should) from the hands of the State, are we not still bound to provide some means whereby we may secure a complete and competent supply of principals and assistants, for whatever establishments we have already, or may have hereafter? Certainly, if no nation intrusts the interests of its army and navy, if no people intrusts the interests of its schools and churches, to spontaneous and casual supplies, no Christian community can with credit or safety intrust the offices of Christian charity to any preparation less provident and complete.

We close with a single word upon the financial question. Here are men moved by the sacred spirit of compassion, sympathy, and good-will, the Christ-like love of man, than which nothing ever fills the human heart more fully with the Spirit of God. Some are high, others low; some are weak, others strong; some are young, others old; some are ignorant, others instructed. We were about to say, some are rich, and others poor; but it seemed better to add, all alike and at once are poor and rich. The claims of their glorious task reduce them to the level of a common poverty; while the open hand of Him who calls them to his service endows them with the common wealth which is his alone to give. The founders of these charities are the financiers of Faith. If they are willing to spend and be spent, after the manner of One who being rich made himself poor, that he might make others rich,- must we not admit that they had a right to be confident of success? Our author omits Müller's memorable case in England, because his theme is the charities of the Continent. We have heard Müller's financial skill questioned. But it cannot be that Liefde is mistaken in crowding his pages with case after case in illustration and attestation of Müller's looking in prayer to Him who alone can say, "The silver and the gold are mine;" and through Him who alone hath authority to add, "If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." No one can read the simple, strange stories of this dependence upon God and success with men, without a new sense of the part assigned to faith and trust through prayer, in the business of good works. The

sums required, collected, and expended in all these charities, during our day, have amounted to many millions. And yet was it even a tithe of the vast aggregate of the world's wealth in the prosperous quarters where the work was done and the expense assumed? To "sit down first and count the cost," was not often possible, at the outset, on such untried ventures; but, as item after item arose, it was provided for by these men full of faith and good works. "God helps those who help themselves." The wisdom and boldness of the beginning are best seen in the grandeur of the end. Faith and hope, allied with charity, are able to work miracles. The words remain true, "For ye have the poor with you always; and whensoever ye will, ye may do them good:" and although our Master added, with equal truth, "But me, ye have not always," may we not hope that in the blessed work of charity the Lord himself is with his people still, "healing all manner of sickness and all manner of diseases among the people"?

ART. VI.-MISS MARTINEAU'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 1. The History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace: 18161846. With an Introduction, 1800-1815. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. 2 vols., royal 8vo. London: Charles Knight, 90, Fleet Street.

1849.

2. History of the Peace; being a History of England from 1816 to 1854. With an Introduction, 1800-1815. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. 4 vols., small 8vo. Boston Walker, Fuller, & Co. 1865-1866.

IN speaking lately of Froude's and Bancroft's histories, we have attempted to show why it is impossible to write a true or adequate history of any series of events, till two or three generations have passed by after they occurred. In the case of Mr. Bancroft, these generations have passed; and we begin to get at some of the springs of action, which, till our time, have been secret. Mr. Froude is doing much the same thing

for Henry VIII. and for Elizabeth. He is doing it with the disadvantage of addressing a tribunal — the public — which dislikes to give up its prepossessions; and is, on the whole, satisfied, that it is so long ago since Henry and Elizabeth died that it makes no great difference whether truth or falsehood is told concerning them. Now comes Miss Martineau, writing out the history of fifty-five years, before the secret springs are made known. A very picturesque and entertaining book she has made; a book a great deal more accurate than we should have thought probable, and one which will fill a very valuable place for the next fifty years, — when some Macaulay, now cutting his teeth on an India-rubber ring, will use it as a very convenient date-book in writing the real history of England through a half-century very eventful in her constitution.

Every person of sense feels constantly the want of such a compilation. No person of sense expects such a compilation to be made nearly so well as this is. For, in general, it is true, that there is no history about which people are so badly informed as the history of twenty-five years preceding their own recollections of the newspapers. The colleges, almost of course, ignore such a subject, as they do most subjects of contemporary interest, or of immediate, practical value; and you will find many a fine young fellow of one-and-twenty, well up on the battles of the Thirty Years' War, quite accurate about Flodden, Bosworth, Naseby, even Austerlitz and Waterloo, who does not know how General Jackson was chosen president, or who made the last Canadian invasion before the Fenians went over the border. The text-books stop at certain fixed eras, because the men who make the text-books find that their portly authorities stop there. The portly authorities stop there, for the evident reasons, that people who know the secrets ought not to tell them; and people who do not know them cannot tell them. So it happens that between the picture of the past, often quite distinct and in brilliant color in a well-educated mind, and the persons and things of the present, as they stand around, visible themselves, there is a cloud of vagueness such as Cornelius Agrippa would have

raised, when he wished to show to some inquirer one of those vivid representations of distant events, which he yet might not rush upon and handle.

The direction to be given to an intelligent young man or woman who feels this want, is to read the "Annual Register" for this intermediate period of twenty-five years, after formal history stops, before their own recollections begin. The advice is a little like the advice which Mr. Thoreau gave when he recommended his American audiences to read the "Veds," -not a quarter part of the "Veds" being then accessible in any language but Sanscrit, a language which was not then known to one human being on this continent, least of all to Mr. Thoreau. For a set of the "Annual Register" is only accessible in the large libraries. It has the faults, speaking in general, of the daily newspapers, out of which of necessity it is made. It has their excellences also. For a hundred years now, it has been published- always in a Conservative interest only in occasional volumes rising to dignity of narrative, but comprehending always what an intelligent literary workman has thought important in English and European affairs for the twelve months just preceding every issue, Then, by a very odd arrangement, there is a sort of appendix to it, vastly more entertaining than the history itself, which contains the striking anecdotes, the criminal trials, accidents, and other events of detail, which, for some reason unknown, the stately historians generally leave out of history. The effect is not unlike that which you sometimes find in a badly made plum-cake, where all the plums are at the bottom, while, perhaps for want of plums, the other part is very heavy and very hard eating. Children are apt to pick out the plums and leave the rest, in such cases. And we observe in the case of the "Annual Register," that the novelists, like Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray, are much better acquainted with this" Chronicle," as it is called, than they are with the solid and more indigestible chapters to which it is appended. But, take it all through, frost, crust, unbaked dough, and plums, the "Annual Register" is very good reading, when in the hands of one who knows how to skip wisely. And, as most

of our young friends think themselves proficients in this detail, we have never hesitated to give, as general advice to young students, the direction above, that they read the "Annual Register" for the period of twenty-five years before their recollection begins.

There are a few volumes of the "Edinburgh Annual Regis ter," in editing which Scott had to do. Dr. Lardner published a volume or two of the "Cabinet Annual Cyclopædia," a book small enough to be kept in small collections; and it is a pity that it was not continued. Eight or ten volumes of an "American Annual Register" were published thirty years ago, and answer very well for the period they cover. The three bound volumes of the "Monthly Chronicle" are an American annual register for 1840, '41, and '42. And now we have Appleton's "Annual Cyclopædia." All these, for an American reader, are of much more use, so far as they go, than the corresponding English volumes. The French "Annuaire Historique," published at the office of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," seems to us better done, as a work of history, than the English. It is generally much more satisfactory on American affairs. We must not forget Mr. Alison's book for the period it covers. But all of these seem exceptional, and, so to speak, spasmodic, when we compare them against the sturdy, solid row, shelf after shelf, of the stupid, eternal, old "Dodsley's Annual Register."

We are led into this excursus on the resources for contemporary history, which few people could get at without taking a walk for them, and which most people in America could not get at at all, because Miss Martineau's history, now happily brought nearly up to date, and furnished by American wit with an index, for the want of which it was almost worthless before, takes, in considerable measure, the place of all this cumbrous machinery. We shall not excuse our young friend now, if she does not know the difference between Capo D'Istria and Bolivar. We shall expect her now to know whether Polignac was a transcendental, radical manufacturer of rattraps, or the governor-general of Poland, or the head of the French ministry. It would not be unfair to say, that Miss Mar