it of all moral support; and we must regret that a more homogeneous combination of all the political elements that are or profess to be Conservative, had not afforded the country a better prospect of extrication from the discredit and danger of Governments on sufferance.

We are as strongly as ever convinced that the great Conservative party, comprising a large majority in the Lords, nearly half the House of Commons, and fully, we believe, threefourths of the property and intelligence of the United Kingdom, is really our sheet-anchor against the current and the storm of revolution. It has failed, indeed, to maintain itself in power, but more, we believe, from want of Parliamentary tact and authority than even of the Parliamentary strength which a short lapse of time might probably have improved, for it really possessed the approbation and goodwill, if not the confidence, of the country at large. It is not denied that the administrative duties of the several departments were never better executed—all with zeal, courtesy, and candour, some with distinguished ability; but it must be admitted that in Parliament they were inferior in discipline, tactics, power of debate, and personal influence to the veterans-the vieille garde of Lord Grey and Sir Robert-who were banded against them. Whether under better strategy--by bolder movements at first, or more Fabian caution at last-they might not have broken that formidable but incoherent array, can only be conjectured; but, one thing is certain, that they now compose the most powerful Opposition that ever was assembled in the House of Commons, and that it is stronger, not merely in numbers, but essentially in character, authority, influence, and power in the country, than any two together of the three or four parties whose coalition has outnumbered it. They hold in their honest and independent hands the balance of the state, and they will, we are confident, be guided in the exercise of that great and delicate trust by the prospective policy sketched out for them by Lord Derby in his address to the Conservative members of both Houses at their meeting on the 20th of December

:

'He hoped that, if the new Government brought forward truly Conservative measures, it would receive, if he could not say the cordial, at least the sincere support of the Conservative party, uninfluenced by pique or resentment; but if the Government about to be formed should not bring forward Conservative measures-if, influenced by the men with whom they were now associated, they brought forward democratic measures, the great Conservative party should remember that, even out of office, they had immense influence in the country, and that they should use that influence to stop the downward course that the Government would be urged to pursue. Thus they would be enabled successfully to defend and preserve the INSTITUTIONS OF THIS GREAT COUNTRY.'Standard, Dec. 21.

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In these general sentiments we humbly concur; but we must be allowed to regret, in the same spirit of frankness and freedom which we trust has always characterised the Quarterly Review, that there were two prominent and important points of Lord Derby's administration from which we are obliged to record our unqualified dissent. First, the want of statesmanlike reserve and of national dignity in the tone and style in which the recognition of the French Emperor was announced. Fas est et ab hoste doceri; and on such an occasion it would have been natural to remember the remarkable instructions given by the first Buonaparte to Talleyrand for his deportment towards Lord Whitworth - Mettez vous y froid, altier et même un peu fier.' The acquiescence in the choice of the French people should have been wholly, or at least as much as possible kept distinct from all personal allusions, and the most extravagant and despotic usurpation the world has ever seen should not have been treated in so encomiastic and fraternizing a style. Our second regret is, that the Government should have gone out-on what principle or even point we really know not-without having shown any sympathy with the feeling that was most prominent and decided at the late elections-the vindication and maintenance of the PROTESTANT CONSTITUTION; and that the ostentatious violation of the law by Dr. MacHale and his fellows has been not only sanctioned by impunity, but crowned with the very triumph which his audacity foretold.

NOTE to No. 182-Article on Dr. Hanna's Life of Chalmers. THE Rev. Dr. Leishman, minister of Govan, near Glasgow, complains that the account given in our September Number (p. 453) of some communications between a certain section of the Scotch clergy and the Government, towards the crisis of the Free-Kirk controversy, is inaccurate, and, as he thinks, injurious to his own character. We are well aware that Dr. Leishman merits entire respect, and do not for a moment doubt that the statement he objects to is incorrect as far as it concerns him individually. But we must inform Dr. Leishman that we merely endeavoured to condense in that passage the substance of Dr. Hanna's full and detailed statement of transactions with which we could not but suppose him to have been thoroughly acquainted at the date of their occurrence. Dr. Hanna's extensive and deliberate work had been for a considerable time before the world: we had never heard of any reclamation against that particular portion of his narrative; and we cannot now discover the possibility of extracting from it (see especially Memoirs of Chalmers, vol. iv. p. 302) any other sense than that which our article expressed. Dr. Leishman should have appealed to his brother divine-not to the reviewer.

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-History of the Ancient Barony of Castle Combe in the County of Wilts, chiefly compiled from original MSS.— with Memoirs of the Families of Dunstanville, Badlesmere, Tiptoft, Scrope, Fastolf, &c. By George Poulett Scrope, Esq., M.P. 1852. 4to. pp. 404. (Not published.) NOTHING could be more true or philosophical than certain

remarks of Sir Francis Palgrave's in his Preface to the Parliamentary Writs; and nothing in better taste, or more indicative of his knowing what he was undertaking, than Mr. Scrope's adopting them as the first paragraph of his own Preface:—

The genuine history of a country can never be well understood without a complete and searching analysis of the component parts of the community, as well as the country. Genealogical inquiries and local topography, so far from being unworthy the attention of the philosophical inquirer, are amongst the best materials he can use; and the fortunes and changes of one family, or the events of one upland township, may explain the darkest and most dubious portions of the annals of a realm.'

There is no doubt of this; and no need of anything like an apology for any gentleman who, possessing a large collection of well-preserved documents' relating to a manor and ancient barony, conceives an idea that a narrative compiled from such materials may be 'not devoid of value as a contribution to the topography of the country.' He will have a right to consider it as something higher; as a contribution-if not a great, yet a genuine one-to the materials which, if such a fabric is ever to be raised, must lie at the foundation of the History of England.

And we are not without hope on this point. Certainly it will be very odd to have such a thing, and we shall wonder, as we do with gas-light and railways-not to mention cabs and busses -how we ever contrived to do without it; but undoubtedly the materials for English history, and history in general, have been for many years past rapidly, though quietly, accumulating. Brickmaking is a quiet business, and the quarry and the sawpit

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are places of hard work without much noise. The materials which they furnish make no show till they are properly put together; and, in the mean time, the best that we can do is to keep them safe, and so arranged as that we may know what we have got, what we want, and where to put what we may get next. Already, we must think, it is time that something should be done as to that point of arrangement ;-but we have no room at this moment for a proper discussion of the subject. We only state the fact that such an accumulation of materials is rapidly taking place, and beg leave to suggest to the distinguished men of letters now in office that the educated public expects some serious attempt to prevent our being actually embarrassed by our riches—a calamity which never arises from quantity, but from bad management.

If we talk of History at all, we should consider though many do not-how much laborious research, recondite learning, and rare accomplishment must be set to work before we can have the most superficial sixpenny History of England-the slightest sketch that any respectable governess could put into the hands of her young pupils. It matters not how much of the book, as it comes under their little thumbs, has been borrowed from other books, or how much it may owe to intermediate sources of any kind. Its mere existence proves that persons have been engaged in its production who understood languages, and could read writings, now unintelligible to all but professed antiquaries. There must, moreover, have been men who were able to discriminate between what is genuine and what is spurious in such matters, and for that purpose acquainted with such diplomatic, numismatic, and technical criteria as are mastered only by long study and experience. And beside all this-for we are supposing the History, however slight and small, to be true-it must be indebted, mediately or immediately, to the skill and labour of men, not only competent to form an opinion respecting the honesty of purpose, the extent of knowledge, and the liability to prejudice, in each original writer who is used as an authority, but also familiar with the manners, habits, turns of thought and feeling, the state of science, art, and literature, the conventional use of phrases and images-in short, with all the characteristic circumstances of the generation to which he belonged and for which he wrote.

Some readers may feel as Rasselas did, and exclaim 'Enough! you have convinced me that no man can be an historian.' How far the Prince was right as to poetry we do not inquire; but as to history, it is true enough, if we conceive of it as a thing to be made by any one man. Take up any early volume of Hume. We have opened the second at random; and turning over the

pages

pages with the simple view of finding one with references, we lighted on these at the bottom of page 16:-'Hoveden, p. 665; Knyghton, p. 2403; W. Heming, p. 528; Hoveden, p. 680; Bened. Abb., p. 626-700; Brompton, p. 1193.'-Now here are five ancients quoted as authorities-no matter for what-we did not take the trouble to inquire. Without prejudice to any opinion which we may hold respecting Hume's authorities, we will take it for granted that these are a sufficient warrant for the statements which they are cited to attest; for our question at present is not whether Hume's History is to be relied on, but how he came by it. In the first place, nobody dreams that he received the autographs from the men themselves; but we may be about as certain that if he had he could not have read them. He would have found it as necessary to call in the help of professed antiquaries, as Belshazzar did to summon astrologers and Chaldeans to decipher the writing on the wall. A curious illustration on this point may be found in p. lxx. of Palgrave's Introduction to the Rotuli Curiæ Regis; and it is the more apposite, because, as far as date is concerned, these rolls of the King's Court, belonging to the period 1194-1200, might have been in the handwriting of three of Hume's five authorities. Sir Francis tells us that in the extracts previously made from these documents the transcriber had been misled by the similarity between the letters t and c in the record;' and, in consequence, had confounded the Archbishop of Canterbury (Cant.) with the Chancellor (Canc.). We can imagine, even from what we have known in our own days, that an historian might very much perplex posterity by confounding the acts and judgments of Lambeth and Lincoln's Inn. Nor is this a peculiarity belonging only to the handwriting of these rolls. We have before us another book (one of the most valuable antiquarian works, edited by one of the best editors of our age), in which the incuria of a transcriber has manifested itself in the very same form, though with a less solemn result. We learn from it that the authorities of a certain city consented that a certain King should build a fortress within their city; and, for access thereto, should be at liberty to perforate their walls to make gates wherever he pleased:-' pro portis ubi sibi placuerit faciendis '—it was, no doubt, written, but it stands in print pro porcis,' as if his majesty was not to do it to please himself but the pigs.

To return, however, to Hume-suppose (absurd as the supposition is) that Roger Hoveden, John Brompton, and Abbot Benedict could have returned to the world after an absence of five hundred years. Suppose that they could have personally waited on the elegant penman of a century ago, and placed in his hands

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