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II.--MODERN HISTORY.

(Under the Direction of Professor GARDINER.)

R. GREEN, in the third volume of his History of the English People (London: Macmillan & Co.), has brought his narrative down almost to the close of the reign of Charles II. It need not be said that he tells with his usual vigour the story of the exciting epoch which opened with the death of Elizabeth. He has paid considerable attention, too, to the criticisms which were so freely lavished on his former work, and has been careful to eradicate many of the blunders by which it was defaced. There are, however, plenty still remaining. One would have thought, for instance, that if there was any one quotation that he would have been more likely to give accurately than another, it would have been that in which he reports the wellknown phrase in which Strafford, at the meeting of the Committee after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, announced that there was an army in Ireland which might be used to "reduce this kingdom." With curious infelicity, Mr. Green asserts that Strafford said it was to be used "to reduce that kingdom to obedience." If Strafford had said this, the words would plainly have pointed to Scotland, and Pym would never have taken the trouble to quote them.

It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further. It is more interesting to ask why it is that Mr. Green fails to make allowances for the Royalists great or small, and accordingly fails to give the Royalist party its due place as a factor in English political development. It may fairly be allowed to Mr. Green that the party of Parliamentary supremacy was not only the victorious party in the end, but that it contributed by far the most important element to the future Constitution. But if we compare Pym's House of Commons with the House of Commons of the present day, it is at once discovered that they differ by the absence or presence of Ĉabinet Government on the one hand, and of guarantees for individual liberty on the other. What was presented to Bacon and Strafford and Charles was the direct rule of the House of Commons without either a Cabinet to guide its deliberations, or a free press to enable the minority to appeal to the sense of the nation. No doubt they were instigated in their resistance by many other causes than pure political theory. But no historian who has really taken the trouble to investigate in detail the records of Charles's Parliaments will fail to discover far more reasonableness in the conduct of the Royalist party than Mr. Green is inclined to allow.

To say this is by no means to deny that Mr. Green has attached himself to the more important element of the two which are harmoniously blended in our present Constitution. An organ of government without an organ of representation runs necessarily to despotism. An organ of representation, when it has once obtained the mastery, is certain sooner or later to call into existence an organ of government. An able writer, indeed, in the last number of the Quarterly Review, holds that the Civil War was mainly the fault of Pym. It is easy to maintain that one side is aggressive when the movements on the other side are left out of account. To tell the story of that momentous first year of the Long Parliament, we must indeed have recourse, like the Quarterly, to "D'Ewes's Diary." But we must also have recourse to Rossetti and Giustinian, men familiar with the Court and sympathizing with its efforts, in order that we may learn how the suspicions of Pym were in great part justified; how almost from the very beginning the Queen was ready to invite a French army to England to defend her cause; how, when Charles went to Scotland, it was upon a deliberate understanding with the Scottish Commissioners that a Scottish army should be placed at his command to restore his old authority in England; and how the attempt on the Five Members was but the special form taken by a blow which he had long been meditating. Many indefensible things indeed were done by the Parliamentary leaders, but they cannot fairly be accused of standing on their defence without a cause.

From Mr. Green's History it is not so long a step as it would seem to the fourth volume of Mr. Theodore Martin's Infe of His Royal Highness the Prince

Consort (Smith, Elder, and Co.). From the tale of Parliaments failing for want of the guidance of a Cabinet, we are brought into a position to observe the inner working of the relations between the modern Cabinet and the Crown. It is probable that before the publication of Mr. Bagehot's Essays on the Constitution, the mass even of the political class had very little knowledge on the subject, and Mr. Martin now comes with special authority to show that Mr. Bagehot's theory was founded upon actual facts. The impression left by Mr. Martin's narrative will, to all unprejudiced minds, be decidedly favourable to the system pursued under the Prince's influence. It may be granted that it would be undesirable that an irresponsible adviser should exert pressure on the Cabinet to bring it to act in a way to which it was itself adverse. Nothing of the kind, however, is reported in these volumes as having ever been done under the Prince's guidance. He often caused his opinions to be laid before this or that minister, and no minister can be the worse for having to take into consideration opinions opposed to his own. If there was reason to suspect that the minister would not pay sufficient attention to the advice given, the Queen directed the Prince to lay it before the Cabinet. Nothing further was then done. To take such a course as this was to provide for the proper working of the constitutional machinery, not to violate its spirit. A Cabinet may indeed allow itself to be dominated by the force of will of one statesman; but it is at least advisable that it should have the opportunity of pronouncing its judgment. On one occasion, in the course of the three years to which this volume relates, a headstrong minister broke away from these restrictions. We learn that the notorious des patch with which Lord Ellenborough hastily and intemperately criticized Lord Canning's Oude proclamation was sent off without being previously submitted either to the Sovereign or the Cabinet. The result was certainly not satisfactory. To turn from the constitutional position claimed for the Crown by the Prince to his opinions on large questions of policy, we are at once attracted to his efforts to keep the peace between France and Austria in 1859, and to his cautious wisdom in restraining the Liberal ministers from intervening after the war was over to involve their country in a partnership with the French Emperor, instead of leaving him to extricate himself from the web of contradictory engagements in which he had entangled his feet. The course which the Prince took was doubtless the best that could be taken. He believed fully in the doctrine of non-intervention, and he did not think that the despots of Europe were likely to contribute much towards the development of free government. Yet it is evident that there was a side of the subject which he did not see. He cared for constitutional freedom and intelligent rule. He showed no sign of caring much for the rights of nationalities. He talked of the composite Empire of Austria as a State in the same way as he would have talked of France or Spain as a State. As such it was not to be meddled with from without. Yet obviously the position of a tyrannical French Government oppressing Frenchmen is quite different from that of a tyrannical Government in Austria oppressing Lombardy. In the first case the cause of liberty would best be served by leaving the tyrant alone. To attack him would be to throw on his side the force of patriotism. The national sentiment would be certain sooner or later to be awakened against him, and would in time reach even those military forces on which he relied. Nothing of the kind was the case with Lombardy and Venice. No patriotism would ever have induced the inhabitants of those provinces to take the part of one who was but an alien oppressor. No growth of hostile feeling on their part was ever likely to work a change in the breasts of the Germans and Sclavonians who held them down. To defend the doctrine of non-intervention in such a case was to uphold the perpetual slavery of one nation to another.

Yet for all that it is no blame to the Prince that he looked with some contempt on Lord Palmerston's habit of throwing himself vehemently from time to time on the side of an Emperor who gave out that he was going to do great things for Italy. The opinions of the ablest and most thoughtful practical men are apt to be restricted within the special conditions under which they work, and it is certain that the Prince was quite wise in holding back England, with all his counsel, from forwarding Napoleon's plans. An Emperor who went about talking of the reconstruction of the treaties of Vienna, and of fighting for the honour and interests of France, was certainly not the partner that a decent nation would care to have in a great enterprise. Nor on the other hand was there any hope from the combination of European Governments. The despotic Powers of Europe were not likely to care much for Italian liberty. If ever the time comes when a Continental opinion is reflected in the European Governments in favour of the rights of nations rather than of the rights of States, that time had certainly not arrived in 1859. It would have been better

perhaps if the Prince had not taken so much interest in those futile negotiations which preceded the outbreak of the war, and which ignored the real point of importance. What was the use of dealing with the relations between Austria and the lesser States as long as she continued to hold Lombardy and Venetia? The Emperor repelled the moral sense of the Prince when he declared he must have une guerre ou une éclatante satisfaction pour moi. When he said that Austria had brought things to this extremity, that either she must rule up to the Alps or Italy be free to the Adriatic," he gave utterance to a truth which the Prince, as far as we learn from this volume, entirely ignored.

The concluding volume, which is stilto come, will be of considerable interest. The Prince's services were so great to his adopted country, and his character was so high and his intelligence so clear, that he can well bear the criticism that he did not perceive the whole truth of a tangled situation of which smaller men can grasp the clue with the advantage of the know- ledge brought by passingtime.

It is not, however, on the Prince's political sagacity that the bulk of the readers of Mr. Martin's book will dwell the longest. The relations between the Cabinet and the Crown, and the relations between States and Nations, interest the thoughtful few. The spectacle of a pure and intelligent domestic life comes home to the hearts of all. The readers of this volume will be able in some little measure to comprehend the love with which the Prince inspired those amongst whom his daily life was placed.

It is satisfactory to learn that Dr. Jessopp's One Generation of a Norfolk House, the reputation of which has long ago been established, has been republished in a handier form (Burns and Oates). The Roman Catholic Missionaries who suffered in Elizabeth's reign deserve their meed of acknowledgment, and it is well that it should come heartily from a writer who does not share in their special creed. Some of Dr. Jessopp's readers will probably be startled by his assertion that the Jesuits, so far from being crafty beyond all other men, were too enthusiastic to avoid the traps which were set for them by the Government. The statement, however, is well borne out by the evidence. It is happily one of Dr. Jessopp's peculiarities that he goes to the bottom of his subject. Most of his readers will glide pleasantly over the graceful narrative which leads them through the scenes of life and death. Experts will admire the carefulness with which the side lights are thrown in after evidently close inquiry. To others the sense of industry is lost in the brilliancy of the effect.

Two recent French works of note have lately appeared in an English dressJules Simon's Government of M. Thiers (Sampson Low & Co.), and the Duke of Broglie's King's Secret (Cassell, Petter, and Galpin). The translation of the latter is particularly well done.

III.-BOOKS OF TRAVEL.

(Under the Direction of Professor E. H. PALMER.)

EN and Things-Russian, by the Rev. James Christie (Edinburgh: Andrew

knowledge of Russia. The description of the voyage thither, at any rate, has no bearing upon either men or things Russian, except, perhaps, in the case of the Atlantic steamer which Mr. Christie saw in Leith roads, which had "been run ashore, got off, and patched up, and which the owners were then trying to sell to the Russian Government to be added to the six already fitted out to sweep British commerce from the seas. "This sets Mr. Christie off on a digression, in the course of which he makes the remarkable statement that "if England can put forty cruisers over against seven of Russia, it almost stands to a certainty that Russia may set Afghanistan over against Cyprus." The meaning of this mystical sentence we cannot pretend to explain; but it is only fair to add that Mr. Christie's style as a rule is simple and straightforward. He digresses at some length about the drink question, about religion, and Mr. Plimsoll, but "the longest voyage comes to an end some time;" and he at length fairly lands his reader in Russia, and gives an interesting, almost idyllic, account of the life of the Finns, in whose country he spent a few days.

It is always pleasant to read the travels of a man who finds nothing to grumble at; and our author observes at Moscow, after praising the "great Slav hotel of this great Slav city, in which everything, from the costume of the hall-porters to the lavatory fountains in the bedrooms, is after the old Russian pattern," that to say it was comfortable "would be superfluous, . . . and although guide-books and travellers warn you against the hotels in Russia, I neither suffered any annoyance nor was subject to any extortion here or elsewhere."

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A visit to the great monastery of Troitsa and to the fair of Nijni Novgorod completed Mr. Christie's holiday tour, and his account of both is well worth reading. It is strange to find that he is quite unconscious of the fact that the ceremony of "beating the bounds" took place in most English parishes a few years ago, for he describes the Russian peasants as using this "novel and to some memorable" method of impressing on the rising generation the geography of their village. Also, we cannot allow that selling the bear's skin before you have hunted him" is a Russian proverb, "whose nationality is so evident that no one will suspect I am manufacturing it for the occasion." Can Mr. Christie never have read the "Legend of Montrose,' where Dugald Dalgetty, who may, by the way, have learned the proverb in Germany, uses it to answer Lord Menteith's tempting offers? Neither did the ten thousand Greeks cry, Oanaoon, Da'λaoon (sic)! as Mr. Christie tells us they did. But when he does not quote Greek or make little jokes he gives capital descriptions of all that he saw, and especially of the great development of industrial life among the emancipated serfs. Of Nihilists, Vera Sassulitch, &c., we read but little, and almost the only story which reminds us that Russia is a despotic country is that of the German waiter at Warsaw, who said to his fellow-servants that the fall of Plevna was bad news for Poland. Next morning he received an "invitation" to visit the police court. Here the following dialogue occurred:-"You have said that the fall of Plevna was bad for Poland ?" "No, I did not." A door immediately opened, and a fellow-waiter, with the cook of the hotel, stepped into the court. They gave their evidence, and the magistrate's quick decision was given in the laconic terms, Cross the frontier immediately."

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Mr. Aylward begins the preface to his book on the Transvaal (The Transvaal of To-day, by Alfred Aylward. W. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London), by expressing an expectation in which he has certainly been justified by the event; namely, that "the South African Question will probably, by the time this work reaches the public, be a burning one:" albeit the burning stage has not been reached in the precise manner which he anticipated. For he talks with a certain contempt of the Zulu nation as a "bug-bear" and "Bogy," and of a "certain domestic devil kept up by politicians for everyday use, whose name is Cetywayo." His book is chiefly devoted to an account of the occupation or annexation of the Transvaal Republic -a subject which, when the excitement and alarm caused by his "bug-bear shall have died away, may supply matter for serious and possibly unpleasant reflection to many of his countrymen. He writes in some measure as a partisan, having been employed by the late Transvaal Government as commander of a small body of volunteer troops: and evidently takes a warm interest in what he considers the rights and wrongs of the Dutch settlers.

The idea of the forcible annexation of a civilized people excites a feeling of deep aversion in this country-an aversion we should be very sorry to see lessened. It is true that an annexation effected in a day by twenty-five mounted policemen is a very different thing from an annexation effected by Krupp guns. We must go further, and admit that colonies stand on a different footing from ancient and populous communities. Lands out of the bounds of civilization, whose barbarous aborigines by universal consent may be placed under the rule of more enlightened races, lie as it were open to the European Power that is best able to seize them. The colonist, broadly speaking, is either a temporary settler, and in that case although the flag which flies over the settlement should be changed, he may retain his old nationality or he has already cut himself loose from it by intending to become a permanent inhabitant, and can hardly be said to have acquired a new one which would be outraged by a transfer of allegiance. His comparatively nomad state makes it easy for him to remove if he dislikes the government under which he finds himself. The Transvaal, a country "as large as France," contains amongst an enormous majority of natives only about 7000 Boer families, and they have not established a settled government for more than nineteen years. They can scarcely be said to have "made a nation," and they have long ceased to belong

to any European community. But though it may be allowed that their case is of a different moral complexion from certain instances of annexation in Europe, it by no means follows that they have nothing to complain of. A treaty formally entered into in the year 1852 has been arbitrarily torn up. Certain conditions were indeed implied in this treaty, but it appears very doubtful whether the Boers can be fairly accused of failing to fulfil these conditions. Above all, Lord Carnarvon gave orders to the Natal Government that there should be no annexation "unless you shall be satisfied that the inhabitants. . . . desire to become British subjects." But no sufficient means seem to have been taken in April, 1877, to ascertain the wishes of the community; and in the summer of 1878, a memorial against the incorporation of the Transvaal, signed by some 6000 out of a "possible 8000 voters," accompanied by a very temperately-written letter of remonstrance, was presented to the Colonial Secretary. Possibly the case of the British Government has yet to be fairly stated, but unless a very different light is finally thrown upon the question from that in which our author places it, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Boers have suffered harsh and unjust usage. At the same time Mr. Aylward is unable to show that the transfer excited any very violent feelings at the time. It was not till "the end of August" that "the people awoke to a sense of injury." He talks of congratulatory addresses and feastings, and of hospitable receptions given not only by English settlers but by the Dutch to British officials. He was himself present at a public dinner given to General Sir A. Cunynghame at Lydenberg, which seems to have left a painful impression on his mind so far as the cookery was concerned-for "the food in fact was raw," and "blood followed the knife whether turkey or sucking-pig was attempted to be dissected;" but in spite of accompaniments certainly calculated to damp conviviality, the relations between hosts and guests seem to have been perfectly genial.

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Mr. Aylward gives much information for the use of Europeans wishing to travel in South Africa. He earnestly advises them, when in the ruder parts of the country, to live in their own waggons, and to avoid inns. Certainly, if one inn, which he describes, "in a capital town" is to be taken as a sample of the hotel accommodation of the country, few will care to avail themselves of it. "The bedrooms," he says, consist of a row of brick cells far too low and badly ventilated for stables. These rooms are 12 feet by 10, are only 8 feet high in front, and are covered with corrugated iron. . . . In summer these terrible, single-brick, iron-roofed ovens are simply maddening. I have known the heat in them to exceed 160° at night, and their twelve or thirteen occupants were provided with only one tub for their joint use-a circumstance suggestive of every kind of discomfort. On the iron roof pigeons take morning walks, feeding on mealies, rattling, tearing, and scraping, cooing and fluttering, to the utter banishment of sleep."

Mr. Aylward does not seem to anticipate any very rapid increase of the white inhabitants or trade of the Transvaal, as long as no railway communication with Delagoa Bay, or indeed with any part of the coast, exists. The country is rough and wild, inhabited by a very primitive class of farmers, and offers scanty attractions to any but young and vigorous emigrants, prepared to face various discomforts. The author shows no inclination to conceal these. Indeed on the very outside of his book we find a lively and, at least in one instance, unexpected representation of the unpleasantnesses to which visitors to the interior may find themselves subject. Three out of four small medallions contain pictures of inconveniences for which the European mind is not altogether unprepared namely, a lion and a buffalo engaged in dispatching human victims, and a formidable-looking savage; but the contents of the fourth would hardly be anticipated by any one unacquainted with the Transvaal. It seems that Mr. Aylward's Boer friends share the opinions of one of Mrs. Gaskell's inimitable old ladies, who, being cross-questioned by her friends in a moment of confidence as to "what would frighten her more than anything," replies in a sounding whisper, "ghosts"-in the Boer language "spookes. The English traveller, if he can succeed in dealing with the wild beasts and the Kaffirs, will probably not object much to the ghosts; least of all to so pretty a "spooke" as appears on the scarlet cover of the book before us. And Mr. Aylward's account of the apparition, or spirit of the storm," is even more attractive. On a summer afternoon, in front of the thunder-shower advancing from the Drakenberg (the very name seems redolent of old Teutonic mythology), the solitary rider sees" a young, fair, ethereal, golden-haired female, whose robes of glittering white trail just over the highest points of the grass. . . coming floating towards him with outstretched arms." It is strange indeed to find a tradition surviving among these simple Low-Germans