erudite are competent to discuss, merely from being unpractised in the character and abbreviations of ancient writings, certain of the historical illustrators, getting access to some of the leading periodicals, actually I know "review their competitors,” and most unmercifully exercise the lash on their erring brother when they find him at fault, proceeding themselves perhaps the very next month, in some "Historical Illustrations" brought into the market purporting to be materials for rectifying national history, to circulate a set of blunders more egregious than those which they had so recently censured! Original documents are indeed the verification of history; the most authentic illustration that can be given of the springs and sources of actions and events. But what remedy has the lover of truth if these are disturbed and muddied, and obscured and turned into new channels at the caprice of any individual editor? What is the check for this very serious evil?-What shall at once make the documents in the State Paper Office available on a liberal principle to the literary world, and yet afford a corrective for the inaccuracy of scribes, of book-makers, and garblers ? Simply to print well-constructed Catalogues, or as I believe they are technically termed, Kalendars of the general contents of the State Paper Office, fused as far as possible into one comprehensive view. I do not know that any facility is gained by classification; because it will frequently occur that several matters of an historical nature are mentioned in the same document, which might be variously referred to three or four heads. I have never had any great respect for classed Catalogues of libraries, having ever found it much more easy to consult an index of reference, the principle of which was alphabetical, like the Catalogue of the Printed Books in the British Museum. I do not profess to be conversant with the measures of the Commissioners for publishing State Papers, but rumours are afloat that the plan of publishing documents verbatim et literatim is to be abandoned; it is conjectured for the sake of laying before the public the historical contents of the State Paper Office in the abstract. If such abstracts be skilfully compiled, neither so laconic as to shut out the heads of information which each paper may contain, nor so lengthy as to draw off the eye from comprehending at a glance the gist of the manuscript, good service will be done, we are persuaded, to the literary world in general, the historical student in particular. The Catalogues or Kalendars of the State Paper Office will find a place in every library of importance: the simple reference to them for some facts and purposes will be sufficient; just as an abbreviated view of the contents of Rymer's Foedera, afforded by the Acta Regia, is often found to satisfy the object of inquiry. When documents are desired at length, access to them might be granted with any due restrictions, or office copies furnished to applicants under certain regulations. Her Majesty's State Paper Office would thus become, I am persuaded, a most admirable and efficient auxiliary to the acquirement of historical, biographical, local, and technical information, and the character of its collections be found at once peculiar, and of their kind unrivalled I THANK you for directing my attention to the passages in Mr. Wake's Southwold Guide which profess to refute an accusation against that borough contained in the review which I furnished you of the History of Boroughs, by Merewether and Stephens. Mr. Wake states, that, in that review, I represented the corporation of Southwold as "notoriously LITIGIOUS!" and at least five pages of Mr. Wake's incomparable work are devoted to the contradiction of that alleged charge, and the reprehension of your very ignorant and uncharitable reviewer. I feel extremely obliged to Mr. Wake for the honour he has done me in noticing my humble labours after this fashion, especially as I find, on turning over the leaves of his book,-I need not say I have not read it,-that I share this sort of attention with worthy old Gardner, the Historian of Dunwich, a man whose work will live when all the books built upon his useful labours have sunk into merited contempt; and with Mr. Rickman, the author of the Essay on Gothic architecture. I say, again, that I feel extremely obliged to Mr. Wake for placing me in such company, and the more especially as it must have been some little trouble to him to effect this honourable conjunction, seeing that, in order to do so, he was obliged to task his imagination, or, in other words, to invent a something which he might pretend to quote from the review, in order that he might afterwards condemn it. This is what he has done. The words notoriously litigious, which he makes believe to quote four several times, which are each time placed between inverted commas, which are marked out for peculiar observation by italics, small capitals, and all the other means by which typography can assist a writer's anxiety to be especially clear and emphatic, are not to be found in the review. Turn to it in your vol. III. N. s. p. 348; search it through and through; mark the passages relating to Southwold in pages 348 and 349-there is matter in them from which Mr. Wake may derive a great deal of instruction, but the words which he affects to quote where are they? In Mr. Wake's book, but not in the review from which he professes to extract them. If, upon so grave an occasion, I might be allowed to follow the bad example of my accuser, and deviate into a joke, I should say that Mr. Wake was not awake when he treated this part of his subject, for you will find that he misstates the title of the book to which he refers, misspells its author's name, and misquotes your review. If I desired to be severe upon Mr. Wake I might go further, and shew you that he has misrepresented-most grievously and palpably misrepresented-the facts of the principal litigation which is the subject of his remarks and mine. In that litigation, which was a trial at law, the corporation of Southwold were unsuccessful. They paid for their own costs £377 (Wake, p. 136) whilst they most unjustifiably put their opponents to an expense of upwards of one thousand pounds!" (ibid. 187.) And who paid the latter sum? The corporation of Southwold ? No. They evaded the payment by means which, if practised by an individual, would have occasioned him to be driven from society with as much scorn and contempt as could be heaped upon an unworthy man. These transactions took place before Mr. Wake knew anything about Southwold, and in treating of them he adopts the jargon of a profession which is not his own, and the meaning of which he evidently does not understand. What assistance he may have had upon this point it is not for me to tell, but he has been deceived. Affectation of candour, and appeals to "the Searcher of hearts" and "the all-seeing Judge "-(most appropriate ornaments in a work of topography)-may co-exist-and in the passages which he has been misled into inserting in his work, do co-exist with a most obvious departure from the truth. I have the proofs, and can produce them. (32, piers (p. 20) and the literary stimulus THE REVIEWER OF MEREWETHER ON MR. HALLAM'S LITERARY HISTORY, THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, &c. (Continued from p. 151.) ON the restoration of the national worship by Buonaparte, under the Consulate and Empire, all articles of faith determined by the Council of Trent were adopted as an indispensable basis; while the stipulations of discipline assumed for a precedent those established by the Concordat of 1517, between Francis the First and Leo the Tenth. So it will be seen in Bignon's Histoire de France, 1829-1838, and in Artaud's Histoire de Pie VII. The former was the solicited annalist of Napoleon, as Clarendon was of Charles the First: "Je l'engage à écrire l'histoire de la diplomatie Française de 1792 à 1815," is the testamentary request of the dying ex-emperor, adopted authoritatively by M. Bignon for his epigraph, and sufficiently anticipative of his excessive partiality in the execution of his commission; but this prejudice became quite unruly on all controvertible questions with England, Bernadotte, and the Pope. Even in his last volume, after an interval of nearly ten years, these feelings continue unimpaired; as a reference to pages 322, &c. of tome X. will shew. He, on the other hand, arraigns M. Artaud of undue bias towards the Pope, then (1811) a captive at Savona. This gentleman had long resided at Rome as secretary of legation, on which M. Bignon relates an observation of Talleyrand, under whom he (M. Bignon) had first entered his diplomatic career, "that foreign agents at Rome always imbibed a deep affection for the Holy See, while those employed at Vienna were sure to return home with a vive antipathie pour l'Autriche." (tome X. 259.) Talleyrand, whose family, I may passingly remark, is stripped of its antique splendour by the acrimonious and sagacious St. Simon, (tome III. p. 217), who accuses them of assuming an usurped title,† was surely no incompetent authority on such matters; and certainly will not be charged with partial leaning towards the papal court. Notwithstanding the essential defect which I have indicated, M. Bignon's work may be most usefully consulted; for it contains facts and documents not to be found elsewhere; such as the secret articles of the treaties of Tilsit and Erfurth, and other mysteries of diplomacy, which his own position at Berlin, Warsaw, &c. and the unreserved communications of the archives of the Foreign Office, even under the restoration, by M. de la Ferronays, revealed to him. It would well deserve, and I am surprised has not yet obtained a translator. The promovent causes of the fatal expedition against Russia in 1812, are minutely and interestingly related in vol. X. As for Mr. Hallam's assertion, "that the Emperor Ferdinand, even after the close of the Council, referred the chief points in controversy to George Cassander, a German theologian," I may transiently remark, that Cassander was Flemish, not German, by birth and residence, and that the Emperor only survived the close of the Council by six months (from December 1563, to July 1564,) and its ratification by the Pope (in June 1564) only by 30 days. Indeed, Cassander "This history was first begun by the express command of King Charles the First," says Clarendon in his preface (page 4-Oxford edition, 1807) to his great work, so justly entitled to his chosen motto—κτῆμά τε ἐς αεὶ (μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν ξύγκειται,) from Thucydides, A. κβ. †The arrogated title was that of Prince de Chalais, by Adrien Blaise de Talleyrand: "mais sans rang ni prétension quelconque," says St. Simon. This self-asserted Prince was the first husband of Anne Marie de la Trémouille, who, on his demise, married the Roman Prince, Orsini, and made so conspicuous a figure in the early part of the last century at Madrid, under that name (Princesse des Ursins) in France. I take this occasion of modifying the assertion of the Count de Durford (Gentleman's Magazine for the last Oct. page 373,) that his family was the only foreign one, not of royal blood, that had contributed two Knights to our Order of the Garter; for I find that, at one and the same time, Anne de Montmorency, the renowned Constable of France, and his son the Duke Henri François, were honoured with that distinction (in the sixteenth century). 2 K GENT. MAG. VOL. XIII. also died the following February; so that Ferdinand's commission could have produced but little fruit, even if undertaken. We have, however, this Emperor's own direct authority for his implicit acquiescence in the Tridentine decisions of faith; and may thence conclude that the reference to Cassander could solely apply to the details of discipline, or to such an exposition of the Roman catholic doctrine, as, like Bossuet's, should be best calculated to propitiate the variant sects, without the slightest dereliction of principle by the mother church. The German historian Ranke (Die Römische Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihre Staat im sechszehnten und siebenzehnten Jahrhundert-Theil. III. Section vi.) cites Ferdinand's letter, ad Legatos, dated 15th August, 1562, from Le Plat's Monumenta, &c. tom. V. p. 452, wherein the Emperor writes "Quid enim attinet disquirere de his dogmatibus, de quibus apud omnes non solum principes, verum etiam privatos homines catholicos, nulla nunc existit disceptatio?" Nothing can be less ambiguous than this declaration, or more opposed to the inference to be drawn from Mr. Hallam's statement. It deprecates all controversy, or discussion in matters of faith, as wholly superfluous; and it is in that sense that Ranke presents it. The German Professor's whole chapter on the subject is well entitled to attention, and will, I think, prove that the Emperor formed no exception to the universal recognition of the dogmatic decrees of the Council. The difficulty, therefore, contemplated by Mr. Hallam as to that fact, which could only apply to France and Hungary, thus vanishes before the evidence I have adduced, and the subject will, I trust, appear of sufficient importance to justify its discussion in detail, which, however, I offer as a question of history, not of controversy,* though, under every aspect, of highest inte rest. A subsequent chapter of the Prussian Professor's work embraces a very * Professor Ranke's work, so often quoted by Mr. Hallam, is highly creditable to him in almost every historical merit; but occasional inadvertences have struck me. Thus, in the first section of his third book, he states that Pope Paul III. (Alexander Farnese) born in 1468, was invested with the tiara in 1534, when in his sixtieth year, and died in 1549, aged 83,- -a series of figures in obvious discord; but the fact is, that Paul's birth should be in 1466, and his accession to the pontificate in his 68th year. In the same section he alludes to a letter of Charles duke of Guise, dated from Rome, the 31st October, 1547, to Henry II. of France, relative to the removal of the Council of Trent to Bologna; but the duke of Guise of that day was Claude, not Charles, the patriarch of that great house in France, and ancestor of our gracious Sovereign, through his daughter Mary, grandmother to James the First. This Claude, born in 1496, died in 1550, a duke and peer, the first so made, of France, not of the blood royal, in January 1527, and leaving a numerous offspring, of whom Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, was the chief representative of France at the Council; but, in 1547, his age did not exceed twenty-two years. Like his uncle John, also Cardinal of Lorraine, he accumulated such a multiplicity of ecclesiastical titles, that he was said to carry a whole council in his single person. The only duke of Guise named Charles was great-grandson to Claude.' On a former occasion (Gent. Magazine for Nov. 1838,) I also indicated a strange oversight in Ranke's volumes, where, Book v. Sect. 7, Monmouth in Wales is confounded with Munster in Ireland, as Fluellen similarly confounded his native Monmouth with Macedon-(Shakspeare's Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 7.) Boyle, who called himself the vedpeλnyéperns Zeus, or, as he meant, the collector of errors, has shown how volumes could be filled with the mistakes of the learned, which indeed, it would not require any great depth of reading to confirm. An incidental instance has just occurred to me: Dr. Arnold, in his most able History of the first ages of Rome, vol. I. p. 85, closes a long and erudite note on the value of copper money with a statement that, "if copper had so risen in value, that although the as of half an ounce weight was equal to half an obolus, the as, when it weighed twenty-four times as much, that is, a full pound, had only been worth twice as much,-a diminution in value," adds the learned author, "of twelve hundred per cent."! that is, eleven times less than the nothing, or zero, to which the first hundred per cent. less necessarily reduced it. The meaning, of course, is that the value was reduced to a twelfth part, but the expression involves an evident absurdity because an impossibility, eleven times repeated. elaborate parallel between the antago nist historians of the Council-Sarpi, and Pallavicini. The former is described as moved by deadly hatred malignant in his purpose and reckless in his means-fabricating falsehoods and distorting or perverting truths; while the Jesuit, though scrupulously correct in the documents he exhibits, often suppresses those opposed to his views. Thus neither fulfils the obligation of history-" ne quid falsi dicere audeat ; ne quid veri non audeat, as prescribed by Cicero (De Oratore, lib. ii. cap. 15.) Both writers are remarkable for purity of diction; but it is singular that Sarpi, whose superiority of talent, moreover, is undeniable, should not be numbered with the classic authors of his language recommended for their style by the Academy della Crusca; for several others, who equally figure in the Index of Rome, are included in the list (see Ranke, Päpste, Theil. iv.-ad calcem.) Mr. Hallam's enumeration of the few writers of the sixteenth century, who, with variant views, sustained liberal political principles, is susceptible of some extension; and a material omission, I think, is that of the benevolent Bartholomew Las Casas, whose posthumous volume on the regal power, its source and object, preceded those mentioned by Mr. Hallam, and is at least as firm in the assertion of popular rights. The book is, indeed, very rare, though twice printed-first at Francfort in 1571, and subsequently at Tubingen, in 1625, with a long title-" Dom. B. Las Casas Episcopi Chiapsensis ... Explanatio questionum utrum Reges subditos alienare possint, Adtinguntur . . . imperiorum ac juris imperandi . . . fundamenta, quibus omnes fere quæstiones circa potestatem legibus solutam decidi possunt."-Even the Spanish bibliographer Don Nicholas Antonio does not appear to have seen the work, (Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, Madrit. 1782, tom. I. p. 151,) which, notwithstanding, he ascribes to Las Casas, though doubted by others; but, at all events, its priority of date and purpose entitled it to advertence. The illustrious Spaniard, however, may rest his more enduring fame on his " Brevissima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias por los Castellanos." (See Beloe's Anecdotes, I. 10,) and I am happy to add, that the imputation, of having substituted the Negro to the Indian Slavery, has been successfully disproved by his French translator. (Paris 1822.) A still earlier and equally strenuous advocate of civil liberty, says the Doctor Henry Leo, professor of history in the University of Halle, was Thomas Aquinas, who, in his Secunda Secundæ, hurled fierce anathemas against the royal assumption of absolute power, proclaimed the right of insurrection against its abuse, and declared that in the people solely resided all legitimate authority. If we were now to read, "adds the learned professor," the Summa Theologica of Thomas, his highmindedness, rectitude of judgment, and bold reasoning would astonish us, in his maintenance of the policy and duties of liberty. (History of Italy during the Middle Ages.) It is no Catholic, be it noted, that offers this homage to the Angelic Doctor. of Buchanan's and Languet's volumes first appeared in 1579, that of Boucher in 1589, and Rose's the following year. Boucher had just terminated his book, when the assassination Henry III. was announced (1 August 1589), and his exultation is not disguised; for which he claims the sanction of Scripture, in Judges, chapter III. Judith 13, &c. (De Justâ Henrici III. Abdicatione, p. 281, recto.) The concluding appeal to the combatants of the League is very animated. "Adstant de cælo angeli, qui vel victores ad Reipublicæ commoda salvent, vel cæsos in cœlum arripiant;" nor is his invocation of the Guisii martyres, (p. 287) less so. The volume attributed to Rose* (William) bishop of Senlis, "De justâ Reipublicæ Christianæ in * The ingenious mystification practised on Molière in 1666 by the President Rose, a junior member of the bishop's family, though often told, may be briefly repeated. In the Médecin malgré lui, (Act 1, Sc. vi.) Sganarelle hugs his bottle, addressing to it a song, which, on the first representation of the play, the President translated into Latin, and a few days after, at the famous Hôtel de Rambouillet, produced this version, pretended to be from the Anthology, as the original purloined by Molière, who |