able, power, depicting, in colours worthy of the important subject, the frenzy of the Catholic persecution, the consequences of the Protestant martyrdoms, and the national disgrace of our foreign policy. Then came his seventh and eighth volumes; and in these he described, in extreme detail and with a singularly graphic touch, the perilous outset of Elizabeth's reign, the precariousness of her tottering throne, the establishment of the Anglican Compromise, opposed by Catholics and Puritans alike, the remarkable accident by which her government was upheld by reason of the mutual jealousies and rivalries. of the Catholic Powers, the complicated events which at this juncture connected English and Scottish history, the appearance of Mary Stuart on the scene as the representative of the cause of Rome and the claimant of the united crowns, the rivalry of the two queens in which Elizabeth was nearly worsted, and the catastrophe-pregnant with mighty issues-which, by identifying Mary with the murder of Darnley, led to her dethronement and ultimate ruin. Though in entering this department of his work Mr. Froude was on ground comparatively well known, it is no more than the truth that he has thrown upon it a degree of light it had never received, and that he has described its scenes and characters in a masterly and very interesting manner. His account of the foreign relations of England in the first years of Elizabeth's reign, and of the phases of Scottish politics, is almost a new page in English history; his elaborate review of the domestic life of the great Queen is a curious discovery; and few readers will forget his pictures of the death of Rizzio and the murder of Darnley.

The present volumes take up the narrative immediately after this last event, and close at the end of 1573. They comprise affairs of considerable importance; the deposition of Mary Stuart and her flight into England after Langside, the proceedings of the two courts of inquiry into her conduct held at York and Hampton Court, the northern rebellion and the Norfolk conspiracy, the final establishment of Protestantism in Scotland, and the horrible triumph of Romanism in France seen in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Besides these conspicuous events, they contain a variety of subordinate details, all, however, of more or less moment; such as the disgraceful episode of Bothwell, the appearance of Alva in the Low Countries, the intrigues that took place in Elizabeth's court respecting the Spanish and French alliances, and the long game of rivalry continued between Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, even in captivity a dangerous enemy. This period, however, is less interesting in its actual occurrences, striking as they were, than in the tendencies it was developing.

Character of the Period.

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It was the period in which the great Catholic revival was dividing Europe into hostile camps; and in which the battle of the hostile faiths was to be fought ultimately between England and Spain, with France as her mere dependency. But while this was the paramount movement, it was long controlled by subordinate movements of a secular and political kind; and the old ties between England and Spain, and the mutual antipathies of the two courts that inherited and represented the traditions of Francis I. and Charles V., formed disturbing causes of the greatest importance. Thus the whole sphere of religion and of politics was in a state of extraordinary disturbance; cross currents opposed and thwarted each other; the general action of states and governments became shifting and very perplexing, until things fell into their final order; and in this conflict the future destiny of England was most powerfully affected. Nor was this remarkable feature of the time its only or chief characteristic of interest. A turning-point of history had arrived for almost every nation in Europe; and we now look back at the immense results in the constitutional freedom of England and the settlement of her ecclesiastical polity, in the Catholicism and even the Absolutism of France, in the degradation and decrepitude of Spain, in the opposite fates of Scotland and Ireland. There is also something especially interesting in tracing out the growth, at this period, of the elements of our future greatness, and the decline of the forces injurious to it; how the peaceful policy of Elizabeth's reign preserved our Parliaments and gave them strength; how Puritanism succeeded in leavening Anglicanism with what was to keep it a Protestant faith; how the material prosperity of the kingdom advanced, and with it its supremacy on the seas; and how, on the other hand, decaying Romanism, expiring Feudalism, and lawless Prerogative in vain attempted to stifle our liberties. And as for the actors on the scene at the time, what age can show more remarkable personages than Mary Stuart, even in her ruin enchanting us-than Elizabeth, great in spite of her weaknesses -than Cecil, the Chatham of the sixteenth century-than the dark figures of Alva and Philip, the leaders of Catholicism and Spain-than Catherine de Medicis and the illustrious Coligni?

Mr. Froude's treatment of this period is fully equal to his previous efforts. He has interrogated sources of history, which had been hitherto almost unapproached; and he has thrown the results of immense industry into fine form by his narrative genius. Some of the details which he unfolds and developes are almost additions to our annals; we would refer especially to the diplomacy of Spain and of France at this conjuncture,

to the account of the factions in the English Court, to the particulars of Elizabeth's conduct to Mary, and to the interesting chapter on Ireland. In all that relates to passing events-to the incidents that make up a narrative-Mr. Froude's researches in the Simancas Archives, the State Paper Office, and the Hatfield MSS., have enabled him easily to surpass his predecessors; and no historian has touched the subject with nearly equal grace and eloquence. In what more especially belongs to the general scope and course of his work, Mr. Froude has brought out some features of the time that required to be more fully elucidated, and in this respect has done excellent service. For instance, how the mutual rivalry of Spain and France enabled Elizabeth repeatedly to hold the balance between them, and gave her government great negative power; how her throne was in continual peril through the intrigues of a reactionary faction of Catholic or half-Catholic peers; and how Mary Stuart, even from the first, was a centre of disaffection and plotting. These special characteristics of the time have been set in their true light, and have had their real and clear significance assigned them. So, too, Mr. Froude has most ably shown how Scottish Calvinism rescued Scotland from relapsing into the hands of Mary, and how instinctively the English Puritans appreciated the peril she was to their cause; and he has been, perhaps, the first historian who has done full justice to the genius of Cecil. As for his descriptive passages, they are, as usual, excellent, clear, simple, and graphic-not falsely brilliant; and his portraits of Alva, of Knox, and of Philip are drawn with a discrimination and ease that belong only to a great master.

Some shortcomings, however, and even errors, must be set off against these excellencies. Speaking generally, Mr. Froude is rather a pictorial than a philosophic historian; and he is less felicitous in marking out the broader bearings of the course of events than in tracing them separately and reproducing them. He is more apt in seizing the form of an age, than its general spirit and remote tendencies; and he rather gives us a striking narrative than places us in a point of view from which we can see the march of events in their relations with the past and the future. His reflective power in short is inferior to his creative and dramatic ability; and we see the results, not only in his method of minute but generally graphic description, and in his love for historical scenes, but in his abstinence from generalising from facts, from drawing any large and deep conclusions, from endeavouring to compress in a few sentences clear deductions from any series of phenomena. Some of his opinions, too, are hardly sound, or at least are open to much question. His Broad

Church sympathies in some degree affect his treatment of the religious movement, which was the principal one of the age; and we are not quite satisfied with his conception of the character and results of Elizabeth's government. On one subject of much importance in any estimate of the great Queen, the real nature of her Scottish policy, we do not think he is altogether correct; and, on the whole, we believe, he underrates her ability and the difficulties of her position. As for Mary Stuart, he has drawn her portrait in colours almost too black for humanity; and although we agree in his view of her guilt, he perhaps, has omitted considerations which slightly palliate without removing it. Mr. Froude, too, has hardly given sufficient prominence to the great development of the liberties and the prosperity of England, which at this period was taking place; and more than once he seems to recur to the reign of Henry as a better time than that of his remarkable successor. As regards the composition of these volumes, great as is the beauty of some passages, and noble as is the style, on the whole, the narrative is occasionally cumbrous; and perhaps for a general reader too many original documents have been cited.

In commenting on Mr. Froude's volumes, we shall consider, first, what may be classified as the more essential parts of his work; and next, those passing incidents and details which may be said to be chiefly transient. This division, indeed, is purely arbitrary, and does not fall in with the course of the narrative; but we think it will make our estimate clearer. First, then, as regards the religious movement, which was the determining force of the time, at least in its final development, Mr. Froude beholds the gathering conflict of the rival faiths with an eye so averse to any positive forms of theology, that he identifies Catholicism and Protestantism in the abstract, with what were the crimes of their votaries, and seems to condemn both systems equally. This view of the matter in our judgment is wholly unphilosophic and untrue; and we must strongly object to such words as the following:- For the religion of Christ was 'exchanged the Christian religion. God gave the Gospel, the father of lies invented theology. . . . . Christianity as 'principle of life has been the most powerful check upon the passions of mankind. Christianity as a speculative system of opinion has converted them into monsters of cruelty. Higher than the angels, lower than the demons, these are the two 'aspects in which the religious man presents himself in all times ' and countries.'

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This philosophy, however, does not prevent Mr. Froude from indicating with great felicity, and on the whole with much

correctness, the general character of the religious movement which was then agitating the nations of Europe. This is his account of its progress in Spain, the champion of the Catholic revival:- Other nations were divided in opinion; Spain had no such difficulty. The faint footprints of Protestantism in Castile had been easily erased by the Inquisition. The conquest of Grenada, and the crusading enthusiasm which had accompanied 'it, had revived the heroism and the superstition of the twelfth 'century. New life had sprung up in the decaying monas'teries. The religious orders, in the genuine fervour of the 'middle ages, girt their loins with sackcloth, disciplined their rebellious flesh with scanty diet and knotted cord, and with ⚫ the revived austerities regained their power over the intellects ' and consciences of men. As the Puritans of New England regarded the warlock and the witch, so to the fanatical Castilians, those accursed infidels who denied Christ's bodily presence in the Holy Eucharist, appeared as children of Satan, 'monsters self-infected with a leprosy of soul; and every man 'who feared God, set himself with heart and arm, life and substance, to root out the poison from every corner of the 'land.' France, unlike Spain unanimously Catholic, was already torn by religious dissensions which had an important effect on her position, and on our own contemporary history. Mr. Froude thus describes their divisions; in condemning the Catholics and Huguenots alike, he is hardly just to an oppressed sect, who were usually defending themselves from tyranny:In France, as in most places, the passions of the multitude were too hot for control. The Reformation had entered there in the form of Calvinism. The Huguenot was as unmanage'able as the Catholic: had he power as he had will, he would have dragooned France as Calvin dragooned Geneva. Both 'sides were possessed with a vindictive hatred, and both alike made impossible the maintenance of the edicts with which 'from time to time the Queen Mother had attempted to pacify them. The minister could not preach in Paris, the priest 'could say no mass at Rochelle; and with the smothered flames bursting out, now here, now there, in local massacres, they lay 'watching each other in suspended hostility.'

In England, Erastianism had effected a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism in the shape of the Anglican Establishment. The church, viewed as a political engine, held the balance in a tolerably equal manner between Catholic and Puritan dissidents; and though it was sustained by some harsh legislation, we agree with Mr. Froude that on the whole it was a good ally of a Government disinclined to any severe persecution,