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THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1847.

EDITED BY GEORGE PECK, D. D.

ART. I.-The Pictorial History of England: being a History of the People, as well as a History of the Kingdom. Illustrated with several hundred Wood Cuts; Monumental Records; Coins; Civil and Military Costume; Domestic Buildings; Furniture and Ornaments; Cathedrals, and other Great Works of Architecture; Sports, and other Illustrations of Manners; Mechanical Inventions; Portraits of the Kings and Queens; and remarkable Historical Scenes. By GEORGE L. CRAIK and CHARLES MACFARLANE; assisted by other contributors. 4 vols. 8vo. New-York: Harper & Brothers.

THE value of a truly good history of England issuing from the American press, attractive in form, and at a price which brings it into popular use, cannot be overrated. We care not with what other work of science, learning, or literary art, it be compared, in all its deep and enduring influences on the American mind, such production, we hesitate not to affirm, will rank first. Setting aside our religion, there will be found no such teacher as our own ancestral history-none whose lessons will be found so familiar or so persuasive, so practical or so much needed. There is, in short, no such mine of national wisdom for us Americans as the study of English history. Our silver and gold may have come to us from other regions, but what is better than silver and gold has come to us mainly from old England. Never, surely, in the past history of the world has the great problem of man and his capabilities, of society and its institutions, of religion and its influences, been so fully or so satisfactorily worked out, as in that little island which looks so small, and counts so great, as we cast our eyes over the terrestrial globe. With all its defects, too, the British constitution has yet been the freest and the best working which the nations of the earth, with their ten thousand experiments, (setting VOL. VII.-31

aside, of course, our own,) have yet lighted upon; and we may add that, with all its drawbacks, the British character has still corresponded with its noblest institutions. Nowhere do we find more sterling virtues, more practical good sense, purer national morals, or sounder Christian faith; and nowhere out of our own land, certainly, equal industry or skill, with its corresponding national wealth and power. Now all this has been the result of a long, long experiment, of which a true English history (a history, we mean, of the people as well as of the government) gives us the successive steps of advancement or retardation,-an invaluable guide, therefore, to all younger nations that would tread like it the path of power. Thus much, at least, those not her sons may admit. To those who are, we commend the affectionate eulogium of their own Camden:-"O! fortunate Britannia! The masterpiece of nature, performed when she was in her best and gayest humor, which she placed as a little world by itself by the side of the greater, for the admiration of mankind; the most accurate model which she proposed to herself, by which to beautify the other parts of the universe."

Or, to put its value in a comparative light, what a blank would not the page of modern history become to us with the name of England blotted out! We could better spare the Spanish, Italian, German, and even French, combined. With the English left, we should scarce miss one moral or political lesson of history. But, under the loss of the English, what a vacuum in all political and social wisdom! All would suffer dim eclipse. For what is there, we may ask, in our whole national training that came not out of that fountain? But as inheritors of England's experience, where did we get our common law, or Bill of Rights, or writ of habeas? And where else, but as graduates in her school, did the framers of our federal constitution learn their singular wisdom? For what, in truth, is all English history but our own history; and the English language, literature, poetry, and faith, but the living rock out of which our own has been fashioned? To whatever quarter, then, we turn, we cannot, as Americans, get England and her history out of our eye, nor, what is more, out of our heart. Nor should we if we could. To a people of "movement," as we are, it is all important to have something in their horizon fixed. Afloat as we are on a restless ocean, the popular will our only rudder, it is very needful to have some clear headlands to sail by; and, with shifting pilots at the helm, to have at least a settled chart before us, from good authority, and steady beacon-lights. Under this image does English history ever present itself to our minds.

With this natural, though perhaps needless, preamble, we come at last to our true subject-the splendid work before us-and hold the country at large a debtor to the liberal and enterprising publishers who have put it forth. So much praise, at least, is due to them in advance. They have added to the public stock of interesting reading, a work well calculated to tell powerfully and permanently on the rising mind of the country. Thousands and tens of thousands will be more or less influenced by it. The heroic and thrilling story of an ancestral home cannot but work deeply on youthful feelings, and improvingly on all; and thus make the publication of this History, as before said, a national benefit. Indeed, setting aside their issue of the BIBLE, we know of nothing that has come forth from the prolific press of the Harpers that better entitles them to be regarded as public benefactors than the work now before us. Its novelty of form and beauty of execution make its success certain, while its contents make that success a national blessing. Of such value do we hold the volumes. before us. We hail them with pleasure, too, from another cause. It is substituting "the solid bullion of the English line" in place of "French wire"-the enduring interest of a moral and true narrative for the spurious excitement of a licentious and fictitious one. It speaks well for the country that it is prepared for such exchange, and it speaks honorably for those who are willing to risk "business profits" by making it, because unwilling to make gain of that which would bring their country loss. The present publishers are men that may safely leave "Sue" and his novels, "et hoc genus omne," to publishers who are more ready to weigh gold against religion, and private interest against the public weal. But to turn to the work itself, which has its own high claims to merit, independent of the value arising from its subject. It is "history" in a new and more instructive form. It is the novel exhibition in literary labor of that same principle which has brought perfection into all material labor, namely, "subdivision of labor;" that is, distribution of "parts," with a view to higher perfection in the "whole." This is its leading feature; a principle which, however obvious and elsewhere familiar, is yet now, we think, for the first time distinctly applied to what it is yet peculiarly applicable to--the preparation of a great national history. It is at once evident what ample room, or rather need, here exists for its application. The varied and minute knowledge demanded in the historian, the stores of the antiquarian, the research of the scholar, the learning of the jurist, the science of the economist, the attainments of the theologian, the taste and reading of the man of letters, the

heart of sympathy to conceive and the hand of power to delineate men and events, as well as the eye of the soldier to realize truly and narrate vividly what, alas! forms too large a portion of the historic page-all these and many more incongruous demands belong to the historian's task, and will be made and must be answered by him who henceforth undertakes to satisfy the public mind in a great national history. But what single individual can even pretend to bring to the task such varied qualifications? and yet which one can be dispensed with? In any one point a marked failure brings condemnation on the work, and breaks down its reputation on all points. To take an instance or two: Hume's ignorance in Saxon, Gibbon's deeper ignorance of religion, Alison's ignorance in military affairs, and Sir Walter Scott's ignorance in financial matters, have each respectively struck down the reputation of their histories even on points wherein they were competent judges. Now from these well-known examples it is clear that a thoroughly good history, more especially of such a country as England, must in its execution be an "exhaustive" work, and therefore, to be successfully treated, must be entered upon and carried out, as the work before us has been, through means of a subdivision of labor -many heads as well as many hands, each skillful in his own department, each confined to his own task, yet all working to a common end. This leads us to speak more specially of the plan of the "Pictorial History of England."

It is a republication for American readers of an English work originally issued in London, in monthly parts, by Charles Knight, the well-known publisher of the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." It bears therefore, in some degree, the stamp and seal of that association. Its authorship, however, is shared by a number of writers, though under the editorial supervision of a single head, namely, Mr. George L. Craik, "whose various works upon the literature and general antiquities of Great Britain have made him favorably known in this department." The manner of such division is as follows: English history is first divided into periods, each period forming a distinct book. The books again are subdivided into chapters, each chapter being devoted to a distinct department confined to the history of that period. Such distribution is sevenfold, each department having its own authorone specially skilled in the subject assigned to him. The departments and authors' names are as follows:

1. "Civil and Military Transactions," by Mr. Charles Macfar lane.

2. "A History of Religion," by Mr. Thomas Thomson.

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