Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847

Beginning with abrupt protests and exclamations, his impassioned pleading gradually grew more continuous, but not less vehement, till it flowed in the full torrent of a lover's eloquence. On all this turbulent pathos Constantia looked calmly down, more in sorrow than in anger. From the moment she understood in whose power she was, she had ceased (so much justice she had at least done to the character of her lover) to have any alarm whatever on her own account; but she was filled with regret, disquietude, and concern for the fatal consequences which might ensue to himself from the unwarrantable step he had taken. "Restore me to my uncle's before he shall hear of this," were the only words she vouchsafed in return to all his passionate appeal.

But the pleading of the desperate lover was not, as may well be supposed, allowed to proceed without interruption. Leonora, a young girl of spirit and animation, immediately sent forth the servants of the household to rouse up the friends of the family, and to spread every where the report of the strange outrage which had been committed upon one of the most respected families of Bologna. A fleet messenger was especially despatched to the uncle of Constantia, distant only a few miles from the town, to recall him to a scene where his presence was so much required. There was a perpetual standing feud between the citizens of Bologna and the students of the university, which had often disturbed the tranquillity of the city; it was therefore with extreme alacrity and zeal that the townsmen rushed in crowds into the streets, armed with the best weapons they could procure, to rescue the niece of their venerable judge, and to punish the gross outrage which they conceived had been perpetrated.

When, however, the multitude came in front of the large mansion or palace in which Giacomo resided, and which was tenanted entirely by students, the great majority of whom were his zealous partisans, and all of whom were prepared, in any quarrel whatever, to take part against the townsmen, they found the enterprise they had undertaken to be one of no little difficulty. The huge gates were closed and barred, while the windows above were occupied by a spirited garrison who had already supplied themselves with missiles of every description to annoy their assailants. These latter began, with true Italian energy, to pull up the posts out of the street, to form battering-rams with which to force the gates. They thundered at them with dreadful din, shaking the whole edifice; and in spite of the missiles despatched in quick succession from above, seemed to be on the point of effecting an entrance.

When Constantia heard this horrible din she turned pale with affright – Giacomo pale with rage. He could make no impression on the cold beauty before him – his suppressed passion was suffocating him. Against these assailants all his impetuosity could burst forth —them he knew at least how to defy; – here was an enemy he could vanquish, or, at worst, a defeat he knew how to sustain. When, therefore, several of his friends rushed breathless into the room to tell him that the great gates began to creak upon their hinges, and were likely to be beaten in, he almost welcomed this new species of contest. Conducting Constantia into a side-room, where she would be out of reach of the ensuing tumult and disorder, and where an aged matron waited to attend upon her, he went with his friends to meet the rest of his companions in arms, who were anxious to consult him on the next measures which in their present emergency should be taken.

The house, or palazzo, was built on a plan very customary in such structures. In the centre were the tall gates, now undergoing the battery of the citizens, which opened upon a square, lofty, paved court or hall, supported by columns, and forming a carriage-way up to the foot of the staircase. Originally you passed through the hall into a garden beyond, but when the building had been converted into a residence for students, and made a part, in fact, of the university, a wall had been erected, separating the garden from the house. This wall, though lofty, did not, however, rise to the level of the roof of the hall; both light and air were admitted from above it, and you still saw the topmost branches of the orange-trees and the summits of the fountains that were playing in the garden beyond. From either side of this hall rose the broad and marble staircase which led into the interior of the house.

Upon both branches of this noble staircase, whose steps faced the entrance, Giacomo stationed his gallant band, armed each of them at least with his rapier. He then commissioned one of his companions to proclaim to the besiegers from a window above, that if they would cease their battering, and retreat a few paces from the gates, they should be opened to them.

To this the crowd assented, presuming that it could imply nothing else than a surrender. The great doors were opened. They rushed forward; but the staircase they thought to ascend so readily was occupied every inch of it by a brave phalanx, which awaited them with glittering swords, held forward in spear fashion, tier above tier. The first rank of this disordered multitude had no desire whatever to be thrust forward by those in the rear on the points held forth by this determined phalanx. A great number of them passed harmless between the two staircases, but the wall we have described prevented any egress in that direction; and when the lower part of the hall was quite full, the struggle commenced in earnest between those of the crowd who desired to retreat, and those who, knowing nothing of the peril of their companions, were still urging forward. The struggle rose to a combat. The students, who, at the express desire of Giacomo, stood steadily at their post, and preserved a dead silence, were undisturbed spectators of the tumult, and saw their adversaries in desperate strife, the one against the other.

They seemed to be on the point of obtaining, in this singular manner, a bloodless victory, when Andrea, the uncle of Constantia, together with the Podestà, made their appearance, with such military force as could be assembled at the moment. This had immediately one good effect; the crowd without, by making way for the Podestà, released their companions within, still struggling for escape. The military force of the Podestà soon stood confronted with the little band of students. Yet these were so well placed, had so decidedly the advantage of position, and their leader was so well known for his prowess and indomitable courage, that there was a great unwillingness to commence the attack, and very loud calls were made upon them to surrender to the majesty of the law.

For Giacomo, the combat was what his blood boiled for. Would that he could have fought single-handed – he alone – and perilled, and have lost his life! But when he saw the respected form of the uncle of Constantia – when he reflected that the experiment he had so long desired, had been made and failed– that the cold virgin whom he had left up stairs was still invincible, whoever else he might conquer or resist, and that he should be exposing the lives of his companions in a combat where to him there was now no victory – he lowered his sword, and made treaty of peace with the Podestà. On consideration that none other but himself should suffer any species of penalty for that day's transaction, he offered to resign Constantia to her uncle, and himself to the pleasure of the Podestà. These terms were very readily accepted; his companions alone seemed reluctant to acquiesce in them.

CHAPTER III

While all this tumult was raging round the house, and within the heart of Giacomo, the student's lamp was burning, how calm, how still, in the remote and secluded chamber of his friend Petrarch! To him, out of a kind and considerate regard, and from no distrust in his zeal or attachment, the ardent lover had concealed his perilous enterprise. Remote from the whole scene, and remote from all the passions of it, sat the youthful sage; not remote, however, from deep excitements of his own. Far from it. Reflection has her emotions thrilling as those of passion. He who has not closed his door upon the world, and sat down with books and his own thoughts in a solitude like this – may have lived, we care not in how gay a world, or how passionate an existence, – he has yet an excitement to experience, which, if not so violent, is far more prolonged, deeper, and more sustained than any he has known, – than any which the most brilliant scenes, or the most clamorous triumphs of life, can furnish. What is all the sparkling exhilaration of society, the wittiest and the fairest, – what all the throbbings and perturbations of love itself, compared with the intense feeling of the youthful thinker, who has man, and God, and eternity for his fresh contemplations, – who, for the first time, perceives in his solitude all the grand enigmas of human existence lying unsolved about him? His brow is not corrugated, his eye is not inflamed: he sits calm and serene – a child would look into his face and be drawn near to him – but it seems to him that on his beating heart the very hand of God is lying.

The poet had closed his door, and unrolled before his solitary lamp his favourite manuscript, "The Tusculan Disputations of Cicero." How well that solitary lamp burning on so vivid and so noiseless – the only thing there in motion, but whose very motion makes the stillness more evident, the calm more felt; how well that lamp – the very soul, as it seems, of the little chamber it illumines – harmonises with the student's mood! How it makes bright the solitude around him! How it brings sense of companionship and of life where nothing but it – and thought – are stirring!

But though the young student had seated himself to his intellectual feast, it was evident that he was not quite at his ease; there was something which occasioned him a slight disquietude. In truth he was destined, by his father, to be "learned in the law;" was enjoying a stolen fruit; and whatever the well-known proverb may say, we have never found, ourselves, that any enjoyment is heightened by a sense of insecurity in its possession, or a thought of the possible penalty which may be the consequence of its indulgence. Petrarch might have been observed to listen attentively to every footstep on the great staircase that served the whole wing of the building to which his little turret belonged; and till the step was lost, or he was sure that it had stopped at some lower stage in the house, he suspended the perusal of his manuscript, and sat prepared to drop the precious treasure into a chest that stood open at his feet, and to replace it by an enormous volume of jurisprudence which lay ready at hand for this piece of hypocritical service. This peculiarly nervous condition was the result of a paternal visit which had been paid him, most unexpectedly, a few evenings before. His father, suspecting that he was more devoted to the classics than to the study of the law, started suddenly from Avignon, stole upon his son unforewarned, ruthlessly snatched from him the prized manuscripts in which he found him absorbed, and committed them to the flames. Petrarch, of gentle temper, and full of filial respect, ventured upon no resistance; but when he saw his Virgil and his Cicero put upon his funeral pyre, he burst into a flood of uncontrollable tears. His father, who was not himself without a love of classic literature, but who was anxious for his son's advancement in the world, and his study of a profession on which that advancement appeared entirely to depend, was smit with compassion and some remorse. These last two manuscripts he rescued himself from the flames, and restored to his disconsolate son, with the repeated admonition, however, to indulge less in their perusal, nor to allow them to take the place due to the science of jurisprudence.

"Science!" said the young enthusiast, who had recovered something of his self-possession: "Can conclusions wrested often with perverted ingenuity from artificial principles and arbitrary axioms, be honoured with the name of science? And the law, to obtain this fictitious resemblance to a science, leaves justice behind and unthought of. I will study it, my father, as I would practise any mechanical art, if you should prescribe it as a means of being serviceable to my family; but you – who are a scholar – ah! place not a tissue of technicalities, however skilfully interwoven, on a level with truth, which has its basis in the nature of things. I would help my fellow-men to justice; but must I spend my life, and dry up and impoverish my very soul, in regulating his disputes according to rules that are something very different from justice? – often mere logical deductions from certain legal abstractions, in which all moral right and wrong, – all substantial justice between man and man, is utterly forgotten?"

"My son," said the father, "you are young, and therefore rash. You think it, perhaps, an easy thing to do justice between man and man. We cannot do justice between man and man. No combination of honesty and intelligence can effect it; the whole compass of society affords no means for its accomplishment. To administer moral justice, each case must be decided on its own peculiar merits, and those merits are to be found in the motives of the human heart. We cannot promise men justice. But we must terminate their disputes. Therefore it is we have a system of law – our only substitute for justice – by which men are contented to be governed because it is a system, and applicable to all alike. Believe me, that wise and able men of all countries are well occupied in rendering more symmetrical, more imposing, and as little immoral and unjust as possible, their several systems of jurisprudence."

Petrarch was silent; it was neither his wish nor his policy to prolong the discussion. Besides, his heart was too full. Had he dared, he would have pleaded for his own liberty; for choice of poverty and intellectual freedom – for poverty and greatness! But what he felt within him of the promptings of ambition, the assurance of fame, the consciousness of genius, he had too much modesty to express. He could not do justice to himself, without appearance of overweening pride. It was better to be silent than to say but half.

It was the remembrance of this visit which, on the present occasion, made him listen with a painful curiosity to every step upon the stairs. And now a step was heard. It came nearer and nearer, higher and higher – a rapid step which never paused an instant till it reached his own door. A loud knocking followed. But this time it was no spy upon his literary hours. On opening the door, a fellow-student, breathless with haste, rushed into the room, and related the tragical event which had taken place at the house of their common friend Giacomo.

Petrarch immediately descended and ran to meet his friend. He found him already a prisoner! The Podestà, willing, however, to treat the unhappy student with as much lenity as possible, had converted his own apartments into his prison. He well knew, also, the honourable character of his prisoner; the granting this indulgence enabled him to exact his word of honour not to escape, and he probably judged, considering the extreme popularity of Giacomo in the university, that this was a greater security for his safe custody than any walls, or any guard, which he had at his command in Bologna.

Petrarch was horror-struck when he came fully to apprehend the extreme peril to which his friend had exposed himself. Whatever were his motives, he had committed, in fact, a capital offence, and one to be classed amongst the most heinous; it was the crime of abduction he had perpetrated, and for which he stood exposed to the penalty of death. The poet fell weeping into the arms of his friend.

"Alas!" said Giacomo, "she would not hear me!" The inflexibility of Constantia was still the only grief that dwelt upon his mind. "She stood there – on that spot – I could kiss the traces of her footstep could I see them – cold, cold as the statue – I might have prayed with better hope to the sculptured marble!"

But Petrarch did not limit his kind offices to sympathy and lamentation. Meditative as he was by character, and little habituated to what is called the business of life, he saw clearly the grave nature of his friend's position. The crime which Giacomo had actually committed – the abduction from her home of a noble virgin – subjected him, as we have said, to the punishment of death. Those only who could have read his heart, or knew the purity of his intentions, could have acquitted him; and even to those, his conduct would have appeared rash and unjustifiable. But to the citizens of Bologna, irritated and all but at war with the university, disposed to magnify every offence committed by a member of that body, and exasperated, moreover, by the late fruitless contest in which they had been engaged – the act of Giacomo would appear in all its unmitigated criminality. They were, in fact, resolved that he should not escape the utmost rigour of the law; they were already clamouring aloud for his death – his public execution.

There was but one man in Bologna who could save him. This was Romeo de' Pepoli, a man exceedingly rich – by far the richest in the city – and who, by a popular use of his wealth, had obtained a great ascendency in the republic. This Romeo de' Pepoli was secretly aiming at the tyranny. He failed, owing to the awakened jealousy of the people; but although he himself was banished from the city at the very moment when he seemed about to reap the fruits of his nefarious intrigues, he prepared the way to power for his sons, who were for some time tyrants of Bologna. There was no doubt that this man – and he alone – was able, if he chose, to rescue Giacomo from his threatened fate. For should his influence with the citizens fail to mitigate their animosity, still, in all the ill-assured governments of that day, such exorbitant wealth as he possessed gave something more than influence. Judgments of law were almost always to be bought, if a price high enough could be paid, or an armed force could be hired which would set the judgment of a court at defiance, and prevent its execution.

To this eminent citizen and nobleman Petrarch betook himself. So remarkable an event as that which had lately transpired in the city, we may be sure, had drawn the attention of this wily and ambitious personage. At first he had adopted the indignation and anger of the citizens, as being the part most likely to increase his popularity. But on reflection it had occurred to him, that a still greater advantage might perhaps be taken of this event, if, through his skilful mediation, and a dexterous advocacy of the cause of Giacomo, he should be able to obtain the favour and partisanship of the more spirited members of the university. Over these, no one had so great an influence as Giacomo – in the cause of no one could they be more deeply interested – nor was it likely that, an occasion would arise in which he could serve them more signally than by coming to his rescue. On the other hand, a thousand ways would still be open to appease and conciliate the offended citizens. Add to all which, Giacomo himself, like all those on whom classical literature and the early histories of Rome and of Greece were just re-opening, was distinguished by an ardent zeal for liberty. Without seeking actually to intermeddle in the political affairs of the city, he and his associates were accustomed – probably in much the same manner as the German students of the present day – to proclaim and uphold the cause of freedom in their songs, and with the oratory of the wine-cup. They might be calculated on as stanch friends to the republic, and deadly opponents to the tyranny. To gain over this band of ardent and enthusiastic spirits, would be a great step in the prosecution of his ambitious enterprise. Even their neutrality would be an incalculable advantage to him.

Petrarch had been always well received by one who was anxious to win all sorts of golden opinions, and therefore desirous to be thought an admirer of learning and a patron of youthful genius. On the present occasion, he found the ambitious nobleman singularly courteous, and not indisposed to listen to his ardent vindication of Giacomo. With the usual artifice of such men, Pepoli appeared to be listening to the reasoning of the young advocate, whilst he was revolving only his own thoughts, and was not unwilling to let it appear that predeterminations of his own were the results of another's eloquence.

"Let me see your unfortunate friend," he said, with a sort of relenting air; "something, perhaps, maybe done – I cannot tell. But you see the whole town is in arms against him. I shall be risking," he added with a smile, – for there is nothing more common with crafty men than to speak the very truth in a light jesting manner, giving their earnest motives the air of sport, and so expressing and disguising themselves at the same time – "I shall be risking all my popularity with the good Bolognese – I must proceed cautiously."

Petrarch ran back, full of sanguine hope, to his friend, and repeated the result of his mission. Giacomo shook his head mournfully. He was slow to enter into the exhilarating prospects placed before him. Perhaps he had read deeper into the character of this man than Petrarch.

The interview which Pepoli desired took place. What circuitous terms the ambitious man employed to suggest the price which was to be paid for his intermediation, we do not know; but the smile on the lip of Giacomo was interpreted as the smile of intelligence and acquiescence. Of intelligence it certainly was. At this interview it was agreed that the student should assemble together some of the most ardent and influential of his friends, that he should present Pepoli to them, and induce them to swear a sort of allegiance and fidelity to his cause, in return for the aid he pledged himself to bring to Giacomo.

With the liberty allowed by the Podestà to his prisoner, it was not difficult to arrange this meeting. He was permitted to invite to supper a considerable number of his most faithful adherents and intimate associates. It being understood that Pepoli was to be one of the guests, there was still less scruple in granting this permission.

The supper passed off, as may be supposed under such circumstances, with little hilarity. Being brought to a conclusion, Giacomo, at whose side sat Pepoli, entreated the attention of his guests. He rose and addressed them. He began by proclaiming the intended mediation of Pepoli in his behalf. Cheers followed this announcement. He proceeded to enlarge on the wealth, the power, the manifest pre-eminence in the state which Pepoli had acquired. The students still applauded, but the exact drift of these somewhat ambiguous praises – ambiguous in the mouth of a republican speaking of a republican – they could not well perceive. Pepoli alone seemed to understand and to approve. He then solemnly called upon his friends to take an oath with him before he died.

"But you shall not die!" was the exclamation with which both Pepoli and the students interrupted him.

"An oath," he continued, not heeding this interruption, "which I exact from you in the name of friendship, in the name of virtue, in the name of liberty. Is it not generous, this offer of Pepoli – of him who has been the champion of the citizen against the student – the most popular man in all Bologna, – is it not generous that he should step forward to rescue my life from the blind rage and mad injustice of the multitude? But you must understand there is a certain price to be given for this generosity. You do not expect him to sacrifice his popularity, which is his power, out of mere compassion to one who has never courted nor applauded him, without receiving, in return, some compensation. If you accept his benefits, you must forward his counsels, you must promote his designs. Say, will you swear?"

"Yes! yes! we swear!" was the general response.

"Students of Bologna!" he proceeded, elevating his voice. "I accept this mark of your friendship. For my sake you have promised to swear. Now hear the oath I propose, and to which I bind you. This man offers me my life, and the price of it is – the liberty of Bologna! Fellow students, Romeo de' Pepoli aims at the tyranny. Swear that you will never, on any condition, for any boon, aid him in his flagitious enterprise; that you will thwart, and resist, and combat it to the utmost. Swear that you will, at all times, reject his mediation – as I now reject, utterly and with scorn, the service that he proffers me. I unmask him to you ere I die. I, too, have lived for one good purpose. This man, my friends, would be tyrant of Bologna – swear, to me that he shall not!"

There was a pause of a few seconds. But it was soon evident that the noble spirit – of patriotism and of self-sacrifice – of their admired friend, had found a genuine response in all his hearers. He had touched the true chord. Carried forward by his disinterested enthusiasm, and pledged by the promise he, had somewhat artfully extorted from them, they rose, and with one voice repeated the oath proposed to, them. Pepoli, pale and aghast, and utterly confounded, and catching here and there the flashing of the half-drawn steel, made a precipitate retreat. Of all the assembly, Petrarch alone remained silent – he alone failed, or forgot, to take the oath; – full of concern for the safety of his noble friend, full of admiration for his greatness, he fell weeping upon his neck.

CONCLUSION

After this, there was no more hope for the prisoner. If to the anger of the Bolognese was added the determined enmity of Romeo de' Pepoli, now resolved on his destruction, from what quarter could a ray of hope proceed? He was even now removed – such was the influence which the new enemy he had provoked possessed over the Podestà – to the common prison, and treated in all respects like a condemned malefactor. The university pleaded its privilege to judge a member of their own body, but the angry feeling of the citizens would not permit them for a moment to listen to this plea. There, was no power on earth to save him – and his fault was so light! A man more honourable did not exist. The purity of Constantia was more safe in his hands than in any others – he loved her so well.

We are not sufficiently in the "tragic vein" to follow the prisoner through the last hours of his confinement, and of his existence. To be struck dead in the flush of life, with all his passions in full bloom upon him, was a hard decree. Sometimes he protested vehemently against the palpable injustice and cruelty of his sentence; but, in general, he found his consolation in the mournful sentiment, that had he lived, he should have been miserable – for the great desire of his life was doomed to be thwarted. "I told you," he said one day to his friend Petrarch, "that this love would work my destruction. It has so; but its great misery has made destruction itself indifferent."

We willingly draw a veil over the last fatal scene, and all the horrors that precede a public death. Throughout this scene his courage never forsook him; but flashes of uncontrollable indignation would occasionally break from him, and occasionally a sigh of more tender despondency would escape. The last tear he shed, the last complaint he murmured, was still to the coldness of Constantia: "We should have been so happy, had she loved – and now! – "

History records that the execution of Giacomo, as well by infringing the supposed privileges of the university as by the indignation it excited in the large circle of his friends and companions, nearly led to the withdrawal of the university from the town of Bologna. The students and the professors seceded in a mass, and retired to Sienna. No entreaties could bring them back; the glory of Bologna might have been extinguished for ever. The Podestà and other magistrates of the town were compelled at length to send a solemn deputation. They promised, in future, to respect their privileges; and, by raising the salaries of the professors, and some other popular measures, they eventually prevailed upon them to return.

Petrarch had not left the city with the rest – he had lingered behind to perform the last rites and honours to the remains of Giacomo – to raise the tomb and inscribe it with his verse.

Upon that tomb the solitary moon was now shining. But who was that figure robed in deepest black that knelt beside it, so sadly, with so desponding a stillness, her forehead pressed against the marble? Was it, too, marble? No. The chisel may create beauty as exquisite, but never combine it with so great a sorrow. It was Constantia. Too late! Too late! She brought her tears where one smile would have given life and happiness. She felt the worth of him who had so passionately loved her, when nothing remained to love but the ashes in that urn. That pleading in the student's chamber seemed vain – and at the moment it was vain; but when she recalled it in her own solitude, her heart had half assented. She remembered how tenderly – with what an ardent and gentle worship – he had pressed her hand; her own hand trembled then to the touch which at the time it had coldly rejected. When, moreover, she heard, through their common friend Petrarch, of the noble manner in which he had refused the aid of Pepoli, and chose death rather than the least dishonour, and thought to herself – this man loved me! – all her heart was won. Alas! too late!

She now knelt at the tomb of Giacomo, afflicted with regret that amounted to remorse. She raised her head – she raised her hand – there was that within it which glittered in the moonbeam. But her hand was suddenly arrested. Petrarch, a frequent visitor at that tomb, had seen and prevented this movement of despair. "No! no!" he cried. "Beautiful creature, and too much beloved – live on – live! And when some other Giacomo appears, make compensation to heaven – by loving him!"

HENRY IV.[18 - Life of Henry IV. of France. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 Vols. London, 1847.]

So closely united are the arts of history and romance, that they may almost be said to be twin sisters. In both, the subjects are the same: and the objects which the artists have in view in handling them are identical. To impress the mind by the narrative of heroic, or melt it by that of tragic events – to delineate the varieties of character, incident, and catastrophes – to unfold the secret springs which influence the most important changes, and often confound the wisest anticipations – to trace the chain of causes and effects in human transactions from their unobserved origin to their ultimate results, is equally the object of both arts. The delineation of character, passion, and transaction is the great end of both, but to neither is the subordinate aid of description or pictorial embellishment denied. On the contrary, to both they constitute one of the principal charms of this art. The sphere of description is different, but the object and the impressions are the same. The novelist paints individual places, and strives to transfer to the mind of the reader a reflection of the brilliant scenes created in his own imagination. The historian embraces a wider sphere, and aims rather at portraying the general features of whole districts of country, or even quarters of the globe. But a painter's eye, a poet's mind, are equally required by both; and not the least interesting parts of the works of either are those in which the author leaves the busy and checkered scenes of dramatic incident, to dwell amidst the recesses of inanimate beauty, – to traverse the Alps with their shepherds, or the Pampas with their Gauchos, and mingle with the turbid course of human events somewhat of the purity which breathes amidst the works of Nature.

Notwithstanding this identity of object and art, there is nothing more certain than that romance writers in general have not made the best historians. Poets also, whose art so closely resembles that of the novelist, have in general failed when they invoked the historic muse. Smollett was in many respects an admirable romance writer; but the author of "Roderick Random" has left a History of England, which is nothing but a compilation of parliamentary debates and gazettes. Scott's powers as a romance writer were so great and various, and his delineations of historic scenes, characters, and events, so graphic and powerful, that it seemed next to impossible that he should not be equally successful as a historian, especially when the theme was one so varied and animating as the "Life of Napoleon." Voltaire's genius was universal, and seemed equally adapted to every object of human pursuit; but his historical works, though deservedly popular as school books, have never risen to an eminence approaching that justly attained by his tragedies and critical disquisitions.

What is very remarkable, and is just the reverse of what might a priori have been expected, the point in which romance writers in general fail, when they undertake history, is in giving sufficient life and animation to their narrative. Like race-horses, they seem in general incapable of carrying any considerable weight. They would break down under the panoply which a steed of Norman or Flemish extraction can sustain without difficulty. Their imagination is only kindled when it is at liberty to roam at will over a world of their own creation. Confined to the narration of actual events, limited to the delineation of real character, cramped by the description of actual scenes, their powers fail, their ardour is weakened, their fire is lost. A mind comparatively prosaic, subject to such burdens, speedily out-strips them even on their own element; and the scholar with his authorities kindles the imagination to an extent which the poet with his verses can hardly excel. Witness Livy's pictured pages – Gibbon's historical descriptions. Yet minds of the most elevated cast have occasionally, though at long intervals from each other, succeeded in uniting the historic and romantic arts. Homer's Iliad is the annals of the Siege of Troy in verse; his Odyssey, the versified Travels of Ulysses; and in the recent "Histoire des Girondins" by Lamartine, we have convincing proof that it is possible to unite the most ardent and enthusiastic poetical mind with the research, knowledge of character, and dramatic power, requisite to make the most interesting tragic annals.

As a romance writer, Mr James unquestionably is entitled to a high place. He has great historical information, especially of the olden times and their leading characters; an accurate personal knowledge of various countries, more particularly France, Flanders, and England; great acquaintance with the dress, manners, arms, and accoutrements of former days; and a very remarkable power of describing as well the ever-changing events of ancient story as the varied scenes of inanimate nature. His best novels, "Attila," "Philip Augustus," "Mary of Burgundy," "The Robbers," "The Smugglers," "Morley Ernstein," "Henry Masterton," are happy specimens of the historical romance. The great and deserved success which has attended the uniform edition of his novels now in course of publication, sufficiently proves that his reputation rests on a broader and securer basis than the fleeting patronage of fashion or the transient interest of individual satire. The great risk which he runs, is from the number of his works. It is dangerous to write thirty books. The most prolific imagination runs into repetition, when repeatedly tasked with invention. Homer himself could not have written twenty Iliads; Shakspeare's fame has been not a little enhanced by his having left only twenty-seven plays; that of Sophocles, by only seven of his having come down to modern times. Perhaps the best thing that a good fairy could do for James's fame – as was said of Dryden – would be to withdraw two-thirds of his productions from subsequent times.

One of the greatest charms of Mr James's writings is the beautiful ideas, clothed in felicitous language, which are to be found profusely scattered over them. It is not the general opinion that he excels in this respect; on the contrary, nothing is more common in conversation than to hear it remarked, that it is in depth of thought, and knowledge of the human heart, that he is deficient. But this opinion arises from the frequency, sometimes, perhaps, redundancy of his pictures of nature, and the brilliant colours in which he never fails to array her finest scenes. Thoughts the most beautiful are frequently concealed amidst profusion of description, as fruit sometimes amidst luxuriance of leaves. Take for example the following, on one of the most familiar objects in nature – a drop of rain.

"We spoke of the rain, and I foolishly enough, in mentioning all the annoyance it had occasioned me, loaded it with maledictions.

"'Call it not accursed, my son,' said the monk. 'Oh no! remember that every drop that falls, bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility. Remember that glorious tree, and herb, and shrub, and flower, owes to those drops its life, its freshness, and its beauty. Remember that half the loveliness of the green world is all their gift; and that, without them, we should wander through a dull desert, as dusty as the grave. Take but a single drop of rain cloistered in the green fold of a blade of grass, and pour upon it one ray of the morning sun, where will you get lapidary, with his utmost skill, to cut a diamond that shall shine like that? Oh no! blessed for ever be the beautiful drops of the sky, the refreshing soothers of the seared earth – the nourishers of the flowers – that calm race of beings, which are all loveliness and tranquillity, without passion, or pain, or desire, or disappointment – whose life is beauty, and whose breath is perfume." —Henry Masterton.