Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/140

 1 30 Rcviczi's of Books ble to either King or Parliament, and at the same time the Scotch com- plained of the slowness of the reformation of religion in England, surmis- ing that God had some quarrel with England ; so, finally. Parliament called an Assembly of Divines to sit at Westminster and settle the affairs of the Church. The Assembly plan of church government became the frame of the Church of the Commonwealth, the Directory for Public Worship supplanted the Book of Common Prayer, and the Confession of Faith superseded the Thirty-nine Articles. In place of the spiritual courts were substituted Presbyterian assemblies, a congregational elder- ship to meet once a week, a classis once a month, a provincial assembly twice a year and a national assembly at the summons of Parliament, constituted of two ministers and four elders from each provincial assem- bly, as the provincial assembly was constituted of two ministers and four elders from each classis. In fact, the state was re-organized upon an ecclesiastical basis. The presbytery took cognizance of the morals of the congregation, held investigations in regular form, and decreed punishment by suspension, and the Houses of Parliament called laymen to their bar for disturbances in churches, for holding conventicles, or for absenting themselves from their parish churches, or for preaching when not ordained. These are a few of the points more or less familiar, which the author discusses judicially and thoroughly, so judicially and thoroughly, in fact, that there seems to us to be no other work except that of Robert Barclay with which to compare it. It marks an epoch in the development of our knowledge of the Commonwealth Church — Presbyterian it may pop- ularly be called — as Barclay's work marked an epoch in our knowledge of the obscurer sects of the same period. W. D.A.WSON Johnston. The Memoirs of the Baro>iess Cecile dc Coiirtot, Lady-in- Waiting to the Princess de Lamballe. Compiled, from the Letters of the Baroness to Frau von Alvensleben, and the Diary of the Latter, by her Great-grandson Moritz von Kaisenberg. Translated from the German by Jessie Haynes. (New York : Henry Holt and Co. 1900. Pp. xiv, 298.) The authenticity of this book stands sadly in need of proof. This is not furnished by the preface, which arouses only suspicion. The com- piler asserts that in the attic of his father's house in the neighborhood of Halberstadt there stood an ancient carved oak chest and that he, delving in it one day, found not only ivory fans, potpourri boxes, ladies' poetry albums, illuminated prayer-books, costumes and fashion-plates, but quite at the bottom "chanced upon a thick packet of letters tied together with a blue ribbon and having on the outside wrapper the inscription ' Cecile's Letters. 1801 and 1802.' " These letters, seventeen in number, written by the Baroness to her German friend, Frau von Alvensleben, purport to describe French conditions and important personages in the