Mirabeau a Life History, in Four Books. Two vols. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1848.

THE object of these volumes is to place Mirabeau in a light in which history has not hitherto presented him; and, if this had been attempted in a lax and latitudinarian spirit-if the author had shown himself to be one, the standard of whose morality is adapted rather to the passions than the aspirations of an immortal being-we should not hesitate at once to condemn the man and the book. And though we cannot but regret that the talent and genius which the most rigid critic cannot deny to the author should have been devoted to so futile an object, we cannot withhold our admiration from the chivalry which has dictated the crusade against an old, and, as we conceive, justlyfounded prejudice of all right-thinking minds. But let him speak for himself as regards his motives to the undertaking :

"I was induced to undertake this biography by many reasons: first, we have no life whatever of Mirabeau; second, the French have no readable memoirs of him; third, in all our sketches, &c., whatever of him (and they are as numerous as lives are scarce), not only are very many malignant and scandalous false statements fastened upon him, but the actual actions of his life are mis-stated, misdated, or omitted; lastly, I considered him as an ill-used and misjudged man; taking, amid the wrath of parties, the wise moderate course which lay between them hating mob rule and anarchy as fervently as despotism and absolute monarchical rule, he has fallen in for the plentiful abuse of both parties, which I deemed it quite time, the secret of correct judgment not lying in extremes or excesses, to endeavour to wipe away."

We do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the author: nay, we will do him the justice to say that he has entered upon his task in the spirit not only of the moralist but the Christian; but even, if he has attained all that he contemplates in the publication of these volumes, to what, on his own showing, does it amount? We will quote his own words :

"Though no panegyrist, I am, nevertheless, an ardent admirer of Mirabeau considering him a man not hateable-a man, in fact, who demands sympathy and pity-his faults being the result of an improperly-trained and scandalously-neglected childhood. His errors were but half his-his brilliancies, his goodnesses, were his own, entirely and

alone."

Now, this is not even-handed justice. If his vices are attributable to his education, his virtues may reasonably be ascribed to the same source.

After all, the theory on which the author would claim our ad

miration of Mirabeau is destroyed by facts which cannot be erased from the records of history; and though we fully understand and appreciate the charity which would extenuate where it cannot justify-a charity which has its origin in the only pure source of it, religion-all that the writer of these volumes has proved or can have hoped to prove is, that Mirabeau was not so hateable as the world has deemed him. "None are all evil" is a maxim on which experience has set the seal of truth; and this is the amount of what the author has proved in the instance of Mirabeau.

But, having said what we have felt it to be our duty (and a painful one it is) to say of the volumes before us, we turn gladly to the more grateful duty of rendering our homage to the touching eloquence, the glowing thought, the poetic, and, withal, Christian feeling which breathe in every page. It is the outpouring of a generous, ardent, but, albeit, mistaken mind. It may, perhaps, startle some of our readers that we should couple the idea of Christianity with the apologist of Mirabeau; but let any man read the passage we are about to quote and tell us if it be the language of infidelity-nay, if it breathe not the spirit of that blessed Book which teaches us that the present, whether measured by its sorrows or its joys, its pleasures or privations, is as nothing in comparison with the glory that shall hereafter be revealed to us :

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Morning and evening, over town and hamlet, beams forth the touching music of the bells: the bells that rang our forefathers' wedding peals; and funeral dirges chime there still, if not to summon us to the house they sound from, at least to tell us there is a God above us. Cold is the heart that melts not at their music-dull is the spirit that draws no lesson from their chimes. What say they, as methinks I hear them, sweet pealing from the old grey tower, around whose base the mouldering dead lie sleeping? Sons of man (runs the melody)! toil on, toil on even so, by an inscrutable decree, is your destination here they tell you you should not toil-they tell you you should all battle and fight for what you have not-for what God has seen fit you should not have; and they prate for ever of your rights! Heed them not-they are false prophets; and your rights are baseless chimeras not to be battled for, since this earth is not a place of right, of equality, of justice, but simply a place of sojournment, of probation, where no man has his deserts entirely, nor ever shall. It is a place of trial, and whoso endures that trial, be it of poverty or be it of wealth (and both are trials), the most uncomplainingly, the most patiently, the most valiantly, that man is the saint of saints. In this advanced century have we yet need to tell, as with a tongue of iron, that earth is but earth, that the heaven is hereafter? The one unvariable law still remains, and must remain until the end of time: it is that earth is no luxury-couch, but a fearful battle-field. Fight on, then, O, ye heaven-conscripts, fight

on the present is confusion, and wounds, and toiling amid sorrow, and sweat and blood-the glory, the reward, the eternal diadem-those are the great TO-COME!'"

We dismiss these volumes with the expression of our deep regret that the talents, eloquence, and genius of the writer had not found a more fitting field for their display.

The Gap of Barnesmore. A Tale of the Irish Highlands and the Revolution of 1688. Three Vols. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

1848.

WE have never, since the days of Sir Walter Scott, taken up an historical romance without being painfully reminded of the immeasurable distance between him and every subsequent and even antecedent writer in the same line. We take up his "Quentin Durward," his "Ivanhoe," his "Old Mortality," again and again, feeling the pleasure we originally enjoyed in his works almost renewed-certainly very little diminished by repetition. He stands beyond and above all others who have ventured on the same path; and it was in anticipation of disappointment, as great as that which we generally experience in taking up a modern romance, that we opened the the "Gap of Barnesmore." Falling short, as it assuredly does of even the least striking of the stories of Sir Walter, it is almost as much superior to the common run of modern fiction as it is inferior to his. The scene is laid in the Irish Highlands, at the period of the Revolution of 1688, opening at the latter end of the reign of James II., and closing in that of William III., when party feeling ran high in religion and politics; so that a writer, young and enthusiastic, as we imagine the author to be, would be very likely to adopt strongly the opinions of one or the other of the parties into whose contests he has flung himself. But unlike many whom we could quote, he holds himself remarkably free from the bias of party, religious or political, giving credit to motives where often he condemns measures. While the historical features of the period are faithfully preserved, the under-currents of the story are managed with very great ingenuity and skill; and, although we trace in some instances a hand not altogether practised in this description of composition, the characters are drawn with much freedom and power. The scenic portraiture, too, is highly graphic; and he makes the most of the picturesque country in which the action of his story is laid. There is considerable pathos in some of the scenes, and occasionally some touches of humour; but these are few and far between, and the author is not so successful in them as in the descriptive portions of his tale.

And yet there are some nice quaint touches in his sketch of the parish priest. We think his delineations of young female character especially happy. An extract from an introductory chapter will explain the feeling with which the author enters upon his task:

"It may be a perilous attempt to employ in our history materials so nearly allied with quarrels that are yet unextinguished. Rich as those materials are in all that can give interest or dignity to the scenes to which they lend a colouring, their employment has certainly its disadvantage. An injudicious use of them would unquestionably bring exasperating topics into pages of which the only object should be to convey instruction in its most pleasing form. There are many who would, therefore, proscribe them altogether. It may be enough for the writer of this narrative to say, that they do not know the Irish of any party who believe that they cannot look back upon the history of past feuds, and find satisfaction in the remembrance of the heroism of either side. For himself, he will be satisfied if, in this humble effort to portray a most interesting leaf of the national history, he succeed in showing that, even amid the quarrels and contentions which make the history of Ireland one tale of strife, there may be found scenes on which it is possible for the mind to dwell with enthusiasm. Something will have been done to throw a new colouring on the despised history of the past: perhaps something to mitigate the bitterness of present animosities. With these few words of introduction-which, however, have been not quite so few as we intended—we request the reader to prepare himself for a narrative of the Highlands of Donegal and of the era of the Revolution."

This quotation will, we think, justify the tribute which we have felt bound to pay to the impartial spirit that prevades the narrative. We will now endeavour to justify our estimate of his talent for description by a quotation of one of the graphic passages our selection being determined by the brief space it will occupy our limits not allowing of extracts, which, although of higher graphic power, it would be inconvenient to transfer to our pages:

"The scene that presented itself at this moment was one of wild grandeur and terror: the effect of the thunders of the angry torrent, as it rushed down the deep chasm it had torn for itself through the solid rock, and the roaring of the tempest in the wood, cannot easily be conceived; mingled with this was the noise and crackling of the flames that preyed fiercely upon that portion of the castle which they were consuming. Another store of winter's forage had just been caught by the fire, and this added fire made the thick reeking smoke, broken by the forked pyramids of flame, shoot up above the roof: the storm caught the volumes of blaze, and carried them out from the castle in separate sheets of fire eddying on the breeze: the living flames were actually hurled, severed from every burning thing, over

the heads of our party where they stood, lighting up the chasm of the river with a lurid glare; and even fragments of ignited timber, and masses of burning hay and corn were tossed far beyond them like meteors on the breeze; and sometimes, when the burning embers came thick and fast, they passed over their heads, presenting an appearance which might be said to be that of the flakes of an ignited snow-storm. Behind the burning castle rose the high hills, distinct in the clear moon-light, reflecting back a red and strong light from the fire. And over all in the heavens-alternately blue with their native colour and black or white with the clouds that scudded along-the round full moon seemed to fly with a rapidity equal to that of the clouds that were driven by the storm: the light of the moon was clear and distinct and the white radiance which it threw upon the rest of the building contrasted as strangely with the colour of the burning mass as did the red glare which was reflected on the heavens, immediately over and behind the castle, with the silvery light that softened the rest of the sky. The mingling of these lights on the spot where Hamilton stood, as each was thrown occasionally through cloud and smoke upon the river, the trees, and the group of human figures that were assembled there, produced an effect of colouring which a painter might describe on canvass, but an idea of which no words can convey.".

In conclusion, we may observe that the interest of the story is sustained throughout; the only fault-a rare one in works of this character-being that the incidents are somewhat crowded, so that the reader has scarcely time to breath between one scene of excitement and another. Altogether it is a very creditable production, and reflects great honour on the discrimination of the publishers, who have thus taken up a hitherto unknown author. We hope this will not be his last work.

History of the Jesuits, from the Foundation of their Society to its Suppression their Mission throughout the World: their Educational System and Literature, with their Revival and Present State. By ANDREW STEINMETZ. Three Vols. Bentley. London.

THIS is precisely the book that we Protestants at this very time so especially want a book written without partiality or prejudice and with the single view of giving a succinct and faithful account of the Jesuits and their doings. No other people have been so much lauded by friends or reviled by enemies: none have been more honoured or more scorned: they have been the objects of the most exaggerated praise and the most unmeasured abuse; but there is not the least necessity to exaggerate anything for or against them, if the object in writing the history of the Society of Jesus is to excite an extraordinary in