s "Literature of the South of
Europe" in four, and "Miscellaneous Essays" in three volumes, show how
happily he has blended these weighty investigations with the lighter
topics of literature and poetry, and the political philosophy which,
in recent times, has come to occupy so large a place in the study of
all who have turned their mind to the progress of human affairs. Nor
is the least part of his merit to be found in the admirable skill with
which he has condensed, each in two volumes, his great histories, for
the benefit of that numerous class of readers who, unable or unwilling
to face the formidable undertaking of going through his great
histories, are desirous of obtaining such a brief summary of their
leading events as may suffice for persons of ordinary perseverance or
education. His mind was essentially philosophical; and it is the
philosophy of modern history, accordingly, which he has exerted
himself so strenuously to unfold. He views society at a distance, and
exhibits its great changes in their just proportions, and, in general,
with their true effects. His success in this arduous undertaking has
been great indeed. He has completed the picture of which Robertson had
only formed the sketch--and completed it with such a prodigious
collection of materials, and so lucid an arrangement of them in their
appropriate places, as to have left future ages little to do but draw
the just conclusions from the results of his labours.

With all these merits, and they are great, and with this rare
combination of antiquarian industry with philosophic generalization,
Sismondi is far from being a perfect historian. He did well to abridge
his great works; for he will find few readers who will have
perseverance enough to go through them. An abridgement was tried of
Gibbon; but it had little success, and has never since been attempted.
You might as well publish an abridgement of Waverley or Ivanhoe. Every
reader of the _Decline and Fall_ must feel that condensation is
impossible, without an omission of interest or a curtailment of
beauty. Sismondi, with all his admirable qualities as a general and
philosophic historian, wants the one thing needful in exciting
interest--descriptive and dramatic power. He was a man of great vigour
of thought and clearness of observation, but little genius--at least
of that kind of genius which is necessary to move the feelings or warm
the imagination. That was his principal defect; and it will prev