murder are crimes. But, we are told, the perpetual vehemence of incessant imprecation, the stormy insistence of unremitting obloquy, which accompanies every chapter, illuminates every page, underlines every sentence of the narrative, must needs impair the confidence of an impartial reader in the trustworthiness of a chronicle and a commentary written throughout as in characters of flaming fire. Englishmen are proud to prefer a more temperate, a more practical, a more sedate form of political or controversial eloquence. When I remember and consider certain examples of popular oratory and controversy now flagrant and flourishing among us, I am tempted to doubt the exact accuracy of this undoubtedly plausible proposition: but, be that as it may, I must take leave to doubt yet more emphatically the implied conclusion that the best or the only good witness procurable on a question of right and wrong is one too impartial to feel enthusiasm or indignation; that indifference alike to good and evil is the sign of perfect equity and trustworthiness in a judge of moral or political questions; that a man who has witnessed a deliberate massacre of unarmed men, women, and children, if he be indiscreet enough to describe his experience in any tone but that of a scientific or æsthetic serenity, forfeits the inherent right of a reasonable and an honourable man to command a respectful and attentive hearing from all honourable and reasonable men.
But valuable and precious as all such readers will always hold these two book of immediate and implacable history, they will not, I presume, be rated among the more important labours of their author's literary life. No one who would know fully or would estimate aright the greatest genius born into the world in our nineteenth century can afford to pass
