as to produce a set of volumes describing "Non-Christian Religious Systems;" and now we have an Evangelical Nonconformist reopening a phase of Christian thought hardly more akin to the opinions he himself professes. He has even a more ambitious object. He wishes not only to enlighten us as to the development of the Scholastic system, but "humbly seeks to aid in the reversal of the general verdict of condemnation passed on the Schoolmen," and to show "that, as contributors to the philosophical thought of Christendom, they aided enormously the cause of human progress" (p. 13). More moderately expressed we have not a word to say against such a scheme, provided only that the author be himself a philosopher and a competent Latin scholar, not to say an Orientalist. Mr. Townsend, however, is a mere compiler, relying, with scarcely an exception, upon second-hand authorities; and when he attempts to be original, simply proving his unfamiliarity with the rudiments of scholarship. German he does not profess to know, and sad havoc is made of the common authorities on the history of philosophy written in that language, when the translation comes to be adjusted and decorated afresh, after the usual manner of unintelligent book-makers. From English authors Mr. Townsend draws liberally. Passage after passage is boldly diluted from Milman-all his rhetoric expanded into bombast, and every telling phrase altered, as though with the help of a dictionary of synonyms.

Yet, however faulty in style and—we may add-grammar, and however restricted the authorities on which it is based, such a book, if carefully manufactured, might do good service in opening a little-known chapter in the history of thought to a wider circle of readers. Mr. Townsend's book, however, can only serve as a warning to compilers. To take a single instance, Albertus Magnus is said (p. 167) to have been "summoned to attend the Council of Lyons, and to aid in the deposition of the Emperor Frederick II.," who had been dead by this time twentyfour years. Mr. Townsend is ignorant of the previous Council (of 1245), which has the dubious credit of this act. After this one is not surprised to read that in 1272" the Chair of St. Peter had been vacant about fifteen years" (p. 189), the compiler having innocently confounded the fifteen cardinals with the three years during which their quarrels prevented any election to the see. But the real objection which makes this book worse than useless, is not its uniform inaccuracy, but the animus by which it is inspired. Regardless of the differing needs of society in different ages, perhaps hardly conscious of them, Mr. Townsend denounces everything Roman Catholic, and every State Church-root and branch. But his violence against both the parties in the great question of Ecclesiastical politics, which runs through the Middle Ages (p. 82), is a little indiscreet, since all his heroes took one side or the other in it; and when he shows an unmistakable admiration of some whose pantheism is, to him, commendable, solely because it was contrary to the religion of Rome, we cannot but be reminded of the Monophysites of Egypt, who betrayed their country to the Mohammadan invaders rather than combine with

their Christian rivals and co-heretics-the Monothelites. Mr. Townsend, in fact, for the same reason delights in exhuming the forgotten heresies even of men like St. Anselm; and, although he utters a passing warning against "the errors of Hegel," makes no secret of the more energetic vitality of his own polemical Protestantism than of his Evangelical orthodoxy. But we are making too much of Mr. Townsend and his opinions. Let it only be added that the book contains the lives of the leading Schoolmen-starting from Alcuin, of all people, whose "scholastic" activity was strictly that of a schoolmaster-with an arid recital of their views, an eternal ringing of the changes on Universals and Individuals, Realism and Nominalism, with none of the life with which their teaching truly was animated, and treated without perspicuity or discrimination. It is, perhaps, a truism, but one of which the justice is repeatedly suggested by books like this, that only a master can make a difficult subject at once plain and popular.

As a contrast to this superficial performance, we may be allowed to point to three lectures on Wiclif's Place in History by Professor Montagu Burrows, doubly valuable just now, both as containing a clear and interesting sketch of perhaps the greatest of the schoolmen, and as drawing attention to the importance of the publication of his complete works, a task for the execution of which we are happy to observe that a Wyclif Society is on the point of foundation. It is to be hoped that this society, which Mr. Furnivall (3, St. George's Square, N.W.) is organising, will meet with the wide and national support which it deserves.

R. L. P.

THIS

THE MAKING of England.†

HIS important book has a singular interest from its bearing upon the previous work by which Mr. Green exerted so astonishing an influence upon the popular appreciation of our history. Readers of his Short History of the English People are aware that its earlier portions represent the author's most careful researches, and, indeed, stand alone in the imagination and freshness with which they illuminate a period which we are accustomed to pass over summarily and with the baldest treatment. The life which Mr. Green kindled in his subject was so novel, that with many of our stricter scholars he provoked a strong prejudice against what he no doubt regarded as the best part of his book; and it is curious to note that when he enlarged the Short History to the compass of four volumes he stripped the earlier pages of not a little of

* Wiclif's Place in History. By MONTAGU BURROWS, M.A., Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford. W. Isbister, Limited. 1882.

+ The Making of England. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A., LL.D., Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. Macmillan and Co. 1881.

their remarkable individuality. The plan of the work did not allow of foot-notes, and Mr. Green perhaps came to feel that it was unfair to make such large demands on the confidence of his readers without detailed justification. This justification, indeed, he possessed, but ill-health prevented him from completing it in a shape fit for publication. At length, in the volume before us, we are offered an instalment, reaching as far as the union of the English kingdoms under Egbert; and if we are too often interrupted by symptoms of haste and want of care, it must not be forgotten that the old excuse unfortunately still holds good, and the date of the preface from Mentone may silence criticism of the trivial errors, discrepancies, and irregularities (for instance, in the spelling of proper names) which abound in the book.

Its relation to the History of the English People may be briefly pointed out. Seventy-two pages of the first volume of that work are now augmented six-fold; but the most striking difference is the copious apparatus of references by which the new book is supported. At the same time, though the bulk of the former is reprinted with little change, the arrangement, and, indeed, the whole scope, of the latter, however similar, is new and on a larger scale. It starts not from the English home in Schleswig, but from Roman Britain: it is not only a study of the growth of the several tribes of invaders into one English People,” but also a geographical history (if the term may be used) of the land itself.

66

This geographical treatment is one of Mr. Green's principal excellences. His power of grasping and reproducing the local situation and the local necessities of events reminds one constantly of Dean Stanley, with whom, however different his style, he has in common a delight in allusion and reminiscence, always suggestive if occasionally far-fetched. The course of the English immigration and the gradual settlement are worked out with exquisite skill. Mr. Green makes one see precisely the lie" (as he would say) of the ground, how far progress was possible, the lines where it must have been arrested by natural obstacles, equally with those at which we know it to have been checked by the arms of the British. Such a reconstruction of the stages in the settlement, as lucid as it is sensitive, must once for all replace the bare catalogue of dates and names which has hitherto stood for our earliest history. But in other respects the book cannot claim so universal an acknowledgment. Mr. Green, as a thorough-going disciple of Mr. Freeman, refuses to allow any appreciable mixture between the British inhabitants and their German conquerors, at least until the period of the later overthrow of the natives of the West of England. He relies solely upon the very scanty records of the invasion, and leaves out of view the opposite and unanimous testimony of anthropology, to say nothing of the problems involved in the development of the national character, which is nearly inexplicable unless we consider its Celtic admixture. Even should we accept Mr. Green's conclusions, it is unpardonable that he should not even mention the existence of any other view of the question, and the frequent references to Dr. Stubbs should certainly be guarded by the

admission that he cannot be cited as an uncompromising supporter of the theory which Mr. Green advocates. Dr. Stubbs is far too learned to be a dogmatist, especially on such doubtful ground.

Important as is this question of the survival or extermination of the Britons, its decision does not influence more than a small fragment of Mr. Green's book. For the rest our admiration hardly needs qualifying. It may be said that the book would gain in unity if it were not so long and consequently had fewer repetitions. But it is a wonderful feat to have succeeded in such a task as Mr. Green set himself to, and to have sustained throughout his unflagging energy, which stirs the dullest incident into life, and a charm of style, which not even his many affectations can seriously impair. If we were to single out passages (not in his former works) specially illustrative of, his peculiar power, we would point to his account of the old civilisation and Christianity of Ireland (pp. 277-290), or to pieces of local exposition such as those relating to the Forest of Arden (pp. 347-351) and the British stronghold of Elmet (pp. 254-256).

R. L. P.

PROFESSOR BAIN'S STUDIES OF JAMES MILL AND JOHN STUART MILL.

IT

T would not be easy for any biographer to infuse much human interest into an authentic account of what can be known of the personal history of James Mill; and it is certainly no reproach to Professor Bain that he has failed to do this. While duly acknowledging the laborious and conscientious research of which we have the fruits in the first of the volumes before us, we cannot help feeling that what we may call the personal, as distinguished from the literary and the social and political parts of the biography, have proved but a poor reward for the pains expended on them. There was not, after all, much that could be ascertained about Mill's career up to nearly his thirtieth year, and the story has to be eked out by "plausible conjectures" such as that “he must have been distinguished [at school] in the three R's," that he must have got on very rapidly, &c., &c. When we come to his college days we are chiefly told what he may be presumed to have done. Knowing who some of his fellow-students were, we may conjecture what friendships he may have contracted, and "may readily imagine his conversational encounters." What we do learn about him in his early Scotch home, and afterwards at the head of his own family in London, cannot be said to present him to us in a genial and attractive light. In fact, we grow indignant at what Dr. Bain very candidly reports of the demeanour of the philanthropist and reformer towards his wife and children, and we do not wonder that his biographer thinks it necessary to guard against the

* James Mill, A Biography. By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D., Emeritus Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen. London: Longmans, 1882.

inference that the children were made" entirely unhappy " by their father's system. At his best there is always something dry and pedantic about him. He was, as Professor Bain scientifically describes him," chiefly a compound of Intellect and Will,"-a very effective combination, no doubt, for getting the work done which he and his fellow-Radicals set themselves to do, but forming a character which we may respect and admire, but certainly cannot feel any personal liking for.

The chief value of Professor Bain's study lies in the very full and detailed account which he gives of the thirty years or so of earnest, successful work which Mill did in London, and in the estimate we are enabled to form of the part he played in bringing about the first great effectual movements in the direction of reform in Education, Jurisprudence, Prison Discipline, Personal Liberty of Speech and Action, Parliamentary Representation,-and, in fact, in nearly every department of social and political life. Dr. Bain has not the art of presenting a very vivid or life-like portraiture of the men whose well-known names appear in his pages in connection with that of the hero of his story. But it is made evident that Mill was second to none of his associates in persistent energy, unswerving faith in his theories, and stiff adherence to principle; and he made his influence felt very effectually by some of his fellowworkers whose achievements fill a more conspicuous place in the literary and political annals of the time. We have a detailed account and analysis of all his more important articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Westminster and other Reviews, and of the books and pamphlets in which he promulgated his doctrines and defined the methods of giving effect to them. There were few of the burning questions of the time on which James Mill had not something to say, and his opinion was always a weighty one. There was a sort of dry intellectual enthusiasm about him, and a clear-headed intentness of purpose, which carried him through an immense amount of successful work. That work belongs essentially to a past stage in our national life, and though many of the principles so clearly laid down are permanently valid, the social and political writings in which they are embodied have not the intrinsic literary quality which would give them a continuous vitality. Dr. Bain, however, shows very clearly the historical interest they possess in connection with the movements which they influenced so much. It does not enter into Dr. Bain's scheme to give any detailed account or critique of James Mill's system of philosophy, though this would have been especially in his line. He says but little, therefore, of the Analysis of the Human Mind, giving a slight sketch of its contents, and a brief indication of what he considers its most signal merits and defects. It is curiously edifying to be reminded that "the section on the family affections is replete with the ideal of perfect domestic happiness."

It was well that the record of James Mill's strenuous life-work should have been made; and if in some respects it might have been set down with a more genial and picturesque pen than Dr. Bain usually wields, and if we might have desired in addition to the detailed information and