The Express.
London, England, 1863-12-26 00:00:00

[Stamped, Id. AdclitionaL]

LITERATURE.

Revolutions in 'lnglis' History. By ROBUST
VAUGHAN, D.D. VoL & Longman. 186&

This volume, which brings the work on English
revolutions to a close, is divided into three books,
the 12th treating of ames and Charles 1., the next
of the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, and the
Republic, and the 14th of the Restoration and the
last of our revolutions, in 168& To these is added
a supplementary book, which gives a rapid sketch
of the national progress from that period to the
present. If it was thought desirable to subjoin
such an appendix toe work which_
_properly ends
with the accession of William and Ham it might,
perhaps, have been better to make the sketch more
full and complete. It is written too much in the
manner of the lecture room, and it therefore
weakens the impression of the more solid work to
which it is added. The author is a moderate liberal
as a politician, and a dissenter, and he has made
the last portion of his work the vehicle for the
expression of his personal views upon a great variety
of subjects—upon art, science, commerce and litera-
ture, convocation, dissent, social morals, arid the
constitution.
The earlier portions of the volume fully sustain
the author's reputation as a writer of ability, care,
and a
judging:Mt. 1141,,has...origentlYaa ,s., sr
amttichn,
affirms, considerable independent res
the proper sources of English history. He is,
generally speaking, candid in the treatment of as-
rasters with which be has no sympathy, although
perhaps too ready to apologies for the mistakes and
failings of those whom he admires. He aims at
the originality rather of independent thought than
of novelty, and finds, as we might naturally expect,
" that the great judgments of history concerning
the men and events of past times are not to be ma-
terially disturbed, except in a few very ram in-
stances." In this quiet way the author enten his
protest against certain late endeavours to rewrite
histories in senses contrary to received opinion, but
he takes sides strongly with the more liberal
modern historians in the defence of men
like Raleigh, Eliot, and others, who were
the victims of arbitrary power, but whose memory
our writers have not always vindicated. Dr.
Vaughan has often 000asion to amend liume's judg-
ments., especially with regard to the Stuart period.
In commenting, for example, upon the sneer of that
historian upon Eliot's being accounted "a martyr
to the liberties of England" because he died while
in confinement, the imprisonment having hastened,
as the author believes, if it was not the cause of his
il
death, Dr. Vaughan remarks :

Such is the spirit in whish our history is written, and our
peat men are disposed of, by an author who has been
allowed to iatlusoes English ideas in regard to English hir
tory beyond any other man through nearly a century past.

The censure is not undeserved, though it applies
more to the expressions of his own opinion on the
part of David Hume than to his statements of
facts. There is no mistaking what the senti-
ments were with which he wrote, but the
facts which he records were often at va-
riance with them. He sometimes furnishes
ample material for au opinion the oontrary
of his own. It is thus curious to remark hew dif-
ferently the two writers relate the same events.
Hume was the apologist of the Stuart kings. Dr.
Vaughan sympathises with the patriots and pu-
ritans who were their opponents. But the historian
bad to deal witb the entire series of events ; and
as he does this in general with tolerable complete-
ness, so far as the knowledge of his time
extended, he will continue to be read until a better
history shall have been composed. The simple
lecturer on history selects his own facts, and
therefore leaves a one-sided impression. Sensible
readers will, for the most pact, decide that the
aut:ior is justified in his amendments of the Scot-
tish writer, but they will feel also that this method
of partial writing of history—of writing it with
the simple purpose of illustrating certain comments
upon it—is extremely liable to become partisan,
whichever side it takes.

The real subject of this volume is the Great
Rebellion—what led to it, and what followed from
it ; and the author's design has been to represent
the leading events and characters of that period as
they appear from what we may call the rebel point
of view. He strenuously defends the Independents,
assuming everywhere that they were in the right
when even he does not say so. Of the Presby-
terians he has little favourable to say when they
stood victorious over the king, but at issue with
the growing power of Cromwell's party. Dr.
Vaughan thinks better of them before the war than
after it. Of Cromwell he takes substantially the
same view with Mr. Thomas Carlyle, though he
never quotes that author, and only refers to him in
a note to the following erect :

It is dna to myseU to state that the estimate I have formed
of tbe &erecter and career of Cromwell is strictly my own,
and was published io substance as mine long before Mr.
Carlyle bad written on this subject, and when the notions
of that gifted writer concerning the leaden in the Long
Parliament and in the English commonwealth were not
what they now are.
- - -

No person would have thought the worse of the
author if he had made a more liberal acknowledg-
ment of an obligation which all future historians
must owe to the laborious research of Mr. Carlyle,
and to his powerful defence of Cromwell, by the
publication of his letters and speeches. The
character of the great hero of the Rebellion is pro-
bably safe by this time, notwithstanding its
studious depreciation by David Hume. To this
more sober and even admiring judgment of a great,
though for a long time a misrepresented, man, Mr.
Carlyle has very largely contributed ; but it is a
fact sufficiently well know n that the hero never needed
apology with the body to which the present author
belongs. They welcomed, in the Scottish critic,
opinions with regard to the great Protector which
had been handed down fur generations from their
own Independent ancestors. Dr. Vaughan ex-
presser these views in the passage to which is
appended the note above referred to.
When Cromwell spoke, as he sometimes did, of not
having sought the position which he filled, he no doubt
spoke what was substantially true. Every signal service be
had rendered opened the way before him to something
higher. The siaccessivin proofs of his transcendent capacity
were the steps which, without any effort on his part, mist
have rain. d him by degree. to some such place as was at
length assigned to him. By every step, moreover, in his
spontaneous career, be became more committed to the
popular cause, and mate bound, by the law of self -presenra-
tioo, to uphold that cause. Such a man, once entered on
such a course, could not I.sk back. It would have been
eelf-destruotion to have done so. The more he did, the
more powerful be needed to become if his advanced ground
was to be rah ground. Ambition might have disposed him
to look thus higher and higher still • but smart from all
selfishness is that form, circumstances made it imperative
that his history should be of that complexioo ; and the in-
stincts of his nature must have prompted him to adjust
himself to those circumstances.

No English sovereign has governed England more con-
stitutionally, none au liberally as Cromwell would have
governed it, had the men of his generation been more men
of his owe order. In his mind we see the England sot of
merely of his own day, but of a day still to come. He was
a MAO of his owe age sufficiently to be its leader. But be
was sufficiently is advance of hi age to have to bear the
penalty commonly awaiting men who become offenders in
that form. It was in his heart to have governed justly,
humanely, magnaoimonsly. But the men about him were
wanting in the large thought, and in the large-heartedoem,
without which it was not possible that bin policy should be
realised.

With the character of Cromwell recovered to some-
thing like a fair appreciation, and at the same time
the principles of the King's opponents set fairly in
the line of sober judgment above the vilifications of
factious abuse, future history may become free to
judge more accurately the policy of the several
partite in our great civil war. The philosophic his-
torian will then, in all probability, find more to
censure in the Protector's career than Dr. Vaughan
Las been able to discover, and as much to blame in
the Independents as be upbraids in their opponents.
But there is one striking fact which he does not ap-
pear to have noticed, that Cromwell's experience of
parliaments was in some degree a repetition of