land, and the citizens of Ghent consented to a treaty of peace. Charles 6th on his return to Paris, proved that, in gaining this victory over the commons of Flanders, he had, at the same time, subdued the commons of his own kingdom, who had taken a lively interest in the cause of the insurgent towns, but who instead of declaring in their favour, when the feudalist army advanced upon them, had waited the result of the battle, ere they would take part in the contest. The Parisians were treated as if they had actually revolted. They were disarmed; the communication of their streets was cut off; the principal leaders of the citizens were beheaded; an enormous contribution was levied upon the whole city, which was deprived of its privileges; the popular magistracies, the offices of provost and sheriff of trade, as well as all corporations, societies and assemblies of tradesmen, were suppressed, as being nothing more than political combinations. The provost of Paris became an officer of the crown, and the corporations were allowed only for particular and trading purposes. "The Parisians were thus treated at this time" says Froissart" in order to give an example to all the other good towns of the kingdom of France; they were made to submit to subsidies, duties, excise, taxes, douzième, treizième, and every other species of exaction, and the poor country was by this means drained. In like manner in the city of Rouen, in order to master the town, some of the citizens were executed and many ransomed; also at Rheims, at Chalons, at Troyes, at Sens, at Orleans, and throughout the kingdom of France, so great a sum of florins were levied as would excite great wonder to tell." Up to this time the whole government of the towns had been elective and democratic; now all was at the will of royalty and it became monarchical. This is the æra of the final subjugation of the plebeian order in France. This is the æra which concludes the great contest of the fourteenth century betwen democracy and feudalism, and which prepares us for a contest of a different nature which took place in the fifteenth century; we mean the contest of feudalism and dynasty, of which we have already spoken.

The troubles in Flanders, we perceive, have great historical importance, and we much wish that M. de Barante had evinced as much power in describing the political consequences, as he has in giving a lively picture of the events. He plunges us at once into the midst of the contest, without explaining to us its causes, without giving to us its meaning. He makes the combatants speak, act, and submit, so as rather to communicate to us the exact impression which was made at the time, than to give us any instruction for the future. Why has he not appreciated this effort of the people, which, had it succeeded, as

it did in Italy, would have raised the municipalities to the rank of republics, but which, in its failure, reduced them to the situation of mere royal cities?

Had the first taken place, the continent would have presented the same appearance as the Italian peninsula. A powerful democracy would have obtained existence, but disorderly, agitated by parties, and occasionally subverted by temporary usurpation and tyranny, in the midst of which the habits of feudalism by degrees would have been displaced by other habits of as determinate, though of a different nature, and that mixed character would have been formed, which results from the combination of war, of faction, of the increase of riches, and the spread of knowledge. The territorial and political centralization which places additional power in the hands of kings by holding the cities in dependance, and the forced and gradual submission of the nobles, would never have taken place, and new social combinations would have grown up. But such was not the conclusion of this contest, for power alone being the arbiter of the question, the nobles necessarily prevailed; those nobles, who made a trade of war, while the commons were only soldiers by accident; those nobles, who had acquired a habit of superiority, a perfect organization, and were headed by one chief whose right was divine: while the commons rebelled in order to acquire, rather than to defend, their independence, and acted without concert and without perseverance.

We know what has resulted from the real issue of the contest. Internal subjugation has been effected under the kings. The fourteenth century saw the conclusion of the municipal democracy of the middle ages, and the fifteenth beheld the sovereignty of feudalism. This is the æra when the great monarchies, which exist in Europe, were established. The kings of France, after the conclusion of their contest with the commons by Charles 6th, with the English by Charles 7th, with the nobles by Lewis 11th, having obtained a territorial and political union of the country, and still preserving the habit of conquest, carried their arms into foreign lands, in the persons of Charles 8th, Lewis 12th, and Francis 1st. This new direction of their power, which was suspended by the internal troubles of the Reformation, was resumed by Lewis 14th, and was not finally abandoned until the peace of Utrecht, which event put an end to the military monarchy. Meanwhile, although France had been disturbed by arms until the moment when the war became totally external, the development of civilization, by means of internal peace, has been most rapid and extensive. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europe has presented a different aspect. The warlike and unintellectual period of the

middle ages has given place to a new æra, an era which commenced with the reformation of religion, and which must end in a political reformation of the states of Europe. The people have supplanted by degrees the nobility; industry has taken the place of arms, and civilized society, with its ideas, its manners, its occupations, its language, has triumphed over a society exclusively military, with all its inevitable accompaniments. It is thus that the commons, who were subdued at the conclusion of the fourteenth century, have again effected, or will effect, a revolution, no longer as a municipal body, but as a whole people, no longer as a civic community, but as a nation. The people of England first accomplished this, because they first threw aside their military character. From the time when under Henry 6th they gave up continental wars, and under Henry 7th they concluded those between the houses of York and Lancaster, they have entered upon a civil career. The revolution in religion was effected in the reigns of Henry 8th and Elizabeth, and the political revolution in 1640 and 1688. Peace, civilization, and the impulse of philosophy, produced the same results in France in the eighteenth century, certainly a little less rapidly, but at the same time more extensively. The same effects must be produced by the same or similar causes throughout the rest of Europe.

Although these considerations are naturally suggested to us; it is much to be regretted that M. de Barante has not communicated those which were produced in his mind by the study of the fifteenth century. To our great disappointment, for there is no person more capable than himself of giving correct opinions upon this æra, he has denied himself the power of offering any view of this nature, by the style of historical composition which he has chosen. He desired to do for public life what Walter Scott has done for private; and although his work in this respect is beautiful; although he has given to history all the interest of romance, we cannot help saying that he has forgotten too much his own times, and has placed himself too much out of sight. When his heroes were silent, we could wish to have listened to himself, that we might have learnt from him what we could not ourselves discover. "When we study the past," says M. de Barante in his preface, we do not seek only the pleasure of perusing a recital more or less interesting; we do not read the relation of truth, in the same spirit that we do the more or less natural scenes of a romance; we seek for solid instruction, for a perfect knowledge of events, for moral lessons, for political counsel, for comparisons with the present."

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

ART. IX. The Quarterly Review.

IN N the article on Periodical Literature, in our first number, we commenced an inquiry into the motives which operate upon the conductors of Periodical Publications, in a direction opposite to the public good. In illustration of these general remarks, we selected the two Reviews, known by the titles of the Edinburgh, and the Quarterly, as furnishing specimens of the mischievous endeavours to which these motives lead, and the most instructive specimens which we could find-on account both of the extensive circulation of those journals, and the superior abilities of those who write in them.

Agreeing in subservience to all those motives which spring from the importunate demand of immediate success, and to all those which spring from the important circumstance of their being addressed chiefly to the aristocracy, and aiming chiefly at their approbation and applause, the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews differed, we saw, in their being addressed to different sections of the aristocracy, the one to the section of the ministerialists, the other to the section of the oppositionists. We shall see, by the examination of the Quarterly Review which we now propose to institute, to what divergence in their lines of operation, and what diversity of artifice, this original difference gives occasion.

There are other differences, of some importance, which are rather to be regarded as accidental.

The Quarterly Review has always displayed much more of the character of a bookseller's catch-penny, than the Edinburgh Review. On looking it over from the beginning, it really is surprising to what a degree it has absolutely renounced the character of being a vehicle of instruction, and has aimed at nothing higher than furnishing amusement and subject of prattle to loungers, and gossips. It is not merely that it has handled subjects of importance feebly and lamely, but that it has very rarely encountered them. Its main resources have been books of travels, and books of poetry and amusement. Books of travels are regularly pillaged of all that is most entertaining in them, to make a compilation for the Quarterly Review. The most interesting passages in books of poetry and amusement supply extracts for the same critical journal;

and it will amuse any one who will take the trouble to look over only a few numbers, as we have done the whole, to observe how large a proportion of its pages are filled directly from the pages of books of travels, and books of poetry, with little other trouble or talent, than what goes to the making of

extracts.

Another difference between the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review is, that a much higher kind of intellect has always appeared in the Edinburgh Review. This we may pronounce to be the public opinion, not contested even by those who would wish that it were otherwise.

A majority of the articles in the Edinburgh Review proves that they are from men with ideas; men of stored and cultivated minds, even when the reasonings they employ are fallacious, and the conclusions to be rejected. An article to which similar praise can be applied, rarely, and at long intervals, appears in the Quarterly Review. The writers in that journal are almost wholly of two sorts, compilers from books of travels, and mere litterateurs, men, who almost rank with the lowest class of artizans; who know little of literature, but the merely mechanical part; whose highest ambition is that of polishing a sentence; and who, feeling themselves incapable of making any impression by the weight and importance of their ideas, are perpetually on the strain to do so by mere language, pomp and glitter of expression.

We remark another, and still more radical difference between the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review. There is something in the writers in the Edinburgh Review, at least some of the most distinguished of them, which shows that they are fit for, and have a leaning towards better things, even when they are lending themselves to the sinister interest which assails them. They do not indeed attempt to go before the public mind, to take the lead of it; and by doing so, to hasten its progress. They are too much afraid of losing favour to adventure any thing like this. But no sooner do they perceive a turning in the public mind towards any thing that is good, than they are commonly ready to fall in with the happy current; and have often lent to it additional velocity and force.

The writers in the Quarterly Review pursue the directly opposite course. They seem to watch the earliest symptoms of any tendency in the public mind towards improvement in any shape, in order to fall upon it with determined hostility. They decry it with all the terms of reprobation. They endeavour to make it ridiculous, they endeavour to make it odious. They employ every artifice of which they are masters to prevent