presence; he was a perfect master of manner, and his address was so exquisitely fascinating as to dissolve fierce jealousies and animosities, lull suspicion, and beguile the subtlest diplomacy of its arts. His soothing smile and winning tongue, equally with his bright sword, affecting the destinies of empires. Before the bland, soft-spoken commander, "grim-visaged war" in the person of Charles XII. of Sweden, "smoothed his wrinkled front," and the rigid warrior-king, at his instance, bade adieu to the grand and importunate suitor for his alliance, Louis XIV., whom it was the great mission of Marlborough to defeat and humble. The consummate diplomatist was never—no, not for an instant—thrown off his guard: his watchfulness knew no relaxation; and his penetration into the designs of the most astute was quick as profound. He was, in fact, equally great in camp and cabinet—born for the conduct of affairs, which he regulated with a sort of frigid masterliness: a condition, however, which he maintained by rigorous self-command; for, as we shall in due time see, he had powerful feelings and quick sensibilities. Lord Bolingbroke said of him, that "he was the greatest general and greatest minister that this country or any other had produced—the perfection of genius, matured by experience." If we may presume to say it, he appears to have been one of those raised by Providence as a great instrument, for a great exigency in the affairs of mankind. It is true that Marlborough had his faults, and grave ones; but the genius of history is, in such a case, equally outraged by an attempt at suppression or exaggeration. "In estimating the character of the dead," justly observes Mr Aytoun, in his able vindication of the memory of Claverhouse against certain incautious allegations of Mr Macaulay, "some weight ought surely to be given to the opinion of contemporaries;" and one of the Duke of Marlborough's most eminent military rivals and political opponents, the celebrated Earl of Peterborough, said of him, in a noble spirit, "He was so great a man, that I have forgotten his faults."[4] But can History? No: she abdicates her functions, unless she records truthfully, for the guidance of mankind, both the faults and the excellencies of the great characters whom she has undertaken to delineate. Without scrupulous fidelity here, history may degenerate into a libel, and a lie—a lie of unspeakable baseness, for it is regarding the dead, who cannot burst indignant from the tomb in which they were laid with honour, it may have been amidst the tears and sighs of a proud and bereaved nation;—a lie of unspeakable wickedness, for it is designed to live, and, living, to lie to all future ages, in proportion to the strength of the pen which writes it. These are truths to which the heart of mankind instantly responds; and we enunciate them here, only by way of making continual claim, to adopt the now exploded phraseology of English law, upon the attention of all biographers and historians. Not that we think this to have been rendered necessary by any recent and glaring cases—for we know of none whatever among English men of letters, in the departments just referred to, in which we have detected any intention to slander the dead, or misrepresent the living. We indignantly repudiate the bare possibility; and only desire to impress the necessity of a caution all but excessive, in making derogatory imputations upon the dead, through placing too great a reliance upon the tittle-tattle of days gone by, written or spoken; upon the means of knowledge possessed by those who gave currency to discreditable rumours; and the trustworthiness of contemporaries, often eager rivals outwitted in the game, and distanced in the race of life and distinction, by him whom they thereupon revengefully resolve to blacken before the eyes of posterity. We concur, in a word, cordially with Lord Mahon in saying that which we are bound to add he has uniformly acted up to, in his candid, luminous, and elegant History: "Unjustly to lower the fame of a political adversary, or unjustly to raise the fame of an ancestor—to state any fact without sufficient authority, or draw any character without thorough conviction, implies not merely literary failure, but moral guilt."[5]

That the Duke of Marlborough is one of the foremost figures in the picture of England's glory, in that radiant quarter crowded by her warriors and statesmen, is undeniable; and so is Lord Bacon, who stands forth among her philosophers a very giant. But would any biographer or historian deal justly, who failed to apprise us of the real blot upon the character of each? Surely, however, he would not dwell upon that blot with eagerness or exultation! but point it out in the spirit of a benignant sadness—in the reluctant discharge of a painful duty—and that only after having deliberately weighed everything that a judicial mind would require, before arriving at a conclusion so humiliating to humanity.

Four living writers—of high personal character, of great eminence in the ranks of literature, and characterised almost equally by painstaking industry in the collection of materials, but clothing the results of their researches in very different styles of composition—have respectively placed on record their deliberate estimate of the moral and political character of the Duke of Marlborough. These writers are—Mr Hallam, Lord Mahon, Mr Macaulay, and Mr Alison. Mr Hallam's writings are already English classics. He is a stern, straightforward, independent, learned man, of great and exact knowledge. His style is pure, yet characterised chiefly by a kind of rugged vigour. Thus has he, in his Constitutional History, dealt with the Duke of Marlborough: "What, then, must we think, if we find, in the whole of this great man's political life, nothing but ambition and rapacity in his motives, nothing but treachery and intrigue in his means? In short, his whole life was such a picture of meanness and treachery that we must rate military services very high indeed, to preserve any esteem for his memory." "The extreme selfishness and treachery of his character make it difficult to believe that he had any further view than to secure himself in the event of a revolution, which he deemed probable. His interest, which was always his deity, did not lie in that direction; and his great sagacity must have perceived it." These are blighting words, and they fall from a writer of great authority, yet liable to the suspicion of occasionally labouring, however unconsciously, under political bias. Lord Mahon, in his History of England, speaks with the utmost temper, forbearance, and unwillingness, but in unequivocal condemnation of one important act of Marlborough. He states that "the extent of infidelity" to the cause of the Revolution, among leading ministerial statesmen, "which has more recently come to light from the publication of original papers, is truly appalling. Above all, it is with shame and sorrow that I write it, the Duke of Marlborough's conduct to the Stuarts is, indeed, a foul blot on his illustrious name." After reciting facts which seem, unfortunately, incontestable, he adds, mournfully, "What defence can possibly be offered for such conduct?" Mr Macaulay writes in a spirit of deadly detestation of Marlborough. This gentleman, it need hardly be said, is a gifted disciple of the same political school as Mr Hallam; and, without desiring to convey erroneous inferences and impressions, he seems to us, nevertheless, a glaring instance of one-sidedness. Mr Macaulay