visit (1829), and thus furnishes a starting-point to measure the progress of his later years. The following story would be the most remarkable of all, if it were better authenticated. It makes his knowledge of language appear very different from a mere effort of memory: "According to another account which I have received, the prince having suddenly changed the conversation into a dialect peculiar to one of the provinces of Sweden, Mezzofanti was obliged to confess his inability to understand him. What was his amazement, in a subsequent interview, to hear Mezzofanti address him in this very dialect! From whom, in the name of all that is wonderful, have you learnt it?' exclaimed the prince. From your Royal Highness,' replied Mezzofanti: 'your conversation yesterday supplied me with a key to all that is peculiar in its forms; and I am merely translating the common words into this form.'"

The only other anecdote of the same kind is the one recorded by Cardinal Wiseman (p. 355), of his learning Californian from the Californian youths, and then teaching it to them grammatically. On the whole, Dr. Russell's book does not dispel the feeling of regret, which we cannot suppress, that powers and opportunities so marvellous should have left no trace; and that he whom Pope Gregory called the living Pentecost, to whom alone among men all the literatures of the world were open, should not have given birth to a single idea, or uttered one word that will be remembered. Mezzofanti felt this, and lamented it. He seems to have wished to attribute it to the times in which he had studied. But in reality he was never conscious that he held the magic key which could have opened before him the inmost soul of all the nations, and that the languages which he knew so well were become in his own time the chief foundation of philosophic history. His own words have been mournfully verified: "When I go, I shall not leave a trace of what I know behind me."

A History of Progress in Great Britain. By R. K. Philp. Part I. 1858. (London, Houlston and Wright.) Mr. Philp is a writer who, at least, is not ashamed of his opinions. People may be taken in as to the value of his book, but nobody can be deceived as to his intentions. It were well if he knew his subject as well as he knows his own mind about it. "No one," he says, "has yet ventured to assert, and laboured sufficiently to prove, that history is a stern record of struggles between the contracted policy of kings and priests, and the nobler aims of mind and labour, and that to the victories of the latter the British nation owes the greatness which commands for her the admiration of the world." But Mr. Philp has luckily been moved to compassion by this grievous deficiency in our literature; and it is a comfort to think that his book "will be a real history of the British people, with special regard to their struggles against oppression, bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance,"-such a book, in short, as we have long felt the want of. "It will be shown that the steps of progress have been sternly opposed by the pulpit, the sword, and even by popular clamour; it will also be shown that none of the countless predictions of revolution, ruin, infidelity, and national decline have been fulfilled." In all this rigmarole there is one point which deserves to be noted. The demand that the historian should inform us as to the condition of the people has become a commonplace of newspaper criticism. Many attempts have been recently made to satisfy it. Chambers's work on Scottish history, which we noticed last month, is a book of this kind. It is a tendency which can hardly produce any durable effect on historical writing, because it is opposed, not to the dignity, but to the unity of history. Only those facts and elements in the people's life which bear on the actual progress of events can be ad

mitted into an historical work. The whole mass of details is without limit and without connection, and would serve only to illustrate illustrations. These studies have formed themselves very properly into a distinct antiquarian pursuit. They are of service to the historian, who can use what he wants, without incorporating the whole into his works. They are the background of history, not a part of history itself. The stream of events scarcely touches them. Great political and intellectual revolutions have occurred without really affecting the social existence of the people, which remains unchanged often for centuries. The real substance of history, which is going altogether out of fashion, the great march of public events, is yet very far from being so thoroughly understood and sucked dry that the historian need seek elsewhere materials for interesting his readers. But inasmuch as it requires a very much greater mental exertion, both in the writer and the reader, than the collection of details, it is naturally less popular.

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It is in reality the notion of perpetual progress which lies at the bottom of this style of historical writing. It comes from admiration of the present, not of the past. The writer who brought it into vogue was Lord Macaulay. Whilst his imaginative faculty placed him at the head of the picturesque historians, his political sentiments made him the tisan of the theory of progress. "Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present" (History of England, vol. i. p. 3). "No ordinary misfortune, no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge, and the constant effort of every man to better himself, will do to make a nation prosperous" (p. 290). This is precisely the same principle which Mr. Philp and others have carried to an extreme. This indulgence in selfgratulation and admiration of the present time bodes no good for the future. The partisans of the theory of indefinite progress forfeit all the advantage which is to be got from the contemplation of those points on which former ages were superior to our own. A certain manly discontent and regret can alone produce vigorous efforts for real improvement. Men of this school are never put to shame by the greatness of old. They generally hold it cheap. Moral greatness, judged by their standard, is of very little real use. It does not promote what in their eyes is the first consideration-material well-being. Hence the worship of intellect rather than virtue, and especially of that kind of intellect which manifests itself in tangible results-the genius of Newton, Watt, or Arkwright. Each event and period of history must be viewed in its own native light. It is the business of historians every where to furnish us with this light, without which each object is distorted and discoloured. We must distrust our knowledge of every period which appears to us barbarous. It appears so as long as we have not found the key to its real character. For the same reason that other nations were barbarians in the eyes of the Greeks, other ages seem barbarous to us. We are unable, and care not, to understand and sympathise with them. The true view of history is the reverse of this narrowness. Its chief purpose is to break down the idolatry of a particular age and stage of development, and to awaken a generous catholic appreciation of mankind in every period and phase of its existence. All the books that are written to celebrate our age at the expense of those which have preceded it, will in a few years become obsolete and ridiculous. Future generations will have a keen eye for our failings when they have corrected them, and will not

be dazzled by our discoveries when they have been surpassed. To these writers the peculiarities of the past are interesting only in so far as they have been superseded, and the comparison with our own time is drawn only when it is to the advantage of the present. This tendency is equally perverse in history and in politics. It seeks in the past only opportunities of despising it, and overlooks in the present what most needs improvement. These men see in history only the reflection of themselves. They endeavour to illustrate, not an age, but an opinion-to establish the truth, not of facts, but of an idea. But no science can flourish that is not cultivated for its own merits, and no work can live that is not written for the sake of its professed subject.

The New American Cyclopædia. Edited by George Ripley_and` Charles A. Dana. Vol. I., 1858. (New York, Appleton and Co.; London, Trübner.) Encyclopædias and dictionaries of biography have become so numerous, that it is no longer very difficult to write a new one. One need only make a selection of articles from those already existing, and a few additions and omissions will easily accommodate it to local wants. The chief part of these works is common property. A mass of ballast passes. from one to the other; and a vast number of mistakes, which first made their appearance in the well-known Biographie Universelle, continue to be faithfully copied in every new compilation of the kind. This volume necessarily addresses itself to a very extensive public, and is at the same time the work of many hands. It may be considered, therefore, to represent the kind of knowledge and the tone of opinion suited to the great mass of educated Americans. It appears to much greater advantage in the last respect than in the first. Its spirit is much more respectable than its matter. It reverses the old maxim which we were taught at school; it is non multum, sed multa. We should have expected that in a work which is to fill about twenty enormous volumes the most important articles of general learning would be fully and satisfactorily treated, and that on questions of universal interest American science and learning would have endeavoured to compete with that of Europe. But this is not the case. Popularity is made the standard of importance. The only elaborate articles are those on American subjects. Major André, for instance, fills nearly as much space as the science of anatomy. The article" Anthracite" is half as long again as "Anthropology." Dr. Anthon takes up more room than St. Anthony; and Alexander the Great has the advantage of Alexander Humphreys by scarcely half a column. These singular proportions are, however, to be laid at the door of the public for whom the book is designed. The writers themselves have aimed at a rigorous impartiality, both in politics and religion. In this they have succeeded very creditably; but it is a merely negative sort of merit, and has, to use a phrase of their own, superinduced a certain tameness and vagueness. As a speculation, it was probably imperative to offend no party and provoke no competition. Even this is characteristic. In England the mere absence of censure upon certain points would have given infinite offence. The chief political articles in this volume are those on the Adams family. It must be admitted that they are free from that spirit of degenerate democracy which has of late years threatened to degrade a noble constitution beneath the level of the revolutionary democracy of Europe; and they are not disfigured by that ludicrous self-glorification in which the Americans dispute the palm with the Chinese. In religious matters there is almost equal reserve. For instance, neither the article on Anselm nor that on Aquinas contains a single offensive word. The most ticklish topics are treated undeniably in the style of Tacitus. Thus, on Anselm's disputes

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with William and Henry, we obtain the interesting information that he was alternately in league and in strife with the kings of England." The strictness with which this rule has been enforced is nowhere more apparent than in the article “Achilli." It bears very suspicious signs of being the authentic work of the no-popery hero himself; yet it contrives to make him interesting in a most harmless way, without complaining of the accusations which, as every body knows, were so victoriously confuted, or dwelling even for a moment on the corruptions of the Church. The classical articles are not without ambition, and the originality of the following estimate of Eschylus must be admitted: "Less polished, he is grander than Sophocles; and with the effeminate, sophistical, and irreligious Euripides he can no more be compared than a son of Anak in his panoply of brass with a petit-maître of Louis XV. of France." There are scholars of note in the United States, and they have no doubt contributed to this cyclopædia. It is evident, however, that their pursuits isolate them from the movement of their country; for their manner of treating antiquity is deficient in the peculiar qualities of the American mind. It is clear that Americans generally take no interest in such studies, and care not to assert their sagacity upon so obsolete a field. "Some days later," we read in the article "Aëtius," "a tremendous pitched battle was fought on the field of Chalons, in which three hundred thousand men fell on both sides." People to whom you can tell such a tale as this without fear of detection and ridicule, clearly care very little about being taken in by such an old story. We doubt whether a contemporary anecdote, in the same style, would find favour in the eyes of that incredulous race. Historical as well as human humbug has still a chance after being found out in Europe, and may open a new credit beyond the Atlantic. Agamemnon is treated in the same way as Attila: "The quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles forms the most interesting feature in the history of the Trojan war. He was murdered by his wife as he was putting on his shirt after a bath," &c. &c. A European scholar would scarcely take the trouble to inform us that the laws "of the Goths and the Teutons were singularly accordant." So probably are those of the Americans and the Yankees. No literary notices are given, nor are the readers referred to other works. Evidently they are not expected to push their inquiries farther than the book itself. Indeed, we may gather the style of public which is expected from the following scientific definition of an adventurer: "Micawber, in David Copperfield, would have been a great adventurer, if he had not been destined to become the great Micawber. He was always waiting for something to turn up. This peculiar state of expectation is, in fact, the normal state of mind of an adventurer."

But the most curious and suggestive article of all is that on "Americanisms.' In the first place,-and this we believe is not uncommon, -the writers do their own countrymen injustice from a very imperfect and arbitrary notion of the English use of words. Venison, they tell us, "in the United States, means deer-meat; in England, it is applied to wild meat generally." Pantaloons, in the sense of trousers, is scarcely a genuine Americanism. And we are disappointed of finding the true American feminine 'pantalet.' The real word (gen. masc.) is' pants.' We must admit, on the other hand, that “Kool-sla" is not commonly used in England for cabbage; and we are ready to surrender "gallowses" as a synonym for braces; nor are "pipeclaying" and " gerrymander" with us opprobrious political terms. At the same time, it is remarkable that the author of this article, after explaining justly how natural it is that

Americanisms should exist, should strive to attenuate and excuse the use of them: “It may safely be said that, as a people, the Americans speak English better than the English themselves." Nevertheless "the standard of the correct language still remains in the use of the learned and educated people of England." We confess we are disposed to be more generous to the Americans on this point than they are to themselves. Without development nothing can live. Growth is essential to life. No living language, therefore, can remain stationary, or independent of the people who speak it. Its progress will be different under different circumstances, of place as well as of time; and it must adapt and attach itself indissolubly to the character of the nation whose thoughts and feelings it is to express. It was the wisest of the ancients who said: olos ó Bios, TOLOÛTOS Ó λóyos, or, as Seneca renders it (Epist. 114): "Talis hominibus fuit oratio, qualis vita: quemadmodum autem uniuscujusque actio dicenti similis est, sic genus dicendi aliquando imitatur publicos mores." Now, parallel with the rise of the American nation, a national character has been formed, which is growing rapidly more definite and more distinct from our own; and it is already strong enough to absorb and neutralise the foreign elements which pour in from Ireland and Germany. Their public institutions are of their own making; and the society of their great towns differs from ours more widely than that of most continental cities. We cannot expect that the language of Oxford and Cambridge should remain unchanged on the confines of civilised life, in the backwoods and plantations of America. The colloquial language cannot remain distinct from the written, where the press is in the hands of men of little education, and addresses itself almost exclusively to the masses. Our tongue must pay, in the loss of uniformity, the penalty of its universality. As a spoken language, no other has undergone so many modifications and adaptations to the minds and jaws of men in every region of the world. So far its flexibility is quite extraordinary. Cooper's red men speak one kind of English, and Mrs. Stowe's negroes another. The Times Correspondent has familiarised us with the English of Hong-kong; and another variety has arisen in what Sydney Smith calls the fifth or pickpocket quarter of the globe. In the same way, many good stories are told of the (now nearly extinct) Hungarian Latin. But the decline of the old Latinity in the literature of the empire presents the closest analogy to the modifications which English is undergoing in the United States. The nasal sing-song and the wordy pomp of American speech cannot be better described than in the words by which Seneca rebukes the affectation of his contemporaries: "Ut aliquando inflata explicatio vigeret, aliquando infracta, et in morem cantici ducta." That contempt for the gradus, by virtue of which an American says 'epicūrĕan,' 'territōry,' 'legislătive,' was a common Gallicism in later Rome. Ausonius scans Cithĕron, Phèaces; and Sidonius is responsible for the hexameter,

Quicquid Pythagoras, Democritus, Heraclitusque.

But it is especially the Africans, of all Roman provincials, whose Latinity reminds us of Americauisms. So early as the second century, their language was peculiar. Tertullian, says Vives, perturbatissime loquitur, ut Afer; and he says of St. Augustine: Multum habet Africitatis in contextu dictionis, non perinde in verbis. The exaggerated superlatives which are common in the mouth of Americans, are to be found just the same in the African writers, such as minimissimus, postremissimus, pænissime. As the Americans delight in the termination "ate" for verbs, as locate, eventuate, approbate, obligate, necessitate, captivate