of the American colonies during the first half | tories, and therefore inspires us with much of the eighteenth century, followed by a more confidence. His style is singularly easy rather fuller description of the social and and pleasant, almost too easy, for it runs on economical state of Scotland at its beginning, with so equable a flow that the reader's attenwith some incidental details on the Union. tion is not quite sufficiently arrested by the Then comes what is to, our mind the most more important facts and reflections. These original and valuable part of the work, a dis- reflections are generally just and suggestive. sertation on Irish history from the time of They show an acute and philosophical mind, Elizabeth, which fills 345 pages. After this which has mastered its materials, can light we return to general politics, and have an ac- them up, and draw instruction from them. count of the conduct of England in the Seven Mr. Lecky is perhaps less successful in his Years War, and of the character and policy studies of individual character than in his of the elder Pitt, and some of the other lead- discussions of the more general social and ing men of the time. Finally, the religious economical aspects of his subject. His pormovements of the time are dealt with; the traits are rather deficient in what may be Deists, Wesley and Whitefield, and the Evan- called incisiveness. He tells us a great deal gelical Revival. We do not complain of the about the leading personages, such as Walpole, topics which have been selected, for they are William Pitt the elder, John Wesley, &c., and the most important that could have been dealt gives us a capital selection of anecdotes, but with, but the arrangement is not happy; and we are not sure that he has caught the Danthere is but little cohesion between the vari- tean or Carlylesque art of dramatizing them ous parts of the book, each part of which for us as living people. What pleases us most might almost as well have been published sepa- of all, in his treatment both of men and of rately. Similarly, when we come to consider questions, is the moderation and fairness of the several chapters or essays by themselves, view, the openmindedness, and disposition they suffer from a want of skill or of pains in to do justice even to principles and characters their order and construction. None of them of which he disapproves, that shine through have been quite worked up out of the stage every page of his volumes. This is one of the of materials into that of a finished treatise. rarest and most precious of a historian's gifts, They look rather like a transcript of the and is, indeed, one which it needs no small author's extremely copious note-books, with self-control to retain. For it is, of course, his reflections interspersed, but with very lit- far easier to produce a literary effect by bold tle done to harmonize or digest them, and, so and highly-coloured pictures like those which to speak, to bring them to a point. In read- Macaulay's unequalled skill has made so poping, one does not seem to be making progress, ular, than by a calm and scrupulous weighing to be advancing from a number of particulars of the different sides of a controversy, or by towards any general proposition. One is not bringing out the brighter features of a charsensible of any logical distribution by the acter in the main wicked or repulsive. author of the details of which he has such a store under their appropriate headings. The consequent defect of the book is a certain want of fibre or grip, so to speak. It does not take so close a hold of the mind as, with its other merits, it ought. The reader rises from it without a clear vision of the main results which the author has wished to impress upon him, or of the dominant causes to which the phenomena so fully described are due. This is a defect which might, we think, be remedied, and it is for that reason that we point it out.ters, which might be called 'An Essay on the The good qualities of Mr. Lecky's book are so many that we cannot but wish to see him superadd to them what will so much increase their value and effectiveness. After this criticism, we have little but praise to bestow. Mr. Lecky has collected his materials with extraordinary diligence from all kinds of books, histories, memoirs, pamphlets, sermons, journals; and he has exercised what seems to be a judicious discretion in choosing the most valuable extracts from this mass. Here and there he is less critical than we could wish in his treatment of authorities, accepting statements which rest on doubtful evidence, and often quoting a second-hand writer for facts without going to the fountain head, or even telling us to what authority that second-hand writer refers. But in these respects this book shows a marked advance on Mr. Lecky's previous his This conspicuous merit of fairness has particularly struck us in the most original and perhaps the most interesting part of the book the elaborate sketch of Irish history from the time of Elizabeth, which fills one half of the second volume. It is the more laudable because Mr. Lecky is an Irishman writing about Ireland, and dealing with questions which nearly all his predecessors have obscured by a partisanship, generally fierce and often flagrantly dishonest. These two chap Causes of Irish Discontent,' ought to be carefully studied by all politicians, and indeed by every one who wishes to understand the reasons why Ireland still presents so many difficult problems. The dismal story of cruelty, injustice, and tyranny which they disclose may well make an Englishman blush, and check that self-complacent Pharisaism with which we are accustomed to regard the doings of other nations, let us say of France in Algeria or of Russia in Poland. The behaviour of the English in Ireland has, take it all in all, been infinitely worse than that of the Russians towards the Poles, and with even less justification; and though, to be sure, it lies two generations behind, why are we to expect other nations to mend their ways at the same pace as we do, or the race that has suffered so terribly to forget at once all the wrongs which have made her what she is? The wonder rather is, not that Ireland is still troublesome and discontented, but that she has reached even that moderate measure of prosperity and order which she now enjoys. One of the most valuable parts of these Irish chapters is that which deals with the famous rebellion of 1641. Mr. Lecky maintains that the great introductory massacre which has so long held its place in common histories as the salient feature of that rebellion, is, if not a complete fiction, at least a portentous exaggeration. He points out that the first accounts of the rising make no mention of it; that the murders of the English which took place in the course of the struggle were sporadic, and often perpetrated against the wish of the leaders; that the Scotch colonists of Ulster were not attacked at all till they had taken up arms against the natives; that the commonly accepted estimate of the whole number killed rests upon wholly untrustworthy evidence gathered some time after the events. He makes out so strong a case for this view, that in the interests of his torical truth and justice we heartily wish he would give us a concise systematic account of the insurrection, tracing its progress and incidents, instead of the somewhat scattered notices which the present book contains. He shows also, what most of us knew indeed, but had not fully realized, how ferocious as well as unjust the previous behaviour of the English to the natives had been, and more than once administers a severe castigation to Mr. Froude for the partial representations made in his English in Ireland.' And he brings out a point which has received but little notice from previous writers, the folly of the English Government in fettering Irish trade and industry in such a way as to depress not only the Roman Catholic but also the Protestant inhabitants of the island, and thereby to defeat what ought to have been its main object the establishment of a large prosperous and loyal Protestant population. The English were in fact led astray by having two dissimilar objects in view in their management of Ireland-the one to root out or at least to oppress and injure popery; the other to prevent Ireland from competing in any way with England; and in their pursuit of the latter they often forgot the means which the former required. Mr. Lecky shows very well how ruinous to England, not only in Ireland, but also in the colonies, and for a time in Scotland, were the narrow and sordid views of British interests' which then ruled our national policy. The lesson is not without its value in the present. We have no space to deal with the multitude of topics discussed by Mr. Lecky in the twelve hundred pages of his book. It is an enormous repertory of fact and anecdote, among which selection becomes difficult. As favourable specimens of his manner, we would refer our readers to the comparison of Pitt and Wesley (p. 517), and to the description of Whitefield (p. 507). In most respects Pitt and Wesley were, it is true, extremely unlike. The animating | principles of the latter are to be found in doctrines that are most distinctively Christian, and especially in that aspect of Christian teaching which is most fitted to humble men. Pitt was a man of pure morals, unchallenged orthodoxy, and of a certain lofty piety; but yet his character was essentially of the Roman type, in which patriotism and magnanimity and well-directed pride are the first of virtues; and the sentences of the Latin poets and the examples of the age of the Scipios, which in a letter to a bishop he once called the apostolic age of patriotism," pear to have left the deepest impression on his mind. But with all these differences, there was a real analogy and an intimate relation between the work of these two men. ap 'The religious and political notions prevailing in the early Hanoverian period were closely connected. The theological conception which looked upon religion as a kind of adjunct to the police force, which dwelt almost exclusively on the prudence of embracing it, and on the advantages it could confer, and which regarded all spirituality and all strong emotions as fanaticism, corresponded very faithfully to that political system under which corruption was regarded as the natural instrument, and the maintenance of material interests as the supreme end of government, while the higher motives of political action were systematically ridiculed and discouraged. By John Wesley in the sphere of religion, by Pitt in the sphere of politics, the tone of thought and feeling was changed; and this is perhaps the aspect of the career of Pitt which possesses the most abiding interest and importance. The standard of political honour was perceptibly raised. It was felt that enthusiasm, disinterestedness, and self-sacrifice had their place in politics, and although there was afterwards for short periods extreme corruption, public [opinion never acquiesced in it again' (pp. 517, 518). Few parts of Mr. Lecky's work exhibit his wide range of sympathy and his discrimination in a more favourable light than his concluding chapter on Methodism and the Evangelical Revival, from which we take the following extract, describing the character of George Whitefield. Unlike Wesley, whose strongest enthusiasm was always curbed by a powerful will, and who manifested at all times and on all subjects an even exaggerated passion for reasoning, Whitefield was chiefly a creature of impulse and emotion. He had very little logical skill, no depth or range of knowledge, not much self-restraint, nothing of the commanding and organizing talent, and, it must be added, nothing of the arrogant and imperious spirit so conspicuous in his colleague. At the same time, a more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly amiable, a more purely unselfish man, it would be difficult to conceive. He lived perpetually in the sight of eternity, and a desire to save souls was the single passion of his life. Of his labours it is sufficient to say that it has been estimated that in the thirty-four years of his active career he preached 18,000 times, or on an average ten | hearts on either shore must assuredly desire.' times a week; that these sermons were uttered with the utmost vehemence of voice and gesture, often in the open air, and to congregations of many thousands; and that he continued his exertions to the last, when his constitution was hopelessly shattered by disease. During long periods he preached forty hours, and sometimes as much as sixty hours a week. . . . His eloquence had nothing of that chaste and polished beauty which was displayed in the discourses of the great French preachers, and which in the present century led so many men of the most fastidious taste to hang spell-bound around the pul- | pit of Robert Hall. It had none of that force of reasoning, that originality of thought, or that splendour of language, which constituted the great charm of the sermons of Chalmers. Yet, while exercising a power which has probably never been equalled over the most ignorant and the most vicious, Whitefield was capable of fascinating the most refined audiences in London' (pp. 567, 568). We cordially hope that the work may have done something in this direction. Of course, persons with strong views upon Irish subjects will readily discover things in these volumes with which they thoroughly agree, or from which they as thoroughly dissent; but all will recognize a very general absence of bitterness and prejudice on the part of the writer. Mr. Sullivan has his strong convictions also -what Irishman is without them?—indeed, he says upon this point, I have borne an active part in some of the stormiest scenes of Irish public life for at least a quarter of a century, and I wish to hold my place as a man of decided views and strong convictions.' Prepared by this frank statement, the reader will come to this work with the expectation of enjoying it, and he will not be disappointed. Mr. Sullivan ably traces the course of those remarkable transformations which have taken place in Ireland during the past forty years, and which amply justify the author in describing the country of to-day as New Ireland,' compared with the Ireland which existed before the Irish famine. In no respect have direction of national education. Upon this subject Mr. Sullivan writes: The average standard of proficiency attained, especially in rural districts, is even still very low, owing to the short and broken periods for which children are allowed to attend school, rather than help to earn for home by work in the fields. But slight as the actual achievement may be in a strictly educational point of view, socially and politically considered, nothing short of a revolution has been effected. There is scarcely now a farmhouse or a workThere is a good deal of inequality in Mr. | ing man's home in all the land in which the Lecky's book. While in Ireland, for instance, boy or girl of fifteen, or the young man or he is quite at home, his treatment of Scotch woman of twenty-five, cannot read the newsaffairs is comparatively vague and unsatisfac-paper for "the old people," and transact tory. Evidently he does not know modern Scotland, but has trusted to his old authorities, and is their servant instead of their master. And similarly we do not feel, while he is dealing with continental wars and alliances, that he is thoroughly master of the general European history of the time. He is at his best in the moral, literary, and social field, and that best is very good. A book more sure to interest readers of almost every class we have seldom met with, nor one pervaded by a higher and juster tone of feeling. He points out very ingeniously how important the influence of the Evangelical movement was in checking the diffusion of revolu-greater changes been recorded than in the tionary doctrines at the close of the eighteenth century; and also how much it must have contributed to mitigate the evils inseparable from the sudden growth of a large and rude population in the great manufacturing counties. Had the teaching of Rousseau, for instance, fallen on the English working class in the coal districts, notwithstanding counter religious influence to check it, the state of England during the revolutionary war might have been very different from what it actually was. New Ireland. We their correspondence. Our amusing friend the parish letter-writer has almost disappeared. His occupation is gone.' Now with this acknowledged progress in the matter of education-a progress equalled in some other social respects-the question will arise in the minds of many, Why should not Mr. Sullivan and his friends go on in the path of improvement, bringing social, domestic, and political matters to the same degree of perfection, instead of agitating for Home Rule? The question is one somewhat difficult to answer. are sorry that Mr. Sullivan, who is a man of By A. M. SULLIVAN, M.P. great talents and eloquence, should have Two Vols. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. thrown in his lot with those who are actively The member for Louth, in a prefatory ex- seeking to subvert the settlement effected by planation touching the raison d'être for these the Act of Union. We are bound also to say volumes, says he has not endeavoured to that, much as we have enjoyed his volumes, write the formal history of Ireland for the we find in them no additional arguments in past half century, so much as to supply, favour of Home Rule; rather the reverse. chiefly from personal observation, a series of The progress which the writer is able to trace sketches or narratives which may, perhaps, in the Irish people of recent years may surely assist in the readier or more correct apprecia- be taken as the best argument that there is tion of valuable results. His object, in fact, nothing in the Act of Union inimical to the has been to promote that better understand-true interests and future welfare of Ireland. ing and kindlier feeling between the New We are not going to say that Ireland is withEngland and the New Ireland which patriotic out grievances; she has many still, though she once had more. But we do ask whether | dowment, had the Establishment been less aggressive. I am personally aware that in parishes where the Protestant rector had a bond fide congregation of his own, and confined his ministrations to them-that is to say, where he neither carried on nor encouraged proselytizing raids on the other communion-he was frequently popular in the most cordial sense, and never in such a case awakened a feeling of jealousy, dislike, or unfriendliness in the breasts of the Catholic masses around them.' It is undoubtedly the fact that the attitude of many of the members of the Irish Church precipitated the legislation undertaken by Mr. Gladstone. they are not capable of being dealt with and removed, if approached in the same spirit in which Mr. Gladstone legislated upon the Irish Church and Irish Land questions. Mr. Sullivan's sketches of O'Connell and of the Repeal agitation are most interesting. The same may be said of his account of the great Ribbon conspiracy,' which agitated Ireland for fifty years, and defied suppression. It took many shapes and characters, and although its existence was a fact as patent as that Queen Victoria occupies the throne, it baffled the most secret investigations. It now belongs almost entirely to the past. 'Ribbonism has been killed off-has found existence impossible-according as a healthier public opinion has grown amongst the masses. Here, again, the school and the newspaper have proved powerful agencies of moral and political regeneration. This curse of Ireland is doomed to disappear before the onward march of intelligence and patriotism.' In recording the history of Ribbonism, however, with all its terrible crimes, does not Mr. Sullivan furnish another proof that Ireland during its sway was scarcely in a fit condition for self-government? In a chapter devoted to Father Mathew, the writer does full justice to the noble character of the man, and to the movement initiated by him. To the latter is owing that public opinion in favour of temperance effort, that parliamentary vote in favour of temperance legislation, which Ireland has so notably and so steadily exhibited.' In a graphic description of the year 1847-that terrible year of famine Mr. Sullivan observes that fondly as the Catholic Irish revere the memory of their own priests who suffered and died for them in that fearful time, they give a place in their prayers to the good Quakers, God bless them !-Jonathan Pim, Richard Allen, Richard Webb, and (the Right Hon.) W. E. Forster.' There were many English families at that period who deprived themselves of almost every comfort to assist their starving Irish brethren. Yet even the famine has not been without a beneficial effect upon Ireland. 'Providence, forethought, economy, are studied and valued as they never were before. There is more method, strictness, and punctuality in business transactions. There is a greater sense of responsibility on all hands. For the first time, the future seems to be earnestly thought of, and its possible vicissitudes kept in view. More steadiness of purpose, more firmness and determination of character, mark the Irish peasantry of the new era. God has willed that in the midst of such awful sufferings some share of blessings should fall on the sorely shattered nation.' Amongst other subjects here treated upon in a manner to fix the attention of the reader, are the Young Ireland party, the Sadleir episode, and the Phoenix and Fenian conspiracies. Upon the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, Mr. Sullivan observes: One may speculate whether the Irish Catholics would have greatly concerned themselves about either disestablishment or disen | This work is of great value, in that it shows us to a very large extent what Irishmen-or the most thoughtful of them-think of themselves. We have no lack of English ideas upon Ireland, nor of theories for her regeneration. What we need is more of the opinion of those who know her well-of her own sons, in short. Mr. Sullivan concludes by saying that no happier circumstance has cheered the outlook of Irish politics in our country than the daily increasing exchange of sympathies, and the more loudly avowed sentiments of reconciliation and friendship between the people of Ireland and of Great Britain.' This is a happy augury for the future, and we can but trust that the bonds of concord between the two peoples may be drawn still more closely together. In taking leave of Mr. Sullivan's work, we would desire to bear tribute to its candour, its honesty, and its marked literary ability. History of the War of Frederick I. against the 6 This work commemorates a momentous struggle, whose influence and effects were felt for many generations after its termination. We find here, in short, an account of the rise of Italian liberty, and Signor Testa does not misread Englishmen in believing that this movement is one which they cannot but regard with deep interest. The work was written many years ago, and inscribed to Mr. Gladstone, in order,' as the author said at that time, to have an opportunity of expressing to you the high opinion which I formed of the goodness and greatness of your soul, when, with that grave moderation which adds grace and authority to truth, you undertook to make known to all the good in Christendom with how great injustice so many Italians are kept shut up in the wretchedness of the Neapolitan prisons; men to whose charge no offence can be laid, excepting that, by reason of the unhappy condition of the times, they have failed in their attempt to recover for their country that liberty which in the Middle Ages appeared with such glory in Italy as the dawn of the present civilization of Europe.' Since these words were written great events have happened, and the people of Italy again breathe that absolute and perfect liberty which tracing the progress of civilization amongst the inhabitants of the cities, and the movement towards liberty. In the second part he glances at the heroic times in Lombardy, and at the character of the people, as sketched in the pages of Dante and elsewhere; and he also discusses Italian architecture, public worship and parochial institutions, the language, and poetry. It was not until the Lombards had secured ease and opulence, and had also banished the fear of foreign invasion, that that moral declension began which followed the Peace of Constance. Signor Testa well shows how intestine strife and other causes led to the dissolution of the power which had been acquired by hard-fought stages. Patriotism being stifled in enmity and suspicion, the Lombards became weak by losing faith in each other's virtue. The conflict with the Communes began in 1152, upon the death of Conrad III. and the accession of Frederick I. Two years later the latter Emperor made his descent into Italy. From that time forward until the year 1176 the history of the great Italian cities is one of strife and bloodshed. During this period the Emperor led against them no fewer than seven armies. At length the battle of Legnano, in which Frederick was disastrously defeated, and the Communes were victorious, compelled the Emperor to sue for peace. We must leave our readers to trace in the pages of Signor Testa the history of the wars which led to this happy event. They will find his narrative lucid, ably written, and full of interest. The Ottoman Power in Europe: its Nature, Growth, and Decline. By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D., Knight Commander of the Greek Order of the Saviour, &c., &c. With three Coloured Maps. Macmillan and Co. they were the first amongst continental peoples to exhibit in all its fulness. Italy is now a great, a free, and a united people. Signor Testa prefixes a preliminary discourse to his actual history of the war, which will be of the greatest value to those who desire first to become acquainted with the nature, extent, and powers of the Lombardy Communes. He goes back to the ancient histories of the cities of Venice, of Lombardy, and of the March of Treviso, for the purpose of trac- | ing the origin and progress of their liberty and power; he shows how they were the first to reconstitute themselves under free governments; and how amongst the wars they sustained they signalized themselves in none so much as in that against Frederick I. in Lombardy. Now there are few historical records possessing either the interest or importance of those connected with the rise and development of the great Italian states; and it is but justice to the author to admit that in great measure he rises to the dignity of his theme. His main treatise, of course, consists in a narration of the deeds which were done by the Italian republics in defence of their privileges against the Emperor Frederick I. down to the Peace of Constance; but the preliminary discourse is thorough and elaborate, and evinces careful and minute research. From the beginning of the twelfth century many cities in Lombardy possessed a republican form of government, yet they had not rejected the sovereignty of the Emperor, but only the authority of his officials, whom he sent to them with the title, for the most part, of counts. They desired to be governed by magistrates chosen by themselves. But such changes took place amongst them gradually, and in different degrees in different cities; they were not introduced with the distinct and general consent of the emperors, neither after they had made their appearance in the cities did they everywhere receive Though this volume was published under their sanction.' In fact, there is no doubt circumstances which gave it something of the that these changes would have been vigorously aspect of a book written for a temporary ocopposed by the emperors, had not the latter casion, it is as likely as any of Mr. Freeman's had their hands full with the faction wars in former writings to claim a permanent place in Germany and their constant differences with literature, so that our somewhat belated nothe Popes. The innovations began with the tice of it needs no excuse. Mr. Freeman Italian people in a small way, but when they himself says in his preface that he wishes it discovered that these changes were not op- to be regarded as a supplement to his 'Lecposed by the paramount rulers-owing to a tures on the History and Conquests of the variety of causes-the people became bolder, Saracens,' and thus distinctly claims for it a expelled the urban counts who ruled them in place amongst his most thoroughly considered the Emperor's name, and suppressed the rural works. Though it must be admitted that counts who had usurped power and influence. | here and there an echo of the noisy voices of By these means they gradually became con- political controversy steals in, the evidence of solidated, and, as Signor Testa remarks, careful and extensive research and the When they saw themselves grown wealthy weighty arguments drawn from historical and powerful, they thought that they had facts suffice to lift it into the category of thus obtained a right to maintain the form of authoritative historical works. Very caregovernment under which they had prospered fully has Mr. Freeman traced out the course so much; whereas the emperors, although they of rapine and bloodshed by which the Turks sometimes felt compelled to recognize it, and made themselves masters of one of the fairest to grant the cities ample privileges, always, portions of Europe. But what will perhaps whenever they had leisure and opportunity, have had most effect upon the mass of readers endeavoured everywhere to abolish it, and to of the book, is the clear and striking manner bring them all back again into their former in which he has presented the reasons why subjection.' In the first part of his prelimi- the Turks must of necessity be persecuting, nary discourse, the author devotes himself to and the cause of constant disorder so long as |