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to his own country, the bulk of Beza's library. Charles of Zierotin excelled in his time among the younger scholars of Geneva; there he learnt to love Plato and Plutarch, to admire Beza as the greatest man of that age, to comprehend the worldwide significance of the struggle his own Hussite forefathers had begun. When he had finished his studies at Geneva, Zierotin visited the West. He saw England, where he became a bosom friend of Robert, Earl of Salisbury. A few years later he came all the way from his family castle to take part in one of Henry IV.'s campaigns. His after-career was devoted to the public service of his country, he became its leading statesman—Landeshauptmann of Moravia, he remained an important personage in the politics of Eastern Europe until the very eve of the Thirty Years' War.

How much the Netherlands owed to the political model and teaching of Geneva our readers will have learnt, or can easily learn, from Mr. Motley's present work and from his previous writings.

More practical, and so more profitable, than a study of Athens in her prime, of Rome in the palmiest days of the Republic, was, in full sixteenth century, the study of Geneva herself. Nowhere had there been in State and Church such disunion, in moral character and in mental sinew such decrepitude, as at Geneva, when, as one might well deem, God's hand and the voice of Farel arrested Calvin. And on the very Slough of Despond' Calvin had planted a good and substantial city. All Europe took courage. What Luther had done for the individual, Calvin had done for the State. After Calvin's work, there could no longer be any doubt about the stability, the vitality, of the political movement into which that work was linked; there could be no doubt that Christianity could exist without the Roman Papacy, and civilization without the Imperial system. A mass of political superstitions was exploded. And where were thews and muscles, where were military authority and rigour, where were religious zeal and discipline, where was rational and logical statesmanship to be found, if not among the Calvinists of the seventeenth century?

Every one, we suppose, is conscious of his proneness to think of periods of a hundred years, of centuries, as if these were something more than just conventional arrangements for chronological purposes, as if an integral change took place in universal human character at such an epoch as the year 1500 or 1600. We speak continually, say of the nineteenth century, as if there were some greater inherent distinction between the years 1799 and 1800 than between the years 1800 and 1801. However, it

is a subject for thankfulness that on such a matter a little mental carelessness is not very misleading. For it is evident enough that, roughly stated, in a hundred years, in the course of about three generations, the general fashion of things does alter, the origin of leading maxims falls out of record, necessary re-adjustments have to be made, points of departure have to be recovered. Political memory is bounded much as domestic memory. Tradition has no real and healthy life when it ceases to be oral, when it reaches backward beyond the tales of a grandfather. It loses its hold as an instinct, as a nature, when it is not bred at home and current from the nursery, when it begins to depend upon the training of the schools and calculations grounded on the maturer experiences of him who allows it to weigh with him. Tradition will not do instead of faith; unless, at least, it falls from the lips of one to whom it is faith, not tradition. So it is that, when a hundred years have passed since Charles, Leo, Henry, Francis trod the stage, the eye looks in vain for anything that resembles them. What strides diplomacy and national spirit have taken! It needs an effort to find predecessors for Gustavus Adolphus, Oxenstiern, Richelieu, Turenne, John Pym, Oliver Cromwell. Not that there is a breach in the history; yet how indepentlent is the century, how different the age, how new the field!

On the threshold of those other times we pause, our limits are reached, and the task we had set ourselves is as we are well aware, rather in the way of hint than of exposition-most imperfectly accomplished. And for the present we must part with Mr. Motley. He is a writer to whom the public is much indebted, and whom it will be always pleased to meet again. We can well understand Mr. Motley's eagerness at the turn to which his studies have brought him, and with his relish for heroic incident and example, to leave the narrow precincts of the Netherlands.'

In one of the most ancient and famous libraries in this country hang in a conspicuous position two paintings rich in historical, indeed in romantic, attractions. Of the first picture one would guess, had one no other index but the artist's labour, that the man presented in it had been of noble and interesting quality, apt to entertain high hopes and rash designs, though there has come a look into his face as of amazement at some suddenly unveiled prospect of power and renown; one would guess that he would be bold and dashing in onset, and that at the beginning of a fray others would readily appeal to him, but that he might be proved too pliable and irresolute as the cavalier, in command through desperate encounters, of a cause where

brain and heart should show as sure and firm as stroke of sword or seat in saddle. The other likeness, though not so well authenticated, suits even more admirably the individual it is reported to represent. A lady stands holding a lance; she wears a soldier's slouched hat covered with heavy yellow plumes which flap over her face and mix with her hair; a black and a red feather, half hidden in the background, join to make up the proud imperial colours of the head-dress; a closely-fitting string of pearls is round her neck, her black robe has sleeves of slashed yellow silk, and a yellow scarf is pinned with a jewel over the right shoulder. The male figure is that of the fugitive from the battle on the White Hill of Prague, the female that of his wife. Granddaughter of Mary, Queen of Scots, sister of Charles I., aunt of Charles II., her manner and physiognomy bear resemblance to each of these among her illustrious kindred, while they are eloquent besides of an originality and of adventures quite her own. It has by chance happened that the preceding pages were for the most part written in the shadow of these portraits. Thus we have been constantly reminded of the act which was to follow next in the drama of European history upon those we have been contemplating-of the conflict, some of the premonitory symptoms of which along the western borders of the Continent Mr. Motley, in the work before us, has ably and carefully described. Most cordially do we wish the historian of the Dutch Republic good speed to his narrative of the Thirty Years' War. His practised and still active hand will, we trust, give new life and spirit to the scenes in which the beautiful Elizabeth of Bohemia* assumes among princesses an engaging and uncommon attitude, and it will find its grasp and cunning strained to their utmost effort, as it disentangles destinies not less troubled, but of far deeper import and more lasting influence than those of Frederick, the Élector Palatine, King for a Winter' as Carlyle expands the metaphor-built of mere frost, a snow-king altogether soluble again.'

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* We have tried to give an idea of a presumed portrait of her. She connects, we need scarcely remind our readers, the houses of Stuart and Brunswick, James I.'s daughter, George I.'s grandmother. Her mental charms were celebrated by Sir Henry Wotton in the well-known lines, beginning,

You meaner beauties of the night.'

ART.

ART. VI.-1. Correspondence with Her Majesty's Missions abroad regarding Industrial Questions and Trades Unions. 1867.Reports from Her Majesty's Diplomatic and Consular Agents abroad respecting the Condition of the Industrial Classes. 1870. Further Reports, &c. 1871-72.

2. On the History and Development of Gilds, and the Origin of Trade-Unions. By Lujo Brentano, of Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Doctor Juris utriusque et Philosophia. London, 1870.

3. Zur Geschichte der Englischen Gewerkvereine.—Zur Kritik der Englischen Gewerkvereine. Von Lujo Brentano, &c. Leipzig, 1871-72.

4. Verhandlungen der Eisenacher Versammlung zur Besprechung der socialen Frage, am 6. und 7. October 1872. Leipzig, 1873. 5. Das Deutsche Handwerk und die sociale Frage. Von J. F. H. Dannenberg. Leipzig, 1872.

6. Die Lehren des heutigen Socialismus und Communismus. Von Heinrich von Sybel. Bonn, 1872.

7. Le Mouvement socialiste et les Réunions publiques avant la Révolution du 4 septembre 1870. Suivi de la Pacification des Rapports du Capital et du Travail. Par M. G. de Molinari, Rédacteur du Journal des Débats.' Paris, 1872. 8. L'Organisation du Travail, selon la Coutume des Ateliers et la Loi du Décalogue etc.-L'Organisation de la Famille selon le vrai Modèle signalé par l'Histoire de toutes les Races et de tous les Temps.-La Paix sociale etc. Réponse aux Questions qui se posent dans l'Occident depuis les désastres de 1871. Par M. F. Le Play, etc. Paris, 1870-71.

9. On Work and Wages. By Thomas Brassey, M.P. Third Edition. London, 1872.

10. Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes. By A Journeyman Engineer.-Our New Masters. By Thomas Wright [the Journeyman Engineer]. London, 1867-73.

11. The Lock-out of the Agricultural Labourers. (From our Special Reporter.) Times,' April-June, 1874.

WH

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WHETHER or no England maintains her old renown of teaching the nations how to live, she may, of late years, certainly claim to have taught the nations how to strike. Having bestowed on the world railways, the iron railway-horse, oceantelegraphy, and the penny-postage, she crowns all by diffusing the doctrine and discipline of Trades Unions. When the French operatives, sent to London by Prince Napoleon's International Exhibition Commission in 1862, came in communication with English work-people, they acquainted themselves, for the first time, says M. de Molinari,* with the principal organizations of

Le Mouvement socialiste,' p. 176.

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the Trades Unions, of which they had no previous notion, and immediately sought to use them for the realization of their Socialist scheme for arraying all the World's Labour against all the World's Capital.' Their efforts resulted in the formation of the since far-famed International Association, which held its first meetings in London in 1864. The main practical aim of that Association, as understood by the English Trades Unionists, with reference to the interests for which they were concerned, was to prevent the importation of foreign workpeople on the occurrence of strikes. In the minds of its French, Belgian, and German associates its more important ulterior object was to place the powerful lever of the English machinery of Trades Unionism in the hands of the leaders of the Socialist Propaganda all over the world.

'England,' says M. de Molinari, 'has, since 1848, imported a considerable stock from the Continent of missionaries of Socialism; for example, the leaders of French and German Socialism, Louis Blanc, Karl Marx, &c. How does it happen then that English workpeople, for the most part, have remained refractory to teachings which fanaticised their Continental brethren? This is to be ascribed doubtless to the practical good sense which forms, we may say, the predominant characteristic trait of the English mind, and which has rendered England the classic land of economic progress.'

While we have no objection to accept whatever compliments may be paid to the English character, we should be disposed, for our own part, to ascribe the scission which soon showed itself between the English Unionists and the foreign Propagandists of Internationalism to the longer experience which the former had enjoyed of industrial freedom. Since the repeal of our old Combination Laws a period has elapsed longer than that which is usually assigned to a generation of man. Since Trades Unions ceased to be secret and illegal, their leaders have had abundant opportunity of learning by experience the practical limits of what is attainable by their agency. But French and German labour has, we may say, lived in fetters till yesterday. The French law prohibitive of all operative combinations was not repealed till 1864, and even afterwards the meetings of work-people, like all other meetings, remained subject to the law which restricted their numbers to twenty, unless with official sanction. In the States now composing the German Empire, the laws prohibiting combinations were not finally repealed till 1869. Labour, therefore, had no opportunity, till those recent dates, of learning what we may call its practical politics. The wildest schemes of social subversion found easy access to the imagination of multitudes whose practical wants and interests had no legal representatives, and with whom the most visionary projects might find the readier audience,

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