KNIGHT'S POPULAR HISTORY OF ENGLAND.* THE seventh and penultimate volume

of Mr. Knight's History of England opens with an entertaining sketch of our national progress,

• The Popular History of England. An Illustrated History of Society and Govern- ment from the Earliest Period to our own Times. By Charles Knight. Vol. VII. From the Close of the American War, 1783, to the Restoration of the Bourbons, and the Peace of Paris, 1814 Bradbury and Evans.

in its various aspects of agriculture, manufacture, art, literature, and manners, from the accession of the 'third George to the war of the French Revolution.

During the earlier part of the reign of George III., an appre- hension of England's decline had taken possession of the political mind. "Poets and statists equally maintained that wealth accumu- lates, and men decay." Notwithstanding, however, the accumula- tion of wealth, national bankruptcy was predicted ; while, conjointly with that accumulation, the country was said to be growing less populous. By comparing the excess of baptisms over burials, the latter error has been happily corrected. While the increase of popu- lation during. the fifty years ending with the middle of the last would seem to have but little exceeded two hundred thou- sand, the increase of the thirty years closing with 1781 amounted to about one million two hundred and fifty thousand, and that of the twenty years ending in 1801, to more than a million and a half. If we follow Arthur Young's estimate, which is, however, in all pro- bability, higher than it should be, we shall find that in. 1770, "one third of the adult male population was employed in providing food for themselves and their families, and the other two thirds of the popu- lation ;" whereas, in 1851, while one man was cultivating the land, three men were engaged in some other employment ; a contrast that indicates a very strikingimprovement in agriculture, attributable, as Mr. Knight reasonably supposes, to the ascendancy of scientific theory over traditional practice. This improvement in husbandry occupied the attention of the most exalted men in the kingdom. We cannot trace, with the author, its progress through, the several districts of England. We content ourselves with referring to the experiments of Edmund Burke, on his farm at Beaconsfield; to the patriotic ex- ertions of Francis, Duke of Bedford ; to Lord Townshend, the intro- ducer of turnip husbandry; to Robert Bakewell, the Leicestershire yeoman, the founder of the famous breed of sheep ; to the Marquis of Rockingham, who showed the "John Trot geniuses of farming' the beneficial results of draining; to the collier, James Croft., type of the enterprising men of the north, who reclaimed from a barren moor many acres of land, by working out of hours, " attacking the most enormous stones, cutting them in pieces, carrying them away, and then bringing mould to fill the holes up." Nor must we omit from our list of ardent agriculturists the good though narrow-minded king, who had his Flemish farm and his Norfolk farm in the great park of Windsor, contributed to Young's "Annals," under the sig- nature of Ralph Robinson, and fairly earned the honourable name of Farmer George. We cannot now specify the different changes in. agriculture. It will give some notion of the general advance, how- ever, if we state that, of the 536,000 acres of land which Cambridge contains, 112,500 were fens, commons, and sheep-walks, in the year 1794, while "in 1846 only 10,000 of these ' barrens' remained un- enclosed, and of these 5000 were mown and fed in. the summer." Again, in 1732, there were 76,000 cattle and 500,000 sheep sold at Smithfield ; whereas, in 1859, 260,000 cattle and 1,500,000 sheep were sold in the great London market. There are three or four other facts, in this connexion, which we shall record. "The average weight of the oxen and the sheep has been doubled since the begin,- ning of the eighteenth century.' Before the war of the French Revolution the peasantry lived chiefly upon oatmeal and barley meal. The war came, and corn was grown for export to England. " Essex veal preserves its reputation, and so do Essex oysters : Essex saffron is a thing of the past, though its former celebrity lingers in the name of Saffron Walden." Buckinghamshire—the land of Hampden and the liberty-loving yeomen who fought with him—is finding uses for the beech, in manufacturing cheap chairs at the rate of a thousand a day ; extirpating the game, instead of leaving a fertile country little better than a large preserve ; and feeding 30,000 cows, which produce annually 6,000,000 pounds of butter., chiefly sent to the London market by railway.

Interesting as is Mr. Knight's sketch of the agricultural progress of Great Britain, that of the enormous revolution in the industrial arts, which in the middle of the last century "was commenced and carried forward in various directions by a knot of men not greater in number than the mythical Seven Champions of Christendom," is perhaps still more attractive. The exploits of the great captains of modern history—of the Duke of Bridgewater. of the millwright James Briudley, of Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, Roebuck, Wedgwood, and Walt—are all briefly but forcibly noted in this rapid survey of an unparalleled industrial transformation. From spinning- machines, iron-works, and steam-engines, Mr. Knight passes to a review of the fine arts in the reign of the Second and Third Georges, maintaining the intimate connexion between the arts of design and the so-called useful arts, and showing how " taste is an essential ele meld in the excellence of manufactures, and of their consequent com- mercial value." A sketch of the literature of the period and of manners as depicted in that literature succeeds. The criticism is light and rapid, but it gives us, on the whole, a fair notion of what was done by the men of letters in that age. We must confess, how- ever, that we were not aware, till we learnt it from Mr. Knight's Pages, that Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne had been " condemned to oblivion." We had fancied, that though not exactly the 'authors suited for indiscriminate perusal, they were nether forgotten, nor likely to be forgotten, by men who can appreciate humour, wit, and original genius. Glancing for a moment at the manners of the period, we find their great representative in the " wicked Duke" of Qaeensbury, with his daily milk bath, real or fabulous, and his fascinating glass eye. March and Lichfield were not far behind him as "moulds of fashion ;" while Sir Francis Dashwocd, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1762, acquired an unenviable notoriety for his

. .

frantic orgies with his brother Franciscans at Medmesham Abbey. The sarcastic remark of George Selwyn gives us some notion of the desperate revels of the members of a club called Arthur's 'Club. When one of the waiters there was committed on a Charge of felony, the wit exclaimed, " What a horrid idea he will give of us to the • people in Newgate !" Into the dissipation and gambling of- this evil time, the sweet-natured man and magnificent orator," Charles Fox, was drawn. His rival in statesmanship, with a more careful training and a greater power of self-control, happily escaped their terrible, seductions.

The historical portion of Mr. Knight's new volume begins with a retrospect of Indian affairs. It traces the career of our great Governor-General in the East, acknowledging his priceless services, as the preserver of the British empire in India, while condemning his arbitrary and oppressive conduct. Those who think that Hastings was " not more guilty than nine out of ten would have been," that "the Begums were not particularly deserving of commiseration," or that that the execution of Nuncomar was justifiable, will scarcely be satisfied with Mr. Knight's presentment. In these days, however, the accessibility of documents enables all competent persons to pro- secute inquiry and form a judgment for themselves. The first retro- spect of Indian affairs, in the commencement of the volume, is fol- lowed by a second in the fourteenth chapter. Occasional notices of the position and progress of the British power in India will be found in subsequent chapters. These notices seem to be sufficiently copious for the purposes which a comprehensive history is intended to sub- serve. At home, the Coalition of Lord North and Fox, the India Bill of the last-named great senator, and the unconstitutional expe- dient by which the King broke up the Whig or Oligarchical Cabinet, are among the first topics treated by Mr. Knight. It is well known that the Revolutionary families at the accession of George IIL monopolized the powers of Government. In the time of his two immediate predecessors the Sovereign had been a kind of Venetian Doge, in the hands of the representatives of the great Whig fami- lies. George III. determined to overthrow the Liberal Oligarchy ; he succeeded, by a system of organized corruption, in acquiring and maintaining an ascendancy over the haughty barons of the Revolu- tion for many years. Lord North then became the agent of the Court. The result of his twelve years' administration—the loss of our American colonies, the increase of our national debt, a war with three of the maritime powers of Europe—need but be recalled in this place. On the break up of the Coalition Ministry the son of the great Chatham, whose sole Toryism at that period consisted in siding with the Crown against the Whig Opposition, became Prime Minister of England and Chancellor of the Exchequer.. It was not till the time of the French Revolution that Pitt was almost inevitably transformed into an opponent of Re- form, and associated with the enemies of political freedom. 'Three times lie advocated an amelioration in the represen- tative system of the country. In /761 he supported Burke's bill for the regulation of the civil list ; later he determined to relieve Roman Catholic Ireland from civil disabilities ; in 1791 he assented to the measure, introduced by Fox, which placed the liberty of the press under the protection of trial by jury. As a Free-trader, Pitt probably understood far better than Fox the principles of which Adam Smith was the expositor and Burke the advocate. The com- mercial treaty with France, which Pitt negotiated, was opposed both: by Fox and Burke on•grounds with which we can have no sympathy. That this treaty was successful "is evident from the fact that the annual average export of British manufactures to France, in the six years ending with 1774, was 871,646 ; in the six years ending with 1792, it was 7,178,076." To Pitt, also, belongs the honour of sim- plifying the complicated system of indirect taxation. Financially, the policy of this eminent minister, from his accession to office to the commencement of the French Revolution, was signally successful. The sinking-fund project alone proved as disappointino- as it was illusory. During the war, the debt, Mr. Knight tells us, " hall actually augmented to the extent of eleven millions, by the less ad- vantageous terms upon which money was borrowed by the Exchequer, compared with the purchases made by the commissioners who managed the sinking-fund." Pitt's humanity was no less cosmopolitan than that of Fox. On the night of April 2, 1799, when it was decided that the slave trade should be gradually abolished, Pitt supported his friend Wilberforce, in a speech of great eloquence and power, dilating on the future prospects of civilizing Africa, and reproving those who contended that Africa was incapable of civilization. One passage in this oration is worth quoting, though, as Mr. Knight says, it will scarcely bear the sober examination of those who contend for the difference of races: " Why might not some Roman Senator, reasoning on the principles of some honourable gentlemen, and pointing to British barbarians, have predicted with equal boldness, 'There is a people that will never rise to civilization ; there is a people destined never to be free; a people without the understanding necessary for the attainment-of useful arts, depressed by the hand of nature below the level of the human species, and created to form a supply of slaves for the rest of the world ?' Might not this have been said in all respects as fairly and as truly of Britain herself, at that period of her history, as it can now be said by us of the inhabitants of Africa?"

The French Revolution of 1789 came to arrest the genial current of Pitt's political liberality. In a condensed narrative Mr. Knight relates the rise and development of that terrific social explosion : portraying the characters of the principal actors and sufferers in that fatal drama; and indicating some of its premonitory symptoms. We do not know that we have any right to demand of our historian. a philosophical exposition of the causes of the French Revolution, or a well-considered estimate of what it meant. We only draw attention

on the destinies of other manly and generous sentiment. Such a clear, vivid, and honest pie history of Europe ; its moral influence nations, as well as of the French ; the significance of its symbols ; its tare of the England of the days of Fox and Pitt, of George the necessity or its avoidability, are questions that are either not at all, Good, and Wellington the Victorious, may well content an ordinary or only very inadequately, discussed. It is very common now, it spectator, who requires only a tolerably correct and animated repre- always has been common, to sneer at the paper constitution and the sentation of that Historic Past which he wishes to meal. ideal principles of the French Revolution. Vague declamation, how- ever, is hardly what we want. If systems of government are so ideal that they are totally inapplicable, both in the present or through PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

all future time, to human practice and human exigencies, by all The Past and Present Life of the Globe: being a Sketch, in Outline, means let this inapplicability be pointed but. If they are capable of of The World's Life-System. By David Page, F.G.S., Author of realization, in some distant age, though not now, let that fact be dis- "Introductory and Advanced Text-books of Geology, &c. Edinburgh tinily noted. If we can begin to approximate to their realization at and London: Blackwood and Sons.—Those readers who are already once, but must be careful how we cast away historic traditions and acquainted with Mr. Page's "Advanced Text-book of Geology," are, established institutions, let the admission be fairly made. We do we fear, likely to be somewhat disappointed with the present volume; not, however, know what is meant when we are told that men are

for, while the former work is certainly one of the best scientific acquainted, the latter is far from being not born free, but in a state of dependence. It is perfectly true that manuals with which we are we are born in a state of dependence, but is it less true that there is entitled to claim so high a position as a popular statement of the

results of palaeontological research. rosearch. It would seem as though Mr. a sense in which individual independence is a right? Again many ment are in a very high degree, available in i i

ment of a government, or of a society. It is not impossible, then, that than befits the exactitudes of science." We cannot, however, admit there was an obscure recognition of this truth in the minds of the the justice of his plea that "even on this point he could not well have authors of this Revolution, mingled with much exaggeration, and

curiosity of his hearers." For instance, the statement that "common hastily and prematurely striving for outward expression. The eaten- sensehomologates the botanist's assertion" on a particular .point, bons and efforts of these men and its own characteristic genius re- would be at least equally effective if it were couched in more mtelli- quire to be distinguished from the atrocities and insanities of those gible language ; nor do we care to have our curiosity excited by the who subsequently presided over its coarse, and from its subsequent comparison of such misty abstractions as " the moralism and mentalism distortions and delirations. The Reign of Terror itself, hateful and of the Present" with " the materialism and mechanism of the Past." hideous as it was, was accompanied by a sincere and admirable At the same time we are glad to endorse—or, as Mr. Page would say, patriotism, the object of which was to save the Revolution and repel to homologate—his assertion that the present volume contains, as far that the Elgin sandstones, in which the remains of the Telerpeton tion of his work. He seems sometimes fairly carried off the rails of Elyinense have been found, are to be regarded as belonging to the his usually quiet though not unpicturesque prose, into a rapid here Triassic, rather than to the Devonian, formation. In stating the neral conclusions which may be drawn from palaeontological facts, they come !" sort of style, in which the past and present tenses gr. Page confines himself strictly within the domain of science, and alternate with a variety which many, we hope, will find as charming refuses to entertain any hypothetical conclusions whatever. He dis- as Mr. Knight seems to have thought it.

We shall not follow our author into the conduct of the war with creation as the best formula for expressin.g our total ignorance as to France. It would seem that Pitt was anxious to avoid it ; that the the origin of species. His remarks on the futility of the attempts French were anxious to precipitate it. At all events, they were the which are so constantly made to reconcile the discoveries of geology first to declare it. Pitt, it is known, took a wrong view of the re-• with the Mosaic account of the creation, are peculiarly sensible and sources of the French Republic. He fancied that he was going to apposite.

"double up" his adversary in no time. The French, he maintained, Years in Italy. By Kate Crichton, Author of "Before the Dawn

were in a gulf of bankruptcy. He thought that the ruin of her in M In two volumes. London : Charles J. Skeet.—Miss Kate finances "necessarily involved the submission of her rulers." clever Frenchman refuted the fallacy, when h hen he said at Wilberforce's completion of her musical education ; for she informs us that she was table " I should like to know who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at that time " an artist, having already appeared before a London to have so pleasing and accurate a summary of the events of this employed the unusually lengthened opportunities for observations latest epical period of England's history, when Napoleon I. twice

twice thought better of it. When nearly four hundred thousand men richurches, pictures, fetes, &c., as any midsummer tourist might be sprang up at a word, in defence' of their country, and finally when, expected to supply. En revanche, however, she gives us full informa- after the abdication of Napoleon, there were three months of public tion on all matters of a personal or domestic nature ; detailing all joy in England, "to parallel which we must look to the fifteenth papa's funny tricks, and carefully noting the dates at which their and sixteenth centuries when Henry V. rode back into London after party was jomed by Lina from England, and by Charlie from Corfu. the battle of Agincourt, and Elizabeth went in a chariot to St. Paul's Of her style, which is, as a general rule, rather ornate, the following an- to return thanks for the destruction of the Armada." The home ticipations of the enjoyment in store for her may be taken as a fair history of this period• is also told with candour and ability by Mr. sample: "But now the time approached to tread that classic soil, Knight.. He states fairly the change that came over the spirit of land of the Muses, thy beauty, which had been pictured to us but in

imagination, would soon lay stretched before our eyes in all its grand Pitt's dream of Reform. State trials, alien and treason bills, Habeas Corpus Act suspensions took the place of schemes which renhty• had fresdom, peace, and philanthropy for their objects. Fox, through- • - ' • • out, continued true to his old political creed, though grievously Night ;" the time which a gentleman is silver planet," or "the Queen of

appointed in the results of the French Revolution. His eloquence spends in bed he "devotes to Morpheus" and a band of musicians sometimes outran his discretion, as once when he denounced the are " followers of Apollo." Although Miss Crichton's prolonged coercive measures of the Government, declaring that "the obedience residence abroad seems to have somewhat impaired her mastery over of the people was no longer a question of moral obligation and duty, her own language, it has not, apparently, rendered her perfectly but of prudence." Speaking of the two rival statesmen in this familiar with foreign tongues. Atter three weeks in Mayence, it is, critical period, our historian very properly observes that we have no we think, scarcely excusable to talk about "singing German fierier, ;" more right to assume that Pitt was resolved upon establishing a and, after six years in Italy, she certainly ottght not to speak of the despotism, than that Fox desired to witness the overthrow of the Larga di Garda. We cannot but think that Siis s Crichton would have

monarchy. done wisely in reserving her account of her foreign sojourn for private This last volume of Mr. Knight's History of England may be re- circulation only.

pried as a repository of the political, social, and military facts which The Poetics !Forks of John Milton. In two volumes. VoL I.