V.-History of the Consulate and the Empire. By M. Thiers. Translated by D. Forbes Campbell, VII.-1. Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie. Par Volney. THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER, JULY, 1845. ART. I.-Diaries and Correspondence of JAMES HARRIS, First Earl of Malmesbury. Edited by his Grandson, the third Earl. 4 vols. 8vo. London: Richard Bentley. 1845. THESE are the generations of the sons of Noah, and unto them were sons born after the flood.' Thus does the sacred historian refer to that grand disruption of the ancient world, by which the whole fabric of society was destroyed. The elements of human life required to be reconstituted: old associations were obliterated; old institutions forgotten. How idle had been the record of those gorgeous palaces, the abode of primeval giants, which were now tenanted by the monsters of the deep! Such is the criticism which, at first sight, strikes us, when we open four bulky volumes of the gossip and intrigue, the licentiousness and treachery, of those continental courts, which were just about to be overwhelmed by the deluge of the French Revolution. The cabals of freethinking courtiers; the deeper designs of Catharine or Frederic; the adroitness of Sir James Harris's counterplots at Berlin or the Hague; his occasional success; his usual discomfiture,-what is all this to us, who walk forth on the surface of a new world, and are rather interested with its life and freshness, than with the history of those metamorphic rocks, which constitute its interior soil? And yet for all this, the volumes before us have their interest. Let us be recalled by some historical Buckland to an inquiry into those effete causes which were the agents in such great catastrophies; and we cannot deny the importance of moral geology; we cannot but find it of benefit to revert to the facts which lie before us, in the order of God's providence, rather than, like the Dean of York, to derive our conclusions from unsupported hypothesis. In the letters and journals of our author, we are perpetually reminded of those glaring vices by which the great ones of the earth have, at certain periods, provoked God's punishment. We see the floodtide of republican fury let loose as clearly to overthrow and abolish the guilty triflers of the con tinent, as we can read the causes of the Deluge in the violence and license, which, in the days of Noah, overspread the earth. This lesson is taught the more remarkably, because Lord Malmesbury walked blindfold amidst all the warnings which surrounded him. No man has more completely illustrated a rule,which it was reserved for the flippant folly of a certain shallow traveller to avow-'from all display of sound learning, and religious knowledge, and from all good moral reflections, the volume is thoroughly free.' But we must proceed to a short account of our journalist. James Harris, the son of a well-known writer on philology, was born at Salisbury, April 21st, A. D. 1746. His father had dedicated his Hermes' to Lord Hardwicke, as a lover of that 'polite literature, which, in the most important scenes of business, you have still found time to cultivate.' He does not appear to have infused the same taste into the mind of his son. Not only are his letters absolutely destitute of any scintillations of genius, but there is nothing of that richness and elegance by which the most commonplace productions of a superior mind are usually adorned. Inest sua gratia parvis. A few ordinary Latin phrases a few French proverbs-these are all the signs of literature which replaced the learned notes of the Philosophical Disquisitions.' In particular are we struck by the absence of any acquaintance with that copious and original language, within hearing of which Lord Malmesbury passed half his life. Except in an accidental notice, that Pitt and Lord Mulgrave came to him one Sunday to interpret a Dutch newspaper, in which was announced the capitulation of Ulm (the public offices being closed on that day), we see no reference to any knowledge of the Teutonic languages. His phrase, that he 'translated it as well as he could,' (vol. iv. p. 340,) shows no great acquaintance even with Dutch: of German he appears to have been profoundly ignorant. His excuse is to be found in the prejudice which suggested to Goëthe's father his strange unfairness to all native talent, and to which Schiller makes so beautiful an allusion: Kein Augustisch Alter blühte, Keines Medizäers Güte, Lächelte der deutschen Kunst; Sie ward nicht gepflegt vom Ruhme, Sie entfaltete die Blume, Nicht am Straht der Fürstengunst. Von dem grössten deutschen Sohne It is somewhat strange, however, that the philosopher of Salisbury should not have given a more literary direction to the active |