ART. I.-History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By J. A. FRCUDE. Vols. 1X., X. London: Longmans. 1866.
THE appearance of these important volumes induces us to take a short retrospect of Mr. Froude's historical labours. He has now traversed the memorable period from 1527 to 1574, that is, from England's great schism with Rome to that stage in the reign of Elizabeth when Anglicanism had been firmly established. In his first volumes he showed us how the second Tudor made a personal dispute the occasion of subverting in his realm the whole temporal authority of the Pope; and, notwithstanding considerable opposition, and the angry menaces of foreign states, became the head of a national Catholicism, and acquired for his throne a degree of power which had been hitherto unknown in England. If Mr. Froude, in narrating these events, made Henry VIII. too much a hero, and sometimes took paradoxical views, it is certain that such a vivid account of the times never appeared before, and that his industry and skill in description deserved the commendation they received. In his succeeding volumes he dwelt upon the obscure period of the Protectorate; and though we believe that he exaggerated the anarchy' which resulted from the inevitable reaction against the tyrannical 'order' of Henry, and though his strictures on the doctrinal aspect of English Protestantism were harsh, and scarcely just, he nevertheless sustained his reputation as an historian of a very high order. The terrible and shameful reign of Mary Tudor he illustrated with remark