, which has gone through many editions, and found its way into many countries, is almost indispensable to the study of the history of modern philosophy, as it gives, perhaps, the only com. plete account of the progress of metaphysics in France, from the period of the Revolution down to the present day."

Could any one, from such an acknowledgment, suspect that the author was indebted to M. Damiron for almost all his accounts of French thinkers (blunders included), and for all the passages cited? Moreover, so ignorant or so careless is Mr. Morell, that he talks of Damiron's work as coming down to the present day; and he has used it as if this were the fact. But, unfortunately for him, the work was published in 1828. Accordingly, any thing that has appeared during the last eighteen years, not being mentioned by Damiron, is ignored by Mr. Morell, with the exception of Auguste Comte, of whom he knows absolutely no more than he could gather from the Edinburgh Review article on the two preliminary volumes. Once or twice, also, does Mr. Morell avow that an exposition is taken from Michelet.

These occasional twinges of the

literary conscience were singularly ill-advised. Had Mr. Morell never condescended to name his authorities, we might have imagined that it was a part of his plan, or that he thought it superfluous to mention them. Having sometimes acknowledged them, it is suspicious to see the acknowledg ment so slight and deceptive. It is really quite amusing to observe a writer so ready to quote passages he finds quoted in manuals, and so reluctant to fatigue the reader by naming the manuals themselves! Any one rambling through his volumes might indeed wonder at the extensive range of reading displayed, if he did not at once suspect from internal evidence that it was all "conveyed." When you see a man so learned in the literature of a foreign country that he can quote from a newspaper more than twenty years old, it is high time to be suspicious. Especially when that writer talks with the easy familiarity of an old acquaintance, of men whose names he invariably misspells. As we are quite ready to substantiate these charges, if called upon, we need not tire the reader with detailed proofs at present.

One bad consequence of Mr. Morell's "extensive range of reading," being, as it were, bounded by Michelet and Damiron, is, that he can give us no account of works published since, or not included in those manuals. The critic has a right to demand, for instance, upon what plea Mr. Morell pretends to instruct us on French philosophy, when he is nose-led by that stupid, blundering old Damiron; and with what conscience can he, in a work professing to be a history of contemporary philosophy, talk to us of La Mennais last work, as Les Paroles d'un Croyant, which was published in 1834? Is Mr. Morell so deplorably ignorant of French Philosophy as to believe that La Mennais stopped there? Did he never hear of the other writings of that extraordinary man? Did he never see, at least the title-page of L'Esquisse d'une Philosophie (three vols.)? or of Le Livre du Peuple? or of De la Religion? If so ignorant, why so bold as to write a history?

The omissions, indeed, are unpardonable. What notice is there of Pierre Leroux, one of the most no

torious, at least, of modern speculators? Not a word. What account is there of that bold undertaking, Encyclopédie Nouvelle ?

a

Not line. What exposition of the doctrine of that school which calls M. Buchez its chief? Not a hint of it. What notice is taken of M. Cabet? None. Of MM. Bordas-Demoulin, Bouiller, Emile Saisset, Bautain, &c., what account is there? Not a single whisper. The truth is, M. Damiron has said nothing on these subjects, so Mr. Morell has nothing to say. The only name not mentioned by Damiron, which he has treated of, is Auguste Comte, to whom he devotes the space of five and a half pages, and those liberally adorned with blunders! Now what will the reader say to this? In two bulky volumes where twenty-three pages are bestowed on a writer so well known as Locke, who does not belong to the nineteenth century (of which the work professes to treat), only five and a half are given to a system which its admirers pronounce the most important since Bacon and Descartes! Certainly, if any where the reader would have expected in Mr. Morell's book to find something like a satisfactory account of this system, at least some indication of its leading features. Where is he to get any account of it? Mr. Mill, in his System of Logic, frequently quotes Comte, but was not called upon to give an exposition; and Mr. Lewes, in his History of Philosophy, gets out of the difficulty by pleading want of space for an outline of so vast a system. What plea has Mr. Morell? That of never having seen Comte's work!

So much for Mr. Morell's treatment of France in the nineteenth century. Germany fares little better at his hands. The names registered in Michelet and others, are, it is true, to be found in his pages. But pray consider this amusing passage which follows the account of Hegel:

"With regard to those philosophers who have put forth new ideas, we might mention Suabedissen, Hillebrand, Troxler, and Krause, as the principal; always, of course, excepting those who have taken a direction in favour of mysticism. The peculiarity of these writers is, that they have all made the attempt to combine in one the subjective and the

objective branches of the modern idealism, to unite the principles of Schelling and Hegel. Suabedissen has, with peculiar care, elaborated the philosophy of religion, in which he has combated the idea, that God is the eternal process of the universe, and deduced from the bare notion of selfexistence the proper essence, spirituality, and personality of Deity. Hillebrand also has bent his chief attention upon this same theological point. His great principle is, that God, or the Absolute, has revealed himself to us immediately in our own consciousness: to prove, however, that we can trust our consciousness upon these points, must be the province of philosophy; and it is in this sense only that philosophy can give any proof of the existence of a Deity. Troxler's philosophy is of the microcosmic order. To him the source, the centre, the object of all philosophy is man. truth and all knowledge is simply the revelation of the original elements of our own reason, and the reality which is im plied in them. The soul is a perfect mirror of the universe, and we have only to gaze into it with earnest attention, to discover all truth which is accessible to humanity. What we know of God, therefore, can be only that which is originally revealed to us of him in our own minds.

All

Lastly, Krause terms his philosophy a system of transcendental idealism, in which, commencing with the subjective principle of observing what exists in our own consciousness, he raises himself step by step to the acknowledgment of one, eternal, self-existent Being. To characterise these different shadings of the ideal philosophy of Germany more accurately would hardly consist with the brevity of our present plan, we shall, therefore, now take leave of this most remarkable page in the history of the world's philosophy, with a single observation."

What! inconsistent with the plan of a history of philosophy in the nineteenth century, which devotes 286 pages to a discussion of Locke, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, &c.? Inconsistent with your plan? No, Mr. Morell, you mean inconsistent with the state of your knowledge. Why not confess it frankly-you don't know what "these new ideas" are; and that is why you wisely say nothing about them. But won't you generously promise that, in case any industrious German should publish a history of contemporary writers, you will willingly extract some account of them for your next edition ?

But Mr. Morell's omissions do not