Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/432

414 Nicholas "is neither led away by the thirst for sudden mechanical improvement, like Peter, nor the praises of philosophers, like Catherine, nor the visions of inexperienced philanthropy, like Alexander… Like Wellington, Cæsar, and many other of the greatest men recorded in history, his expression has become more intellectual as he advanced in years… He is an Alexander the Great in resolution, but not in magnanimity."

Observe,again, Sir Archibald's eagle eye for "extraordinary coincidences." If any man can get up a case of the kind, it is he. Carefully he records the fact, that, "by a singular coincidence," the last action in the continental war of 1814 took place on "the Hill of Mars, where, fifteen hundred years before, St. Denis suffered martyrdom, who first introduced Christianity into Northern Gaul." On the 31st December, 406, says Gibbon, the Vandal army crossed the probably frozen Rhine, and the barriers between the savage and civilised nations of the earth were levelled to the ground:—"On that day fourteen hundred and seven years," says Alison, by an "extraordinary coincidence," the allied armies "at the same place crossed the same river." "It is a very curious coincidence that the battle of Waterloo was fought just four hundred years after that of Azincour; the former took place on 18th June, 1815; the latter on Oct. 25, 1415." It is a very extraordinary ditto, that Wellington's English soldiers at Vittoria fought on the same ground as their fathers had done, five hundred years before, to establish Peter the Cruel on the throne of Spain.—Were the coincidences and parallels thus suggested, duly brought together, they would form a notable pendant to Plutarch's craze in the same line for the fine old Bœotian dearly loved to collect coincidences and parallels, and dwell, e. g., on the great fact that "there were two eminent persons of the name of Attis, the one a Syrian, the other an Arcadian, who both were killed by a boar;" and "two Actæons, both torn to pieces, one by his lovers, the other by his dogs;" and "two Scipios, of whom the one conquered Carthage, the other destroyed it;" and three captures of Troy, in all of which horse-flesh was more or less concerned—the first capture being by Hercules, "on account of Laomedon's horses; the second by Agamemnon, by means of the wooden horse; the third by Charidemus, a horse happening to stand in the way, and hindering the Trojans from shutting the gates so quickly as they should have done." Let it be accounted venial in Alison cum Plutarcho errare; for so to err is human, though so to forgive may not be divine.

Once more. Every one must admire the historian's careful insertion of such restrictive clauses as the following, in his judgment of celebrated men. "Yet, with all these great and lofty qualities, Chateaubriand was far from being a perfect character." The Emperor Nicholas is "exemplary in all the relations of private life, a faithful husband, an affectionate father. … Yet he is not a perfect character." Nor is it easy to do justice to the dignified gravity with which he enunciates some such profound proposition as, that "the march of revolution is not always on flowers," and that "the Vox Populi is not always, at the moment, the Vox Dei."

And so we might go on for some time to come; but then, que voulez-