er to our hungry fancy, he appeals grandly to our
noblest impulses. In Motley a spirit of the most refined humanity is
everywhere visible; he is guilty of no Voltairean satiric stabs at
purity, no petulant Voltairean flings at the faith he does not share.
All is manly, terse, frank, undisguised. Honorable himself, he does not,
like Gibbon, distrust all mankind, and question with a sarcasm the very
sincerity of a martyr at the stake.

Among Americans, Motley is what Botta is to the historians of Southern
Europe. The same grand principles actuate both writers; the same
tendency to philosophical generalization is evident in the structure of
their works, the same inflexible pursuit of a fixed and visible aim, the
same enthusiastic love for freedom. But with Botta the poetical element,
which is only secondary with Motley, predominates. He holds the nervous
pen of a true Italian--more than that, of a true Italian patriot. All
the hitherto suppressed fire of his nation flames out on his pages in an
indignation as natural as it is superb. His lines vibrate with passion,
his words are tremulous with a noble pain. His very pathos is impatient,
stern, and proud; it cleaves our hearts like a battle-axe, rather than
meets them as with summer showers. His sarcasm is as keen and effective,
but far more startling; it hisses its way from some iron-cold comment,
and stabs the monarch whom it crowns. His fertility of imagination is
not weakened by contact with the details of government. The same pen
that draws in such inimitably graceful lines the sugar-plums of starving
Genoa, lingering about flower-wreathed baskets of bonbons sold in the
public squares to famishing men and women, sketches in a style as
nervous and appropriate the complex detail of governmental policy. He
unfolds his subject with the skill of an epic poet; its general effect
is sublime, and its petty details arranged with a rarely careless skill.
If he is sometimes diverted by a burst of enthusiasm, of indignation, or
of horror, into an inequality, the rough island thrown up in the sea of
his fancy is speedily verdured over with the wonderful luxuriance of his
genius. If he bends sometimes to amuse, to revel among his sonorous
Italian adjectives in the description of a coronation at Milan, or an
opera of Valetta, it is part of his purpose, giving to his picture the
rich and glowing tints that bring out, by violence of contrast, the more
elaborate tinting in of dark upon d