M. AUGUSTE ComTE, enlarging the Positivist Code by supplementary decree,
laid down that an ideal history would contain no proper names. The present volume may appear, on a rapid glance, to be a move in the direction of the mandate of the supreme pontiff of the tri-phase philosophy, for it is but sparsely sprinkled in places with capital letters. This, however, is not because our author scorns pictures of places, incidents, and persons, but is the result of the vastness of his subject, which has induced him to subordinate the romance of external history to principles and causes. For dealing with a field of inquiry as broad as the landscape of the three kingdoms which Mr. Bryce beheld on his famous ascent to "the secret top" of Mount Ararat, an author who is a jurist and accomplished essayist, who is a climber in more senses than one, and who has risen to high office is well qualified. Mr. Bryce has abundant learning, he is ruled by the spirit called by Sainte-Beuve "le demon de l'exactitude et du detail," his style is forcible, and his reflections throw real light on his facts. Never dull, his aesthetic sensibilities tempt him here and there to excursions beyond the fence that encircles his chosen "sphere of influence." Palaces, churches, campaniles, pictures, draw him into seductive " asides," with references, perhaps, to Dante or Goethe or Shelley. Skilfully placed in his learned pages are the vast chandelier with which Kaiser Barbarossa decorated the tomb of Charlemagne, and the fresco in Santa Maria Novella with the Dominicans as Dogs of the Lord, while exhaustive notes on the burying-places and sarcophaguses of Teutonic Emperors and " German Kings " treat of the sublime array of symbolical statuary of dark steel guarding Maximilian's tomb at Innsbruck.
When a book epitomises an endless succession of the pur- poses of the ages, showing how the dominant conditions, beliefs, and desires of one epoch developed into new stages of human progress ; how conflicts of races, classes, and dynasties subsided into struggles with newer methods and ambitions ; how religion, at first a bond of union between the peoples, grew into a source of war and territorial revolution— when the historian pilots us through changes like these from the era of Augustus to that of Bismarck, a few critical para- graphs cannot summarise his characteristics and results. In the case of Mr. Bryce's largo spandere that question arises the less as the reprints and new editions of his book have been fully reviewed from time to time. Only his own words can convey his view of the central "Soul and Essence" of the great historical evolution recorded by his pen. There is no excess of subjectivity in his narrative of the steps which brought the Imperial edifice of Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa to the condition that made the jurist Puffendorf, after the Peace of Westphalia, say that the sham Empire was a mere abortion of irregular shape like a monster : which suggested to Voltaire the remark that it was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire, an opinion practically justified not long after when Napoleon gave the old Romano-Germanic Empire its quietus by decree- ing the Confederation of the Rhine.
The process of rise and decline from Julius Caesar to the little Corsican took eighteen hundred and fifty-eight years to accomplish. The feelings and acts of many of the heroes of the Mediaeval Empire and the Popedom cannot but arouse sentiments of execration in the mind of a Radical or Tory, of the Edwardian age. But our author warns us not to weigh the men of past centuries in modern scales. Writing in a
• The Holy Homan Empire. By James Bryce. D.C.L., Honorary Fellow of Trinity and Oriel Colleges, Oxford. A New Edition, Enlarged and Revised Throughout, with a Chronological Table of Events and S Maps, London : Macmillan and Co. Ps. 13c1..]
against that great Hohenstaufen and his Tedeschi, we are not to regard him as a "tyrant crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and industry." How could Republican institutions and ideals of popular freedom appeal to a Kaiser of his epoch, and how could he help construing
some of the actions of the Milanese as treason against God and himself P No! we must look beyond Shelley's talk of the quenchless ashes of Milan, and Sismondi's oblique. conception of Kaiser Rotbbart's record. Praising that much- vilified Monarch for his notable merits as German King with reforming methods, the author thus takes leave of "the greatest of the Crusaders ":— " To the south-west of the green plain that girdles in the rock of Salzburg, the gigantic mass of the Unterberg frowns over the road which winds up a long defile to the glen and lake of Berchtes- garden. There, far up amongst the limestone crags, in a spot scarcely accessible to human foot, the peasants of the valley point out to the traveller the black mouth of a cavern, and tell him that within the red-bearded Emperor lies amid his knights in an enchanted sleep, waiting the hour when the ravens shall cease to hover round the peak, and the pear-tree blossom in the valley, to descend with his Crusaders and bring back to Germany the age of peace and strength and unity. Often in the evil days that followed the fall of Frederick's house, often when tyranny seemed unendurable and anarchy endless, men thought on that cavern, and sighed for the day when the long sleep of the just Emperor should be broken, and his shield be hung aloft again as of old in the camp's midst, a sign of help to the poor and the oppressed."
The influence of titles and ceremonies on mankind is eternal,—even in the England of to-day the hegemony of spectacular pomp and venerable associations is in full vigour.
Our author's appendix on these essential ornamental adjuncts of humanity, in so far as they concern his essay, will help the attentive reader over various difficult stiles of German history. Nowhere else have we met with such clear ex- planations as those given by Mr. Bryce of wordings like "Riimischer Kaiser," "Romischer Konig," "Roman Empire," and of some, at least, of the seventy-five titles of Charles V. Many of us have wondered how, if "false fleeting perjured Clarence" embarked, in his dream, "to cross to Burgundy,"
that word could also apply to the region described in Quentin Durward, and the vineyards which furnish that generous
liquor of the gods, Chamberlin. This puzzle is solved in the admirable appendix in which Mr. Bryce long since established his suzerainty over the territorial sphinx in question, by show- ing that the Burgundy of chroniclers and historians must be located in ten (or eleven P) different situations.
How in the period between Waterloo and Sedan the memories of the " Roman Empire of the German Nation " stimulated the growth of patriotism, and led to premature attempts to realise the new ideals by force, is treated by Mr.
Bryce in a chapter which will serve as a useful introduction to the systematic history of Treitschke, from whose " Prussic acid" our author is, of course, free. But the present writer, at any rate, must object to his belief that in
the case of the war of 1870-71 the trigger was pulled by Bismarck's editorial improvement of the Ems telegram, in which the King of Prussia reported the rupture of his relations with the French Ambassador, Benedetti. This matter has lately been reopened by the publication of the memoirs of the official transmitter of the telegram, Herr von Abeker, and a comparison of the original with the " cooked " text fully supports, in the opinion of not a few students of modern events, the earlier dictum of the distinguished French historian, M Seignobos, that the King's statement, as published by Bismarck, was shortened but not falsified. A new chapter on the Germany of to-day should be mastered by certain contributors to our Press who think that the police of Munich and Dresden are dependent on the Kaiser's orders, and that newspapers are subject to Count Billow's Ukases. The author's sketch of the constitutional structure and central institutions of the Empire marks the distribution of legislative and adminis- trative functions between the Imperial authority and the separate States, as compared with the practice of other Federations. The right emphasis is laid on the growth of Socialism and on the spirit of patriotism and habits of obedience developed in the citizen by his compulsory military service, attention being also drawn to the notable German advances in discovery and invention, and the accompany- ing evolution of trade and industry which has made the Empire the seat of a flourishing community. Here a few improvements of detail may not be out of place. Correctly calling the Reichstag "an effective agency in welding together the populations of the various States into a truly German nation" and making them " think Imperially," Mr. Bryce ascribes the legislative weakness of that body to its division into "four, five or even six groups." As a fact, the first German Parliament at once split up into ten independent parties, the present number of separate groups being eighteen, besides the " Wilde," or Independents, who have no programme. That " the Reichstag interferes very little in questions of external policy " is true ; but did our House of Commons dispute the Treaty with Japan, and would it have interfered, if sitting, with the decision of the Cabinet on the North Sea Outrage ? Mr. Bryce under- rates the Reichstag's control over the Imperial Budget. Here we would observe that while at St. Stephen's opposition to Supply is an empty form which lets oratory loose, but is never followed by an effective adverse vote, the German Estimates habitually undergo cheeseparings all round, which the financial authorities of the Empire have to digest. When the author calls Posen the only province of the Empire whose Members form a " particularist " section of the Reichstag, we must remark that such separation has hitherto been the case with Elsass-Lothringen, Hanover, and Schleswig-Holstein. Furthermore, railways, roads, and canals are not subject to Imperial controL A move by Prince Bismarck in the "seventies" in the direction of the purchase of all the railways of all Germany by the Empire was the signal for a vigorous counter-campaign started by the Saxon Minister President, who by his own resistance, and that of his Federal allies, forced the Reichskanzler to drop his scheme : the only rail- ways controlled by the Empire are the lines in Elsass- Lothringen.
Looking to the fact that so few of us can read German, we do not wonder that Mr. Bryce has given a very short bibli- ography. But for auxiliary apparatus of other species this treatise is a model. Contents and dated side-notes are abundant ; there is a complete chronological list of Emperors and Popes, with a huge synopsis of events from Julius Caesar to Pio Nono, and the index is a book in itself.
NOVELS.
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