er.

narrative, whether it be historical or what is called fictitious, is in proportion to the degree in which it exercises and thereby strengthens the social feelings and moral principles of the readIn both cases it excites emotions similar to those inspired by the men and actions which surround us in the world. Our habits of moral feeling are formed by life;-and they are strengthened by the pictures of life. In the perusal of History or Fiction, as in actual experience, we become better by learning to sympathize with misfortune, and to feel indignation against baseness. The narrative of events which have occurred, or which may probably occur, is thus one of the most important parts of the moral education of mankind. It is not, however, by the commonplace and trivial moralities which may be inferred from, or illustrated by every narrative, that the historian contributes to the morality of his readers. These general conclusions are already known to every child; and nothing has less effect on the character or feelings than the repetition of such paltry adages. He can improve his readers only by interesting them; and he can interest them only by that animated representation of men and actions which inspires feelings almost as strong as those which are excited by present realities. Delight and improvement must therefore be produced by the very same means; and if the history of former ages be delightful only when it has the picturesque particularity of original writers, it must depend also in part on the study of the same writers for the attainment of its highest purposes.

Nor are these the only circumstances in which History, when rendered picturesque and characteristic by its adherence to contemporary documents, is superior to those narratives in which modern speculations predominates. It is not only more accurate, more interesting, and more moral, but it also affords more instruction to the politician, and better materials for the philo sopher. As long as the events preserve the colour of the age in which they passed, the statesman is in no danger of being so misled by history as to consider the precedents of a remote antiquity as fit to be slavishly adopted in a totally dissimilar condition of society. The speculations of a modern compiler discolour and disguise the facts of ancient history. They are seen through a different medium; and being combined with modern passions and prejudices, are indeed no longer the same facts. From such materials the philosopher can form no true judgment of the spirit and character of former times. No inferences from them can afford a solid foundation for a theory of the nature and progress of society.

To illustrate these general remarks, we subjoin a specimen

of the difference between an ancient narrative and a modern

abridgement.

In speaking of the administration of Charles Martel, the Abbe Velly has the following passage.

'France owes to the victory of Poitiers, the preservation, or, at least, the free exercise, of the Christian religion. Without the intrepid arma of the prince who crushed the Saracens, she might perhaps have been compelled to embrace Mahometanism. Yet the clergy laboured to blacken his memory. We read in a synodal letter ascribed to Hincmar, that the body of Charles was carried away to hell; and that, on opening his grave, nothing was found but a frightful dragon and a pestilential smell. This ridiculous story is founded on a revelation of St Eucherius of Orleans, though that prelate died before Charles Martel. It is obvious that it is a fable invented to intimidate those princes who might be tempted to lay their hands on the property of the Church.-Velly, Hist. de France, I. 183.

Let us now see the ancient narrative, as it is (in our opinion judiciously) copied literally by M. de Sismondi.

A hundred and twenty years after the death of Charles Martel, the clergy of France, assembled at Kiersi in a National Council, condemned his memory in the following letter to Louis the Germanic.

It is because Prince Charles, father of King Pepin, was the first of the Kings and Princes of the Franks to divide and separate the property of the Church, that, for that cause alone, he is damned eternally. We know, in fact, that St Eucherius, bishop of Orleans, whose body rests in the convent of St Frudon, being in prayer, was carried into the world of spirits; and that, among the things which he saw, and which the Lord showed him, he recognised Charles exposed to torments in the lowest depths of hell. The angel who conducted him being interrogated on this subject, answered, that, in the judgment to come, the soul and body of him who takes away the goods of the Church shall be exposed, even before the end of the world, to eternal torments, by sentence of the saints who are to judge with the Lord. The sacreligious plunderer shall be laden with the penalties not only of his own sins, but of the sins of those who had bestowed their property, for the love of God, on holy places, on the lamps of divine worship, on alms to the servants of Christ, and for the redemption of their own souls. St Eucherius, when he came to himself, called St Boniface, and Fulrad, abbot of the convent of St Dennis, and first chaplain of King Pepin, to whom he related these things. He recommended that they should go to the sepulchre of Charles; and that if they did not find his body there, it would be a proof of the truth of his vision. Boniface and Fulrad accordingly went to the convent, where the body of Charles had been interred; and having opened his tomb, a dragon instantly sprung out of it, and it was blackened in the inside, as if he had been burnt. We

ourselves have seen men who lived till our times, and who were present at these occurrences, and they attested the things which they saw and which they heard. These things coming to the knowledge of Pepin, he caused a synod to be assembled at Leptines, at which St Boniface, together with George, a legate of the Apostolic See, presided. We have the acts of this synod, which attempted to restore all the ecclesiastical property which had been taken; but as Pepin could not restore them all, on account of his war with Gaifer, prince of Aquitain, he at least mortgaged them to Bishops, directing that they should pay tithes, and that each household pay twelve pennies to the Church till the whole could be restored.

How faint is the modern abridgement,-and in what lively colours does the original letter display the sordid rapacity, the rancorous malice, the impudent imposture, the gross ignorance, of a whole national church, and the wretched state of nations and sovereigns, who could be duped by such clumsy falsehoods!

The history of the Kings of France, of the first race, corre sponds nearly in time with that of the Saxon heptarchy. The reigns of the Carlovingian line, though they terminated fourscore years before the Norman invasion, have some resemblance to the period of our history which extends from the supremacy of Egbert to the accession of William. The French historians have hitherto embroiled and disfigured their early history, by confining their view to the Frankish principality of Clovis, which indeed the Kings of France have considered as the original basis of their monarchy, but which was not the earliest, nor for a time the most considerable of the Germanic States established in Gaul. In the first years of the fifth century, while the Franks were obscure auxiliaries in the Roman armies, the Visigoths founded a powerful monarchy in the southern part of Gaul; and the north-eastern portion of the same great province became the seat of the power of the Burguadians. At one moment it appeared probable that the Visigoths would acquire the ascendancy; and the circumstances which conferred it on the Franks, were not of such a nature as to promise so favourable a result. The Burgundians and Visigoths, issuing from distant countries, had migrated with their families, and became fixed in their new possessions, soon after their entrance into Gaul.

It is remarkable that all the natural, as well as preternatural part of this letter, is false. George did not preside at the council of Leptines that council was not assembled by Pepin, but by Carloman. It did not discuss either the damnation of Charles Martel, or the restitution of property to the Church; and St Eucherius died three years before Charles Martel!

VOL. XXXV. No. 70.

I i

After they thus became cultivators, it was difficult to assemble any large portion of them under arms. But as the original seats of the Franks were near the Roman frontier, their wives, children, and old men remained in their ancient possessions; while the fighting men alone followed Clovis. That chief, and his immediate successors, lived in the camp, in the midst of their Frankish army, who were ready for every military enterprise, and whose concentrated force held the scattered people of Gaul in subjection; as the Turkish soldiery of Barbary enable their Deys to oppress many millions of inhabitants who abhor their yoke. Like these barbarous tyrants in another respect, the Merovingian Kings were often the victims of the military democracy, whose support was the sole foundation of their power.

There is perhaps no part of history which exhibits maxims of state and usages of war so barbarous as those of Clovis and his descendants. When he had established himself at Paris, after his return from the Gothic war, his first care was to secure his throne, by the destruction of all the petty chieftains of the long-haired race who ruled over the other tribes of Franks. His first victim was Sigebert, king of the Ripuarians, who, being lame, had sent auxiliaries, under the command of his son Chloderic, to the army of Clovis. In the free intercourse of a camp, Clovis suggested to the young Prince the assassination of his father, and promised to secure him in the possession of the government. Thus tempted, Chloderic murdered his father; but Clovis, instead of paying the reward of the crime, caused the murderer to be assassinated; and, calling together the Ripuarians, he swore before them that he had no share in the death of their princes. He then offered himself to be their ruler, and was accepted. By various expedients of the same faithless and atrocious sort, he extirpated the whole race of Frankish princes, and seized on their dominions. Thus, says Gregory of Tours, every day God made some of his ⚫ enemies fall into his hands, and extended the limits of his • kingdom; because he walked with an upright heart before the Lord, and did that which was pleasing in his sight!'* Among the posterity of Clovis, it seems to have been almost a constitutional principle, that the security of the Monarch required the destruction of all the Princes of the Royal Blood: And as brothers were the most dangerous rivals, fratricide was the established usage. Chramnes,' says Gregory of Tours, after his defeat by his father Clotarie, against whom he had revolted, attempted to escape by sea; but having delayed his embarkation till he could also place his wife and daughters in se

Greg. Turon. Lib. II. c. 40.

curity, he was taken and loaded with chains by the soldiers of his father. The king commanded his son to be burnt, with his wife and daughters. He was, accordingly, imprisoned in the hut of a poor man. The soldiers set fire to the house, and the prince, with his wife and children, perished in it.' Manners the most dissolute prevailed during this period of atrocious crimes. The tragical history of Brunehault and Fredegonde affords a sufficient example of the domestic life of the Merovingians. We have seen how the ecclesiastical historians of those times treated the crimes of their sovereigns; and we need scarcely any other characteristic feature of the age, but that, in the fourscore years of the reigns of Clovis and his sons, under kings so ferocious and dissolute, and when ecclesiastics were so indulgent to their vices, the clergy of France furnished no less than seventy-one saints to the Calendar. To these seventy-one saints, the produce of such an age, the most enlightened nations of Europe still appear to ascribe miraculous powers, and the privilege of interceding with the Deity for offending mortals; while the souls of Socrates and Marcus Aurelius are doomed to irrevocable perdition! If any law or usage could now be traced to the time of Clovis, and shown to have originated among the faithless savages who then disgraced the human name, it would be represented to us as a monument of venerable antiquity, which the hand of reformation could not touch without barbarity or even impiety.

The origin of the Carlovingian family, and their progress to supreme power, are more fully and clearly stated by M. Sismondi than by any other modern historian. Under the Merovingians, the direct authority of the kings of the Franks extended from the Loire to the Rhine. They were connected, by ties which continually varied in their strength, with the Germanic provinces beyond the Rhine, and their supremacy was acknowledged by the two conquered kingdoms of Burgundy and Aquitaine; of which the latter was bounded by the Loire and the Pyrenees, and the former stretched from Alsace to the Mediterranean. The Frankish monarchy itself was divided into two parts, by a line drawn from the mouth of the Scheldt to Bar-sur-Aube. The part to the westward of the line was called Neustria: that to the eastward Austrasia. In the beginning of the seventh century, Pepin, called De Landen, and Arnulph, who afterwards became bishop of Metz, were distinguished as leaders of the aristocracy, which the progress of civilization began to form in Austrasia; and in the last years of the same century, their grandson

* Greg. Turon. Lib. IV. c. 20, 21.