their cause, it is manifest that the sentiments which this examination should leave upon our minds are those of profound com miseration.

As to instruction, we may receive it here, with much pain indeed, but with little danger. When we recollect how often unbelief allies itself with licentiousness of every kind, and thus makes its appearance under the most seductive aspect, we feel a respect for the honesty of such opponents of the Christian faith as do not disguise the bitterness of the fruits which they have reaped from the poisoned seed of their false imaginations. We have a comparative gratitude to those who place before us cases like that of Shelley, and the not wholly dissimilar instance now before us, where the records themselves, prepared by the parties or their friends for the public eye, bear demonstrative testimony to the incapacity of anti-Christian theories, when entertained in subtle and ever-questioning: minds, to supply any stable resting-place to the understanding, or any adequate support under the sorrows and the cares of life. Shelley tells us of himself, in those beautiful Verses written, in Dejection, near Naples,

Alas! I have nor hope, nor health,

Nor peace within, nor calm around.'

And he indicates in the Alastor' that the utmost he hoped to realize was('{

71 of

Not sobs nor groans,

The passionate tumult of a clinging hope,
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

1

Mr. Blanco White was happily distinguished from Shelley in so far that, with his understanding in part, and with his heart less equivocally, he even to the last embraced the idea of a personal or quasi-personal God, whom he could regard with reverence and love, and to whom he could apply, with whatever restriction of the signification of the words, that sublimest senti ment of the Christian soul

In la Sua volontade è nostra pace.'

Yet the only element of positive" consolation which, so far as we can discover, cheered his later days, was the notion that there was something ennobling,' something very dignified in a human being awaiting his dissolution with firmness! But neither had he joy on this side of the grave, nor any hope that would bear his own scrutiny on the other. For, of the first, he repeatedly tells us that to live was torment, that he dreaded the idea of any improve. ment in his health, that nothing but the conviction of the criminality

Paradiso, c. iv. + Life, III., p. 36.

‡lb., pp. 3, 4, 45, 85, 47, 53, 163 and alibi, 192, 2, 11p

of

of the act kept him from self-destruction. Of the second, again, it is indeed true that his affections still struggled against the devouring scepticism of his understanding; and, as he had formerly tried to persuade himself of the doctrine of the Trinity, so he tries to persuade himself to the last that he will in some way exist after death.* God cannot,' he says, 'have formed his intellectual creatures to break like bubbles and be no more.' But others, as far advanced as himself in the destruction of faith, have made efforts as vigorous to keep some hold of some notion of immortality. Thus Shelley has written with great force :

'Nought we know dies. Shall that alone which knows,
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath

By sightless lightning?'†

And from other passages of the work before us it is too plain that Mr. Blanco White did not believe in his own personal immortality: Indeed, that is an idea which he selects for ridicule from his sickbed: P. P., clerk of the parish, must be the same identical individual throughout eternity; the same are every one of his neighbour's wishes; against which wishes there are difficulties which every reflecting man must find insuperable.' And we must observe in passing, that this is one of very many instances in which he states the most startling opinions as certainly true in the view of the illuminated portion of mankind, without having anywhere attempted any substantive exposition of their grounds. So again he declares, there is not one philosophical principle upon which the immortality of Mr. A. and Mrs. B. can be established.' § So much for his expectation: and as to his desire, he says (April, 1839)—

Most of my thoughts are melancholy forebodings, which I cannot entirely dispel, but am obliged to let them pass like dark clouds over my mind.'

So early, indeed, as in 1837, he had written with a more fearful clearness,

'I feel as if an eternal existence was already an insupportable burden laid upon my soul.' ¶

And he says again, in 1840,—

'I feel oppressed by the notion of eternal existence, even when the absence of evil is made one of its conditions.'**

It is true, indeed, as we have already said, that he retained his resignation; and it was not altogether that of Stoic pride-it had also features of a Christian tenderness: so much the more is it remarkable, so much the more is his example useful for our

warning, when we find that resignation itself had lost the power which it never fails to exert on behalf of the Christian: it could not take the sting from death, nor the victory from the grave; it could not engender hope. Little, then, as we have to fear from the posthumous influence of Mr. Blanco White, through the medium of his arguments, if they be carefully and calmly sifted, we have as little to apprehend from any appeals which his history may make to our passions and our grosser nature, To a blinded pride, doubtless, it may offer incense; but it brings with it no small correction in the mental oppression and misery which it discloses.

Upon the whole, we are very deeply impressed with the value and importance of the lessons which this history of a sceptical mind imparts and enforces. We have indeed exhibited only a few of the incongruities of its philosophy; but as they stand in the original, if not as they appear in our pages, they afford a strong collateral witness to the truth by showing the self-destructive character of infidel speculations. It may well increase our humility to mark the fall of a man to whom many of us will be ready to own themselves morally inferior; and the letters of that golden text, 'Be not high-minded, but fear,' seem as if they stood forth from every page. It may well fortify our faith, when we observe the desolating and exhausting power with which unbelief lays waste the mind of its victim, and the utter shipwreck that it made of happiness along with faith. It is not, however, only in favour of the general notion of Christianity, as against those who deny it, that Mr. Blanco White bears his strong though negative and involuntary witness: it is in favour of Christianity unmutilated and entire, as against the generalised and enfeebled notion of it; of that Christianity in which the Word and the Church, the supreme law and the living witness and keeper of that law, apply to the one inveterate malady of the race of Adam its one divine unfailing remedy. For thus much we conceive is clearly proved, with regard to his life in this country, by the work before us, if it were previously in doubt: the faith of the English Church he never left, for he had never held it. He joined himself indeed, and we doubt not with sincere intention, to her communion, and he subscribed her formularies; but he never mastered the idea which they at least represent, if it be more faintly discernible in the practice of her children-the idea of a Reformed Catholic Christianity.

ART. VIII.

ART. VIII.-1. Esprit des Institutions Militaires. Par le Maréchal Marmont, Duc de Raguse. Paris. 1845.

2. History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815. By Capt. W. Siborne. 2 Vols. 8vo. (with Plans). London. 1844.

3. The Fall of Napoleon: an Historical Memoir. By Lieut.Col. Mitchell. 3 Vols, post Svo. London. 1845.

"THE

THE work which I publish is the last contribution I can offer, at the close of my life, to the profit of a science which I have cultivated always with ardour, and a profession I have pursued with passion.'-Marmont-Preface, p. vi.

These are the words of one whose name occupies a place in the military history of the age sufficiently conspicuous to entitle the work they announce to high consideration. Of the Marshal's professional career we have heard nothing which can diminish the respect due to the twenty campaigns which he proudly refers to as the groundwork of his present lucubrations. In a national point of view we have no recollections to disturb the satisfaction with which we can

Smile to see reflection's genial ray

Gild the calm close of valour's various day.'

If in the eyes of some of his countrymen three days of unmerited misfortune are to be balanced against years of unquestioned devotion, we can only wish to recognize in that stormy sunset the light of a soldier's fidelity to the standard to which he had pledged the sacramentum militare. It is therefore in no hostile or wrangling spirit, and, as we trust we shall show, on no idle grounds, that in the course of observations which the authority of his name and the literary merits of his work invite from us, and which will be consistent with the respect due to that authority in matters of opinion, we shall give an unceremonious contradiction to one misstatement of fact which disfigures the volume.

The work opens with a brief essay on the subject of military' literature, in which the Marshal disposes of the ancients as profound, indeed, but utterly inapplicable to the purposes of modern instruction, and of the moderns as, with few exceptions, superficial and deficient. It would appear that in France at least military Boyles and Temples are still to be found, who are fond enough of classical antiquity to indulge in the reveries of Folard and other military antiquarians of the reign of Louis XIV. We must ourselves plead guilty to a boyish affection for the illustrated edition of Folard, with its pictured legions and elephants, and Canna's crescent, and the paraphernalia of Punic war. We admit, how

ever, that these are ruminations for boys or professors, and that men of action will hardly now go farther back than to Frederick the Great, or at most to Turenne, Marlborough, and Eugene for practical purposes. The classical antiquarian is more likely to obtain from the present some light which he may reflect upon the past, as Gibbon brought the experience of a militia drill to bear upon the formation of the legion."

Marshal Marmont specifies but few exceptions to his general condemnation of the modern writers on the art of war. The Mémoires de Montholon, dictated by Napoleon, Gouvion St. Cyr, Segur's Russian campaign, and the Strategy of the Archduke Charles, compose his list. Of the Royal Austrian's treatise he speaks, as do all the qualified judges we have ever met with, as a work qu'on ne saurait trop étudier. Of the Marquis de Segur he says:→→→→

I have read on the ground the three well-known narratives of Segur, de Chambray, and Bouturlin; in my opinion it is the first alone which gives an exact account of the manner in which things must have passed,' A high tribute from a soldier to the merits of a civilian's work, No mention whatever is made of Jomini-pronounced by Mr. Alison to be the first military writer of the age that produced the Archduke Charles. The Marshal, we suppose, has, like ourselves, the misfortune to differ from Mr. Alison. Cleared of the pompous charlatanerie of Jomini, and of the profound but useless disquisitions of the school which would take us back with the Baron of Bradwardine to the prælium equestre of Titus Livius, and the army regulations of Vegetius, the soldier's library is thus reduced to a narrow compass. We incline to the opinion that the present volume will be considered an addition of some value. It is a condensed summary of the experience of twenty campaigns, free from verbiage and the parade of science, which may be perused in an hour, but is suggestive of much meditation, and in some instances throws the light of a competent opinion on points of character interesting to the biographer and the historian. An example of this is to be found in the author's remarks upon Moreau and Napoleon. After ascribing to the latter the very highest pre-eminence as a strategist, he says

Moreau, on the contrary, whose talents have been so much extolled, knew nothing of strategy. His skill displayed itself in tactics. Personally very brave, he handled well, in the presence of the enemy, troops occupying a ground within the limits of his vision; but he delivered his principal battles with a portion only of his force.'-p. 15.

་,

Marshal Marmont cites Höhenlinden as a case in point. No better illustration is to be found of the military character and resources of the two men than may be derived from a studious

comparison