Those who have been intimately associated with Professor Stanley, both in the official and private relations of life, will cherish an affectionate recollection of his virtues. They will often call to mind his humility, his candor, his sincerity, his delicate sense of honor and propriety, his nice regard for the feelings of others, his honesty and uprightness, and his unsullied purity of character.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

WE find ourselves unexpectedly restricted within so small a space for our literary notices, that we are obliged to throw aside what we had prepared, and content ourselves with giving scarcely more than the titles of the books we have received. From Crosby, Nichols & Co., of Boston, we have received through T. H. Pease, the following works:-Reason and Faith, and other Miscellanies, by HENRY ROGERS, Author of "The Eclipse of Faith;" Essays well known and of decided merit, and well worthy to be classed with "The Eclipse of Faith," reviewed in the present number. Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling;" and the very interesting and useful Memoirs of Mrs. WARE, the notice of which we reserve for our next issue. From Gould & Lincoln, of Boston, we have received through T. H. Pease, "The Annual of Scientific Discovery and Year Book of Facts in Science and Art, for 1853," which maintains its rank as a storehouse of most valuable, practical and scientific information; and also the very novel Personal Narrative of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BOURNE, detailing his “ Captivity in Patagonia."

From the Messrs. Appleton, we have through T. H. Pease, the first volume of "The Works of John C. Calhoun." We are glad to have the writings of Mr. Calhoun in a permanent form. They will be honorable to his memory as a man of great argumentative powers. They will serve as a logical praxis to the political student; and notwithstanding the errors of opinion in them, they must ever hold a high rank in the literature of political philosophy. We have also received from the same firm, "Spalding's History of English Literature," which is a reliable work and contains within a small space a very good view of English literature through its several periods.

We have received from the publishers, Durrie & Peck, New Haven, and H. C. Peck and T. Bliss, Philadelphia, the "Revised Edition of Day's Algebra.' The very many additions made in this edition to the former work, fully brings it up to the present state of mathematical science among us, and makes it one of the best-if not the best-Algebra in use for Colleges. The important additions made by Prof. Stanley were, alas, his last contributions to science.

Through Mr. A. H. Maltby we have an attractive work, entitled "The Finland Family," published by M. W. Dodd, of New York: and " The Senator's Son, or the Maine Law a last Refuge," from Tooker & Catchel, of Cleveland, Ohio,—a work which we most heartily commend to the notice of our readers; and from Jewett & Co., of Boston, "The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," which needs only be announced to awaken a deep interest in its contents. That interest will not be disappointed. From Robert Carter & Brothers, we have as usual several important works. "Hengstenberg on the Apocalypse," we commend, after a careful examination, as a valuable contribution towards an explanation of that obscure portion of Scripture. It is learned, in general judicious, and above all, as coming from Germany, written in a truly Christian spirit. James' " Young Woman's Friend' has all the merits of that pleasant and useful writer. We were glad to see a new edition of Whately's "Historic Doubts," though we think it unequally yoked with the "Historic Certainties respecting the Discovery of America."

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. XLIII.

AUGUST, 1853.

ART. I.-ABBOTT'S NAPOLEON.

Napoleon Bonaparte. By JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. Harper's New Monthly Magazine.

THE Scene of Napoleon's death at St. Helena did not belong to the last act of the French Revolution. The play had scarcely begun. The curtain of time was yet to rise upon actors as useful for the development of the plot as those who had dashed through their brief parts upon the theatre of Europe, and upon incidents as important for the spectator's comprehension of the whole drama as those which had taken place. The jealousy of England watching over the body of her implacable enemy as carefully as she had guarded him a living prisoner at Longwood, may pass for an interlude, if not for a part of this historic piece. For another scene, we have a display of French vanity -a frig ate, commanded by a Prince of the blood royal, steering for the "lone isle," to receive and bear to France the mortal and adored remains of her great Emperor-England consenting, after she was convinced that he was quite dead, and that he would no more disturb her repose by projects for crossing the British channel, or by coalitions of States in the heart of the continent. Next comes the grand pageant of the reëntombment, or rather the reënthronement, of Napoleon the First, under the dome of the Invalides. Next the ghost scene, shade

of Napoleon, in his old costume and old attitudes, pensive as ever, one foot thrown forward, arms folded, now starting at the sound of his own thunder, now rattling his hollow armor at his old enemies the Bourbons, appearing in all the conclaves of revolutionary France, and beckoning on his followers to scenes he loved and gloried in. Period 1848 brings an overturning of heads and diadems. Scene, Palace of the Tuilleries. Enter a messenger. Louis Philippe and wife, late King and Queen of the French, decamp by a private passage for parts unknown. New scenes and characters, with appropriate decorations. Provisional Government; Lamartine; M. Ledru Rollin. Vive la Republique! Constitution declared. Revolution, marches, alarums, barricades and blood; General Cavaignac. Enter Louis Napoleon; coup'de etat; Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, flourish. Distant thunder and lightning; exeunt omnes-for the present.

Napoleon No. I, when he was informed of the resolution of the Council of State that the first Consul for life should have the power of appointing his successor, said to Cambaceres, "A dead man, let him be who he will, is nobody." If his remark is to be considered anything more than a ruse to gain time, some of the later scenes of this drama could not have passed before his ardent imagination, tinged with the glory which he longed to bequeath to a line of princes. Men now will acknowledge that a dead man may be somebody, especially a dead French Emperor, in the course of human events, since they have seen him ruling his subjects from his coffin, and placing upon the head of a member of his own family-being the issue of the very marriage to which he had looked for an heir-the crown of France, confirmed to him and to his posterity, in the direct line of descent, forever. A true history of this remarkable man, who has founded two French empires,; and who can govern his people as well from a coffin as a throne, ought to be written, if it has not been, were it only to convince many persons of the possibility of such a thing. For no sooner are our "historic doubts" removed by one book, than there comes along another, or a lecturer, to disturb our fond and settled opinions, and to throw us again upon the trembling foothold of conjecture, telling us, "You are too near the colossus to understand him or to take his true dimensions, and surrounded by influences necessarily hurtful to his reputation. Through prejudice, national or social, no historian has fairly represented him. Scott knew but little of Napoleon; Alison still less." Generally, however, the sentence ends in this way: "But here, ladies and gentlemen, you have an accurate fulllength transparency of the great Emperor, with a memoir which may be relied on.

When genius and learning are at such a discount; when the productions of the most gifted minds, given to the world after lives of toil, may be set aside by a flippant remark, or a stroke of criticism-when such a book as Alison's History of Europe is considered good for nothing, "not worthy of a place in any respectable library"-it is high time to introduce a new series of "popular reading," burn up our heavy old tomes, scout to the winds the clumsy idea of regarding an accomplished mind, diligence, research, and the labor of a life-time, desirable qualifications in a historian, and go for our knowledge of the past to "light literature." It will do for writers to decry Alison when they can answer his arguments, show in general the absurdity of his conclusions, the inaccuracy of his statements, the falsity of his documentary evidence; when they can overlook those little crosses and stars, pointing downward to a fact, a date, or a despatch confidential, which reveals the cause of many a bloody campaign, or infamous treaty, and when, content with their own gleanings in the field of history, they cease to pilfer from his storehouse. As to prejudice, what writer is free from that? Gibbon had his, Hume his, Macaulay his. They wrote, in the main, a true account of men and things, notwithstanding. Alison has his great prejudice against democracy in general, and French democracy in particular. Some judgment may be formed, however, of the accuracy of his work on the whole, by the ordinary rules of criticism. From facts in which reputable writers agree, a satisfactory idea may be obtained of any great man of modern times. If not, if after all that has been written and said and sung of Napoleon Bonaparte, we are still hopelessly in error as to the main incidents of his life and the principal motives of his conduct, we may doubt the reality of all the achievements ascribed to heroes for the last two hundred years, or we may soberly respond to Archbishop Whateley's opinion, expressed in his Historic Doubts, that there must have been two Napoleon Bonapartes who flourished about the same time. But the tests of truth are not all carried away in the whirl of new and strange opinions. Some of the old landmarks exist, which have guided men in safe paths to sound conclusions, in all ages of the world. Chronicles remain; records may be compared and certified; evidence may be weighed ; witnesses may be challenged and examined; monuments of events may be brought to light. Thus, the facts, the materials of history, are at hand for the molding of the figure of any heroic character. The inferences from these facts are the topics for discussion. These may be drawn through prejudgment, or the soberest af

ter-thought, by Mr. Abbott, the "Berkley Men," or the New Englander.

Mr. Abbott, the author of the series of articles under review, considering the demand for a true history of Napoleon very great at the present time, has undertaken to supply it, being furnished, as he conceives, with some special qualifications for the office. He seems to think that the tories of England have so far monopolized the business of showing off Napoleon on one side of the British channel, and the anti-repulicans on the other, as to force the great idol of the French, "whose throne," we are told, "is in the hearts of the people of all nations," to look to America for a historian to do justice to his fame. Mr. Abbott says, "Americans have derived their views of Napoleon from the tory historians of England. They are not impartial judges; they are ardent advocates, hungering for the liberal reward which attends their successful defense. In France, the reputation of Napoleon has been exposed to influences almost equally adverse. So potent have these influences and misrepresentations been, that one can hardly find in the United States a man who has passed sixty years of age, who does not think that Napoleon was almost a demon. The public mind has been so effectually perverted by the misrepresentations of years, that an impartial statement of the real character of the Emperor is, by many, regarded as blind eulogy. An American alone is favorably situated to write an impartial account of that terrific conflict, &c. An American is exposed to no influences to induce him to swerve from historical verity. He has nothing to hope, and nothing to fear, from either England or France. Self-love will induce him to prize his own reputation as an impartial historian, far above any unworthy desire to eulogize one now mouldering in the grave. In America alone can an impartial history of Napoleon be written." All this is not perfectly clear as it stands by itself, and it is less so in connection with much more of the same sort. Our author, of course, does not speak literally when he says, that "an American is exposed to no influces to induce him to swerve from historical verity," in such a country as the United States, where "one can hardly find a man who has passed sixty years of age, who does not think that Napoleon was almost a demon." He really means, then, by "historical verity," favorable opinions of Bonaparte-opinions contrary to the prevailing sentiments of old people in America, which he undertakes to furnish under the head of "impartial statements." Thus, by his own announcement, he is to be considered a defender, an apologist. The work which he has set before him to accomplish is to defend the character of Na