A First Sketch of English History : Part II., 1307 - 1689.
By C. J. Matthew, M.A. (Macmillan and Co.)—This is an effort, and on the whole a successful effort, to give the inner meaning of the changes and movements which seem at first sight to be merely the outcome of personal or party ambitions. Of course, Mr. Matthew's views will be differently regarded. What he describes as an ecclesiastical reaction, the movement that resulted in the Good Parliament, seems to some to have been an assertion of popular liberties. This cannot be avoided. But Mr. Matthew always makes his readers think, and teaches them to look for the really important and essential things in the national history. —Another historical sketch, written for a somewhat different class of readers, is one of a series entitled " The Children's Study" (T. Fisher Unwin). England is from the pen of Miss Frances E. Cooke. Her aim, according to her preface, "is to give to children in simple language a clear conception of the growth of the English nation." This is a very difficult thing to do, and Miss Cooke seems not to have quite appreciated some important factors in the development of England. She does not do justice to Edward IV., a King who, with many personal faults, had a clear purpose of exalting the middle class at the expense of the nobles. It is also a quite inadequate conception of Henry VII., one of the ablest of English Kings, to say that "his chief wish was to have plenty of money." Any teacher who may use this volume as a text-book will have to supplement and correct largely. —Belonging to this same series is Scotland, by Mrs. Oliphant. Mrs. Oliphant deprecates the comparison which will naturally occur with the "Tales of a Grandfather." We will not make it ; indeed, her volume is constructed on different lines. It is as much a book of the time as Sir Walter Scott's was. We have all to be philosophical now. Even children are taught that rerum cognoscere causas is happiness. They have to look beneath the glitter of battles and pageants to the movements of national life. Mrs. Oliphant has the art of doing this without losing the picturesque touch, which is one of her chief gifts. Of the judgment with which she executes a difficult task, her treatment of the Queen of Scots is an excellent example. The subject could not have been handled with more discretion. "A failure in every way "—this is her terse description of this wonderful woman—" though never failing either in valour, or hope, or life."—The Churchman's History of England. By the Rev. M. S. Baylis. (Masters and Co.)—Mr. Baylis's object is to exhibit the share taken by the Church in the "evolution of our modern England." We cannot profess ourselves wholly satisfied with his treatment of the subject. We wish that he had given us some more definite view of the great question,—How far did the action of the Church tend to develop popular liberties ? He recognises the difference between prelates of the Hugh of Lincoln and Stephen Langton type on the one hand, and Archbishop Arundel on the other, but seems to regard it as personal rather than typical. Of Laud he has little but good to say. Yet surely no man did more than Laud to strengthen that damaging alliance, from which the Church is not yet wholly free, with class privilege.
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