al life. But though his letters, which now rise to the rank
of despatches, become more interesting to those who watch his progress
as an officer, there are comparatively fewer which let us into the
character of the man. Besides this, the incidents of his career after
this time are so well known, that little new can be expected. What
novelty, however, there was to be obtained has not escaped the
research of the editor, from whom (till we meet him in another volume,
when Nelson will again become interesting in his individual capacity,
as his secret and confidential letters in the Carraccioli and Lady
Hamilton's period, come to be laid before us) we part with feelings of
gratitude and respect.

GUIZOT.

Machiavel was the first historian who seems to have formed a
conception of the philosophy of history. Before his time, the
narrative of human events was little more than a series of
biographies, imperfectly connected together by a few slight sketches
of the empires on which the actions of their heroes were exerted. In
this style of history, the ancient writers were, and to the end of
time probably will continue to be, altogether inimitable. Their skill
in narrating a story, in developing the events of a life, in tracing
the fortunes of a city or a state, as they were raised by a succession
of illustrious patriots, or sunk by a series of oppressive tyrants,
has never been approached in modern times. The histories of Xenophon
and Thucydides, of Livy and Sallust, of Caesar and Tacitus, are all
more or less formed on this model; and the more extended view of
history, as embracing an account of the countries the transactions of
which were narrated, originally formed, and to a great part executed,
by the father of history, Herodotus, appears to have been, in an
unaccountable manner, lost by his successors.

In these immortal works, however, human transactions are uniformly
regarded as they have been affected by, or called forth the agency of,
individual men. We are never presented with the view of society _in a
mass_; as influenced by a series of causes and effects independent of
the agency of individual man--or, to speak more correctly, in the
development of which the agency is an unconscious, and often almost a
passive, instrument. Constantly regarding history as an extensive
species of biography, they not only did not withdraw the eye to the
distance necessary to obtain such a general view of the progress of
things