frame-work of human bodies, he was viewed | sort of reading backwards; they compose a by his royal auditor, after hearing him cool-good, honest, and straightforward assertion ly to the end, as the most horrid little mon- of wholesale wickedness as absolutely esster on the terraqueous globe. But Gulli-sential to prosperity and comfort of mind in ver had so little suspected any liability in this shocking world. Many have fancied his own opinions to such a construction, that, if challenged as an elaborate jester in that he had talked with the self-satisfied air masquerade, Machiavel would have burst of a benevolent philosopher teaching the old into explosions of laughter. Far from it; idea how to shoot. he would have looked as angry and disconcerted as Gulliver, and would have said, probably, “Oh, if you come to virtue, and all that sort of thing, really I pretend to no opinions on the subject; I am addressing myself to men of sense, and simply taking

"A philosophical treatise on poisons would," says Mackintosh, "determine the quantity of each poisonous substance capable of producing death, the circumstances favorable or adverse to its operation, and every other information essential to the pur-it for granted, that, as such, in a world of pose of the poisoner, though not intended universal kicking and being kicked, they for his use." Something like this has been will wish to kick back in every direction.” pleaded on behalf of Machiavel by others. But the defect of Sir James Mackintosh's But in fact it will not bear a critical scru- paper, is the neglect of positive extracts tiny. For all depends on the mode of pre- from The Prince, given in their true consenting the poisonous arts. In a little nexion. Such a treatment would soon have chemico-medical manual lying before me at dispersed any doubts about the final drift of this moment, the Parisian author, speaking the work. For, suppose that, in a work on of the modes employed to color wines, says, poisons, (to adopt Mackintosh's own illus"On peut jaunir ces liquides" (white wines) tration), you met with a little section like "à l'aide du gaz acide sulfureux; cette this:-"With respect to the proper mode fraude est dangereuse, si l'acide se trouve of despatching young toothless infants, I en assez grande quantité." Now here there always set my face against the use of poiis something not strictly correct; for the son. I do so on moral principle, and also writer teaches a secret which he knows to as a man of refinement. It is evident that be profitable on one hand and dangerous on poison in such a case is quite needless : the other, with a slight caution that he you may operate more speedily by a little might easily have made a full one. The se- lavender-water; this will be agreeable to cret is likely to be tried, it is likely to cause both parties-yourself and the child; pour danger; whilst the simple means for evad- a few spoonfuls into a slop-basin; hold the ing the danger, viz., by stating the proper little human kitten with its face downwards proportions, he is too indolent to report. in this, and it will hardly have time to mew Yet still, though blameable, this author is before the trick will be done. Now, obfar above being suspected of any wish to serve the difference of circumstances with teach murderous arts. And what is the respect to an adult. How pleasing it is to proof of this? Why, that he never intro- the benign heart, that nature should have duces any substance for the mere purpose provided so vast a gamut in the art of murof showing its uses as a poison; but, when der! To the philosophic mind it suggests other uses have obliged him to notice it, he the idea, that perhaps no two people ought takes occasion to caution the reader as to to be murdered in the same manner. Supthose which are dangerous. If a man were pose, for instance, the subject marked for answerable for all the indirect or inverse immediate despatch to be your uncle; a modes of reading his book, then every wri- huge, broad-shouldered monster, evidently ter on medical jurisprudence would be lia- quite unfit to live any longer. I should say, ble to indictment; for such works may be now, that a dose of corrosive sublimate always turned to account as reversely sys- would be the correct thing for him. Phletems of poisoning; the artifices for detect- botomy would never do with such a bullock ing guilt may always be applied by a Lo- as that. He would turn a mill with his custa [Sueton. in Claudio] or a Brinvilliers blood, and the place of operating would beas so many directions for aiding its opera-come a mere shambles. If, again, you attions; just as the Lord's Prayer, read back- tempted to repeat upon him the experiment wards, was, of old times, the shortest means that had succeeded with the infant, surprisfor evoking the fiend. Now, Machiavel's ing and holding him down in the water, arts of tyranny are not collected from this when washing his face, the refractory ruf

into dimness when laid aside for a long time into dark repositories; but, upon being brought back to sunlight, revive gradually into something of their early life and coloring.* There are four separate rea sons why the authorship of this book will always remain an interesting problem for the historical student :—

1st. Because it involves something of a mystery. In this respect it resembles the question as to the Gowrie Conspiracy, as to the Iron Masque, &c. &c.; and unless some new documents should appear, which is not quite impossible, but is continually growing nearer to an impossibility, it will remain a mystery; but a mystery which might be made much more engaging by a better mode of presenting the evidence on either side, and of pointing the difficulties that beset either conclusion.

fian would assuredly break the basin in his struggles; his face would be lacerated; and, when his howling had brought the police to his assistance, the streaming blood would give an air of plausibility to his odious calumny that you had been attempting to cut his throat; whereas, he knows, as well as you know, that not a drop of blood would have been spilt, and very little water, had he forborne making so horrid an uproar." After such a passage, I suppose few people would be satisfied with Sir James's construction of the book :-" It is an account of the means by which the art of assassination is to be acquired and preserved; it is a theory of that class of phenomena. It is essential to its purpose, therefore, that it should contain an exposition of murder in all its varieties." In reality, the state of Italian society in those days, as Sir James himself suggests, is the best key to the pos- 2dly. Because it is an instructive examsibility of such a work as The Prince, but, ple of conflicting evidence, which having at the same time, the best guarantee of its long been sifted by various cross-examiners, absolute sincerity. We need only to read sharp as razors, from ability and from rethe autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, ciprocal animosity, has now become interwho was a contemporary of Machiavel, to esting for itself; the question it was, which see with what reckless levity a man, natu- interested at the first; but at length the rally generous and brave, thought of aveng- mere testimonies, illustrated by hostile criting his slightest quarrel by a pistol shotics, have come to have a separate interest from some cowardly ambuscade. Not mil- of their own apart from the point at issue. itary princes only, but popes, cardinals, 3dly. The book has a close connexion bishops, appear to have employed murder- with the character of Charles I., which is ers, and to have sheltered murderers as a a character meriting even a pathetic attennecessary part of their domestic garrisons-tion, where its native features are brought often to be used defensively, or in menace; under the light of the very difficult circumbut, under critical circumstances, to be used stances besetting its natural development. aggressively for sudden advantages. It was no mistake, therefore, in Frederick of Prussia, to reply calmly and elaborately to The Prince, as not meant for a jest, but as a serious philosophic treatise offered to the world (if, on such a subject, one may say so) in perfect good faith. It may, perhaps, also be no mistake, at all events it proves the diffusive impression as to the cool wickedness of the book, that, in past times, many people seriously believed the name of Old Nick [one of the vulgar expressions for the devil], to have been an off-set from the name of Niccolo Machiavelli.

4thly. The book is one of that small number which (like the famous pamphlet of the Abbé Sieyes, on the Tiers état), produced an impression worthy to be called national. According to my present recollection, I must, myself, have seen the fortyninth edition; at present [May, 1846] it wants but thirty-two months of full two hundred yearst since the publication of the book; such an extent of distribution in

pened, three or four years ago, to what are called "Life and coloring: "-Such a change hap The Raphael Tapestries. After having been laid up in darkness for about ten years, they were brought out and exhibited at Manchester; after which the crimsons deepened remarkably under constant exposure to light, the blues clarified themselves, and the harmonies of the coloring began to revive.

The king suffered on the 30th of January, 1649. And I have somewhere read an anecdote, that Royston, the publisher, caused several copies, ed amongst the crowd that surrounded the scaf the first that were sufficiently dry, to be distributfold. This was a bold act. For Royston, and

an age of readers so limited, such a dura-rect there: "horror" is his own word; tion of the interest connected with a ques-and a horror it was until a late act for extion so personal, is the strongest testimony alting the weak and pulling down the extant of the awe pursuing so bold an act mighty. Sir James seems to have thought as the judicial execution of a king. this phrase of a horror," un peu fort for Sir James Mackintosh takes up the case so young a prelate. But it is to be conas against Dr. Wordsworth. And, being a sidered that Dr. G. came immediately from lawyer, he fences with the witnesses on the rural deanry of Bocking, where the the other side, in a style of ease and adroit-pastures are good. And Sir James ought ness that wins the reader's applause. Yet, to have known by one memorable case in after all, he is not the more satisfactory for his own time, and charged upon the injusbeing brilliant. He studied the case neither tice of his own party, that it is very possimore nor less than he would have done a ble for a rural parson leaving a simple recbrief: he took it up on occasion of a sudden tory to view even a bishopric as an insupsummons ab extra: and it is certain that no portable affront; and, in fact, as an atrocijustice will ever be done to all the bearings ous hoax or swindle, if the rectory happened of the evidence, unless the evidence is ex- to be Stanhope, worth in good mining years amined con amore. It must be a labor of six thousand per annum, and the bishopric love, spontaneous, and even impassioned; and not of mere compliance with the suggestion of a journal, or the excitement of a new book, that will ever support the task of threshing out and winnowing all the materials available for this discussion.

Were I proprietor of this journal, and entitled to room a discretion, perhaps I might be indiscreet enough to take forty pages for my own separate use. But, being merely an inside passenger, and booked for only one place, I must confine myself to my own allotment. This puts an end to all idea of reviewing the whole controversy; but it may be well to point out one or two oversights in Sir James Mackintosh.

The reader is aware of the question at issue, viz., whether the Icon, which is supposed to have done so much service to the cause of royalty, by keeping alive the memory of Charles I., in the attitude of one forgiving injuries, or expostulating with enemies in a tone of apparent candor, were really written by the king himself, or written for him, under the masque of his character, by Dr. Gauden. Sir James, in this case, is counsel for Dr. Gauden. Now, it happened that about six months after the Restoration, this doctor was made Bishop of Exeter. The worthy man was not very long, viz., exactly forty-eight days, in discovering that Exeter was a horror" of a bishopric. It was so; he was quite cor

all his equipage of compositors, were in great peril already, by their labors at the press. Imprisonmert for political offences was fatal to three out of four in those days: but the penalties were sometimes worse than imprisonment for offences so critically perilous as that of Royston.

*"A horror :"—It is true that Dr. G. received a sum of twenty thousand pounds within the first year; but that was for renewal of leases that had

to be Exeter, worth, until lately, not more than two. But the use which Sir James makes of this fact, coming so soon after the king's return, is-that assuredly the doctor must have had some conspicuous merit, when so immediately promoted, and amongst so select a few. That merit, he means to argue, could have been nothing else, or less, than the seasonable authorship of the Icon.

It is certain, however, that the service which obtained Exeter, was not this. Worcester, to which G. afterwards obtained a translation, and the fond hope of Winchester, which he never lived to reach, may have been sought for on the argument of the Icon. But Exeter was given on another consideration. This is certain; and, if known to Sir James, would perhaps have arrested his final judgment.

2. Sir James quotes, without noticing their entire inaccuracy, the well-known words of Lord Clarendon-that when the secret (as to the Icon) should cease to be such, "nobody would be gladd of it but Mr. Milton." I notice this only as indicating the carelessness with which people read, and the imperfect knowledge of the facts even amongst persons like Lord Clarendon, having easy access to the details, and contemporary with the case. Why should the disclosure have so special an interest for Milton? The Icon Basiliké, or royal image, having been set up for national worship, Milton, viewing the case as no better than idolatry, applied himself to pull down the idol; and, in allusion to the title of the book, as well as to the ancient Iconoclasts,

lapsed during the Commonwealth suppression of the sees; and nothing so great was likely to occur again.

he called his own exposure of the Icon by the name of Iconoclastes, or the Imagebreaker. But Milton has no interest in Lord Clarendon's secret. What he had meant by breaking the image was not the showing that the king had not written the book, but that whoever had written it (king or any body else), had falsely represented the politics and public events of the last seven years, and had falsely colored the king's opinions, feelings, designs, as expounded by his acts. Not the title to the authorship, was what Milton denied of that he was comparatively careless: but the king's title to so meek and candid a character as was there portrayed. It is true that laughingly, and in transitu, Milton notices the unlikelihood of a king's finding leisure for such a task, and he notices also the internal marks of some chaplain's hand in the style. That same practice in composition, which suggested to Sir James Mackintosh his objections to the style, as too dressed and precise for a prince writing with a gentleman's negligence, suggested also to Milton his suspicion of a clerical participation in the work. He thought probably, which may, after all, turn out to be true, that the work was a

false, it was easy for him to reply with the bold front of an innocent man. There was next a second charge, of having negotiated with the rebels subsequently to their insurrection. To this also there was a reply; not so triumphant, because, as a fact, it could not be blankly denied; but under the state difficulties of the king, it was capable of defence. Thirdly, however, there was a charge quite separate and much darker, which, if substantiated, would have ruined the royal cause with many of its staunchest adherents. This concerned the secret negotiation with the Popish nuncio through Lord Glamorgan. It may be ninety years since Dr. Birch, amongst his many useful contributions to English history, brought to life this curious correspondence: and since that day there has been no room for doubt as to the truth of the charge. Lord Glamorgan was a personal friend of the king, and a friend so devoted, that he submitted without a murmur to be represented publicly as a poor imbecile creature, this being the sole retreat open to the king's own character. Now, the Icon does not distinguish this last charge, as to which there was no answer, from the two others where there was. In a person situjoint product of two or more persons. But ated like Gauden, and superficially acall that was indifferent to his argument. quainted with political facts, this confusion His purpose was to destroy the authority might be perfectly natural. Not so with by exposing the falsehood of the book. the king; and it would deeply injure hist And his dilemma is framed to meet either memory, if we could suppose him to have hypothesis that of the king's authorship, benefitted artfully by a defence upon one or that of an anonymous courtier's. Written by the king, the book falsifies facts in a way which must often have contradicted his own official knowledge, and must therefore impeach his veracity: written for the king, the work is still liable to the same charge of material falsehood, though probably not of conscious falsehood; so far the writer's position may seem improved; one who was not in the Cabinet would often utter untruths, without knowing them to be such yet again this is balanced by the deliberate assumption of a false character for the purpose of public deception.

charge which the reader (as he knew) would apply to another. Yet would it not equally injure him to suppose that he had accepted from another such an equivocating defence? No: for it must be recollected that the king, though he had read, could not have had the opportunity (which he anticipated) of revising the proof sheets; consequently we know not what he might finally have struck out. But, were it other

*This "poor imbecile creature" was the origia suggester of the Steam-engine. He is known in his earlier life as Lord Herbert, son of Lord Worcester, who at that time was an earl, but af3. Amongst the passages which most afterward raised to a Marquisate, and subsequently fect the king's character, on the former hy- the son was made Duke of Beaufort. Apart from pothesis, (viz., that of his own authorship,) the negotiations with the nuncio, the king's peris the 12th section of the Icon, relating to Earl of Glamorgan as a means of accrediting him sonal bargain with Lord Herbert (whom he made his private negotiations with the Irish Ro- for this particular Irish service) was tainted with man Catholics. The case stands thus: marks of secret leanings to Popery. Lord GlaCharles had been charged with having ex-morgan's family were Papis's; and into this famicited (or permitted his Popish queen to blood in their veins, the king was pledged to give ly, the house of Somerset having Plantagenet excite) the Irish rebellion and massacre of a daughter in marriage, with a portion of three 1641. To this charge, being factious and hundred thousand pounds.

wise, Sir James Mackintosh argues that the phalia. That treaty it was, balancing and dishonesty would, under all the circum- readjusting all Christendom, until the stances, have been trivial, when confined French Revolution again unsettled it, that to the act of tolerating an irrelevant de- first proclaimed to the Popish interest the fence, in comparison of that dishonesty hopelessness of further efforts for extermiwhich could deliberately compose a false nating the Protestant interest. But this one. So far I fully agree with Sir James: consummation of the strife had not been his apology for the defence of the act, sup- reached by four or five years at the time posing that defence to be Gauden's, is suf- when Charles entered upon his jesuitical ficient. But his apology for the act itself dealings with the Popish council in Ireland; is, I fear, untenable. He contends,-that dealings equally at war with the welfare of "it certainly was not more unlawful for struggling Europe, with the fundamental him," [the king] "to seek the aid of the laws of the three kingdoms which the king Irish Catholics, than it was for his oppo- ruled, and with the coronation oaths which nents to call in the succor of the Scotch he had sworn. I, that love and pity the Presbyterians." How so? The cases are afflicted prince, whose position blinded him, most different. The English and the Scottish of necessity, to the truth in many things, Parliaments were on terms of the most am the last person to speak harshly of his brotherly agreement as to all capital points conduct. But undoubtedly he committed of policy, whether civil or religious. In a great error for his reputation, that would both senates all were Protestants; and the have proved even a fatal error for his inpreponderant body, even in the English terests, had it succeeded at the moment, senate, up to 1646, were Presbyterians, and that might have upset the interests of and, one may say, Scottish Presbyterians; universal Protestantism, coming at that for they had taken the covenant. Conse- most critical moment. This case I notice, quently no injury, present or in reversion, as having a large application; for it is too to any great European interest, could be generally true of politicians, arguing the charged upon the consciences of the two Roman Catholic claims in these modern Parliaments. Whereas the Kilkenny treaty, on Charles's part, went to the direct formal establishment of Popery as the Irish Church, to the restoration of the lands claimed as church lands, to a large confiscation, and to the utter extermination of the Protestant interest in Ireland. The treaty did all this, by its tendency; and if it were to be prevented from doing it, that could only be through prolonged war, in which the king would have found himself ranged in battle against the Protestant faith. The king not only testified his carelessness of the Protestant interest, but he also raised a new and a rancorous cause of civil war.

The truth is, that Mackintosh, from the long habit of defending the Roman Catholic pretensions, as applying to our own times, was tempted to overlook the difference which affected those pretensions in 1645-6. Mark the critical point of time. A great antiProtestant league of kingdoms had existed for a century, to which Spain, Austria, Bavaria, many Italian states, and, intermittingly, even France, were parties. The great agony of this struggle between Popery and the Reformation, came to its crisis, finally and for ever, in the Thirty years' war, which, beginning in 1618, (just one hundred years after Luther's first movement,) terminated in 1648, by the peace of West

days, when the sting of Popery, as a political power, is extracted, that they forget the very different position of Protestantism, when it had to face a vast hostile confederation, always in procinctu for exterminating war, in case a favorable opening should arise.

Taking leave of the Icon Basiliké, I would express my opinion, that the question is not yet exhausted: the pleadings must be reopened. But in the mean time no single arguments have been adduced against the king's claim of equal strength with these two of Sir James's: one drawn from external, the other from internal evidence:

First, that on the Gauden hypothesis, Lord Clarendon's silence as to the Icon in his history, though not strictly correct, is the venial error of a partisan; but that, on the other, or anti-Gauden hypothesis, his silence is fatal to his own character, as a man decently honest; and yet without an intelligible motive.

Secondly, that the impersonal character of the Icon is strongly in favor of its being a forgery. All the rhetorical forgeries of the later Greek literature, such as the Letters of Phalaris, of Themistocles, &c. are detected by that mark. These forgeries, applying themselves to ages distant from the writer, are often, indeed, self-exposed