"Our death was necessary, our rising up will be necessary, in order that the word of the Son of God, the eternal word of life, may diffuse itself through the social circles of the world. It is through our nationality, tortured to death upon the cross of history, that it will be revealed to the human spirit, that the political sphere must be transformed into a religious sphere, and that the temple of God on earth must be, not this or that place, this or that form of worship, but the whole planet. For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.""

The Nieboska Komedyia is the work by which this author was first made known to the public; and as it is also the one which we think gives the best idea of the peculiar style and genius of his writings, we shall select this poem for more particular consideration. As we are not aware that any translation of the works of this author has yet appeared, and as the originals themselves are not easily to be procured in this country, it is our purpose, in a future number, to offer our readers a full analysis of the Nieboska Komedyia, with extracts so copious, as shall, better than any commentary, enable them to judge of the character and turn of thought of the writer.

ART. V. — An Autobiographical Memoir of SIR JOHN BARROW, BART., late of the Admiralty; including Reflections, Observations, and Reminiscences at Home and Abroad, from Early Life to Advanced Age. London: John Murray. 1847. 8vo. pp. 515.

THE multiplication of biographies is one of the striking characteristics of the literature of the day. A man's life is now very far from being finished at his death. If, in the estimation of the public, he was deemed to be a great man, or if in the judgment of his friends he ought to be so esteemed, though the public differ from them, divers ponderous octavos are very sure to be brought out to vindicate or reprove the opinion of his contemporaries. The writers of these books do not seem to remember, that, in estimating men, a valet-de-chambre and a grandson look from very different points of view. And so it happens, that the time seems to be near at hand when

no humbleness of occupation, no apparent insignificance of life, and no Smithiness of name, will save the community from that call to read which cannot be safely listened to or neglected.

The increased and increasing size of such books is an alarming feature in the case. The number of volumes given to the record of a man's life is apparently regarded as truly indicating his real position in the world. And this necessity of multiplying volumes brings with it the necessity of filling them. In the olden time, when a respectable octavo would contain all of the greatest man which it concerned the world to know, and an humble duodecimo "for the use of schools" was the second and last "reward of merit " bestowed in the distribution of posthumous honors, the biographer had, at least, a simple duty to perform. He had a story to tell, and he told it. But in these modern days, the circumstances of the hero's life are quite secondary affairs. All that belonged to him peculiarly is merely subsidiary to the main object. The biography has come to be an encyclopædia. If the subject of it happened to be born on a farm, we are let into much learning upon rotation of crops, sub-soils, and all the other marvellous mysteries of the art and science agricultural. A single battle in which he may have been engaged is fatal to all readers who are not learned in strategy, and not prepared by previous study to enjoy criticisms on Cæsar and Napoleon. Biographies of politicians, especially, are favorite pegs on which to hang dissertations on geography, diplomacy, statistics, and all that pertains to the origin and operations of government, the rights of man, or the course of nature.

Sometimes we are warned by the ominous title which announces the "Life and Times" of an individual, and the knowing ones prepare themselves accordingly. Of course, the history of the "Times" may not only include an account of all that was seen, done, or suffered by the men and women and Miss Martineaus of the day, but may legitimately be preceded by indefinitely protracted narratives of prior events, which give significance to, or explanation of, the thoughts, words, and deeds of the thousand heroes with whom our business more particularly lies, and be followed by a summary of subsequent events which shall gratify the excited curiosity of the reader. The Life and Times of Old Parr" would furnish a complete history of the world from

the creation to the present day. The Flood would be a mere circumstance in the great chain of events which went to the formation of his character, or had some influence, in some way, upon some person or some thing referred to in the terrible book.

Autobiographies are especially dangerous matters. They are generally written in advanced life, when senility conspires with egotism to magnify trifles, when a man is quite apt to differ with the public in his estimate of himself, as he is and was, when small events become dignified, and great events are belittled, as they may have borne upon his fortunes, when the faculty of nice discrimination is, in a good degree, lost, and when the temptation to discursiveness, garrulity, and all manner of gossipry has become irresistible.

No period of English history is more interesting or important than the forty years between the commencement of the American war and the battle of Waterloo. There have been times when there was much more of court intrigue, and of personal and unworthy jealousies and rivalries, among her distinguished men, - times, too, when the elements of domestic strife and revolution were more rife, and when the stability of the form of government was more seriously endangered; but none when the struggle was so severe to maintain power, or so decisive in establishing England's true status among the nations. The combination of Europe against her, during the latter years of our Revolution, rendered it doubtful whether she would not sink to the station of a second-rate power; and the wars growing out of the French Revolution appear now, as they seemed then, to be struggles for national

existence.

Such are the times which produce great men, and England had her full share of them. The second crop of such seasons is an abundance of biographies, and England has formed no exception to that rule. In stirring times, when startling events follow each other in rapid succession, every man feels his individual importance increased, without being aware that he is rising with the tide and not above it; and very lamentable mistakes are, consequently, made in regard to the relative standing of men. The cock that enacts the crowing looks upon himself as contributing as largely to the great movement of the tragedy as the man who does Hamlet.

George III. is the prominent figure in all the accounts

of those days, not merely as the king, but as a monarch who, in an unusual degree, stamped his peculiarities upon the last thirty years of his sane life. His great peculiarity was his obstinacy, and most amusing it is to see how this trait in his character gave a tone to almost all the sayings and doings of the great men of the day, - how it was yielded to by the good-nature of North, how it was bullied by Fox, how it was scorned and circumvented by Pitt, how it was fed by the simplicity of Addington, and pampered by the congenial stubbornness of Eldon. The king's biography is one great ingredient in all the personal histories of the

time.

We are inclined to think that the younger Pitt has suffered more than any of his contemporaries by the universal outpouring of private anecdotes and personal experiences to which we have alluded. The stately pen of history, dealing merely with his vast intellectual power and the events of his protracted administrations, so protracted, that, when he resigned in 1801, leaving a great part of his friends in office, Sheridan said he had sat so long, that, when he rose, he left, like Hercules, the sitting part of the man behind him, - this pen of history would have sent him down to posterity as entitled to universal admiration. But when the search is carried farther, it seems to us that that calmness which gave him power in public was a coldness which was most forbidding in private life; that he was not only imperious as a politician, and contemptuous as a subject, but haughty and exacting as a friend; that he was self-seeking, somewhat unscrupulous in his selection of means, with all his father's proud self-reliance, without Chatham's occasional bursts of generous feeling; that he was a noble temple of ice, solid, brilliant, but never thawing into self-forgetfulness, and never warming the hosts of worshippers, which, in common with all noble temples, he gathered around him.

It is curious to trace, by the aid of several recent books of memoirs and biographies, his course on the occasion before referred to, in 1801. He found himself at war with France, and the nation wishing, and almost clamoring, for peace. He found himself unable to conclude a peace upon terms which would be consistent with his own honor, or, as he thought, compatible with the interest of England. He knew that peace upon any other terms would soon become unpopular; that

those who made it would, of course, share in that unpopularity; that the war-spirit would revive, and affection for the warminister would revive with it; and his object was to retire from the government until some weaker man should achieve the peace and the unpopularity, and thus, with unsuspecting hands, smooth the path for his return to power. Accordingly, his conscience suddenly smote him; the wrongs of the Catholics haunted him; he could no longer tolerate intolerance; he must forego the sweets of power, rather than participate in its abuse. The poor king was suddenly startled and affrighted with a statement of these intensified scruples. He had pet scruples of his own, as the minister well knew. Resignation followed; "Doctor" Addington, the amiable and innocent sharer of the royal scruples, stood ready to relieve his master and manage the nation; he believed in Pitt's promises of help, was cheated by him, made the peace of Amiens, was hissed and lampooned out of office by Pitt's friends, and the great man returned to his ministry, and troubled himself no more about the Catholics to his dying day.

This hot-chestnut operation, we learn, as we have said, from recent memoirs; and this, with other similar lights thrown upon men's characters and the springs of their actions, reconciles us to this species of literature, and rebukes us for the half-complaining tone in which we have spoken of it.

But it is quite time to say something of the book before us. Sir John Barrow's name has been so long and so familiarly associated with the English Admiralty, he had, for so many years, filled a station which seemed to afford him peculiar opportunities for collecting valuable anecdotes concerning great men and great events, that the title of the book is one of much promise, and we opened it with very confident expectations of much amusement, and some proper hopes of much instruction. But, to save our character for honesty, we are fain to confess our disappointment. We find one quarter of the book filled with notes upon Lord Macartney's embassy to China; another quarter taken up with some account of Southern Africa; and we have the peculiar satisfaction of discovering, that thus far, we have nothing except what was deemed unworthy of publication in the author's former elaborate volumes upon these subjects. We are next entertained with some reflections on the Kaffir war, in 1846, with which Sir John had nothing more to do than had President Polk. We then