carefully-prepared map of France and the Netherlands, "so arranged as to show the positions of every place, in strict accordance with the text;" and plans of the battles, accurately reduced from the great German work of Kausler, "so well known from the splendour of its finishing, and the accuracy of its details." To all this we have yet to add, that Mr Alison appears also to have consulted every other work hitherto published, having reference to the personal or military life of his hero, and to be familiarly acquainted with everything of importance that has appeared, either contemporaneously or subsequently, concerning the part which the Duke of Marlborough took, or is supposed to have taken, in the momentous politics of the day.

We have taken the trouble of being thus particular, out of justice to Mr Alison; for without this detail, neither the value nor the extent of his labours could have been appreciated by the reader; who, if he share our fate, will be carried evenly and rapidly along, from the beginning to the end of these two eloquent volumes, charmed with the result, but never adverting to the laborious and praiseworthy process. And we repeat that all this is thoroughly tanti—as a matter of even justice to the sedulously-slandered illustrious dead, in this respect sharing the fate of a prophet, who is not without honour, save in his own country, (for abroad, Marlborough's memory is radiant with imperishable glory,) and also because, as we have intimated, there is a portentous resemblance between Marlborough's time and our own. He was the great champion of Protestantism, in its tremendous encounter with Popery, of which Louis XIV. was the worthy and formidable exponent. "The siege of Lille," says Mr Alison, at the close of his first volume, "one of the most memorable and glorious of which there is any mention in history, like those of Troy and Carthage in ancient, and Malta and Jerusalem in modern times, was not merely the theatre of contest between rival powers, but of struggle between contending principles and rival faiths. The great contest between the Romish Church and the Reformation ultimately issued, as all such schisms in belief must issue, in a terrible war. Louis was the head of the ancient, Marlborough the champion of the new, faith. The circumstance of the Spanish Succession was but an accident, which brought into the field forces on either side, previously arranged under these opposite banners. It was the great division of men's minds which drew them forth, in such strength, into the field of war."[9] Now let any thinking person of 1852 survey the existing attitudes of these fearful and implacable belligerents, as exhibited in their relations, both in this country and on the Continent, and in certain recently-developed political conditions, which they are rapidly moulding, and arranging with a view to action on a scale such as the world has perhaps never witnessed; and the "boldest may hold his breath for a time." He will at length, probably, ask, not without anxiety—Where are we to look for our Marlborough by and by? and perhaps he may add, with an indignant sigh, We would not treat him as our fathers treated theirs!

The romance of the Life of Marlborough begins with the very beginning of that life. He bursts upon us a beautiful boy, fascinating everybody by his charming manners—the little heir to the all but ruined fortunes of an ancient and loyal family, which, on the father's side, had come in with the Conqueror, while in his mother's veins ran the blood of the illustrious Sir Francis Drake. He had an only sister, who, a victim to the licentiousness of the times, became mistress of the future James II., the great patron of her brother, and to whom she bore a son: who, as Duke of Berwick, was destined, almost single-handed, to uphold the tottering throne of Louis XIV. against the terrible sword of her brother! That son, commanding the forces of France and Spain during the War of the Succession, almost counterbalanced, by his military genius, his uncle's victories in Germany and Flanders! Lord Bolingbroke said of the nephew, that "he was the best great man that ever existed"—and of the uncle, that "he was the perfection of genius, matured by experience—the greatest general and greatest minister that our country, or any other, has produced." These two great personages were signalised by the same grand qualities of military genius, of humanity in war, of virtuous conduct in private life: would, however, we could say that the elder hero had no bar sinister on his moral, as the younger had on his heraldic, 'scutcheon! Forgetting, however, for a moment, that solitary blot—would we could forget it for ever!—let us concur with Mr Alison in noting so singular and interesting a coincidence, that "England has equal cause to be proud of her victories, and her defeats, in that warfare; for they both were owing to the military genius of the same family, and that, one of her own."[10] There was a difference of twenty years between them; and it is again singular, that each, at the same early age, fifteen, showed a sudden irrepressible ardour for arms, impelling them, at the same age, to quit the seductive splendour of the court of Charles II. for foreign service—the uncle, as a volunteer in the expedition to Tangiers, against the Moors; the nephew, twenty years afterwards, against the Turks, under Charles, duke of Lorraine, in Hungary. It is indeed a most extraordinary fact, already adverted to, that, while the uncle all but subverted the throne of France by his Flemish campaigns, and, but for infamous domestic faction, would have done so, his nephew, single-handed, preserved that of Spain for the house of Bourbon! If this be the first step in this romance of reality, the next is one profoundly suggestive to a contemplative mind. We have spoken of a splendid Decennium in the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns—that from 1702 to 1712. But what a preceding Quinquennium—that from 1672 to 1677—have we here, for a moment, before us! The "handsome young Englishman"—an idol among the profligate beauties of the court of Charles II.—had made at length a conquest of his celebrated and favourite mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland. To remove so dangerous a rival in her fickle affections,[11] Charles gave him a company in the Guards, and then sent him to the Continent—proh pudor—to aid Louis XIV. in subduing the United Provinces. There he sedulously learnt the art of war under Louis's consummate generals, Turenne, Condé, and Vauban: thus acquiring, under Louis's own auspices, that masterly knowledge of the science of war, which was destined to be wielded so soon afterwards, with triumphant and destructive energy, against himself! How little was such a contingency dreamed of, when Louis XIV. publicly, at the head of his army, thanked the handsome young hero for his services, and afterwards prevailed on his brother sovereign, Charles, to promote him to high command! And here is suggested the first of several deeply interesting and instructive parallels to be found in this work, between our own incomparable Wellington, and his illustrious predecessor: that Wellington went through the same practical course of study, but in inverse order—his first campaign being against the French, in