Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/131

 Lang : History of Scotland 1 2 1 ceptional and picturesque, at the expense of that normal line of progress, which after all constitutes the most important part of history. Aside from the defects already alluded to, it should be noted that the book before us contains no maps or chronological tables ; also that the treatment of church organization, government, discipline and worship is regrettably meagre. The proof-reading might have been more carefully done, and there are occasional slips of a more serious kind, in statements of fact. Yet on the whole Dr. Newman's Manual ^W. be welcomed in many institutions where text-books are employed, and it is sure to give better satisfaction than most books of a similar character. J. WiNTHROP Platner. A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation. By Andrew L.XG. Vol. I. (New York: Dodd. Mead and Co. 1900. Pp. xxvi, 509.) Dr. Liebermann has lately been complaining of the tendency of English students of history to produce readable essays rather than to de- vote themselves to laying the dry foundations upon which a future mas- ter may build. In this connection Professor Seeley's denunciation of " mere literature " is remembered. Literature is what Mr. Lang has ac- customed us to expect from him, but he now presents himself as a serious and even ambitious writer of history. In this capacity, then, and in no other, must he be judged. A history of Scotland, at the present stage of historical study in that country, must be one of two things. Either it must be the fruit of a scholar's prolonged and painful study of original sources, or else the dis- cerning and compact restatement of results obtained by specialists work- ing in various parts of the general field. In the first of these classes Mr. Lang's work cannot be included, in the second it probably will not oc- cupy a distinguished place. The present volume — a second is promised — comprises the period from the Roman occupation to the middle of the sixteenth century. The field is wide, but perhaps less so than would at first appear. The dynastic history of Scotland may be said to have begun with the consoli- dation of the Celtic — or non-Teutonic, for this point is in dispute — peo- ples of North Britain under Kenneth MacAlpine (844-860). But the national history of the Scots can scarcely be regarded as older than the battle of Carham (1018), a victorious defeat of the Anglo-Saxons, by which the Northumbrian kings lost the province of Lothian and the Scottish dynasty was swept into the current of Teutonic development. In the succeeding century the marriages of Malcolm Canmore with St. Margaret— a princess of the line of Cerdic and Alfred — and of David I. with that Matilda who, as heiress of Earl Waltheof, brought a dower of claims to an English earldom, definitely mark the triumphs of Teuton over Celt between Tweed and Forth. Thus a Celtic dynasty sprung from an ancestor half Scot half Pict — and so, perhaps, something more