critic must forbid the banns. The Icelander, his history, his language, his literature belong to European civilization, and are involved intimately with its early growth and diffusion. His poetical and historical Sögur contain the germs of the fictions and facts which form the history of Europe from the decline of the Roman power until the 12th century. His country exhibits the most sublime phænomena which the eye of science has an opportunity of contemplating in our hemisphere. The Laplander, on the other hand, is the human being in the lowest state of intellectual culture, wandering over a tableland of uniform structure and formation. The union of two such distinct countries and populations, into one subject of a literary work, is an union for which we are indebted to the bookbinder's glue and pasteboard, not to any natural, rational, or even accidental ties connecting the two. The honourable author, by attempting too much, accomplishes too little. From a residence of twelve months in a country so little accessible to ordinary travellers, and so full of interest as Iceland, we are entitled to expect something more than the ordinary account of the way of living in every fishing town in the north of Europe. Stornaway, Ullapool, Lerwick, or Stromness would afford a winter of storm and bad weather, out of doors; stench, dirt, dried fish, salt meat, and discomfort, in doors,-quite similar to Reikavig: and what else do we learn of the honourable gentleman's residence in the Icelandic metropolis? A visit to the Geyser springs, which every shipmaster who has a few spare days at Reikavig rides over the country to see,-bounds the exploratory enterprise of this traveller, residing twelve months in a country as extensive almost as Ireland, and of which the interior, and the northern districts, and the extent of volcanic agency on its surface, are scarcely known. Our traveller exerts great energy to reach a place, but this energy seems exhausted in the effort to reach it, and his travels end at the point where they should begin. Sir George Mackenzie, Dr. Holland, Dr. Henderson the missionary, and a dozen other travellers in our days, have given far more valuable and interesting descriptions of the country and people, far more important details in geological and statistical science, far more curious literary and hiauthor. Of 240 parishes in Iceland, Mr. Dillon appears to have been in three only, during his twelve months' residence in that country. To the other volume we have the same objection. The traveller's impetus in his reindeer sledge is so great in Lapland, that he cannot stop to see the Laplanders. We applaud the perseverance, the sound manly spirit which carries him through a journey of some thousands of miles, to attain his goal, the accomplishment of his enterprise; but we cannot laud the want of that spirit of observation in his progress, which the useful traveller ought to possess. The honourable traveller stops nowhere, inquires nowhere, reaches Allengaard on the north sea, from Haparanda on the Bothnian gulph, turns his sledge, after a few days' rest, and gallops back with the same relays of deer and horses-by the same roads-travelling night and day, all the way to Stockholm. We admire such powers of enduring fatigue, and so happy a talent for sleeping on the road; but the readers of such performances demand something more for their money, and it is our duty to support so reasonable a demand, especially as no want of powers of observation, or of expression, prevent Mr. Dillon from ranking high among modern travellers, but merely the common mistake of supposing that to travel, means, in the literary as well as in the literal sense, to be carried over a great many miles, in a great many foreign countries, with the utmost speed; and that activity of body is equivalent to activity of mind. But "a thousand miles in a thousand hours" is no accomplishment in Paternosterrow, no feat in literature. Nine out of ten travel-writers are couriers, not travellers. They give us an account only of their own condition, progress and affairs, not of those of the people they profess to describe. Mr. Dillon seems capable of more intellectual work than that of a locomotive engine registering the distances it travels over. With more exertion of mind in his future journeyings, and less of body, he will attain more perfectly the object of the traveller-some knowledge of the country and people he visits. Among the sins of omission, not of Mr. Dillon only, but of all travellers in Iceland, we feel sensibly at this moment, the practical, on the peculiar natural resources and economical advantages of the country. Can this volcanic land within three days' sail of our coast furnish the volcanic product-sulphur -without which many of the most important branches of our manufacturing industry, in which the sulphuric acid is essential, would fall to the ground, and upon account of which we are on the eve of war? The question must have occurred to every reader,-must have been the main subject of inquiry to many; but neither the philosophic traveller, nor the amateur of locomotion, neither Sir George Mackenzie, nor Mr. Dillon, give a plain mercantile answer to the plain mercantile question. Can this natural product of volcanic countries be found in available depôts, in Iceland also? and can any application of capital and labour bring it to the coast? The spirit of enterprise of our great merchants might surely be applied to the solution of this question-without incurring the name of wild speculation. The Danish government would probably concur in any fair proposal which could not but benefit the revenue of the state and the condition of the Icelanders; and a party of two or three competent practical men sent to Iceland in a stout smack, would at no great expense settle the very important point, whether Britain can be supplied from Iceland with this, the most essential perhaps of any of the mineral products not found within her own territories, to the progress and even to the existence of her manufactures? ARTICLE IV. 1. Lebensnachrichten über Barthold George Niebuhr aus Briefen desselben und aus Erinnerungen seiner nächsten Freunde. 3 Bände. Perthes, Hamburg: 1838-39. 2. Reminiscences of an intercourse with Niebuhr. By FRANCIS LIEBER. London: 1835. 3. A Vindication of Niebuhr's History of Rome, &c. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE. Cambridge: 1829. THE reputation of Niebuhr in England, though it stands higher than that of any contemporary philosopher, depends will be compelled to judge of him principally from his great work, which is an excellent sample indeed, but by no means an adequate measure of his various powers and acquirements. Even from this, however, we may perceive that his genius for historical inquiry is so peculiar, and in its kind so entirely unequalled, that it becomes desirable to understand how he learned as well as how he taught, by making ourselves acquainted with his original character, his education, employments and fortunes. The investigation assumes a higher interest when we find that Roman history, which he reproduced, occupied scarcely more than its proportionate space in the vast system of his knowledge,-that even to literature in general he could only devote the intervals of an active official career, and that of all the great events of his time he was a careful observer, and in some an influential participator. From his childhood to his death he kept up a lively interest in the passing events of every European state; and as his perfect knowledge of modern history supplied the clue by which he entered into the very thoughts and feelings of ancient times, Greece and Rome gave him in turn inexhaustible precedents and parallels by which he could measure and estimate the indistinct tendencies of the age; for as long as no other records exist of the complete course of a form of civilization from its rise to its destruction, it is here alone that an unvarying standard of comparison can be found for the phænomena of our present midway position. Niebuhr's opinion upon all questions of government and policy is entitled to the highest respect, as that of a practical man who had interpreted history by experience, while on the other hand he learned politics from history. The drawbacks which are to be made from his authority we shall have an opportunity of pointing out below; but if they were of far greater importance, and the instruction to be derived from his theoretical opinions was far less valuable than it is, the facts of his life would well deserve to be studied for his own sake; as well on account of the active and enlightened interest which he cherished in every branch of art and science, as for the unceasing sympathy which he felt with every attempt to promote human happiness; above all, for the purity, the tenderness and the undeviating integrity of his personal character. marks, and pleasing illustrations of Niebuhr's amiable disposition may probably be familiar to our readers from Lieber's agreeable little work, or from other sources. Those who wish for a fuller knowledge of his history must consult the account of his life, of which the title is prefixed to the present article. Of the friends who have compiled it, we have only the name of M. Perthes of Hamburg, who is also the publisher. In the preface and conclusion he admits that the work is neither a regular biography, nor a complete collection of Niebuhr's letters. The object proposed is to illustrate his moral and intellectual character: public and private considerations render it proper for the present to suppress many things; and the editors, while they are desirous of making use of materials which may be hereafter inaccessible, modestly express doubts of their own fitness to take an impartial and comprehensive view of the friend whom they admire and regret. Would that a similar diffidence existed in England, where it seems now an established rule, that the biography of eminent men is most fitly written by the unbiassed pens of their sons and their widows. The narrative, which is interspersed among the letters, occupies a comparatively small part of the three volumes; but it is sufficient to explain and connect them. We could wish that the correspondents were more numerous, as every man shows to each friend to whom he writes a different side of his character. Probably the wittiest and gayest men would write seriously to their wives, and to graver and older friends; and in every case there will be some adaptation of the kind. Earnestness is however the main requisite in a letter, and, if Niebuhr could ever have laid it aside, he would have used it in his correspondence with his beloved friend and sister Dore Hensler, to whom the greater part of these letters are fortunately addressed. We regret to find that the statements of his political opinions are far less full and explicit than we could have wished. In many cases they are no doubt suppressed, in deference to the scrupulous timidity which to Englishmen so oddly characterizes the monarchies of the continent. If they are ever hereafter incorporated together with other materials now omitted in a complete |