424 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



APRIL, 



gible or admitted sense of the word, can have 

 nothing to do. 



One question yet remains in what con- 

 sists the difference between man and ani- 

 mals? Man has much that animals have, 

 and animals have much that man has. The 

 animal again has something which man has 

 not, and man a good deal which animals 

 have not. This is about all that is said by 

 Mr. S. through sixty or seventy pages, deter- 

 mining scarcely any thing. Animals have the 

 use of reason to a certain extent, but then 

 they cannot speak ; and if one individual 

 improve, he cannot spread or communicate 

 the improvement, &c. 



The last hundred pages are filled with a 

 disjointed account of the boy Mitchell now 

 indeed thirty years old born blind, deaf, and 

 dumb. This case has occupied much of 

 Mr. S.'s attention. The taste and smell were 

 the only channels by which intelligence 

 could be conveyed. Many of the common 

 feelings of mankind these seemed unable to 

 awaken, or but feebly to exercise. Mr. S. 

 had been desirous of applying especial pains 

 for his education, to see what could by pos- 

 sibility be accomplished in his defective 

 slate ; but, in spite of all efforts, his purpose 

 has been defeated. 



We have already greatly exceeded our li- 

 mits; but we cannot refrain from directing 

 the reader's attention to the note C, relative 

 to the late Dr. Brown, Mr. S.'s successor in 

 the moral chair at Edinburgh. It exhibits 

 no pleasant view of Mr. S.'s temper but that 

 is his concern. It shews too plainly he can 

 bear uo rival near the throne ; and Dr. 

 Brown had shaken his sovereignly : though 

 gone, his works remain, and Mr. S. cannot 

 forbear, [n his opinion, then, Dr. Brown 

 was an admirably clever, ingenious, ac- 

 complished person, but no metaphysician. He 

 bad not the requisite power of patient think- 

 ing ; he was too confident in Ins own judge- 

 ments; if he did not see difficulties, he did 

 not believe they existed ; he did not know 

 Low to stop when at the end of his tether ; 

 he thought, when he got to the end of his 

 own sounding line, he bad reached the bottom 

 of the ocean; but great powers will not 

 master any subject without great thinking, 

 &c. &c. Pro/i pudor ! 



A Vindication of Certain Passages in 

 the 4th and 5th Volumes of the History of 

 England, by Dr. Lingard. To contribute 

 what we can to the publicity of Dr. Lin- 

 garcl's defence is, in our opinion, a duty, and 

 one which we trust every independent re- 

 view in the kingdom will promptly perform. 

 Dr. Lingard is a Catholic, and has been as- 

 sailed on all sides by high church and low 

 church by such as were resolved to find 

 him wrong. The Vindication before us is 

 a temperate and careful reply to his three 

 principal opponents the Edinburgh) Mr. 

 Todd, and Mr. Todd's backer, the Quarterly. 

 The Edinburgh, in an article of unusual 

 length after flinging out the most con- 

 temptuous phrases upon the whole perform- 



ance fastens, to prove the worthlessness of 

 the whole, upon Dr. Lingard's account of the 

 massacre of St. Bartholomew. What, does Dr. 

 Lingard deny the reality of the massacre? 

 No ; but he denies it to have been the result 

 of a preconcerted plot he represents it to 

 have arisen from the sudden impulse of "per- 

 sonal fears. Generally, historians speak of 

 the plot as one that had been most elabo- 

 rately concerting fora couple of years at the 

 very least. Dr. Lingard found reason, on 

 referring to the original authorities, and on 

 contemplaling the circumstances of the mas- 

 sacre, to doubt the accuracy of the usual re- 

 presentation ; and he rests his doubts of this 

 two-year-old plot, first upon the want of con- 

 temporary authority ; and next, upon the 

 probabilities of the case upon admitted cir- 

 'cumstances, which militate against the com- 

 mon conclusion the King's intimacy with 

 Coligni the attempt on the life of Coligni 

 two days before the massacre and the King's 

 visit to the bed-side of the wounded Coligni. 

 The massacre took place, as all the world 

 knows, on the 24th August (1572). The 

 object was of course the destruction of the 

 Huguenots, of whom Coligni was the acknow- 

 ledged leader. On the 22d, Coligni was 

 struck by an assassin in the streets of Paris. 

 If the general massacre was to occur in two 

 days, or at all, why alarm the party by the 

 murder of their leader ? Was it not the 

 very thing to put them on their guard ? But 

 who assassinates? An agent of Catherine's, 

 the King's mother. Why ? To get rid of 

 one, whose growing influence with her son 

 she was jealous. He had been for some time 

 notoriously on terms of great intimacy with 

 the King, and had urged him to shake oil 1 his 

 mother's yoke, and act for himself. But then, 

 how account for the general massacre, the very 

 extent of which implies some preparation? 

 To prevent exposure. On the 23d, the morn- 

 ing after the attempt on Coligni's life, the 

 King visited him at his bed-side the Qneen 

 forced herself in his company ; but Coligni 

 still whispered the King, and warned him of 

 his mother. Ou the morning of the 24th, 

 witnesses were examined before the privy- 

 council. The assassin had escaped, but left 

 behind him his horse and weapon. The horse 

 was recognised, and the weapon proved to 

 belong to the guards of the Duke of Anjou, 

 the King's brother; the Queen and her son 

 Anjou were suspected evidence thickened 

 the Huguenots assembled, and two of them 

 did all but charge the Queen to her face ; 

 and on the following morning the leaders of 

 the party resolved to demand justice of the 

 King in a body. Exposure seemed inevi- 

 table. No time was to be lost. The Queen 

 and her counsellors determined on the mas- 

 sacre that night, the 24th. They persuaded 

 Charles that his life was in danger from the 

 treacheries of the Huguenots ; they succeeded 

 in alarming him he was but about twenty 

 ol'an impetuous and excitable disposition ; and 

 he concurred. The massacres that followed in 

 other towns of the kingdom were the result 



