Continental Monthly Volume 1 Issue 3 by Various

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As we near our own day, history is invested with new dignities; its arms
float, sea-weed like, on the raging waves of political life, as if to
grasp from some fragment of shipwrecked treaties or some passing argosy
of government a precious jewel to light its deep researches. It takes in
with nervous grasp the tendencies of literature; its keen gaze drinks in
the features of popular belief and searches out the fountains of popular
error. Fully equal to the requirements of the exacting age, Motley has
produced a work whose lightest merit is its equal conformity to the new
rules of his art. He possesses in an eminent degree the first
qualification which the old Abbe de Mably, in his _Maniere d'ecrire
l'histoire_, insists upon for the historian. He recognizes the natural
rights of man, those rights which are the same in every age, and as
powerful in their demands in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth.
His well-balanced mind acknowledges and respects the duties of man as
citizen and magistrate, and the mutual rights of nations. No splendor,
no power, no prejudice, has been able to seduce him from his high
principles, neither does a warm and manifest sympathy with his subject
delude him even into the passing extravagance of an undue praise. If he
comprehends the greatness of the national character he almost flings
upon the canvas before us, he appreciates as profoundly its weaknesses
too. Strada's history is a poison, which strikes at the very roots of
society, and would wither all the fresh young leaves of its vigorous
spring. Motley's is its powerful antidote, which restores the juices of
life to the brittle fibres, smooths out the shriveled leaves, and
clothes them again with the fresh green of hope and promise. Strada is
the slave of the victor; Motley is the champion of the vanquished.
Strada bends the dignity of Justice before the painted sceptre of
Despotism; Motley exalts the honest title of the man above the will of
the perjured monarch. Strada gilds with the false gold of sophistry the
very chains that gall his soul; Motley sharpens on the clear crystal of
his unobtrusive logic, the two-handed sword of power, and cuts his way
through an army of protocols and pacts to the fortress of Liberty.

It is, we believe, an exploded theory that the characters of modern
times are inferior to those of antiquity. 'Under the toga as under the
modern dress,' says Guizot, 'in the senate as in our councils, men were
what they still are;' and the old Jesuit takes a narrow view of the
progress of mankind, who asserts that the masculine and vigorous
treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by
the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau,
who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of
the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not,
in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human progress,
insinuate the existence of a principle urging the systematic and
inevitable decline of individual power from age to age. So far from
exacting less of the historian, the present age demands even a firmer
handling. Our era has its Alexanders and Caesars; its Hannibals and
Hectors; and if these men of antiquity rise before us with an
unapproachable air of grandeur, it is because the light shining from our
distant stand-point surrounds them with deeper shadows, and throws them
in bolder relief against the background of their vanished ages. It is a
simple triumph of _chiaro-scuro_, and by no means the proof of the truth
of an absurd theory.

It is mournful enough to see the dead nations that were once young and
glorious pacing onward through an inferno like so many headless Bertrand
de Borns, bearing by the hair

'The severed member, lantern-wise
Pendent in hand.'

For ourselves, we have no fear of lighting our own spirit thus through
any Malabolge of purification. And this bold faith animates Motley; it
invigorates all his work with a firmness that inspires full confidence
in his readers. Free as he is from every puerile superstition, his
mastery of his subject is complete. He exercises over it a sort of
magistracy which extends even to his own flashing impulses. Never
pausing to display his moral learning, he avoids the tedious diffuseness
of Rollin; steering adroitly around the quicksands of political
dissertation, he escapes the pragmatical essayism of Guiccardini. Not
easily fascinated by the trifles that swim like vapid foam upon the tide
of history,--petty domestic details, the Koenigsmark intrigues of
royalty, the wines and flowers of the banquet table, the laces and
jewels of the court,--he leaves far in the distance the entertaining
Davila, who, says the sarcastic Schlosser, 'wrote memoirs after the
French fashion for good society,' yet whom the arbitrary and adventurous
Bolingbroke does not scruple to declare 'in many respects the equal of
Livy!' And yet no single stroke is omitted which is needed to preserve
the unity of the work. Tacitus himself did not embellish with more
commanding morality his histories. The jots and tittles of the _Groot
Privilegie_, the terms of the famous 'Pacification of Ghent,' the
solemn import of the _Act of Adjuration_, and the political ambition of
the church, are as faithfully drawn as the Siege of Leyden, or the
'Spanish Fury' of Antwerp.

Hume, in the narrowness of a so-called philosophical indifference to the
appeals of domestic life and the details of national theology and art,
gives us only a running commentary upon mere chronological events,
galvanized by the touch of his keen intellect and fine rhetoric into a
deceitful vigor, and ornamented with the poisonous night-shade blossoms
of a spurious philosophy. We may more justly seek some analogy between
Gibbon and Motley, even if the search but discover points of difference
so radical that a comparison is impossible. The solemn, measured, and
splendid rhetoric of Gibbon is met by the animated, impetuous, and
brilliant flow of Motley's thought. Neither leans to the ideal; with
both the actual prevails. The policy of a government is summoned by
neither before the partial tribunal of a sentiment, or the intricate
scheme of some Machiavelli subjected to the imperfect analysis of a
headstrong imagination. But Gibbon, though he writes in the vernacular,
has lost all the honest nationality that should give an air of sincerity
to his work; his brilliant antithesis belongs to the ornate school of
the French literature of the day; and, fascinating as is the pomp and
commanding march of his sentences, we are rather dazzled by his
eloquence than convinced by his argument. He is picturesque, rich; but
it is the picturesqueness and richness of the truly bewildering Roman
architecture of the Renaissance--half Byzantine, three-eighths Gothic,
and the remainder Greek. But Motley, with all his varied learning and
association, is still perfectly and nobly Anglo-Saxon. His short,
epigrammatic sentences ring like the click of musketry before the
charge, and swell into length and grandeur with the progress of his
theme. The simplicity, not of ignorance but of genius, characterizes
him. He does not cater to our hungry fancy, he appeals grandly to our
noblest impulses. In Motley a spirit of the most refined humanity is
everywhere visible; he is guilty of no Voltairean satiric stabs at
purity, no petulant Voltairean flings at the faith he does not share.
All is manly, terse, frank, undisguised. Honorable himself, he does not,
like Gibbon, distrust all mankind, and question with a sarcasm the very
sincerity of a martyr at the stake.

Among Americans, Motley is what Botta is to the historians of Southern
Europe. The same grand principles actuate both writers; the same
tendency to philosophical generalization is evident in the structure of
their works, the same inflexible pursuit of a fixed and visible aim, the
same enthusiastic love for freedom. But with Botta the poetical element,
which is only secondary with Motley, predominates. He holds the nervous
pen of a true Italian--more than that, of a true Italian patriot. All
the hitherto suppressed fire of his nation flames out on his pages in an
indignation as natural as it is superb. His lines vibrate with passion,
his words are tremulous with a noble pain. His very pathos is impatient,
stern, and proud; it cleaves our hearts like a battle-axe, rather than
meets them as with summer showers. His sarcasm is as keen and effective,
but far more startling; it hisses its way from some iron-cold comment,
and stabs the monarch whom it crowns. His fertility of imagination is
not weakened by contact with the details of government. The same pen
that draws in such inimitably graceful lines the sugar-plums of starving
Genoa, lingering about flower-wreathed baskets of bonbons sold in the
public squares to famishing men and women, sketches in a style as
nervous and appropriate the complex detail of governmental policy. He
unfolds his subject with the skill of an epic poet; its general effect
is sublime, and its petty details arranged with a rarely careless skill.
If he is sometimes diverted by a burst of enthusiasm, of indignation, or
of horror, into an inequality, the rough island thrown up in the sea of
his fancy is speedily verdured over with the wonderful luxuriance of his
genius. If he bends sometimes to amuse, to revel among his sonorous
Italian adjectives in the description of a coronation at Milan, or an
opera of Valetta, it is part of his purpose, giving to his picture the
rich and glowing tints that bring out, by violence of contrast, the more
elaborate tinting in of dark upon dark behind them.

Something of this we recognize in Motley; but none of Botta's tendency
to proverbial sayings, bitter with a sarcasm that wounds most deeply its
creator; as, 'To believe that abstract principle will prevail over full
purses is the folly of a madman.' Neither do we find in Motley the
occasional terse conciseness of Botta,--little epics enclosed in a short
sentence. 'Napoleon had redeemed France; but he had created Italy.' But
the Italian can not be impartial. Just he is, but it is the accident of
his political position, not the deference paid by the historian to his
art. He writes of an age from whose injustice he has suffered, of a
country whose miseries he has shared, of a people whose brother he is.
And here Motley stands second only to Thucydides among historians. In
the Greek, impartiality was almost divine, for he wrote in the very
smoke of the conflict, wrote as if with his dripping lance upon rocks
dyed with the blood of his countrymen. With Motley impartiality is the
product of a nature strictly noble, that aims through its art not only
to delight the present, but to instruct the future, and which bases its
doctrines of right and wrong upon the principles that govern universal
nature. The temper of Thucydides is lofty and even; though never genial,
he is always calm and accessible; though often sublime, he is never
pathetic; too grand to be sarcastic, he is also too proud to be selfish.

Motley, if lacking the great and admirable element of sublimity, which
Longinus extols, compensates for it by the animation and variety of his
style, which changes, as does his mood, with his subject. He enters with
all the vigor of his manhood into the spirit of the scenes which he
sketches. He describes a character, and his strokes are bold, quick,
decided; he follows the intricacies of political intrigue, and his
movement is slow, continuous, wary, while it still remains firm,
confident, and successful. He can administer the finances with Escovedo,
while his wide, keen intelligence, undismayed, masters at a glance the
wily policy of Alexander of the '_fel Gesicht_.' No modern historian has
given more comprehensive sketches of character. No quality escapes his
vigilance; he yields every faculty the consideration which is its due.
The portraits of Alva, of Navarre, of Farnese, of Orange, of Don John of
Austria, are so many colossal statues, that seem to unite in themselves
all the possible features and characteristics of humanity. He is indeed
rather a sculptor than a painter. His figures are round, perfect,
throbbing with life, and their hard and striking outlines, springing
sharply from the background of despotism and persecution, are more
imposing than any Rubens-like vividness of coloring which could warm
them. He treats of diplomacy as a diplomat, unwinds the reel of protocol
and treaty, and binds up with the inflexible cord the rich sheaves of
his deep researches. His reflections are suggestive but short, and his
details never weary.

He loves, too, to mark the sympathies of nature with event--the rain
falling upon the black-hung scaffold, or the laughter of gay sunshine
mingling with the shouts of a great victory. And here he differs, as
indeed he does in almost every other respect, with Macaulay. The
Englishman thinks little of nature; as he himself says of Dante, 'He
leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky; his business is with
man.' Indeed, the absence of a true and universal sympathy is the one
vast defect of Macaulay. No position is so high that it may not be
overshadowed by the giant form of his violent partisanship, no character
so small that it may not be raised to the semblance of greatness by the
mere force of his political preferences. His scholarship was splendid,
his genius commanding, the beauty of his style unsurpassed; but he
perverted his knowledge to subserve certain public ends, and wielded his
magnificent powers too often in the defence of an undeserving cause.
Fascinated by his dazzling rhetoric, borne along by its rapid and
tumultuous current to the most brilliant conclusions, we forget the
narrowness of the stream. His scope of vision was indeed great, but it
had its limits, and these were not imposed by time or necessity, but by
the unyielding will of his own prejudices. As his virtues were massive,
so were his errors grievous. He ventured to grasp the great speculative
themes of existence with a mind that was neither profound nor
suggestive. He swam with all the wondrous ease of an athlete through the
billows and across the currents and counter-currents of elegant
literature, of politics, of theology, yet possessed not the diver's
power to win their sunken but priceless jewels. Rich he was with the
accumulated intellectual spoil of centuries, but the power of exhaustive
generalization was denied him. His perceptions were vigorous and acute,
and none knew more perfectly to exhaust a subject, if its requirements
were of the actual and tangible rather than of the ideal and spiritual
order. He was a thorough logician, but a superficial philosopher; a
master of style, but oblivious of those great religious truths of which
the events of his great history were but the natural outgrowth and
product. But nothing can exceed the power of his rhetoric, that is
uncontrolled by any laws, yet offends none, unless it be the
arbitrariness of his dogmatism, that concedes no favors and asks no
gifts.

Less vehement, less ornate, possibly less learned than Macaulay, with
frequent though trifling inequalities of style, Motley goes far beyond
him in real practical insight into the heart of affairs. There is a
unity in all visible life, whether of nation, of individual, of church,
or of inarticulate nature, that escaped Macaulay and impresses Motley.
The one would govern the universe with the arbitrary rules of a
political clique; the other applies to all the infallible test of a
universal philosophy. Both writers are thoroughly incorporated with
their subject; but where Macaulay was the captive of a mighty and often
just prejudice, Motley is the exponent of a living principle. Everywhere
Macaulay was a Whig and an Englishman; everywhere Motley is a Republican
and a cosmopolite.

Motley is indeed inferior to his English contemporary in many striking
points whose value every reader will determine for himself; but his
occasional and rare inaccuracies of expression and inelegances of
language are on the surface, and may be removed by the stroke of a pen
without marring the general effect of his work. He possesses, among many
charms, an unfailing geniality, which, united with his fine dramatic
powers, fascinates us completely. He abounds also in fine poetical
touches, that give us glimpses of a mind cultured to the last degree of
literary refinement. His 'rows of whispering limes and poplars' are like
arabesques of gold straying over the margins of some old _romanceros_.
His descriptions glow with the fresh and ever-varying delight of the
observant traveler, who seems to see before him for the first time the
cities which, with a few vigorous and simple strokes, he transfers to
big pages. His pictures have the charm of naturalness and a simplicity
that is more effective than the most ornate diffuseness. Thus he says of
the picturesque little city of Namur: 'Seated at the confluence of the
Sambre with the Meuse, and throwing over each river a bridge of solid
but graceful structure, it lay in the lap of a most fruitful valley. A
broad, crescent-shaped plain, fringed by the rapid Meuse, and enclosed
by gently-rolling hills, cultivated to their crests, or by abrupt
precipices of limestone crowned with verdure, was divided by numerous
hedgerows, and dotted all over with corn-fields, vine-yards, and
flower-gardens. Many eyes have gazed with delight upon that well-known
and most lovely valley, and many torrents of blood have mingled with
those glancing waters since that long-buried and most sanguinary age
which forms our theme; and still, placid as ever is the valley, brightly
as ever flows the stream. Even now, as in that banished but
never-forgotten time, nestles the little city in the angle of the two
rivers; still directly over its head seems to hang in mid-air the
massive and frowning fortress, like the gigantic helmet in the fiction,
as if ready to crush the pigmy town below.' How like the _Ueberfahrt_ of
Uhland:--

'Ueber diesen Strohm, vor Jahren,
Bin ich einmal schon gefahren,
Hier die Burg, im Abendschimmer,
Drueben rauscht das Wehr, wie immer.'

We may quote his description of the great square of Brussels, the scene
of the double execution of Montmorency, of Horn, and the gallant and
unfortunate 'Count d'Egmont,' not only as an example of his dignified
and sustained style, but also as an evidence of his sensitiveness to
those minor refinements of association and place that bespeaks the
talented artist. 'The great square of Brussels had always a striking and
theatrical aspect. Its architectural effects, suggesting in some degree
the meretricious union between Oriental and a corrupt Grecian art,
accomplished in the mediaeval midnight, have amazed the eyes of many
generations. The splendid Hotel de Ville, with its daring spire and
elaborate front, ornamented one side of the place; directly opposite was
the graceful but incoherent facade of the Brood-huis, now the last
earthly resting place of the two distinguished victims; while grouped
around these principal buildings rose the fantastic palaces of the
Archers, Mariners, and other guilds, with their festooned walls and
toppling gables bedizened profusely with emblems, statues, and quaint
decorations. The place had been alike the scene of many a brilliant
tournament and of many a bloody execution. Gallant knights had contended
within its precincts, while bright eyes rained influences from all those
picturesque balconies and decorated windows. Martyrs to religious and to
political liberty had upon the same spot endured agonies which might
have roused every stone of its pavement to mutiny or softened them to
pity. Here Egmont himself, in happier days, had often borne away the
prize of skill or of valor, the cynosure of every eye; and hence, almost
in the noon of a life illustrated by many brilliant actions, he was to
be sent, by the hand of tyranny, to his great account.'

There are, too, dashes of a healthy sarcasm among these records, not,
however, of such frequent occurrence as to darken the flow of the
narrative, but sufficiently indicative of the strength and energy of the
writer. Never attacking the honest faith of any man, his satires are
levelled at hypocrisy, never error, as when he says of the venerable
tyrant, the master of the Invincible Armada, when he had received from
the trembling secretary the assurance of the failure of the hope of
Spain: 'So the king, as fortune flew away from him, wrapped himself in
his virtue, and his counsellors, imitating their sovereign, arrayed
themselves in the same garment;' a scanty mantle, in truth, but, no
doubt, amply sufficient for the denizens of that torrid atmosphere of
bigotry in which Spain has lived for centuries.

Of what earnest stuff Motley's dreams of religious freedom are made, we
read in his terse comments upon the declaration of the principles of
liberty of conscience by the States General. 'Such words shine through
the prevailing darkness of the religious atmosphere at that epoch like
characters of light. They are beacons in the upward path of mankind.
Never before had so bold and wise a tribute to the genius of the
Reformation been paid by an organized community. Individuals walking in
advance of their age had enunciated such truths, and their voices had
seemed to die away, but at last, a little, struggling, half-developed
commonwealth had proclaimed the rights of conscience for all mankind.'

Thus we have no longer a wearisome compilation of events strung upon the
thread of chronology, but a practical history of the most momentous
epoch of modern times. No hand has before pointed out so faithfully its
great motive power or adjusted so nicely its apparent contradictions.
The structure is grand; it is the expression of a glorious faith. In the
accomplishment of so vast a design, Motley has won our warmest
gratitude, while he has awakened our deepest sympathies. Not alone to
the learned, the scholarly, and the elegant, are these volumes
addressed; their high-toned thought has met response in the people's
heart, and children bend with flushed faces over the high romance of the
struggle that cost the lives of thousands, and recognize, perhaps dimly,
the import of that great advance from the darkness of intolerance to the
light of freedom, that was so well worth the treasure of blood with
which it was bought.

And here we part with Motley the historian, only to clasp hands with
Motley the patriot. In the present tremendous struggle of people against
progress, this fierce contest between labor and the lords, these last
convulsions of the expiring giant of feudal aristocracy, whose monstrous
conception dates far back among the Middle Ages, Motley has shown
himself the true champion of the doctrines advocated in his histories.
His platform is still the same, but how changed the theatre of his
action! His letter to the London _Times_ on the 'Causes of the American
Civil War' is a masterly exposition of facts, whose naked power is
obscured by no useless displays of rhetoric. Its tone is calm,
dignified, confident; its statements are strongly maintained, its logic
convincing. All honor to the man who from his quiet researches in royal
archives and busy deciphering of dusty MSS. turned to his country in her
hour of need, and defended her where defence should have been
superfluous, but was, unhappily, of small avail. And still he works
nobly for the dear old flag, and, intimately _lie_ as he is with the
first literati and politicians of Europe, it is not easy to measure his
influence. His purely literary habits forbid all suspicion of his
disinterestedness, and will go far to commend him to the sympathies of
the commanding intellects of the age. Let us hope for the time when,
with renewed faith in his mighty theories and still renewing love for
his motherland, he shall return to the retirement which has already
produced such noble fruits, and add works as worthy to our American
classics. Meanwhile, _vive qui vince!_

* * * * *

THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.

Thou who for years hast watched the course of nature,
What time the changing seasons swept their round,
And, 'mid the play of every varying feature,
New founts of pleasure for thyself hast found;
Who, when dark clouds upon the mountain glooming,
Threaten destruction to the smiling plain,
Canst pierce the shadow and foresee the blooming
Of budding blossoms brighter for the rain:

To whom, when the dread winter's icy fingers
Have chilled to silence the gay babbling stream,
A memory of its summer music lingers,
Or April violets in the future beam;
To whom the darkness whispers of the dawning,
And sorrow's night tells of the coming day;
And even death is but the twilight morning
Of glory which shall never fade away;--

_Teach us thy lesson_. Unto us be given
The trusting faith the April flowers display;
Looking in their meek confidence to heaven,--
Trusting to God the future of the day.
Our night is dark, and perils vast surround us,
But, firm in truth and right, what shall we fear?
Has danger ever yet base cravens found us?
Who has sustained thus far will guide us here.

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