able defect in his history; and we speak of it with the more seve rity, because he has done nothing, where he had the opportunity of doing a great deal. The state of Germany during the middle ages, has been very little touched by those who have thrown most light upon philosophical history, as to other parts of Europe. But the whole system of society which then prevailed, is passed over without notice by Mr Coxe; nor has he even deigned to dwell a moment upon that peculiar civil constitution, without some knowledge of which his pages must often appear quite unintelligible to an uninformed reader.

We anticipate his apology, that he does not write the history of Germany, but of the House of Austria. Such a defence we reject. No man has a right to fill three quarto volumes with the history of the House of Austria, or of any other house whatsoever. It is not with families, but with nations; not with sovereigns, but with subjects, that the dignity of history converses. Separately considered, the House of Austria has no more claim to our attention, than any private family in Europe. On what ground indeed could it prefer such a claim? Has it produced a series of princes, distinguished for their military skill, their cultivation of letters, or the benefits they have conferred upon their country? The very reverse is the truth. Few families have been less productive of great men. An extreme obstinacy, an intolerant bigotry, an absurd pride, an ambition alike without principle and judgment, have been their characteristics. It is surely very disgraceful to historians, especially in a foreign country, to descant upon the genealogies and marriage-alliances of such a race; while not a word is given to the condition of those millions which gave to the House of Austria all the importance which it possesses in the eyes of the merest antiquary in Christendom. There is certainly a good reason why Mr Coxe should have denominated his work the History of the House of Austria, It is, that the dominions of that family, consisting of separate states and kingdoms, have never borne any general appellation. But he seems to have had no other view, than to follow the fortunes of the family itself, and to treat every other part of history as subordinate. For he declares himself, in his preface, to have meditated the design of tracing the Spanish, as well as the German branch, from the time of Charles the Fifth; and to have abandoned the scheme, simply on account of the extent to which it would have swelled his publication, as if the mere affinity of blood between two royal families, would have given sufficient unity of design to a work comprising the history of two different nations.

It is this preposterous method of considering all things as acessary to the fate of a single family, which constitutes the prin

cipal defect of these volumes. Another a good deal allied to it, is a more partial bias towards the individuals of that House, than can be quite justified. But, bating these exceptions, this is a publication of very great value. It might perhaps have been more judicious to omit the earlier part, and confine the narrative to that period which is most generally interesting, and the authorities relating to which are most original. But taking the work at its present extent of plan, we will undertake to say, that, long as it is, there is not much that could well have been spared. On the contrary, we have already pointed at topics, the investigation of which would have rendered it still longer. There is little of superfluous detail; and that little is chiefly found in biographical anecdotes of the Austrian family. As little could be subtracted from his language as from his narrative; the style is flowing and unembarrassed; sometimes perhaps a little vulgar, and never rising to good writing; but free from verbiage and poetical tropes.

The founder of the House of Austria, as is well known, was Rodolph, Count of Hapsbourg, who was elected to the imperial crown in 1273. His family, if not quite so illustrious as some others of that age, may be traced for several centuries; and his dominions in Alsace and Switzerland, most of which remained to his descendants, till their late downfall, were not quite inconsiderable. But it appears to have been the policy of the German aristocracy of that period, whom the ambition of the House of Suabia had kept in a perpetual conflict, to select an Emperor not sufficiently powerful to alarm their jealousy. Hitherto the imperial sceptre had been entrusted to the most leading families of Germany, and, during the continuance of the male line, it had commonly been suffered to pass, without much unwillingness, according to hereditary succession. But after the extinction of the Suabian dynasty, both these rules were infring ed. Obscure and insignificant princes were sometimes elevated to the throne; and it became, for more than a century, a sort of principle among the assertors of Germanic freedom, that the son should not succeed his father in the empire. This rule, indeed, which was strenuously encouraged by the Popes, frequently gave way to the influence of the reigning sovereign; but it led, at almost every election, to violent conflicts among the competitors, and frequently to protracted hostility. The imperial prerogatives of Charlemagne, had dwindled away through civil discord, and the growth of powerful feudatories: the right of nominating his successor, which had originally belonged to the whole body of freemen, and been afterwards exercised by the princes alone, was in the 13th century, through one of those silent revolutions which can hardly be traced in history, confined to three ecclesi

astion!

astical and four secular electors. Such was the condition of the imperial authority, when Rodolph of Hapsbourg, a man of eminent valour and prudence, and long distinguished in the warfare of his own neighbourhood, was invested with it. But though his personal merits were great, he owed to some fortunate cir cumstances the opportunity of founding the most illustrious family in Europe. Fallen as the authority of the Emperors was, they retained the right of conferring the investiture of imperial fiefs, escheated for want of heirs. To this prerogative some of the principal houses in Germany are indebted for their grandeur; but none more eminently than that of Austria. That fertile country which lies upon the Danube, between the Inn and Presburg, had been erected into a Margraviate in the 10th century, and a Dukedom in the 11th, in favour of the family of Bamberg. Upon their failure, it reverted to the empire, and was granted by Frederic the Second to one of his own family; who, in the wane of the House of Suabia, was unable to protect his fief from the arms of Attocar, a powerful king of Bohemia. The prowess of the Emperor Rodolph was first displayed against this Attocar, who was certainly a formidable adversary, though not, as Mr Coxe calls him, the most powerful prince of Europe. He was assuredly far less so, than either Philip the Hardy, or Edward the First. Such however as he was, he made very little resistance; and was easily despoiled of the Austrian territories, which Rodolph conferred upon his son Albert,

Upon the death of Rodolph, civil wars broke out in Germany; and though Albert ultimately succeeded in obtaining the imperial crown, upon his death by assassination in 1308, it passed into another family. For above a century from this time, the House of Austria was in its dark quarter: but Mr Coxe has compiled a narrative of its transactions during that period, which, if it may not always be deemed of the highest interest and importance, is original, we believe, to the English reader, and worthy of being laid before him. There is some confusion, but which could not be avoided, that arises from following the several reigning branches into which the descendants of Rodolph were speedily divided. By an ill-judged policy, very common in Germany during the 14th and 15th centuries, of partitioning principalities among all the sons of a family, the great houses of the empire were sometimes reduced to insignificance. Saxony was divided into two branches, one reigning at Wittenburg, the other at Lauenburg. Brandenburg, Brunswick, Misnia, were in a similar manner split into petty principalities. The illustrious line of Bavaria, independently of the Palatine branch which it had very early sent forth, fell into three subordinate ramifications during the 15th

century.

century. It is marvellous that none of the ambitious princes of Germany should have felt the absurdity of thus weakening their hereditary influence. Like children, they built houses of cards, to destroy them. Ambition becomes a very unintelligible thing, when we see a Frederic the Second, or an Albert of Austria, demolishing the fabric they had been labouring all their lives to establish. By such repeated divisions, the strength of the Austrian House was shattered, and its stem spread into three branches; one of which reigned in Austria, another in Styria and the adjacent countries, and a third in the Tyrol.

The marriage of Albert the Fifth with the daughter of the Emperor Sigismund, inspired the Austrian family with pretensions to the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, as well as of the empire. The former, they were never able to maintain : but Mr Coxe has taken the opportunity of entering into the history of those two nations of high-spirited freemen, who preserved, more for their glory than their happiness, the primitive constitution of most European states; an elective monarchy, and an insubordinate class of nobles. Albert, however, was chosen king of the Romans in 1437, and was succeeded soon afterwards by his cousin Frederic III, who, during an inglorious reign of half a century, was often an exile from his own dominions, and wandered from one imperial city to another :-so abased was the House of Austria, within a few years of the time when it was to overshadow the rest of Europe. But its hereditary dominions were reunited before the death of Frederic; and the singular concurrence of three most fortunate marriages, of the son, grandson, and great grandson of Frederic, with the three heiresses of Burgundy, of Spain, and of Hungary and Bohemia, rendered, within half a century, the descendants of this poor and despised prince, masters of an empire little inferior to that of Charlemagne.

The accession of Maximilian, which is the precise point where the twilight of the middle ages terminates, and the sunshine of modern history commences, leads even Mr Coxe, who is not prodigal of general reflections, to somewhat like a comprehensive sketch of the state of Europe at that time. But here, where all his exertions should have been commanded, we find him particularly deficient. The reader, who expects to find the several states of Europe, which were now brought for the first time into competition, balanced in the scale together, will be disappointed by a succinct detail of their several reigning families, and a few common facts of their history. Even these are not always accurate. In the commencement of the 8th century, we are told, page 318, the Saracens or Moors conquered from the Gothic sovereigns, who succeeded to the Roman domination, the greater part of Spain,

confined

confined the Christians to the mountains of Biscay and Andalusia, and established the kingdoms of Cordova, Seville, Toledo, and Grenada. But in the 9th century, the Christians emerging from their fastnesses, founded the kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Arragon, and Navarre, and confined the Mahometans to Grenada.' The word Andalusia is probably misprinted for Asturias; but it might naturally be inferred from this passage, that the Moorish kingdoms enumerated were all founded in the 8th century, and the Christian in the 9th; whereas several of each did not exist till long afterwards. In the next page, Ferdinand is said to have added Sicily to his other dominions: that island had, however, appertained to the kingdom of Arragon for 200 years before his time. We do not understand upon what grounds it is asserted, that the invention of gunpowder, and the discovery of printing, were disadvantageous to Maximilian. It appears evident, on the contrary, that the use of the former, and what was connected with it, the introduction of regular armies, tended to aggrandize all the principal powers in Europe at the expense of smaller independent states. When Mr Coxe tells us, that Maximilian, through this cause, failed in his efforts to regain the preponderance of his fa mily, and recover the territorial dependencies of the empire, he seems to have forgotten even his own former pages. The House of Austria had never preponderated in Germany; in fact, it had never excited so much jealousy as during his reign. As to the imperial dependencies in Italy, they had been neglected for a great length of time; and though Maximilian was not very successful in his attempts to regain them, yet, in consequence, and not in spite, of the recent changes in the art of war, he made a much greater figure in Europe, than any Emperor since the days of Frederic the Second. Nor had the art of printing any perceptible effect to his disadvantage. The diffusion of knowledge has not always been favourable to liberty; and certainly the imperial authority over Germany was far greater in the ages which immediately succeeded that discovery, than in those that went before.

An endeavour has been made by Mr Coxe to elevate the cha racter of Maximilian. But, if he possessed some talents, his light and versatile temper seems to exclude him from the class of respectable sovereigns. Few contemporary writers speak of him but with scorn. His reign, however, forms an epoch in the history of Germany, as well as in the system of Europe. The. peculiar form which the feudal constitution assumed in that country, tended to the most opposite results in different stages of society. During the interval between the Carlovingian dynasty, and his accession, it seemed to be framed rather for the purpose of aggravating the evils of natural society, than of imposing the

restraints