456 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



QAPRIL, 



and neither will I mislead those who read my 

 work, nor sacrifice the reputation of my country's 

 arms to shallow declamation upon the uncon- 

 querable spirit ofi ndependence. To expose the 

 errors is not to undervalue the fortitude of a noble 

 people ; for in their constancy, in the unexam- 

 pled patience, with which they bore the ills in- 

 flicted alike by a ruthless enemy, and by their 

 own sordid governments, the Spaniards were truly 

 noble : but shall I say that they were victorious in 

 their battles, or faithful in their compacts ; that 

 they treated their prisoners with humanity ; that 

 their Juntas were honest or wise ; their generals 

 skilful ; their soldiers firm ? I speak but the bare 

 truth, when I assert that they were incapable of 

 defending their own cause ! Every action, every 

 correspondence, every proceeding of the six years 

 that the war lasted, rise up in support of this fact ; 

 and to assume that an insurrection so conducted 

 did, or could possibly baffle the prodigious power 

 of Napoleon, is an illusion. Spain baffle him! 

 Her efforts were amongst the very smallest causes 

 of his failure. Portugal has far greater claims 

 to that glory. Spain furnished the opportunity ; 

 but it was England, Austria, Russia, or rather 

 fortune, that struck down that wonderful man. 

 The English, more powerful, more rich, more 

 profuse, perhaps more brave than the ancient 

 Romans; the English, with a fleet, for grandeur 

 and real force, never matched, with a general 

 equal to any emergency, fought as if for their 

 own existence. The Austrians brought four 

 hundred thousand good troops to arrest the con- 

 queror's progress ; the snows of Russia destroyed 

 three hundred thousand of his best soldiers ; and 

 finally, when he had lost half a million of ve- 

 terans, not one of whom died on Spanish ground, 

 Europe, in one vast combination, could only tear 

 the Peninsula from him by tearing France along 

 with it. What weakness, then, what incredible 

 delusion, to point to Spain, with all her follies 

 and her never-ending defeats, as a proof that a 

 people fighting for independence must be victo- 

 rious. She was invaded, because she adhered to 

 the great European aristocracy; she was deli- 

 vered, because England enabled that aristocracy 

 to triumph for a moment over the principles of the 

 French Revolution. 



Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Library. Vol. III. 

 Annual Retrospect of Public Affairs for 

 1831. This is no bad conception. A 

 glance of this kind over the year, at the 

 end of it, in these stirring times, might 

 save abundance of labour, and reminds us 

 conveniently at little cost and trouble. 

 But one volume should have been the 

 limit. Such a degree of compression 

 would have prevented much of it re- 

 sembling, as it now does, the stale de- 

 tails of the newspapers. Greece, France, 

 and Belgium occupy the chief portion 

 of the volume. Leopold's rejection of 

 the sovereignty is told far too lengthily, 

 though fairly enough. More swelling 

 matters have driven Greece into the 

 back -ground. The great patrons of 

 Greece in England and France Pal- 

 merston and Sebastiani are now both 

 of them respectively at the head of the 

 foreign departments will Greece be the 

 better for it ? Will they now urge upon 



the Port the evacuation of Candia so 

 earnest as they both were when out of 

 office ? French affairs are brought up 

 to the trial and sentence of the minis- 

 ters, which might very well close the 

 year ; but the writer is not disposed to 

 let go his hold, and proposes to prose- 

 cute the subject in a second volume. 

 Belgium is barely touched upon a lit- 

 tle preluding only respecting Be Potter. 

 Home seems to present nothing but Par- 

 liamentary'' prattle, of which the author 

 takes a fair estimate enough. Would 

 that the Reform Bill swept away ano- 

 ther two hundred ! Four hundred talkers 

 might surely satisfy any nation upon 

 earth. The Athenians themselves were 

 never such babblers as we are become 

 but they had no reporters ! 



Waverley Novels Kenilworth. Sir 

 Walter's success in his portrait of 

 Queen Mary, in the "Abbott," natu- 

 rally prompted, he tells us, a similar 

 attempt respecting " her sister and her 

 foe," the celebrated Elizabeth of Eng- 

 land. Robertson avowed his national 

 prejudices, and Sir Walter, " a poor ro- 

 mance writer," as he describes himself, 

 dare not disown, what so liberal an his- 

 torian ventured to avow. Nevertheless, 

 in delineating Elizabeth whom, by the 

 way, Dr. Nares, in his second volume 

 of "Burghley's life, assures us, was not, 

 as some affirm of the devil, so black as 

 she is painted Sir Walter's aim was to 

 describe her as a high-minded sovereign, 

 and a woman of passionate feelings 

 hesitating between a sense of her rank 

 and duty to her subjects on the one 

 hand, and her attachment, on the other, 

 to a nobleman, who, whatever might be 

 his character, was at least a very hand- 

 some man, and of attractive manners. 

 Leicester's murder of his wife was a sub- 

 ject of general suspicion and allusion, as 

 appears from numerous sources. Sir 

 Walter's authority is Ashmole's His- 

 tory of Berkshire but his first ac- 

 quaintance with the story was from 

 Mickle's Cummor Hall. There can 

 be little doubt Leicester had enemies 

 enough. A favourite has no friend; 

 and he was not of a nature to conciliate. 

 Sir Walter has clenched the nail. Lei- 

 cester and murder are for ever now in- 

 separable an effect which might sug- 

 gest a little more caution in dealing 

 with historical character. 



The Animal Kingdom, on Cuvier^s Ar- 

 rangement. Edited. by E. Griffith^ and 

 others. Part XXVII. The twenty- 

 seventh portion of this respectable un- 

 dertaking, of which we have more than 

 once expressed our approbation, is taken 

 up with Reptilia, and chiefly with frogs 

 and toads. Frogs, it seems, are going 

 out of favour in France, though still to 

 be met with in the markets, but not so 



