of the bishops.  The most superficial reader must be charmed, we think, by the liveliness of the narrative.  But no person who is not acquainted with that vast mass of intractable materials of which the valuable and interesting part has been extracted and condensed can fully appreciate the skill of the writer.  Here, and indeed throughout the book, we find many harsh and careless expressions which the author would probably have removed if he had lived to complete his work.  But, in spite of these blemishes, we must say that we should find it difficult to point out, in any modern history, any passage of equal length and at the same time of equal merit.  We find in it the diligence, the accuracy, and the judgment of Hallam, united to the vivacity and the colouring of Southey.  A history of England, written throughout in this manner, would be the most fascinating book in the language.  It would be more in request at the circulating libraries than the last novel.

Sir James was not, we think, gifted with poetical imagination.  But that lower kind of imagination which is necessary to the historian he had in large measure.  It is not the business of the historian to create new worlds and to people them with new races of beings.  He is to Homer and Shakspeare, to Dante and Milton, what Nollekens was to Canova, or Lawrence to Michael Angelo.  The object of the historian’s imitation is not within him; it is furnished from without.  It is not a vision of beauty and grandeur discernible only by the eye of his own mind, but a real model which he did not make, and which he cannot alter.  Yet his is not a mere mechanical imitation.  The triumph of his skill is to select such parts as may produce the effect of the whole, to bring out strongly all the characteristic features, and to throw the light and shade in such a manner as may heighten the effect.  This skill, as far as we can judge from the unfinished work now before us, Sir James Mackintosh possessed in an eminent degree.

The style of this Fragment is weighty, manly, and unaffected.  There are, as we have said, some expressions which seem to us harsh, and some which we think inaccurate.  These would probably have been corrected, if Sir James had lived to superintend the publication.  We ought to add that the printer has by no means done his duty.  One misprint in particular is so serious as to require notice.  Sir James Mackintosh has paid a high and just tribute to the genius, the integrity, and the courage of a good and great man, a distinguished ornament of English literature, a fearless champion of English liberty, Thomas Burnet, Master of the Charter-House, and author of the most eloquent and imaginative work, the Telluris Theoria Sacra.  Wherever the name of this celebrated man occurs, it is printed “Bennet,” both in the text and in the index.  This cannot be mere negligence.  It is plain that Thomas Burnet and his writings were never heard of by the gentleman who has been employed to edit this volume, and who,