Of the two kinds of composition into which history has been thus divided, the one may be compared to a map, the other to a painted landscape.  The picture, though it places the country before us, does not enable us to ascertain with accuracy the dimensions, the distances, and the angles.  The map is not a work of imitative art.  It presents no scene to the imagination; but it gives us exact information as to the bearings of the various points, and is a more useful companion to the traveller or the general than the painted landscape could be, though it were the grandest that ever Rosa peopled with outlaws, or the sweetest over which Claude ever poured the mellow effulgence of a setting sun.

It is remarkable that the practice of separating the two ingredients of which history is composed has become prevalent on the Continent as well as in this country.  Italy has already produced a historical novel, of high merit and of still higher promise.  In France, the practice has been carried to a length somewhat whimsical.  M. Sismondi publishes a grave and stately history of the Merovingian Kings, very valuable, and a little tedious.  He then sends forth as a companion to it a novel, in which he attempts to give a lively representation of characters and manners.  This course, as it seems to us, has all the disadvantages of a division of labour, and none of its advantages.  We understand the expediency of keeping the functions of cook and coachman distinct.  The dinner will be better dressed, and the horses better managed.  But where the two situations are united, as in the Maitre Jacques of Moliere, we do not see that the matter is much mended by the solemn form with which the pluralist passes from one of his employments to the other.

We manage these things better in England.  Sir Walter Scott gives us a novel; Mr. Hallam a critical and argumentative history.  Both are occupied with the same matter.  But the former looks at it with the eye of a sculptor.  His intention is to give an express and lively image of its external form.  The latter is an anatomist.  His task is to dissect the subject to its inmost recesses, and to lay bare before us all the springs of motion and all the causes of decay.

Mr. Hallam is, on the whole, far better qualified than any other writer of our time for the office which he has undertaken.  He has great industry and great acuteness.  His knowledge is extensive, various, and profound.  His mind is equally distinguished by the amplitude of its grasp, and by the delicacy of its tact.  His speculations have none of that vagueness which is the common fault of political philosophy.  On the contrary, they are strikingly practical, and teach us not only the general rule, but the mode of applying it to solve particular cases.  In this respect they often remind us of the Discourses of Machiavelli.