BOOKS.

THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.* Tins may not be the greatest of Mr. Freeman's works—the place of honour must always be reserved for the History of the Norman Conquest—but it is the most admirable, and perhaps the most artistic. It may be doubted if any living writer has such a superb command of his facts as Mr. Freeman ; but then it may also be doubted if any living writer has a less superb command of his temper. In his new work, however, Mr. Free- man has been put entirely upon his " historical honour," and that, in his oyes, is next to truth, or perhaps we should say, is identical with it. He has recognised that an historical geography ought to be a contribution to science, and that thb scientific spirit has only to do with facts, not with " eroto.60.• ", "views," hardly even with generalities. The moir," snotable characteristics of the preface are—an(I Mr. Fre-rit

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* The Historical Geography of Rurope. By Edward A. Factual; ------- 2 vole. London ; Longmons, Oren, and Co. 1881. !ac:1;.0./,,, dm.

never more himself than iu his prefaces—modesty, a candid avowal of imperfect information in regard to certain points, and a positive anxiety for more light. This note of modesty is sustained throughout the book. Long after he had written the tenth chapter, giving a "general survey" of the Eastern Empire, there was published at Paris the first volume of M. Sathas's valuable collection of Documents Inedlts Relatifs a l'Histoire de la Greco an Mogen Age. M. Sathas, in his preface, makes some startling propositions. One of them must have, to Mr. Freeman, been positively confounding, being to the effect that the Slavonic occupation of a large part of Greece, which has hitherto never been altogether denied, is absolutely a mistake, the settlers being not Slays, but Albanians, " called Slays by that lax use of national names of which there cer- tainly are plenty of instances." All that Mr. Freeman says on this point is, " I cannot undertake either to accept or to refute M. Sathas's doctrine during the process of revising a proof-sheet. I can only put the fact on record that one who has gone very deeply into the matter has come to this, to me at least, altogether new conclusion." Everybody knows Mr Freeman's views ou the Eastern Question. It has been t, , red rag which has brought out what Lord Gran- ville would probably consider the John-Bullishness of his nature. He has been so ferociously in the right, that there is, after all, some excuse for many people thinking he must have been in the wrong. Such a work as this deals necessarily and largely with the historical and geographical problems which are included in the Eastern Question. Yet Mr. Freeman has stood the tests applied to his self-command and " historical honour" most satisfactorily. He has rightly considered that in such a book, an attack on the late Lord Beaconsfield would be as little in place as an attack on Mr. Fronde. Even the story of the " insane convention " is thus told :—

" The Greek island of Cyprus has passed to English rule; but it is after a fashion which may imply that the conquest of Richard of Poitou is held, not, it is to be hoped, by the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, but possibly by the Empress of India, as a tributary of

the Ottoman Sultan The virtual English possession of the Ionian Islands made England for a while a sharer in the fragments of the Eastern Roman Empire ; and later still, she has again put on the same character by the occupation, on whatever terms, of another Greek and Imperial land,—the island of Cyprus."

Here the somewhat "agricultural vigour" of Mr. Freeman's politics, "through some certain strainers well refined," as Pope would say, becomes dainty and delightful historical innuendo.

Mr. Freeman divides his book into two volumes, text and maps. The persons for whom it will have a supreme value—the more Inquiring of the general public, politicians, and publicists who do not think they perform their duty when they merely make a few more or less "intelligent remarks" on subjects of which they have only a vague knowledge—will find it to their decided advantage to divide it into three parts, text, index, and maps. The index is singularly good, even for Mr. Freeman; and we should recommend the reader who wishes to know the meaning and value of the book, and is anxious to acquire an accurate knowledge of any place within its scope, to look first to the references in the index, and then hunt them out in the text, with the proper maps before him. If ho does this—let him, for example, take Ireland and Epeiros, as having a living in- terest at the present time—ho will acquire as much accurate, knowledge in an hour, as he would probably get by a day's unmethodical reading in the British Museum. He will also find how amazingly ignorant he is on subjects which he not unnaturally supposed himself to know, if not thoroughly, at least tolerably. We shall take an instance. Probably every well- educated Englishman of the present day thinks he is—although his father was not—familiar with the history of Scotland. He

has, of course, read all that Mr. Hill Burton, and Mr. Skene, and Mr. Lancaster, and Mr. Robertson (Mr. Robertson " the younger "), and Mr. Freeman himself have written

within the last quarter of a century or so. Let him put his reading courageously to the proof, by writing out as if in answer to an examination-paper, a succinct account of the history of Scotland to the time of its final incor- poration with England. A comparison of his narrative with that in Mr. Freeman's volumes—as a preparation for which, by the way, we would recommend the perusal of the chap- ter on historical geography in the last book, contributed to Mr. Stanford's "London Geographical Series" of the late W. Keith Johnston—will be a good test of his in- formation or ignorance. Yet how many must there be who, if only comparatively ignorant of Scottish history, are abso- lutely at sea in regard to the historical and territorial changes which are conjured up by, say, Austria, Hungary, Sleswick- Holstein, Sicily, Aquitaine, Roumauiu, and the Burgundies P This is a book which literally makes the crooked places look straight, and the extraordinary dwindle into the common-place. When it was reported recently of Prince Bismarck that he had threatened to deprive Berlin of its position as capital of the Gorman Empire, lie was thought to have uttered a very remark- able, if not an altogether absurd thing. Yet here is what Mr.

Freeman says :-

" As far as geography is concerned, no change can be stranger than the change in the boundaries of Germany between the ninth century and the nineteenth. The new empire, cut short in the north-west, south-west, and south-east, has grown somewhat to the north, and it has grown prodigiously to the north-east. The ruling State—a State which contains such illustrious cities as Koln, Trier, and Frankfort—is content to call itself after an extinct heathen people, whose name had most likely never reached the ears of Charles the Great. The capital of the now empire, placed far away from any of the ancient seats of German kingship, stands in what in his day and long after was is Slavonic land. Germany, with its chief State bearing the name of Prussia, with the place of its National Assemblies transferred from Frankfort to Berlin, presents one of the strangest changes that historical geography can show us."

So that if the declaration put into the mouth of Prince Bis- marck was actually made by him, it meant nothing more than a threat to make Germany return to its old historical and geo- graphical channels.

Mr. Freeman's work, therefore, as a manual of historical and territorial changes, not only in, but connected with Europe —for the colonies and dependencies of European countries are included in it—is indispensable to the student of politics who deserves the name ; and probably the only fault that will be found with it ie that the history in it stands to the geography in the ratio of Falstaff's sack to his bread. As is the case with all Mr. Freeman's books, it abounds in sentences which are happy and pregnant, and have all the virtues and none of the vices of the epigram. How true, for example, is it that Greece, "though it is the part of Europe which lies nearest to Asia, is, in a certain sense, the most European of European lands," be- cause " the characteristic of Europe is to be more full of penin- sulas, and islands, and inland seas than the rest of the old world. And Greece, the peninsula itself, and the neighbouring lauds arc fuller of islands and promontories and inland seas than any other part of Europe." Nor is this work without its historical and ethical " lessons." How powerless, for example, does it show mere individual and national ambition to be against " natural historical law," against even the physical configuration of countries and continents ! Perhaps it would be premature to cite the recent changes in the East until they can be considered com- plete. But look at the results of the Napoleonic wars, of two Bonapartist regimes. "The France of the restored Bourbons was the France of the old Bourbons, enlarged by those small, isolated scraps of foreign soil which were needed to make it continuous.

The geographical results of the rule of the second Bonaparte consist of the completion of the work which began under Philip the Fair, balanced by the utter undoing of the work of Henry II. and Louis XIV." Not less keen and probably even more abiding than this Vanitas vanitatum feeling is that of the greatness of Rome. In his concluding passage, which iu eloquence will compare favourably even with Mr. Arnold's panegyric on Oxford, Mr. Freeman says :-

"In thus tracing the historical geography of Europe, we have made the round of the world. But we have never lost sight of Europe, we have never lost sight of Rome. Wherever we have gone, we have carried Europe with us ; wherever we have gone, we have never got beyond the power of the two influences which, mingling into one, have made Europe all that it has boon. The whole of European history is embodied in the formula which couples together `the rule of Christ and Comer ;' and that joint rule still goes on, in the shape of moral influence, wherever the tongues and the culture of Eutopo win new realms for themselves in the continents of the Western or in the islands of the Southern Ocean."

That may be, but will the world ever again roach the dignified repose of the Pax Bontana ?