form, and said even in the bitterness of death: | we must here for the present close our lucuFather, take thy son from this bleeding hull, brations on Jean Paul. To delineate, with and lift him to thy heart!-Ah, ye too happy any correctness, the specific features of such inhabitants of Earth, ye still believe in Him. a genius, and of its operations and results in Perhaps even now your Sun is going down, the great variety of provinces where it dwelt and ye kneel amid blossoms, and brightness, and worked, were a long task; for which, perand tears, and lift trustful hands, and cry with haps, some groundwork may have been laid joy-streaming eyes, to the opened Heaven: here, and which, as occasion serves, it will be "Me too thou knowest, Omnipotent, and all my pleasant for us to resume. wounds; and at death thou receivest me, and closest them all!" Unhappy creatures, at death they will not be closed! Ah, when the sorrow-laden lays himself, with galled back, into the Earth, to sleep till a fairer Morning full of Truth, full of Virtue and Joy, he awakens in a stormy Chaos, in the everlasting Midnight, -and there comes no Morning, and no soft healing hand, and no Infinite Father!-Mortal, beside me! if thou still livest, pray to Him; else hast thou lost him for ever!" "And as I fell down, and looked into the sparkling Universe, I saw the upborne Rings of the Giant-Serpent, the Serpent of Eternity, which had coiled itself round the All of Worlds, -and the Rings sank down, and encircled the All doubly; and then it wound itself, innumerable ways, round Nature, and swept the Worlds from their places, and crashing, squeezed the Temple of Immensity together, into the Church of a Burying-ground, and all grew strait, dark, fearful,—and an immeasurably extended Hammer was to strike the last hour of Time, and shiver the Universe asunder, Probably enough, our readers, in considering these strange matters, will too often bethink them of that "Episode concerning Paul's Costume;" and conclude that, as in living, so in writing, he was a Mannerist, and man of continual Affectations. We will not quarrel with them on this point; we must not venture among the intricacies it would lead us into. At the same time, we hope, many will agree with us in honouring Richter, such as he was; and "in spite of his hundred real, and his ten thousand seeming faults," discern under this wondrous guise the spirit of a true Poet and Philosopher. A Poet, and among the highest of his time, we must reckon him, though he wrote no verses; a Philosopher, though he promulgated no systems: for on the whole, that "Divine Idea of the World" stood in clear ethereal light before his mind; he recognised the Invisible, even under the mean forms of these days, and with a high, strong, not uninspired heart, strove to represent it in the Visible, and published tidings of it to his fellow men. This one virtue, the foundation of all other virtues, and which a long study more "My soul wept for joy that I could still pray and more clearly reveals to us in Jean Paul, to God; and the joy, and the weeping, and the will cover far greater sins than his were. It faith on him were my prayer. And as I arose, raises him into quite another sphere than that the Sun was glowing deep behind the full pur- of the thousand elegant sweet-singers, and pled corn-ears, and casting meekly the gleam cause-and-effect philosophers, in his own counof its twilight-red on the little Moon, which try, or in this; the million Novel-manufactuwas rising in the East without an Aurora; rers, Sketchers, practical Discoursers, and so and between the sky and the earth, a gay forth, not once reckoned in. Such a man we transient air-people was stretching out its can safely recommend to universal study; and short wings and living, as I did, before the In- for those who, in the actual state of matters, finite Father; and from all Nature around me may the most blame him, repeat the old maxflowed peaceful tones as from distant evening-im: "What is extraordinary try to look at bells." with your own eyes." ... WHEN I AWOKE. Without commenting on this singular piece, ON HISTORY. CLIO was figured by the ancients as the eldest daughter of Memory, and chief of the Muses; which dignity, whether we regard the essential qualities of her art, or its practice and acceptance among men, we shall still find to have been fitly bestowed. History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature; his earliest expression of what can be called Thought. It is a looking both before and after; as, indeed, the coming Time already waits, unseen, yet definitely shaped, predetermined, and inevitable, in the Time come and only by the combination of both is the meaning of either completed. The Sibylline Books, though old, are not the oldest. Some nations have prophecy, some have not: but, of all mankind, there is no tribe so rude that it has not attempted History, though several have not arithmetic enough to count Five. History has been written with quipo-threads, with featherpictures, with wampum-belts; still oftener with earth-mounds and monumental stoneheaps, whether as pyramid or cairn; for the Celt and the Copt, the Red man as well as the White, lives between two eternities, and, warring against Oblivion, he would fain unite himself in clear, conscious relation, as in dim unconscious relation he is already united, with the whole Future and the whole Past. A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief inheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. Is not every memory written quite full with Annals, wherein joy and mourning, conquest and loss, manifoldly alternate; and, with or without philosophy, the whole fortunes of one little inward kingdom, and all its politics, foreign and domestic, stand ineffaceably recorded? Our very speech is curiously historical. Most men, you may observe, speak only to narrate; not in imparting what they have thought, which indeed were often a very small matter, but in exhibiting what they have undergone or seen, which is a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off from Narrative, how would the stream of conversation, even among the wisest, languish into detached handfuls, and among the foolish utterly evaporate! Thus, as we do nothing but enact History, we say little but recite it; nay, rather, in that widest sense, our whole spiritual life is built thereon. For, strictly considered, what is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials? other less boasted sources, whereby, as matters now stand, a Marlborough may becoine great in the world's business, with no History save what he derives from Shakspeare's Plays? Nay, whether in that same teaching by Experience, historical Philosophy has yet properly deciphered the first element of all science in this kind? What is the aim and significance of that wondrous changeful life it investigates and paints? Whence the course of man's destinies in this Earth originated, and whither they are tending? Or, indeed, if they have any course and tendency, are really guided forward by an unseen mysterious Wisdom, or only circle in blind mazes without recognisable guidance? Which questions, altogether fundamental, one might think, in any Philosophy of History, have, since the era when Monkish Annalists were wont to answer them by the long-ago extinguished light of their Missal and Breviary, been by most philosophi cal Historians only glanced at dubiously, and from afar; by many, not so much as glanced at. The truth is, two difficulties, never wholly surmountable, lie in the way. Before philoso phy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and intelligibly recorded. Now, overlooking the former consideration, and with regard only to the latter, let any one who has examined the current of human affairs-and how intricate, perplexed, unfathomable, even when seen into with our own eyes, are their thousand-fold, blending movements-say whether the true representing of it is easy or impossible. Social Life is the aggregate of all the individual men's Lives who constitute society; History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. But if one Biography, nay, our own Biography, study and recapitulate it as we may, remains in so many points unintelligible to us, how much more must these million, the very facts of which, to say nothing of the purport of them, we know not, and cannot know! Under a limited, and the only practicable shape, History proper, that part of History which treats of remarkable action, has, in all modern as well as ancient times, ranked among the highest arts, and perhaps never stood higher than in these times of ours. For whereas, of old, the charm of History lay chiefly in gratifying our common appetite for the wonderful, for the unknown; and her office was but as that of a Minstrel and Story-teller, she has now farther become a Schoolmistress, and professes to instruct in gratifying. Whether, with the stateliness of that venerable cha- Neither will it adequately avail us to assert racter, she may not have taken up something that the general inward condition of Life is of its austerity and frigidity; whether, in the the same in all ages; and that only the relogical terseness of a Hume or Robertson, the markable deviations from the common endow graceful ease and gay pictorial heartiness of a ment, and common lot, and the more importHerodotus or Froissart may not be wanting, is ant variations which the outward figure of not the question for us here. Enough that all Life has from time to time undergone, deserve learners, all inquiring minds of every order, memory and record. The inward condition are gathered round her footstool, and reve- of life, it may rather be affirmed, the conscious rently pondering her lessons, as the true basis or half-conscious aim of mankind, so far as of Wisdom. Poetry, Divinity, Politics, Physics, men are not mere digesting machines, is the have each their adherents and adversaries; same in no two ages; neither are the more each little guild supporting a defensive and important outward variations easy to fix on, offensive war for its own special domain; or always well capable of representation. while the domain of History is as a Free Em- Which was the greater innovator, which was porium, where all these belligerents peaceably the more important personage in man's hismeet and furnish themselves; and Sentimentalist and Utilitarian, Skeptic and Theologian, with one voice advise us: Examine History, for it is "Philosophy teaching by Experience." Far be it from us to disparage such teaching, the very attempt at which must be precious. Neither shall we too rigidly inquire, how much it has hitherto profited? Whether most of what little practical wisdom men have, has come from study of professed History, or from tory, he who first led armies over the Alps, and gained the victories of Canna and Thrasymene; or the nameless boor who first hammered out for himself an iron spade? When the oak tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze. Battles and wartumults, which for the time din every ear, and with joy or terror intoxicate every heart, pass away like tavern-brawls; and, except some few Marathons and Morgartens, are remem- tion, but only some more or less plausible bered by accident, not by desert. Laws them-scheme and theory of the Transaction, or the selves, political Constitutions, are not our Life, harmonized result of many such schemes, but only the house wherein our life is led: each varying from the other, and all varying nay, they are but the bare walls of the house; from Truth, that we can ever hope to behold. all whose essential furniture, the inventions Nay, were our faculty of insight into passing and traditions, and daily habits that regulate things never so complete, there is still a fatal and support our existence, are the work not discrepancy between our manner of observing of Dracos and Hampdens, but of Phoenician these, and their manner of occurring. The mariners, of Italian masons and Saxon metal-most gifted man can observe, still more can lurgists, of philosophers, alchemists, prophets, record, only the series of his own impressions: and all the long forgotten train of artists and his observation, therefore, to say nothing of artisans; who from the first have been jointly its other imperfections, must be successive, teaching us how to think and how to act, how while the things done were often simultaneous; to rule over spiritual and over physical Na- the things done were not a series, but a group. ture. Well may we say that of our History It is not in acted, as it is in written History: acthe more important part is lost without reco-tual events are nowise so simply related to very, and, as thanksgivings were once wont to be offered for unrecognised mercies,-look with reverence into the dark untenanted places of the past, where, in formless oblivion, our chief benefactors, with all their sedulous endeavours, but not with the fruit of these, lie entombed. each other as parent and offspring are; every single event is the offspring not of one, but of all other events prior or contemporaneous, and will in its turn combine with all others to give birth to new: it is an ever-living, everworking Chaos of Being, wherein shape after shape bodies itself forth from innumerable So imperfect is that same Experience, by elements. And this Chaos, boundless as the which Philosophy is to teach. Nay, even habitation and duration of man, unfathomable with regard to those occurrences that do stand as the soul and destiny of man, is what the recorded, that, at their origin, have seemed historian will depict, and scientifically gauge, worthy of record, and the summary of which we may say, by threading it with single lines constitutes what we now call History, is not of a few ells in length! For as all Action is, our understanding of them altogether incom- by its nature, to be figured as extended in plete; it is even possible to represent them as breadth, and in depth, as well as in length; they were? The old story of Sir Walter Ra- that is to say, is based on Passion and Mysleigh's looking from his prison window, on tery, if we investigate its origin; and spreads some street tumult, which afterwards three abroad on all hands, modifying and modified; witnesses reported in three different ways, as well as advances towards completion, so,himself differing from them all, is still a true all Narrative is, by its nature, of only one dimenlesson for us. Consider how it is that histo- sion; only travels forward towards one, or torical documents and records originate; even wards successive points: Narrative is linear, honest records, where the reporters were un- Action is solid. Alas, for our "chains," or biassed by personal regard; a case which, chainlets, of "causes and effects," which we where nothing more were wanted, must ever so assiduously track through certain handbe among the rarest. The real leading fea- breadths of years and square miles, when the tures of an historical transaction, those move- whole is a broad, deep, Immensity, and each ments that essentially characterize it, and atom is "chained" and complected with all! alone deserve to be recorded, are nowise the Truly, if History is Philosophy teaching by foremost to be noted. At first, among the Experience, the writer fitted to compose hisvarious witnesses, who are also parties inte- tory is hitherto an unknown man. The Experested, there is only vague wonder, and fear or rience itself would require All-knowledge to hope, and the noise of Rumour's thousand record it, were the All-wisdom needful for tongues; till, after a season, the conflict of such Philosophy as would interpret it, to be testimonies has subsided into some general had for asking. Better were it that mere issue; and then it is settled, by a majority of earthly Historians should lower such pretenvotes, that such and such a "Crossing of the sions, more suitable for Omniscience than for Rubicon," an "Impeachment of Stafford," a human science; and aiming only at some pic"Convocation of the Notables," are epochs ture of the things acted, which picture itself in the world's history, cardinal points on will at best be a poor approximation, leave which grand world-revolutions have hinged. the inscrutable purport of them an acknowSuppose, however, that the majority of votes ledged secret; or, at most, in reverent Faith, was all wrong; that the real cardinal points far different from that teaching of Philosophy, lay far deeper, and had been passed over un-pause over the mysterious vestiges of Him, noticed, because no Seer, but only mere On- whose path is in the great deep of Time, whom lookers, chanced to be there! Our clock History indeed reveals, but only all History, strikes when there is a change from hour to and in Eternity will clearly reveal. hour; but no hammer in the Horologe of Such considerations truly were of small proTime peals through the universe, when there fit, did they, instead of teaching us vigilance is a change from Era to Era. Men under- and reverent humility in our inquiries into stand not what is among their hands: as History, abate our esteem for them, or discalmness is the characteristic of strength, so courage us from unweariedly prosecuting them. the weightiest causes may be the most silent. Let us search more and more into the Past; iet It is, in no case, the real historical Transac-all men explore it as the true fountain f knowledge; by whose light alone, consciously | from which, if taken for the real Book, more or unconsciously employed, can the Present error than insight is to be derived. and the Future be interpreted or guessed at. For though the whole meaning lies far beyond our ken; yet in that complex Manuscript, covered over with formless, inextricably entangled, unknown characters,-nay, which is a Palympsest, and had once prophetic writing, still dimly legible there,-some letters, some words, may be deciphered; and if no complete Philosophy, here and there an intelligible precept, available in practice, be gathered; well understanding, in the mean while, that it is only a little portion we have deciphered, that much still remains to be interpreted; that history is a real prophetic Manuscript, and can be fully interpreted by no man. Doubtless, also, it is with a growing feeling of the infinite nature of history, that in these times, the old principle, Division of Labour, has been so widely applied to it. The political Historian, once almost the sole cultivator of History, has now found various associates, who strive to elucidate other phases of human Life; of which, as hinted above, the political conditions it is passed under, are but one; and though the primary, perhaps not the most important, of the many outward arrangements. Of this historian himself, moreover, in his own special department, new and higher things are now beginning to be expected. From of old, it was too often to be reproachfully observed of him, that he dwelt with disproportionate fondness in Senate-houses, in Battle-fields, nay, even in King's Antechambers; forgetting, that far away from such scenes, the mighty tide of Thought, and Action, was still rolling on its wondrous course, in gloom and brightness: and in its thousand remote valleys, a whole world of Existence, with or without an earthly sun of Happiness to warm it, with or without a heavenly sun of Holiness to purify and sanctify it, was blossoming and fading, whether the "famous victory" were won or lost. The time seems coming when much of this must be amended; and he who sees no world bu that of courts and camps; and writes only how soldiers were drilled and shot, and how this ministerial conjurer out-conjured that other, and then guided, or at least held, something which he called the rudder of government, but which was rather the spigot of Taxation, wherewith, in place of steering, he could tap, and the more cunningly the nearer the lees,-will pass for a more or less instructive Gazetteer, but will no longer be called an Historian. But the Artist in History may be distinguished from the Artisan in History; for here, as in all other provinces, there are Artists and Artisans; men who labour mechanically in a department, without eye for the Whole, not feeling that there is a Whole; and men who inform and ennoble the humblest department with an Idea of the Whole, and habitually know that only in the Whole is the Partial to be truly discerned. The proceedings, and the duties of these two, in regard to History, must be altogether different. Not, indeed, that each has not a real worth, in his several degree. The simple Husbandman can till his field, and by knowledge he has gained of its soil, sow it with the fit grain, though the deep rocks and central fires are unknown to him: his little crop hangs under and over the firmament of stars, and sails through whole untracked celestial spaces, between Aries and Libra; nevertheless, it ripens for him in due season, and he gathers it safe into his barn. As a husbandman he is blameless in disregarding those higher wonders; but as a Thinker, and faithful inquirer into nature, he were wrong. So, likewise, is it with the Historian, who examines some special aspect of history, and from this or that combination of circumstances, political, moral, economical, and the issues it has led to, infers that such and such properties belong to human society, and that the like circumstance will produce the like issues; which inference, if other trials confirm it, must be held true and practically valuable. He is wrong only, and an artisan, when he fancies that these properties, discovered or discoverable, exhaust the matter, and sees not at every step that it is inexhaustible. However, that class of cause-and-effect speculators, with whom no wonder would remain wonderful, but all things in Heaven and Earth must be "computed and accounted for;" and even the Unknown, the Infinite, in man's life, had, under the words Enthusiasm, Superstition, Spirit of the Ag, and so forth, obtained, as it were, an algebraical symbol, and given value, have now well-nigh played their part in European culture; and may be considered, as in most countries, even in England itself, where they linger the latest, verging towards extinction. He who reads the inscrutable Book of Nature, as if it were a Merchant's Ledger, is justly suspected of having never seen that Book, but only some school Synopsis thereof; However, the Political Historian, were his work performed with all conceivable perfection, can accomplish but a part, and still leaves room for numerous fellow-labourers. Foremost among these comes the Ecclesiastical Historian; endeavouring with catholic or sectarian view, to trace the progress of the Church, of that portion of the social establishment, which respects our religious condition, as the other portion does our civil, or rather, in the long run, our economical condition. Rightly conducted, this department were undoubted.y the more important of the two; inasmuch as it concerns us more to understand how man's moral well-being had been and might be promoted, than to understand in the like sort his physical well-being; which latter is ultimately the aim of all political arrangements. For the physically happiest is simply the safest, the strongest; and in all conditions of Government, Power (whether of wealth as in these days, or of arms and adherents as in old days) is the only outward emblem and purchase-money of Good. True Good, however, unless we reckon Pleasure synonymous with it, is said to be rarely, or rather never, offered for sale in the market where that even passes current. So that, for man's true advantage, not the outward condition of his life, but the inward and spiritual, is of prime influence; not the form of Of a less ambitious character are the Histories that relate to special separate provinces of human Action; to Sciences, Practical Arts, Institutions, and the like; matters which do not imply an epitome of man's whole interest and form of life; but wherein, though each is still connected with all, the spirit of each, at least its material results, may be in some degree evolved without so strict reference to that of the others. Highest in dignity and difficulty, under this head, would be our histories of Philosophy, of man's opinions and theories respecting the nature of his Being, and relations to the Universe, Visible and Invisible; which History, indeed, were it fitly treated, or fit for right treatment, would be a province of Church History; the logical or dogmatical province of it; for Philosophy, in its true sense, is or should be the soul, of which Religion, Worship, is the body; in the healthy state of things the Philosopher and Priest were one and the same. But Philosophy itself is far enough from wearing this character; neither have its Historians been men, generally speaking, that could in the smallest degree approximate it thereto. Scarceby since the rude era of the Magi and Druids has that same healthy identification of Priest and Philosopher had place in any country: but rather the worship of divine things, and the 2cientific investigation of divine things, have been in quite different hands, their relations not friendly but hostile. Neither have the Brückers and Bühles, to say nothing of the many unhappy Enfields who have treated of that latter department, been more than barren reporters, often unintelligent and unintelligible reporters, of the doctrine uttered, without force to discover how the doctrine originated, or what reference it bore to its time and country, to the spiritual position of mankind there and then. Nay, such a task did not perhaps lie before them, as a thing to be attempted. Art, also, and Literature are intimately blended with Religion; as it were, outworks and abutments, by which that highest pinnacle in our inward world gradually connects itself with the general level, and becomes accessible therefrom. He who should write a proper History of Poetry, would depict for us the successive Revelations which man had obtained of the Spirit of Nature; under what aspects he had caught and endeavoured to body forth some glimpse of that unspeakable Beauty, which in its highest clearness is Religion, is the inspira. tion of a Prophet, yet in one or the other degree must inspire every true Singer, were his theme never so humble. We should see by what steps men had ascended to the Temple; how near they had approached; by what ill hap they had, for long periods, turned away from it, and grovelled on the plain with no music in the air, or blindly struggled towards other heights. That among all our Eichhorns and Wartons there is no such Historian, must be too clear to every one. Nevertheless let us not despair of far nearer approaches to that excellence. Above all, let us keep the Ideal of it ever in our eye; for thereby alone have we even a chance to reach it. Our histories of Laws and Constitutions, wherein many a Montesquieu and Hallam has laboured with acceptance, are of a much simpler nature, yet deep enough, if thoroughly investigated; and useful, when authentic, even with little depth. Then we have Histories of Medicine, of Mathematics, of Astronomy, Commerce, Chivalry, Monkery; and Goguets and Beckmanns have come forward with what might be the most bountiful contribution of all, a History of Inventions. Of all which sorts, and many more not here enumerated, not yet devised and put in practice, the merit and the proper scheme may require no exposition. In this manner, though, as above remarked, all Action is extended three ways, and the general sum of human Action is a whole Universe, with all limits of it unknown, does History strive by running path after path, through the Impassable, in manifold directions and intersections, to secure for us some oversight of the Whole; in which endeavour, if each Historian look well around him from his path, tracking it out with the eye, not, as is more common, with the nose, he may at last prove not altogether unsuccessful. Praying only that increased division of labour do not here, as elsewhere, aggravate our already strong Mechanical tendencies, so that in the manual dexterity for parts we lose all command over the whole; and the hope of any Philosophy of History be farther off than ever; let us all wish her great, and greater success. |