Domestic and Foreign. 



1830.] 



l)le to the charge a charge which has 

 never, we believe, been made by any 

 but such as shrink from a confession 

 of ignorance of denouncing an im- 

 possible crime. Then why punish, and 

 that capitally, an imaginary offence ? 

 Because, it seems, the tendency of a 

 power of appeal to spirits, real or ima- 

 ginary, was to withdraw the Jews from 

 their allegiance it was an encourage- 

 ment of idolatry, and justly fell under 

 the same penalty. 'But though the 

 female professors of witchcraft, in the 

 scriptures, were as mere impostors as 

 their successors in modern times, Sir 

 "Walter seems to hesitate about the gen- 

 tlemen the wizards, if not the witches, 

 may have had the benefit of superna- 

 tural communications Pharaoh's magi- 

 cians, for instance we do not know 

 why. The truth is, there is pace dixe- 

 rimus a deal of twaddle in this portion 

 of Sir Walter's entertaining gossip. 



The volume is, indeed, a choice col- 

 lection of stories relative to the treat- 

 ment of witches in courts of justice, 

 in Scotland and England. Pitcairn's 

 collections have contributed largely. Sir 

 Walter has also given us his interpre- 

 tation of most of the popular tales of 

 apparitions assigning most of them to 

 disease, on Hibbert's principles, many 

 to defective evidence, and some to still 

 more obvious causes not always very 

 satisfactorily. To shew how easily a 

 ghost, or the rumour of one, may be 

 laid, he tells a story of a family alarm- 

 ed by noises in the night. The head of 

 the family, a gentleman of birth and 

 distinction, and well known in the poli- 

 tical world, determined to discover the 

 cause of these terrific noises he watched 

 and heard the sounds in the depth and 

 silence of the night they were truly 

 awful ; but the man of birth and political 

 distinction had his senses about him, and 

 at last traced them to the efforts of a 

 rat struggling to escape from an old- 

 fashioned trap in which he had been 

 caught. "The circumstance was told me," 

 says Sir W., with becoming gravity, " by 

 the gentleman to whom it happened.*" 

 But what had the rat to do with the 

 previous noises ? Did he play the same 

 prank every night ? Towards the close 

 of the volume is a good specimen of the 

 garrulous the author tells of his own 

 sensations, at two epochs of his life, at 

 nineteen and forty-four, when he slept 

 in haunted rooms, but nothing came of 

 either, and it would be difficult and, as 

 the Greeks might phrase it, not difficult 

 to say why either was told. 



Cabinet Cyclopaedia History of France, 

 Vol. /., by Eyre Evans Crowe. Our na- 

 tional literature has long wanted a con- 

 densed history of France not a mere 

 sequence of events but a survey made 



703 



by somebody deserving the name of his- 

 torian, with time to gather up opinions 

 and customs, and an eye to mark their 

 bearings upon current ages and after 

 ages the bias of parties the prejudices 

 or professions the struggles of different 

 orders in the state and thus through 

 masses of facts develope the successive 

 steps of cultivation, and still more those 

 which checked the march of constitu- 

 tional government. Such an historian, 

 not to the very perfection of beau-ideal- 

 ism, but yet to a very respectable de- 

 gree Dr. Lardner has unearthed in the 

 person of a Mr. Eyre Evans Crowe. 

 The name is new to us, but he is obvi- 

 ously no novice in scribbling. His 

 history of France is worthy to figure 

 with the works of his associates, the best 

 of their day Scott and Mackintosh 

 he is less easy than the first, but more 

 graceful than the second he has not 

 the power, perhaps, of ready combining 

 so conspicuous in the one, but shews no 

 deficiency in what is considered the 

 other's chief excellence he generalizes 

 and even moralizes with quite as much 

 effect, if it be with less solemnity and pre- 

 tence. We were satisfied Sir James was 

 not so immensely in advance of his age, 

 as to the philosophy of history, that all 

 new competitors must of necessity be 

 distanced in the race Mr. Crowe will 

 run him hard. It must not, however, be 

 forgotten, he has had the full benefit of 

 Sismondi's able performance. 



The early periods of the history Mr. 

 C. does but glance at. From Clovis to 

 Charles Martel there exists, he observes, 

 not a personage worthy of the reader's 

 attention or memory there is not re- 

 corded an event or an anecdote which 

 could excite any feeling save disgust. 

 Charlemagne, whose reign constitutes the 

 great epoch of modern history, claims a 

 closer regard ; but his successors, again, 

 require as little as the Merovingians ; and 

 the reigns of the Capetians, up to St. 

 Louis, are described by Sismondi as one 

 long interregnum, during which the his- 

 tory of France was a history, not of its 

 monarchs,but of the nobles. The remark, 

 however, applies only to the first four 

 Capetians -Louis the Fat, and his suc- 

 cessors shewed more activity, and paved 

 the way for the greater decision of St. 

 Louis. This was the age of the Crusades. 

 Pilgrimages had been long in fashion ; 

 vast numbers visited the holy sepulchre; 

 they went in crowds ; one bishop headed 

 a body of three thousand; another, one 

 of six ; the greater the assemblage natu- 

 rally the more they were liable to ill- 

 treatment they began to excite alarms. 

 These unarmed expeditions, with the 

 cruelties exercised upon them by the 

 Mahometans, suggested hostile ones. 

 " The universal thought of an age is 

 often referred," says Mr. C., acutely, 



