of an exception in the case of a lineal heir who was not in communion with the Church of England. Both Somerville and Cooke accuse the French government of coldness and indifference to the Stuarts. From the Correspondence we have seen, the contrary is most apparent. Next to peace, which had become essential to the very existence of France, the object nearest to the heart of Louis and of his ministers, seems to have been the restoration of the Pretender. But they had suffered too severely in the war, which had been provoked by their recognition of his title, to violate the peace they had made, by any public demonstration in his favour, without the certainty of a large, united, and well-organized party in England, ready to embark in his cause. What they could do without hazarding the renewal of hostilities they were prepared to have done. In November 1713, when the life of the Queen was supposed to be in danger, Torcy informed the Pretender, that two small armed vessels were ready at Havre to convey him, in the event of her death, to England or Scotland, whichever he pleased—adding, that it was the advice of the King he should set out from Lorraine without delay, on the first intelligence of that event, travel as secretly as possible, and not pass through Paris or Versailles.* Affairs were in a different position at the time of the Queen's death. The Tory Ministry was dissolved, and had not been reconstructed. After the proclamation of King George, which no measures had been taken to prevent, the Whigs formed a majority in the council. The ports were guarded, the fleet placed under the command of a Whig, and all the fortresses in the kingdom secured. The Jacobites were in consternation, and the Tories fallen into despair, or indulging in vain hopes from Hanover. The Pretender had disappointed his friends by his obstinacy about religion, and offended many by his injudicious and ill-timed circular. † A price had been set on his head, in case he landed in any part of the British dominions. He nevertheless set off in post-haste from Bar on the news of his sister's death-wrote to Torcy that he was coming to Paris, the very step he had been desired not to take stopped at an inn to despatch letters to Scotland-met on the road an express from Torcy, directing him not to come to Paris, and advising him to return to Lorraine, as he might be arrested on landing, by the first constable who met him in England. He took the advice, and went quietly back to his former quarters. *Torcy to the Pretender, 21st November, 1713. VOL LXII. NO. CXXV. From the facts we have stated, there seems little reason to doubt, that in the four last years of Queen Anne, designs were entertained, and measures projected by her ministers, for the restoration of the Pretender. Of the moral guilt of the persons who took part in these proceedings there can be but one opinion. While conspiring for the Pretender, they were loud and vehement in their professions of attachment to the Protestant succession. Oxford and Buckinghamshire vied with each other in declarations of zeal and devotion for the Electoral family; and Oxford vouched for the Queen and Lady Masham being animated with the same sentiments as himself. Buckinghamshire complained of the persecution he had suffered from the Whigs, on account of his fidelity to their interests; and protested that nothing in the preliminaries of peace had given so much satisfaction to himself and his colleagues as the article which secured the succession in the Protestant line. Strafford attempted to wheedle the Electress, and persuade her that the Tories were her real friends, and the Whigs secretly her enemies. Bolingbroke, though not exempt from the same reproach, seems to have indulged to a less degree in this hypocrisy than his brother conspirators. Had the designs of the ministers succeeded, we have little hesitation to say, that our religion and liberties must have been exposed to imminent danger. The Pretender was a bigot, and with the usual casuistry of bigots, he would soon have reconciled himself to the disregard of every engagement he had contracted, or might have been made to contract, in support of the Church. He had been educated in the same lofty notions of prerogative, and had imbibed the same doctrines of divine indefeasible right, which had proved so fatal to his family; and most probably he would have acted on these principles with the same dogged obstinacy and determination as his father had done. His success must have cost us another revolution to correct the evil of another restoration. On the other hand, the most specious of the objections to the House of Brunswick have turned out eventually to be so many reasons in their favour. The German propensities of the two first Georges involved them in a labyrinth of continental engagements, which kept them in continual dependence on the House of Commons, and gradually consolidated the system of Parliamentary government introduced by the Revolution. Even Hanover was, in their days, of benefit, by absorbing that restless activity incident to royal personages, which might otherwise have been exerted for mischievous purposes at home. No sooner had Hanover ceased to be the chief object of attraction to its elector, than the King of England began to form schemes for recovering that personal weight and influence in affairs, which had been enjoyed in ancient times by his predecessors. Discord and disgrace were the bitter fruits of his experiment. America was lost, and for the first time since the Spanish Armada, a hostile fleet was seen to ride triumphantly in the Channel. The personal deficiencies of the first princes of the House of Hanover, have not been unattended with advantages. Their ignorance of the country they were called upon to govern, and even of the language spoken by its inhabitants, prevented them from taking that part in the conduct of its affairs which had been invariably assumed by their predecessors. They ceased to attend councils for the transaction of business; and were satisfied if the result of the deliberations of their ministers was submitted to their approbation. This happy innovation began at the accession of George I., and amidst the struggles and contentions of parties, it has continued to our times, and may now be considered as an established and essential part of our practical constitution. They, who are responsible, discuss among themselves; and, unawed by the presence of a superior, decide in freedom what is fittest to be done. He, who is irresponsible, has and should have no voice in public but what proceeds from them. Wherever a contrary system prevails, representative governments are shorn of half their efficacy, if their value consists, as we believe it to do, in substituting the wisdom of many, acting under the calm and wholesome influence of public opinion, in place of the caprices and prejudices of one, who has nothing to fear but from some of those sudden and transient bursts of popular violence, which shake society to its centre. Wishing well, as we most cordially do, to the representative government established in France, we cannot but lament, that this last improvement on the ancient feudal monarchies of Europe, has not found its way into that kingdom. The French King, if we are not misinformed, assists and presides at the deliberations of his ministers; and, strange to say, there are persons of consideration in France, whose lives have been passed in the public service, so imperfectly acquainted with our institutions, as to maintain that such is the practice in this country. They may be assured, that the reverse is the fact; and that for many generations past no King of England has ever assisted at those consultations of his confidential servants, where measures are discussed and prepared for his approbation, and that of Parliament. We cannot conclude this short and imperfect sketch of an important and hitherto obscure portion of our history, without again expressing our hopes that the Historical Collections of Sir James Mackintosh may be secured for general use, and deposited in some of our National Repositories, accessible to the public at large. With the Stuart Papers, formerly at Carlton House, they would afford ample materials for a history of the decline and fall of Jacobitism, -a superstition more respectable for the feelings mixed up with it, than laudable for the objects of its adoration,-once extensively diffused over the island, though in various degrees of intensity, but now exhibiting no other signs of life than the political tendencies it has left behind and impressed on the minds of its former votaries. Something like it, we confess, still lingers on the continent, but with the progress of reason it must vanish, and give place to a higher, more reasonable, and more salutary faith, more conducive at least to the progress and improvement of the human race. ART. II.-Faustus, a Dramatic Mystery; the Bride of Corinth ; the First Walpurgis Night. Translated from the German of GOETHE; and illustrated with Notes, by JOHN ANSTER, LL.D. 8vo. London: 1835. INCE the appearance of Mr Hayward's prose Translation of Faust,' which was reviewed in this Journal (April, 1833), no less than four poetical versions of the same drama have been ushered into the world. There is something so attractive in the very first aspect of this literary ignis-fatuus-so much ease and flexibility, both in flow of metre and turn of thought, in various parts, and especially in the earlier scenes—that a reader who has the slightest propensity towards verse-manufacturing, can scarcely refrain from trying his hand at translation, almost as soon as he has opened the book. Pleased with his own success in rendering, either literally or liberally, those portions which fall almost of their own accord into English rhyme, he plods gallantly on through the enormous difficulties which beset him in the farther prosecution of his task, and trusts to the spirit and fidelity of a few passages to redeem the great deficiencies which, he cannot but be conscious, disfigure the remainder of his attempt. We do not pretend to compare the relative merits of the versions of Messrs Syme and Blackie, which have preceded the present volume in the date of their appearance, although not of their composition; besides a third experiment by Mr Talbot, with which we have not yet been able to make ourselves acquainted. Both appear to us, in many respects, to reflect credit on their authors. Both, like that of Lord Francis Egerton, the earliest of these competitors, are occasionally excellent in the easier scenes, viz. the opening, and some of the dialogues between Faust and Margaret-very tolerable, in the other poetical portions of the drama; but we are compelled to add, that in our judgment they wholly fail in those most difficult passages in which the author has given the rein to his own fantastic humour; where pathos, philosophy, satire, good and bad taste are mingled together in such strange variety, that it is, probably, in vain to expect that any translator will succeed in representing each piece of the intricate Mosaic by an exactly equivalent morsel in his own language. We have, however, been induced to notice more particularly the translation which is now before us, because, when we read some detached portions of it, several years ago, in a series of papers in one of the Magazines, we were at once impressed with the conviction that their unknown author was far better fitted to the task than any other adventurer with whose attempts we were then acquainted ;-judging by the singularly free and spirited touches of his pen, and his evident sympathy, no less with the quaint and sarcastic than with the exalted or pathetic moods of the German Shakspeare. The fragments which then appeared have now been connected; and, in the work thus completed (to the publication of which the author has been induced, as he says in his preface, by the mention made of him in Mr Hayward's notes; and we are happy to find our judgment fortified by the concurrence of one so highly qualified to form an opinion), we have seen full reason to justify our original predilection. Not that the author has by any means executed the desideratum of a perfect translation; for, while some parts are admirable, others are disfigured by gross inequalities; nor are we sure that, in endeavouring to convert his bold sketches into a finished work, he has not occasionally refined away a little of their effectiveness, and rendered his copy a tamer, if more faithful, imitation of the original than the rough draught had been. But it is the genius, the fire, the characteristic mind and tone of Goethe which we find here, and here alone, transfused into our native tongue; and it is easy to trace how the possession of this fellow-feeling with his author has smoothed away for him many of the difficulties with which other translators have contended unsuccessfully; so that he is carried, with grace and dexterity, through portions of the work where the others labour in much perplexity, and do not think themselves safe unless they have fast hold of the words and idiom of Goethe, in default of his spirit. As the translator of Don Quixote must have something Cervantic in his composition, and the translator of Rabelais must of necessity be of the sect of the Pantagruelists, so must the translator of Faust have a certain touch of Goethe, or, if you will, of Mephistopheles, in order to do any justice to his original, |