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ciples, he acknowledged the Pretender' as king of the British empire on his father's death, passed a more effectual condemnation on the policy of Mazarin than on the Revolution of 1688. But there are many other symptoms that in the latter half of the seventeenth century the principles of divine hereditary succession had been enlarged and strengthened in the continental courts, and especially in the court of France. The expansion of the French power towards the establishment of the old empire, with the House of Bourbon at its head, seems to have appealed to the lawyers and the churchmen of the time to preserve that vast dominion which the opening of successions and prosperous warfare were steadily enlarging. Lest the existence of so magnificent a regal fabric should be endangered, let them prove that all such acts as the opposition to Charles the First, and the dismissal of his son by the revolution, were acts not only criminal as offences against man, but blasphemous as attempts to defeat the laws of God. Thus doctrines far subtler than the precepts of passive obedience preached by the Filmer school, were elaborated by their successors. Genealogy was found to be an exact science: given the relationship to the head of a house of any relation, collateral or descended, that relation's place in the order of succession was as surely fixed by an eternal law as any of the astronomical facts in the almanac calendars. It was long, however, ere the intellect reached this subtle analysis, and in fact the bloodiest wars of the middle ages-that of York and Lancaster among them-arose out of the unsettled question whether the succession fell to the nearest living relation, such as a second son, or to the offspring of the eldest. There was something assuring and complete in the establishment of unerring law, and it seemed as if the Deity had made that law unerring that no man might question or oppose it without guilt. The influence of the law came out emphatically in the treaties about the Spanish succession, when the divine-right lawyers proclaimed that, however it might be settled by treaty that the descendant of Louis XIV. who was sovereign of Spain should not also be sovereign of France, yet, whatever other dominions he might possess, he whom the unfailing law of hereditary succession pointed to as King of France was King by the eternal decree of God-and this is what the Count of Chambord and his Jesuit advisers now say, for all that has come to pass since the doctrine was promulgated in the days of the great Louis.

It would have been a great gain to historical literature had the clear light thrown by the author on the period of the Protectorate been extended down to the war of the Spanish suc

cession. For no period—at least for none equally eventful— have we more need of an expositor who has made himself familiar with the diplomatic relations and the political creeds of the great Continental States.

Here, finding ourselves virtually passing the boundaries of Von Ranke's great services to our history, and at the same time approaching the limits appropriate to the consideration of one book, however meritorious, it perhaps becomes us to pass from the tenor of the book, and briefly note its scope and limits. It is on the period from the Reformation to the settling down of the Revolution Government and the opening of the war of the Spanish succession, that the author has shown the historical strength that claims for his book a great place in literature. To give completeness to the task there is a summary sketch at the beginning, and another at the end, bringing the whole down to the accession of George III. For this latter part it has the merit of being a lucid sketch over a period so well known in the writings of others that the author might have done well to let it alone, unless he was prepared to reopen the accepted historical literature of the period, and systematically recast the results, as he has done for other portions of history. The initiative sketch is still less valuable, and tends, placed where it is, to prejudice the reader against the work, and disincline him to follow a path that holds forth so slight a promise of the rich fulness lying beyond. In this introductory sketch, indeed, there is that tone already referred to of completeness in accounting for every historical phenomenon by a policy or development, while we have not the assurance, so amply supplied in the dealings with the seventeenth century, that the author is master of all the details that go to make up the generalities. In fact, we know that on many points he is not master of them, for nobody is master of them; and however hard it may be to the acute and successful conqueror of a hundred difficulties, it is necessary to accept the alternative that they are to abide in the limbo of the unknown and unsolved. In these regions of doubt and difficulty lies the work of the archæologist-work that is hard to make interesting to any but those who pursue it. It is critical and expository, rather than narrative and descriptive; and since it is not fruitful in interesting events, an attempt is sometimes made to give interest to the investigation--to present us with the adventures of the hunter in encountering and solving difficulties, so that our sympathy may in some measure be invested in his fortunes-but any excitement so raised is generally of a languid kind. The bringing order out of the chaos.

as centuries pass, however, gives the archæologist, if he can pass into the lively historian, the opportunity of giving a certain picturesqueness to his story, as the detailed front of a picture is relieved by the hazy background. No one could have better accomplished such a happy combination than our author; but all men's capacities are limited, and we need hardly expect him now to undertake so great a task.

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Indeed, if he did so, it would only be a deepening of the reproach already cast upon our own historical literature by his triumph. Take the present book for all in all, it is the best history of England written by one man. If we should put together the various fragments of our history, composed by eminent authors, yet it is likely that Germany could still excel us-at least we would have difficulty in competing with the united result of Lappenberg, Pauli, Ranke, and Raumer. Lappenberg's Anglo-Saxons' has been long translated and is well known. Pauli carries on the narrative to the point where Ranke begins to show his full strength-the Reformation.* Still further to our shame, this book is still untranslated, and it might be for the consideration of the body of gentlemen who have so successfully made English readers familiar with the work in hand, whether they should go back and give us in full the history of the Plantagenets. In our having no better standard history than the Hume and Smollett' of our grandfathers there is no justification in scantiness of material. On the contrary, the abundance of chronicle and state-paper matter accessible-especially the accumulated flow that has recently been poured forth-seems to have frightened our native historians from any attempt to make a comprehensive use of the whole. The foreigner who has had so much experience in the history of other lands has faced the task more manfully, probably because his experience has taught him how to extract all that is emphatic and suggestive in confused masses of material. It would not increase our respect for his work to find him making astounding discoveries in unexpected quarters, or strewing his pages with recondite authorities. Much has been added to our raw material of history since he completed his work, but nothing to supersede any important portion of it. It is seldom that new discoveries supersede sagaciously written history, since there is an instinct that carries the authors of such works free of flagrant fallacies. Too much has recently been accepted from the documents found in

* Geschichte von England, von Reinhold Pauli, mit einem Vorworte, von J. M. Lappenberg. Hamburg, 1853, 3 vols.

foreign archives, professing to give the secrets hidden under the ostensible politics of England and Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When from such sources a story is divulged by a foreign resident, which we know to have been unknown to the keenest and best-informed home politicians of the time, the most appropriate reception we can give to it is in the ancient slang expression of a mare's nest.' What shall we say if it should be revealed some time hence, by rummagers in the archives of Timbuctoo or Zanzibar, that Cardinal Manning is employed by the Materialists and Comtists to bring Christianity into contempt, and that Mr. Newdegate is a Jesuit father who has done splendid services in the promotion of the inscrutable policy of his order?

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These remarks point to a source of deception to be watched and detected by the historical critic. It is not to be inferred that this is a taint common to the news sent home by strangers who have sojourned among us. On the contrary, the acute stranger-if free from the bias of the diplomatist who has an end to work out, or of the spy who has to enhance the importance and value of his revelations-is likely to see the significance of events and tendencies that are unnoticed by ourselves from the conformity of their external symptoms to the every-day life of the Constitution. When revelations from such a source cross Von Ranke's path, he apprehends at a glance their value, and puts them to good service. He was especially fortunate in discovering close at home-in the State archives of Berlin-one of the most valuable treasures of this kind that has been brought to light in recent times. It consists in a succession of letters sent by two brothers, Friedrich and Louis Bonnet, to the Court of Brandenburg from London. These letters cover a period of thirty years, and it is evident from the references made to them that they contain full information on some political events, neglected, or but imperfectly told, in our home sources of history. It is understood that the Trustees of the British Museum have entered on communications for obtaining a full copy of this valuable collection of papers; and we must hope that it will soon be available in London for purposes of historical research.

ART. IV.-Histoire de la Guerre Civile en Amérique. Par M. le Comte de PARIS, ancien Aide-de-Camp du Général MACCLELLAN. Tomes I. et II. Paris: 1874. Tomes III. et IV. 1875.

THESE volumes in more than one respect should satisfy any reader. In the first place they meet the want hitherto felt of such a skilful narrative of one of the greatest, and certainly the most complicated of modern wars, as should give a juster measure than yet has been attained of the weight of individual events, and trace more clearly their influence on the general course of the struggle. Advances, retreats, victories, defeats, succeeded each other confusedly during the contest on the different theatres of the war, each of which for the day seemed of chief interest. Preceding narratives had either diminished unduly the importance of some of these, by dwelling on those that were better known; or, describing them in detail, had failed to show their bearing on the struggle as a whole. Writers might have attempted this however with success, who would have altogether failed where the Comte de Paris has most perfectly succeeded. Hitherto no one on either side of the Atlantic has been found to view the character of this war in its larger historical aspect, as one impressed on it not merely by the incidents of the day, but by the slowly strengthened force of precedent. Much has been said of the divergence of the American soldiery from European rules, their want of discipline, their personal disregard when not under fire for those who led them, their general impatience of restraint. The peculiar features of the actions fought have been dwelt upon as though these could have been reproduced in any rough and wooded terrain by any militia that found themselves engaged there. Too often European critics have treated the subject, when deeming it worth examination, as a mere question of locality, or hasty training, or a superabundance of the raw material of war. The Comte de Paris approaches it in its military aspect with the true spirit of philosophic inquiry. He goes back, being the first to take this simple and necessary step, to the early history of the United States when they were struggling and separated colonies. At the risk of wounding French sentiment, he enters deeply into that long struggle for a continent between his nation and our own, a struggle which, far more than the petty wars that raged along the Spanish Main between fierce viceroys and savage buccaneers, decided the destinies of a new world. He shows how the endurance

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