New Publications
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NEW PUBLICATIONS.
HISTORY OF EUROPE from the Commencement of the French Revolution in 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815. By Archibald Alison,1 F. R. S. E. In four volumes, New York, Harper and Brothers.
This is a new and revised edition of Allison's great work, in four handsome, compact volumes, well-printed, on fine, white paper. It is of convenient size for reference or perusal and would equally adorn the library shelves or the centre-table. Indeed the name of the great publishing house whose imprint it bears is a sufficient guarantee of the excellence of its mechanical execution.
Of the History itself, of course little need be said at this late day. Its copious learning, its brilliant descriptive passages, its integrity of research, have long been acknowledged again and again by the most eminent critical authoritites both in Europe and in this country. Alison is eminently a philosophical historian and his work is full of those comprehensive generalizations which group the panoramic scenes which it describes around a great central idea. Believing that amid the infinite deversity of human affairs and the increasing progress of the human race there are certain general principles which are of universal application, he everywhere asserts that it is in the discovery of these principles, hid amid the multiplicity of human events, that the great use history consists—that it is in their general diffusion through all the thinking classes of the community that the only sure foundation either for social prosperity or national security is to be found. Holding this leading principle ever in view, Alison has gone over the great field, crowded with momentous events, which he has chosen for the display of his historical powers, and, in the spirit of a great literary artist, has moulded the chaotic mass into one harmonious whole. His large philosophic mind has seized with the instinct of genius upon the singular capabilities of the subject, and he has presented the world with a work, wrought out by years of patient toil and laborious research, which bears the same relation to European events from 1789 to 1815, as Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" to the latter days of the Roman Empire, and as the volumes of Hume and Macaulay to English History.
Granting all this, however, it cannot be denied that Alison, though he has been extensively read, has always been unpopular in this country. His prejudices against Democracy and the Republican form of government everywhere appear, and they cannot but prove distasteful to those of contrary opinions. Especially was the seventy-sixth chapter of his work, relating to America, made the subject if animadversion in our critical journals, when the first edition appeared. Some of our readers may remember with what promptitude and ability the North American Review for 1843 took up the cudgels in behalf of this country and its institutions. Our people were then much more thin-skinned than they are at present, though we are altogether too sensitive to foreign rebukes even now, and an attack upon the working of Democracy on this side of the water, coming from so authoritative and influential a source, was deemed a matter of no small moment. From the North American and Chancellor Kent down to a host of news paper writers, the organs of public opinion in this country attempted to remove the false impressions which Mr. Alison's details and inferences unavoidably suggested. They charged him with allowing his judgment to be warped by his Tory antecedents and prejudices, with being biased in mind when he first undertook a general summary of information respecting the condition of politics and prospects of the United States—in a word that the lesson taught by American experience of a popular government was previously determined by his feelings and prejudices, and that he investigated the subject in order to discover evidence only on one side.
Undoubtedly this feeling among our intelligent and reading men was justly aroused. The author of the "History" was, is, and probably always will be the most conservative of conservatives, a firm advocate of a monarchcial form of Government and a landed aristocracy, religiously believing with De Tocqueville2 that "the self-government and all-powerful sway of the majority is the greatest and most formidable evil in the United States." Such a man, writing of such a country could not but allow his deeply-grounded convictions to tinge the current of his thought; and besides this unavoidable tendency, he fell, though we feel assured not from malice prepense, into many gross misstatements of fact. Thus that the earlier editions of this great work should have elicited much unfavorable comment in America is not to be wondered at.
Nevertheless, despite these faults, the work, viewed as a whole, became a necessity in our libraries and its perusal as indispensable to an elegant and polite education as that of any other standard. A revised or expurgated edition was then called for by the public and soon appeared with the offensive paragraphs softened down and meliorated in their tone and the grosser blunders in facts and figures corrected. But even this did not seem to give general satisfaction nor have we seen any edition which seemed to us quite free from objection before the appearance of the volumes now lying before us. Here the reader has the bane and antidote both before him. The original text is restored with the exception of emendations made by the author himself. The emendations made relate to the Paper Circulation and also to the Revenue and Expenditure of the United States; to the want of provision for a National Religion; to the absence of originality or independence of thought; to the state of dependence of the bench; to Literature and the Press; and lastly to the action between the Java and the Constitution. As the author has solicited that this portion of his work should be revised, the American editor of the present issue has commented with perfect freedom on the mistakes which Mr. Alison has fallen into and on the prejudices which so evidently have warped his judgment in respect to the nature and effects of our institutions. The notes are not only voluminous but eminently satisfactory, conceived and written in a sensible and intelligent manner. We can only conclude by recommending the present edition of Alison to our readers as, beyond a peradventure, the best extant.