is country by the
Appletons, in two large volumes (embracing the first four of the original
impression), carefully and judiciously edited by Professor Henry Reed, of
Philadelphia. It well indicates the right of its author to a place with
the best British writers in this department. History was never before
written so brilliantly or profoundly as in the last half century. Germany
in this period has boasted her Schiller, Niebuhr, Von Hammer, Heeren,
Ranke, and two Mullers; France her Sismondi, Barrante, Thierrys, Michelet,
Mignet, Guizot, and Thiers; England her Mitford, Arnold, Thirlwall, Grote,
Napier, Hallam, Mackintosh, Macaulay, Palgrave, and Mahon; and we have
ourselves the noble names of Bancroft, Prescott, and Irving, to send to
the next ages. Of the English authors we have mentioned, we regard Lord
Mahon as in many respects the first; Hallam is a laborious and wise
critic; Thirlwall and Grote, in their province, have greatly increased the
fame of British scholarship; and Macaulay, brilliant and picturesque
beyond any of his contemporaries, has an unprecedented popularity, which
will last until the worthlessness of his opinions and the viciousness of
his style are more justly appreciated than they are likely to be by the
mobs of novel readers who in this generation have preferred him to James
and Ainsworth. Lord Mahon is the most legitimate successor of the greatest
historian of his country, David Hume.

Although the chief subject of these new volumes is the American war, the
general political history of England, from the decline of the fortunes of
Bute through the administration of Grenville, Rockingham, Chatham, the
Duke of Grafton, and Lord North, is illustrated and commented on as
largely as the special purpose of the author permitted; and we have many
striking passages respecting Wilkes and his various persecutions, the
Letters of Junius and their authorship, and the common intellectual and
material progress of the British empire. The spirit in which he regards
our Revolution is illustrated by the following paragraph, on the
rejection, by the House of Peers, of the conciliatory Bill by which Lord
Chatham hoped, in 1775, to prevent the threatened separation of the
colonies:

"It may be proper, or at least pardonable, here to pause for an
inquiry, what probable issue might have attended an opposite
decision in the British Parliament? If the ministers had been
defeated on this Bill, if, in con