readers, is, that he is so dull--the most fatal of all defects,
and the most inexcusable in an historian. His heart was not in history,
his hand was not trained to it; it is in "Roderick Random" or "Peregrine
Pickle," not the continuation of Hume, that his powers are to be seen.

Lord Mahon has brought to the subject of the history of England from the
treaty of Utrecht to that of Aix-la-Chapelle, talents of a kind much
better adapted for doing justice to Marlborough's campaigns. He has
remarkable power for individual narrative. His account of the gallant
attempt, and subsequent hair-breadth escapes of the Pretender in 1745,
is full of interest, and is justly praised by Sismondi as by far the
best account extant of that romantic adventure. He possesses also a fair
and equitable judgment, much discrimination, evident talent for drawing
characters, and that upright and honourable heart, which is the first
requisite for success in the delineation, as it is for success in the
conduct of events. His industry in examining and collecting authorities
is great; he is a scholar, a statesman, and a gentleman--no small
requisites for the just delineation of noble and generous achievements.
But notwithstanding all this, his work is not the one to rescue
Marlborough's fame from the unworthy obscurity into which, in this
country, it has fallen. He takes up the thread of events where
Marlborough left them: he begins only at the peace of Utrecht. Besides
this, he is not by nature a military historian, and if he had begun at
the Revolution, the case would probably have been the same. Lord Mahon's
attention has been mainly fixed on domestic story; it is in illustrating
parliamentary contests or court intrigues, not military events, that his
powers have been put forth. He has given a clear, judicious, and elegant
narrative of British history, as regards these, so far as it is embraced
by his accomplished pen; but the historian of Marlborough must treat him
as second to none, not even to Louis XIV. or William III. Justice will
never be done to the hero of the English revolution, till his Life is
the subject of a separate work in every schoolboy's hands. We must have
a memoir of him to be the companion of Southey's Life of Nelson, and
Napier's Peninsular War.

Voltaire, in his "Siecle de Louis XIV.," could not avoid giving a sketch
of the exploits of the British hero; and his natural impartiality has
led him, so far as it goes, to give a tol