and the might of man, that silent awe of the mysteries of life and death which lay deep in English souls then as now, passed with Englishmen to the land which Englishmen had won." And he elsewhere points out that there also was the origin of the English "home" and family bond; there were to be discerned the forms of English justice and of equality before the law, of English society, and of personal freedom; and that when the English freeman settled in conquered Britain, it was England which settled down on English soil-England, with its own language, its own laws, its own complete social fabric, its system of village its principle of kinship, its principle of justice, its principle of representation, and its right freely to choose its own rulers. It is the growth and movement, sometimes silent, and sometimes loud enough for all the world to hear, of the English people from this humble root to their present pitch of national greatness, that Mr. Green delineates the progress of their moral sense, the unfolding of their intellectual powers, the processes of their edneational and religious enlightenment; their impulses of association, which banded them together for the establishment and security of their social and political institutions; the movement of their trades and industries, from their first faint beginnings; the welding to impossible for these thoughtful and acute writers entirely to overlook the great body of men who constitute the people while writing of the land to which they belonged; and they do undoubtedly afford us glimpses of them and of their relationship to each other and the state. But these glimpses are seldom minute, and bear but a small proportion to the numbers and importance of the people. In one respect the course pursued by these older historians is not unphilosophic; for if it be true that no man is greater or better than his age, it is so because great men-and likewise great events-truly reflect the spirit of the time. It is, therefore, by a close inspection of some rep-life and culture, its township and its hundred, resentative actors who rise a head and shoulders above their fellows, or of some momentous events which are more imposing in their influence than others, that we can see as if in a compact and concrete form the inner heart and soul-the very form and pressure-of the times in which they lived and moved. Still, this method gives us merely a shadow of the times as applied to a whole people, and fails to make us familiar with the millions who really constitute the nation and give it a place in the world and in history. It is more emphatically to these, the people of England, that Mr. Green brings us intimately face to face, while not neglecting to fix attention upon individuals who have been conspicuous in the popular movement and development, nor omit-gether of their laws and privileges, their rights ting to chronicle the events which marked the stages of the people's struggles and advance. Early in his history he strikes the key-note which dominates throughout, when he says, speaking of the Angles or Engles of Sleswick -a folk who in the fifth century resided on the Baltic peninsula, and who, with the kindred Saxons and Jutes, shared in the conquest of Britain, and formed the union out of which the English people have sprung-that their township, village, and home life was the primary and perfect type of all English life, domestic, social, and political; that all that England has been since lay there in the bud; that there the sovereignty of the community was established, the rights of its humblest members were ascertained and protected, and its government was regulated by law; and there that those public discussions had their rise which have since developed into parliaments, and that the weight of public opinion was first substantially recognized. "Distant and dim," says Mr. Green, "as their life in that older England may have seemed to us, the whole after-life of England was there. In its village moots lay our Parliament; in the gleeman of its village forests, our Chaucer and Shakspeare; in the private bark stealing from creek to creek, our Drakes and Nelsons. Even the national temper was fully formed. Civilization, letters, science, religion itself, have done little to change the inner mood of Englishmen. The love of venture and of toil, of the sea and the fight, that trust in manhood and duties; their advance in personal prosperity, personal importance, and personal independence, with the result of internal unity and national strength. Mr. Green has judiciously grouped the events in the life of this people and nation around some central historical facts, under distinctive heads, as, for instance, Early England (A.D. 449 to 1071); England under Foreign Kings (A.D. 1071 to 1214); The Charter (A.D. 1214 to 1291); The Parliament (A.D. 1307 to 1461); The Monarchy and the Reformation (A.D. 1461 to 1603); and Puritan England (A.D. 1603 to 1683). To each of these he assigns a separate book, in which, while copiously illustrating the central fact, he details the general course of events, pari passu, in an exceedingly clear and minute narrative, invariably marked by dignity and candor, and often enriched with temperate eloquence-no important phase of English life and movement, whether it relate to the social, industrial, political, religions, or intellectual life of Englishmen, their military and naval affairs, their domestic and foreign relations, or their jurisprudence and political constitutions, escaping his deliberate and dispassionate scrutiny, but all being presented in colors that are impressive by their transparent clearness and purity. Mr. Motley's History of the United Netherlands is another exciting act in the great drama of History of the United Netherlands. From the Death JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. In 4 Vols., 8vo. With Portraits. of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce. By New York: Harper and Brothers. the Eighty Years' War for civil and religious ous quarter of a century covered by this sec ond installment of Mr. Motley's Dutch history. The work is diversified with close interior views of affairs in England and on the Continent, with life-like pictures of the leaders and heads of the jarring triangular parties in France, and with minute sketches of the exciting civil and military events that occurred in Holland, as also of the palace politics, court intrigues, and diplomatic methods and usages of that busy age. In an introduction prefixed by the author of Ecce Homo to a memoir of the Life and Adventures of Ernst Moritz Arndt, the lyrical poet of the unity of Germany, he places a high valuation upon the memoir for the historical light which it throws upon the Napoleonic age, especially by the opportunity which it gives the reader to see how that age appeared to one who was a minor but spirited actor in its drama, who personally knew many of the chief movers in it, and who was a close spectator of great events, and mixed in and formed a part of the crowd which met to discuss them and their bearings. So completely, Professor Seeley thinks, does Arndt reflect the average German heart and mind of his day, and represent the formation of opinion and crystallization of political character among the middle and inferior classes of the peoples who have been since welded into the German Empire, as relates to the period from the reconstruction of Prussia after the peace of Tilsit until the downfall of Napoleon, that he frank liberty, of which his Rise of the Dutch Republic was the first, and it carries us forward from the death of William the Silent, through twenty-four eventful years, to the "Twelve Years' Truce," in 1609, when the new Dutch commonwealth had become thoroughly organized, and had assumed a place among the family of nations. Many of those who had been foremost actors on the stage in the earlier scenes disappear in this act, and their places are filled by new men. William had perished at the door of his own dining-hall by the hand of a paid assassin; Egmont and Horn had suffered on the scaffold; Alva, and Margaret of Parma, and Granvelle, and Viglius, and Peter Titelmann, had vanished. And in their places, on one side and the other, we have Aldegonde, Hohenlo, Prince Maurice, and Barneveld; Mendoza, Richebourg, Mondragon, and Alexander of Parma; Drake and Leicester, Walsingham and Davison, Henry of Guise and Catherine de Medicis, Henry of Navarre and Elizabeth of England, and numbers more who were only less conspicuous. Of all who were the chief actors at the opening of the drama, one only remains upon the stage until nearly the close of the act that passes before us in Mr. Motley's historical panorama, namely, the loathsome spider of the Escorial, who continues as busy as ever in his seclusion, spinning a net-work of lies and perfidy, hatching murders of men and of states and peoples, and gloating himself with atrocities upon all who had the manhood to assert their civil and religiously confesses that the memoir of the poet's life rights, or to resist his claim to universal dominion. The theme of the drama is the conspiracy of this monster and the papacy combined against human rights-the rights not only of the people of the Netherlands, but of the France and England of that day, and of all men who have lived since then who cherish civil and religious liberty; and its incidents are the battles waged by him on the soil of the Netherlands for the destruction of these rights and liberties. The recital involves the secret details of this plot to crush religious and political freedom, and of the open and concealed counterplotting in England, France, and the Netherlands, and a rehearsal of the heroic actions, the wise counsels, the persistent sacrifices, and the self-helping energy by which two free nations were enabled to baffle the gigantic conspiracy. Mr. Motley aptly says of this deep-laid plot that it deserves to be patiently examined, "for it is one of the great lessons of history," and, further, that the crisis to which it gave rise "was long and doubtful, and the health, perhaps the existence, of England and of Holland, and with them of a great part of Christendom, was on the issue." It is not extravagant to say that there has been no epoch of modern history, not even excepting that of the Reformation, more crowded with absorbing and permanent interests affecting the race and the individual than the moment might as appropriately as his own Life and Times of Stein bear for a second title the caption Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age. This is no unmeaning compliment. In all that relates to the unconscious and almost imperceptible evolution of popular opinion among the men of the German race, till the idea of German unity and nationality became an all-pervading and intensely vivifying principle which dwarfed all other sentiments and interests, the life of Arndt is a better reflection of the spirit of the people and of the times than Professor Seeley's more ambitious and exceedingly able performance. It takes us nearer to the hearts of the common people, and more clearly reveals the influences that moulded their opinions, and created a public sentiment that at length became irresistible. Valuable, however, as the life of Arndt undoubtedly is for the historical knowledge that may be derived from it, it will be chiefly prized by the great majority of readers for its exquisitely artless, modest, unaffected, and transparently open and candid narrative of the personal fortunes of a man who was a child of the peoplethe son of a freedman-whose nature was remarkably fresh and buoyant, whose experiences 4 The Life and Adventures of Ernst Moritz Arndt, the German. With a Preface by JOHN ROBERT SEELEY, M.A. Singer of the German Father-Land. Compiled from the 12mo, pp. 450. Boston: Roberts Brothers. with occasional digressions into other fields of poesy, the author follows its course in English literature, illustrating his pleasant discourse with many examples from the works of the great masters of the art. The plan of the book permits the author to indulge in an easy, familiar, conversational style, which engages the attention and keeps the imagination alert. Unconsciously the reader puts himself in the questioner's place, and awaits the professor's answers with curiosity and interest. The work is one of great research and value in the branch of English literature to which it is devoted. As a critical but thoroughly popular history of the sonnet it is unsurpassed, while, in addition to its special purpose, it contains many felicitous criticisms on other forms of poetry, and displays an extensive familiarity with general literature. The book is one to be enjoyed by every reader endowed with poetic feeling. It is one which may be taken into shaded fields for a summer holiday, or kept to enliven the hours of winter evenings at home. were deliciously varied, and whose character remained as sweet and healthful at ninety as it was in early boyhood. The larger part of the volume is abridged from Arndt's own autobiography, and the remainder is made up of quotations from his letters and other writings. What is told by Arndt himself sparkles with artless grace, and its frankness and naïveté are charming. His pictures of his early rural and sylvan life, of his sterling parents and grand old uncles, of his social and domestic surroundings, of his youthful trials and perplexities, of his education, and of the gradual growth of his literary instincts, are as attractive as any in Goldsmith's inimitable letters descriptive of his early years. There is in all these pictures a tenderness, a simple piety, a modesty, and a strength of filial affection such as we seldom find in biographies. As we read we fail to perceive when Arndt ceases to be young; and if the idea of increasing years is suggested, it is not by any diminution of his perennial gay- | ety and child-like cheerfulness, but by the dropping out by the way of the friends of his youth, and the intrusion of new actors and When he was in his nineteenth year Mr. more imposing affairs upon the scene. That Tennyson published two parts of a poem, of Arndt suffered keenly in later years from do- which he had written three parts, styled The mestic affliction and from political ostracism Lover's Tale; but feeling its imperfections, is plain enough; but he was not a man to dis- he subsequently withdrew it from the press. play his wounds or solicit pity. In addition One of his friends, however, he tells us, "boyto the engaging and life-like pictures of him- like, admired the boy's work," and distributed self and his more immediate friends which we copies of it among their associates, without the find in his biography, it introduces us more or corrections, omissions, and amendments that less familiarly to numerous personages, all of the author contemplated. Of late years the whom are historical, and many of them illus- poem has been "mercilessly pirated," and seeing trious, among others to the Emperor Alexan- that what he "had deemed scarce worthy to der, to Stein and Goethe and Niebuhr, to Blu- live is not allowed to die," Mr. Tennyson now cher and Scharnhorst, to Schlegel, Madame De publishes an authorized edition of it, accomStaël, and Kotzebue, to Romanzoff, Rostop-panied by a reprint of the sequel, which was chin, and Talleyrand, and many more. The the work of his later years. Although this volume also embodies an interesting account of Arndt's literary productions, in the course of which some of his inspiriting battle and national lyrics, and of his famous war pamphlets and appeals, are reproduced in spirited translations. In the guise of familiar conversations, in which the dramatis personæ are a genial pro-recognition; nor is it free from those crudities fessor and an inquiring friend, enjoying their summer vacation in the country, Mr. Deshlers gives an interesting history of the English sonnet from the time when it was transplanted from Italy down to the present day. An enthusiast on the subject, as well as an acute critic, the author writes-it might be more in keeping to say talks-with an esprit that can not fail to awaken equal ardor in other minds, and imbue them with his own appreciation of the "diamond of literature," to adopt his own felicitous definition of the sonnet in its perfection. The volume opens with a brief but clear résumé of what is known respecting the origin of this form of poetic composition, and of its first appearance in England, after which, Afternoons with the Poets. By CHARLES D. DESILER. New York: Harper and Brothers. early poem is interesting chiefly as a literary curiosity, there is nothing in its structure or matter of which the veteran poet need be ashamed. It is true that it is not superior to many other youthful productions of writers whose poetical genius afterward won general of thought and expression which are natural to immature but gifted minds. But every where in it there are intimations of the fine grace and fancy, and instances of the felicities of style and diction, which characterize the more reserved and more severely polished later work of the laureate; and it requires no microscopic scrutiny to detect in this early bud the germs of the excellences that we find in the ripe fruit. Forms of expression, phrases, collocations, images, and turns of thought constantly present themselves which have the distinctive Tennysonian ring; and as constantly we recognize the same ideals, The Lover's Tale. By ALFRED TENNYSON. "Harper's Half-hour Series." 32mo, pp. 57. New York: Harper and Brothers. The Same. 16mo, pp. 32. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Co. the same rich and leisurely amplitude of adornment and illustration, the same graceful imagery, the same intellectuality, the same absence of virile strength and passionate force, that we observe in his maturer poems. It also has interest as revealing the poetical school in which the youthful aspirant was training his powers, and from which he drew inspiration. his best novels-Mr. Trollope considers it "so much the best that there is no second to it”— Thackeray himself did not so consider it, for while acknowledging that he had intended it to be his best, he pronounced it a failure. An author's judgment of his own works, however, is scarcely more authoritative than a mother's opinion of her children; and we imagine few The resemblance of large por-will be found, even among those who rank Estions of it to Shakspeare's early poems-more mond below Vanity Fair or Pendennis, who will especially to the sonnets-is even more re- concede that it is in any sense a failure. For markable than the correspondences that we ourselves, while recognizing its inferiority as discern between it and its author's riper off- a work of high art to some other of his masspring. Though the poem has numerous and terpieces, and especially while missing from it not inconsiderable beauties, it will not excite the fine touches of raillery and satire, and the enthusiastic admiration, or make a deep or masterly dissections of character and motive, lasting impression. which distinguish them, we yet find a charm in Roman Days' is the fruit of a visit to Rome the geniality, sweetness, and naïveté of Esmond by the accomplished Swedish scholar, critic, that we discover in none of the others, except and poet Viktor Rydberg during 1873 and 1874. on occasion in the Newcomes. Its perusal leaves In it, under four heads-The Roman Emperors the mind free from that sense of the bitter, in Marble, Antique Statues, Roman Traditions the mocking, the hard and disagreeable, which of Peter and Paul, and Pencil Sketches-he is inseparable from a perusal of the others. groups an exceedingly interesting series of Esmond himself is an exquisite character, even historical and artistic studies and a number though he be, as Thackeray was wont to say, a of picturesque sketches. His studies on the good deal of a prig. Surely, however, there emperors include Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Ti- | never was a more delightful prig; and in his berius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero; and in case, as in that of another fine specimen of the these, and also in his studies on the antique | kind-old Pepys-it is to this characteristic statues of the Aphrodite of Milos and of Anti- foible we are indebted for a recital whose minous, his biographer has well said that Ryd-nuteness of detail and fascinating garrulity berg" places us face to face with ancient Rome, have few rivals in our literature. But Esmond throwing the light of new views on some of was more than a prig. He is besides, as Mr. the most debated characters among its rulers." Trollope justly says, "a gentleman from the In the traditions of Peter and Paul he care- crown of his head to the sole of his foot"fully reproduces the legends linked with the brave, polished, gifted with old-fashioned courtlife and death of these great Apostles as he esy, true as steel, loyal as faith, and with a found them current among the people of Rome, power of self-abnegation that surprises us and he clothes them in a dress midway be- without seeming forced or unnatural. As we tween the historical style and the simple at- read his story-told autobiographically in the tire of popular imagination. These reproduc- phraseology of the time of Queen Anne and tions, which are legendary treasures of great the first Georges, with a fidelity to the dialect beauty, have the following captions: Paul in and general style that is almost literal--we Naples; Paul in Rome; the Ascension of Simon are drawn to him as if he were a man of real the Sorcerer; Prisca and Prudentia; Nero and flesh and blood, and not an ideal creation. his Love; Lord, Whither Goest Thou? and the Aside from the sympathy we feel for the hero, Death of the Apostles. The Pencil Sketches and the interest with which we listen to his consist of five lively pictures depicting the story of love and intrigue, of foibles and virphysiognomy of Rome under several aspects. tues, of incident and adventure, his narrative The book is remarkable for the breadth and is a more faithful representation of the real subtlety of its criticisms, for its poetic ideal-life and events of the period in some of its asism, and for the acuteness and vigor of its historical deductions and discriminations. The letterpress is supplemented by five illustratory. tions of the statues of the emperors, of Antinous and Agrippina, and of the Venus of Milo, that of the latter being a photograph from the most precious pearl of the collection of marble antiques in the Louvre. pects, and gives us a truer and more graphic picture of them, than can be found in any his In his recent novels Mr. Anthony Trollope seems to have abandoned the special field so long and assiduously cultivated by him, in which curates and rural deans, bishops and Dukes of Omnium, together with their wives and children, "their sisters, their cousins, and their aunts," were the staple crop, and undertakes to depict another less exclusive phase ice of her Majesty Queen Anne. Written by Himself. A Novel. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 87. New York: Harper and Brothers. of English society. EDITOR'S LITERARY RECORD. His latest novel, John | belonging to the humbler ranks, and is imCaldigate,' is as remote as possible from these pressed by her extraordinary beauty and vigor, others in its treatment, incidents, and actors. and by her native refinement and her frank The hero of the story is the son of a country and fearless purity. She is a model of physportions are grand; and she has an instinctive squire, whose tastes are intellectual råther ical beauty as to form and feature; all her proloftiness of thought and demeanor, of grace than bucolic, and who, despite a well of latent After an accidental tenderness for his family, has the knack of making himself as unlovable as a bear, among and delicacy, which seems marvellous for one On his part, the son de- in her lowly position. others, to his son. velops tastes and habits the opposite of his meeting, followed by other meetings that were father's, which lose him the old man's confi- not accidental, in which the young soldier and dence, and result in their estrangement. The peasant maiden form impressions that are to father purchases from our hero his right of influence all their after-life, they are separated. entail to the paternal property, and the young He is ordered to the Crimea, where he wins fellow starts with the proceeds in his pocket, distinction by his bravery, and she remains at and a stout and resolute purpose in his bosom, home, sinking into still greater depths of povto try his fortunes in the gold fields of Aus- erty, but amid it all nursing in her heart the tralia. In Australia he is sharp, shrewd, in-memory of the gallant soldier who had gleamed dustrious, and so proverbially lucky that his name is a synonym for good fortune, and in a few years he is able to return to England with a fortune, to clear off heavy incumbrances from the paternal home, to win back the steadfast affection of his father, and to marry a pure and sweet maiden whose image he had treasured When every thing in all his devious ways. seemed thus prosperous and happy, his relations while in Australia with a woman who had entangled him returned to plague him. He had consorted improperly with her, had even talked of marriage to her, but had never married her. Hearing of his marriage, she and some disreputable male associates, who had been connected with Caldigate's Australian enterprises, conspire to extort money from him by trumping up evidence that he had been previously married to the Australian adventuress. The interest of the plot hinges on this conspiracy, which was at first so successful as to plunge Caldigate into prison, after a trial in which he was proven guilty. An important link in the evidence against him was an envelope bearing the postmark of the Sydney post-office. After his conviction it is discov-faithful hearts become one. ered by a post-office employé that the postmark was not in use at Sydney at the date it bore, and also that the postage-stamp belonged to an edition that had not been issued until a year later. This being established, the conspiracy is unravelled, John is liberated, is reinstated in society, and the woman and her accomplices are condignly punished. 10 Although sometimes a little tedious, there 9 John Caldigate. A Novel. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE 10 The House of Lus: One Book of its History. A Tale. heart. Realizing the hopelessness of her love, Mr. O'Reilly's Moondyne11 is a novel with a 11 Moondyne. By JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 12mo, pp. 327. Boston: The Pilot Publishing Company. |