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HISTORY,

History of Poland. (Lardner's Cyclopaedia,1 No. XX.)

TRAVELS,

Inglis 's Spain in 1330 2 V

VOYAGES AND ADVENTU R ES,

Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative of his Ship- wreck, and consequent Discovery of certain ., Islands in the Caribbean Sea. Edited by Miss Jane Porter NOVELS, The Staff Officer. By Oliver Moore 3 Vols.

Ivan Vejeeghen, or Life in Russia. By Thad- P Vols.

dens Bulgarin

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Johtes Lives of Celebrated Travellers (Na-

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tional Library) I . • • . . • Longman and Co. .

f Cochrane and Pick- 1 ersgill.

Whittaker and Co. Colburn and Bentley.

Colburn and Bentley.

ols. Whittaker and Co. ols. Longman and Co.

THE SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

AN outcry has been raised against the History of Poland, which forms the Twentieth Number of Dr. LArenNEA's Cyclopedia : the author has been called a hack, vile and miserable ; and the enormity has seemed so great to one individual, that he has stated, were not the character of the editor above suspicion, he should suspect the influence of Muscovite gold. We had previously pe- rused the volume, and come to the conclusi,in, that, though not written by a declamatory partisan for the Pules, it was an impar- tial and a well-informed work. We are hearty and anxious well- wishers to the cause of the Poles, and should not approve, nor in- deed fail to condemn, any unjust or unfriendly allegation against the Poles. We uphold their cause, and should applaud any gene- rous incentive which might be used in their favour upon the na- tions of Europe. But still, history is history, and the truth must be told : we believe it to be told in this volume, and we are more- over sure that it is pointed in no unfriendly manner against the Poles.

This writer states, that after the fall of NAPOLEON the condition

of Poland was dreadful—its capital was destroyed, its agriculture forsaken, its peasantry starving, and it was overrun by lawless soldiery ; that Russia gave it a constitution of a liberal kind ; and that in all matters of trade, commerce, and means of subsistence, Poland became flourishing. The markets of Russia were open to it, and where one hundred looms were at work on the erection of Poland into a Russian state, six thousand were employed at the breaking out of the late revolution. The peasantry were enjoying abundance, and the appearance of the country was greatly im- proved. The institutions, however, originally free, were broken in upon by the establishment of a censorship, and by some arbitrary and tyrannic acts of the Grand Duke CONST ANTI NE . There was a strong Anti-Russian party in Poland, partly on the ground of ancient antipathy to Muscovy, and partly on the score of these individual acts. These, acting upon the strong recollection of ancient inde- pendence and bitter wrong, and with the modern stimulus of hope from the people of France, produced the outbreak which is now spending itself in a bloody contest. The Poles are proverbially a brave and a warlike nation ; but the chances of their unassisted valour against Russian resources seem to be small. Hope alone is for them.

Such is the story told by this book, and we see nothing in it to

excite the bile of the most acrid temperament. It might have been easier to declaim- against the Muscovite Autocrat, to chant the praises of liberty, and anathematize its enemies ; but such a paean would not have been wiser or more liberal, however it might sound, than the plain truth. It is far from discreditable that a nation should prefer the hardy blessings of independence to the prosperity purchased by its sacrifice : the struggle for liberty is not the less sacred because it is not forced upon a people by the want of subsistence. The Poles are a nation who love the me- mory of their ancient freedom, and will spill their blood and sacri- fice their treasure to regain them. Is not this noble ? A philoso- pher or an economist might say, Go on increasing the stores of national wealth—secure the blessings of civilization, education, and foreign communication—and free institutions must necessarily follow. This author is himself of a peaceful turn, and of the dis- position shown by the majority of peaceful and prosperous citizens in every country; he thinks that free institutions are dearly purchased by the utter dispersion of property, by starvation, slaughter, and rapine. He has certainly given utterance to this sentiment; and it is one that would be entertained by many who now talk very loud, were the dreadful miseries of insurrection visited upon themselves, their families, or their connexions. At Any rate, it may be entertained without disgracing Dr. LARDNER, or the author of the work, whoever he may be. Two short extracts from this history will show the spirit in which it is written : the one is the most favourable in the book to the cause of the Poles ; the other is that which most decidedly leans to a Russian view of the subject.

" On the first view of the case, it could not rationally be expected that any considerable degree of harmony could subsist between people who, during eight centuries, had been at war with each other, and between whom, consequently, a strong national antipathy had been long fostered. And even had they always lived in peace, they were too dissimilar in manners, habits, sentiments, and religion, ever cordially to coalesce. For ages the Pole had idolized a liberty unexampled in any country under heaven: the Muscovite had no will of his own, but depended entirely on God and the tsar: the one was the maker and master of kings; the other obeyed, as implicitly as the voice of fate, the most arbitrary orders of his monarch, whom he considered Heaven's favourite vicegerent. The

one was enlightened by education, and by intercourse with the polished nations of Europe ; the other, who long thought it a crime to leave home, was brutified by superstition and ignorance : each cursed the other as schismatic,—as out of the pale of God's visible church, and doomed to perdition. The antipathy which ages had nourished, had been intensely

aggravated by late events. The unprovoked violence of Catherine; the haughtiness of her troops ; the excesses accompanying the elevation and fall of Stanislas ; the keen sense of humiliation—so keen as to become intolerable to a proud people,—were causes more than sufficient to neu- tralize the greatest benefits conferred by the tsars. " Another and, if possible, weightier consideration arises :—How could the most arbitrary monarch in Europe,— one whose will had never been trammelled by either the spirit or the forms of freedom ; whose nod

was all but omnipotent,—be expected to guide the delicately-complicated machine of a popular government? "Would he be very likely to pay much

regard to the apparently insignificant, however necessary, springs which kept it in motion ? Would the lord of fifty legions, whose empire ex- tended over half the old world, be likely to hear with patience the bold voice of freedom in a distant and (as to territory) insignificant corner of his vast heritage.

" Under no state of things, however, would the Pules, as long as they were subject to foreign ascendency, have remained satisfied. The recol- lections of their ancient glory would give a more bitter pang to the con- sciousness of present degradation. Alexander, indeed, had held out to them the hope of uniting Lithuania under the same form of government; but even in this case, would either Poles or Lithuanians be less subject to the autocrat ? Besides, what guarantee had they that even their pre- sent advantages would be continued to them ? None, surely, but the personal character of the autocrat, who, with the best intentions, was somewhat fickle; and who might any day abandon the reins of empire to a more rigorous or less scrupulous hand. What have we to hope,' ex- claimed the celebrated Dombrowski at the period at which this compen- dium is arrived ; what have we not to fear ? This very day might we net tremble for the fate which may await us to-morrow ?' The general expressed his conviction that if the Poles, instead of being disunited, would cordially combine, they would recover their lost greatness. Let them,' added he, retrieve their ancient nationality ; let them combine their opinions, their desires, their wishes !' In other words, he meant that the whole nation should enter into an understanding to permit the existence of the present order of things no longer than they could help. lithe same fortune,' he concluded, ' which has given us a sovereign, should one day turn round on him, Poland may recover her liberty and independence, and acknowledge no king but the one of her own choice. " " In contemplating the recent history of Poland, it cannot but be mat- ter of regret to the philanthropic mind that the nation should, so soon. after its union with Russia, have brought on itself the of that power. Though some slight infractions were made on the spirit rather than the letter of the charter, during the four first years of the con- nexion, these might have been remedied by an appeal to the emperor. On the part neither of Alexander nor of his lieutenant did there exist the slightest wish to violate its provisions, until experience had taught both that individual freedom was not so much the object in pursuit, as a total separation from the empire. Then it was that liberal institutions became odious in the cabinet of St. Petersburgh ; that the tsar resolved to pre- vent their extension, on the plea—a mistaken but not unnatural plea— that they were inconsistent with a settled monarchy, and consequently with long-continued social security : then it was that the imperial minis- ters and-their underlings commenced their unwise system,—a system but partially known to the tsar, and one that would never have been approved by him,—of exasperating the Poles, first by petty annoyances, next by depriving them of privileges to which thee leafa sacred right,—of adding fuel to a fire already too intense to continue long harmless. " The seeds of hatred, thus unfortunately sown, germinated with silent but fatal rapidity. A vast number of soldiers (especially of unem- ployed.officers) ; of ardent patriots and students ; of all whom Russian haughtiness haci provoked, or Russian liberality had failed to visit ; and, more than all, of that fickle and numerically speaking imposing class so prone to change ; were gradually initiated into the great plot destined to concentrate the scattered elements of resistance to imperial violence, and to sweep its framers and abettors from the face of the kingdom. The society, numerous as were its ramifications, was well organized, and its proceedings were wrapt in more than masonic mystery. That not a few of its members were implicated in the conspiracy which exploded on the accession of Nicholas—utterly unknown at present as were the subjects and nature of that conspiracy—appears both from the numerous arrests on that occasion (no fewer than two hundred took place in Poland and Lithuania), and from the very admission of their organs. Though the commission of inquiry, consisting chiefly of Poles, failed to discover the clue to that dark transaction, evidence enough was adduced to prove the existence of a formidable national association. Two years afterwards (in 1828), that association gained over the great body of Polish officers, and silently waited the progress of events to watch for an opportunity of striking the blow."