DEATH OF FRIEDRICH WILHELM. 331 otherwise disturbed, I could obtain no farther account: the man did not care to be put in history (a very small service to a man); cared to have a house with trim fittings, and to do his grooming well, the fortunate Philips. At sight of his son, Friedrich Wilhelm threw out his arms; the son keeling sank upon his breast, and they embraced with tears. My father, my father; my son, my son! For some days he lingered, during which he gave directions about his funeral, and about various matters, his chief care, however, being as to his soul's welfare. He was often heard in prayer, and would say sometimes, "Pray for me, Betet, betet." More than once, in deep tone, "Lord, enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified." Here, too, is a characteristic trait. In a German hymn, (Why fret or murmur thou?) which they often sung to him, or with him, as he much loved it, are these words, "Naked I came into the world, and naked shall I go." "No," he said, "not quite naked, I shall have my uniform on." "Let us be exact, since we are at it!" Many kind and thoughtful things were said and done in his last days, his family and friends round his bedside, Feekin, as he called his wife (Sophiekin) ever near him. "My trust is in the Saviour," he often said, and the last words heard from him were, "Herr Jesu, to thee I live; Herr Jesu, to thee I die; in life and in death thou art my gain (Du bist mein Gewinn)." The last breath of Friedrich Wilhelm having fled, Friedrich hurried to a private room, sat there all in tears, looking back through the gulfs of the past, upon such a father now rapt away for ever. Sad all, and soft in the moonlight of memory,—the lost loved one all in the right as we now see, we all in the wrong! This, it appears, was the son's fixed opinion. Seven years hence, here is how Friedrich concludes the History of his father, written with a loyal admiration throughout: "We have left under silence the domestic chagrins of this great prince; readers must have some indulgence for the faults of the children, in consideration of the virtues of such a father."* All in tears he sits at present, meditating these sad things. In a little while the Old-Dessauer, about to leave for Dessau, ventures in to the crown-prince, crown-prince no longer; "embraces his knees;" offers, weeping, his condolence, his congratulation; hopes withal that his sons and he will be continued in their old posts, and that he, the Old-Dessauer, "will have the same authority as in the late reign." Friedrich's eyes, at this last clause, * Euvres, i. 175 (Mém. de Brandebourg; finished about 1747). flash out tearless, strangely Olympian. "In your posts I have no thought of making change: in your posts, yes; and as to authority, I know of none there can be but what resides in the king that is sovereign!" Which, as it were, struck the breath out of the OldDessauer; and sent him home with a painful miscellany of feelings, astonishment not wanting among them. At an after hour, the same night, Friedrich went to Berlin; met by acclamation enough. He slept there, not without tumult of dreams, one may fancy; and on awakening next morning, the first sound he heard, was that of the regiment Glasenap under his windows, swearing fealty to the new king. He sprang out of bed in a tempest of emotion, bustled distractedly to and fro, wildly weeping. Pollnitz, who came into the anteroom, found him in this state “half-dressed, with dishevelled hair, in tears, and as if beside himself." "These huzzahings only tell me what I have lost!" said the new king. "He was in great suffering," suggested Pöllnitz ; "he is now at rest." "True, he suffered, but he was here with us; and now!”* Mr. Carlyle's great power lies in his graphic and dramatic representations of historical events and personages. When we go back with him into the past centuries, we seem as if in the very presence of the men whom he describes, not the shadowy ghosts of them, but in actual form! as they fought and bustled through their troubled lives in those old times. Or it is as if we were sitting in some Endor cave, under the spell of a magician, who causes to pass before our eyes a succession of grand dissolving views, with veritable portraits of the actors in the scene. We see the looks, the gestures, the movements of the men and the women of other times, and their histories are suggestively conjured up before us. There is generally, too, the keenest insight into character, and unmistakable expression of it, though at times grotesque roughness and amusing caricature in the portraits. But this is almost the extent of Mr. Carlyle's excellence as a historical writer. His turn is dramatic, not philosophical. He can estimate a character far better than any epoch, and individual actions than national movements. His account of Brandenburg, and the Hohenzollerns, we can accept as a series of wonderful biographical portraits and historical sketches, but, as a history of Prussia, not at all. We are told little or nothing about the language, the customs, laws, religion, education, arts, commerce, or institutions of the country; nothing, in short, about the people as distinguished from their rulers. It is on all hands agreed now, that history ought to deal with the internal * Ranke (ii. 46, 47), from certain Fragments, still in manuscript, of Pöllnitz's Memoiren. THE LAST FOUR POPES. 333 condition of a nation or country, as well as with its wars and outward politics. Mr. Carlyle keeps to the old vulgar ideal of history, as a record of fighting and other things that make most noise in the world. With him the people exist for the rulers, not the rulers for the people. We should like to have read something about the condition and progress of Prussia, in matters that come home to the business and bosom in daily life, as well as about the schemes of rulers, and the conflicts of armies. Mr. Carlyle never takes us into the homes of the people, but always to the courts and camps of kings and warriors. To use a favourite and expressive word of his own, there is gross flunkeyism" in this, although the flunkey is not of the mere Papin-digester and gold-lace type, but of a heroic turn of mind. But with this view of history, we need not be surprised at some of Mr. Carlyle's eccentricities and paradoxes, his frequent abuse of constitutional government, for instance, or his contempt for all literary labours of a kind different from his own. These are blots on the high name of Mr. Carlyle, but can little detract from his power and influence as a writer. We look forward with interest to the completion of his work. 66 ART. V.-1. The Last Four Popes. Recollections of the Last Four Popes, and of Rome, in their times. By H. E. CARDINAL WISEMAN. London: Hurst and Blackett, Marlborough street. 2. My Recollections of the Last Four Popes, and of Rome, in their times: an answer to Dr. Wiseman. By ALESSANDRO GAVAZZI. London: Partridge and Co., Paternoster-row. "He that is first in his own cause seemeth just, but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him." Once more, and very remarkably, is this saying of the royal philosopher illustrated by the volumes before us. Dr. Wiseman bespeaks a candid perusal of his volume in these words: "Let the work then be taken for what it is, the recollections of four truly good and virtuous men, and of such scenes as they naturally moved in, and of such persons as they instinctively loved and honoured." Signor Gavazzi, in coming and searching him, says, My reminiscences then will be nothing more than the practical confutation of Dr. Wiseman, in order to show the world, that while an Irishman, in green spectacles, sees everything green at Rome, 2 A VOL. XLIV. an Italian, without spectacles, sees things in their natural state, and thus puts them in print. Not all, indeed, but few (he adds), are in circumstances to measure themselves with Wiseman in a confutation. He has been sufficiently "wise in his generation" to avoid such skirmishes, by casting this gauntlet in the face of his opponents: "Every reader will expect this volume to present a view of the subject treated different from what is presented by other writers. Tourists, politicians, lecturers, and newspaper writers, have given estimates of persons and events here mentioned, often contradictory to what they may appear in these pages. All that one can do in such a case is to require an impartial balance of evidence. Can these writers or speakers say that they have been present, or have witnessed what they describe, or that they have taken pains to test and verify the hearsay evidence which they have accepted?" To this I answer emphatically, yes. Yes, I have witnessed what I describe, equally as Dr. Wiseman, and, indeed, more than Dr. Wiseman. I was not imported into Rome, but was by birth a Roman subject. From my infancy I was familiar with the facts, and saw and approached the persons of the four Popes in question, having spent a large portion of my life at Rome at various times. Yes, moreover, not only because I have taken the pains "to test and verify hearsay evidence," but because, in the majority of cases, I adduce only what I have myself seen. We, therefore, fight with the same weapons as regards ocular testimony; but the result of the conflict cannot be the same for both. While Wiseman brandishes his arms to defend a windmill, I employ mine with the sole view of decapitating a fatal Hydra. I leave it then to others to decide, not who has most skilfully used his weapons, for here I leave the victory to my adversary, but which of us has employed it in the best cause. To the reader, who looks for a complete history of four pontificates, it is my duty to say, that such is not the object of these reminiscences. In following Wiseman, I shall be compelled to proceed by irregular bounds, without direction, and almost without object, and to present to his view only a poor panorama of places, men, and events, with the least possible historical connection. In a word, Wiseman's book having been justly characterized as a snare and a poison, the sole intent of mine is to exhibit the snare, and offer an antidote to the poison. Dr. Wiseman thus describes his impressions on his first visit to the "Eternal city" : A long, narrow street, and the Pantheon burst full into view; then a labyrinth of tortuous ways, through which a glimpse of a church or palace front might be caught occasionally askew; then the small square opened on the eye, which, were it ten times larger, would be oppressed by the majestic, overwhelming mass of the rr 335 Farnese Palace, as completely Michel-Angelesque in brick as the Moses is in marble, when another turn and a few yards of distance placed us at the door of the "venerable English College." Had a dream, after all, bewildered one's mind, or at least closed the eager journey, and more especially its last hours, during which the tension of anxious expectation had wrought up the mind to a thousand fancies? No description had preceded actual sight. No traveller, since the beginning of the century, or even from an earlier period, had visited it or mentioned it. It had been sealed up as a tomb for a generation; and not one of those, who were descending from the unwieldy vehicle at its door, had collected from the few lingering patriarchs, once its inmates, who yet survived at home, any recollections by which a picture of the place might have been prepared in the imagination. Having come so far, somewhat in the spirit of sacrifice, in some expectation of having to "rough it" as pioneers for less venturesome followers, it seemed incredible that we should have fallen upon such pleasant places as the seat of future life and occupation. Wide and lofty vaulted corridors; a noble staircase, leading to vast and airy halls succeeding one another; a spacious garden, glowing with the lemon and orange, and presenting, on one's first approach, a perspective in fresco, by Pozzi, one engraved by him in his celebrated work on perspective; a library, airy, cheerful, and large, whose shelves, however, exhibited a specimen of what antiquarians call opus tumultuarium, in the piled-up, disorganized volumes-from folio to duodecimo, that crammed them; a refectory, wainscoted in polished walnut, and above that, painted by the same hand, with St. George and the Dragon ready to drop on to the floor from the groined ceiling; still better, a chapel, unfurnished, indeed, but illuminated from floor to roof with the saints of England, and celestial glories, leading to the altar, that had to become the very hearthstone of new domestic attachments, and the centre of many yet untasted joys ;such were the first features of our future abode, as, alone and undirected, we wandered through the solemn building, and made it, after years of silence, re-echo to the sound of English voices, and give back the bounding tread of those who had returned to claim their own. And such, indeed, it might well look to them, when, after months of being "cribbed, cabined, and confined" in a small vessel, and jammed in a still more tightly-packed vettura, they found in the upper corridor, wide and airy as those below, just the right number of rooms for their party, clean and speckless, with every article of furniture, simple and collegiate though it was, spic and span new, and manifestly prepared for their expected arrival. One felt at once at home; it was nobody else's house; it was English ground, a part of fatherland, a restored inheritance. And though, indeed, all was neat and trim, dazzling in its whiteness, relieved here and there by tinted architectural members, one could not but feel that we had been transported to the scene of better men |