Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/605

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 597 and then broadening out on to wider ground. This was in itself more alien than Quietism from the spirit of the society, and consequently its effect was more transformatory. While in England the society was able to preserve its unity not only in face of this, but in face also of more subversive tendencies of the eighteenth century, in America it was not so fortunate ; and Dr. Jones, who naturally devotes considerable space to the history of the society in America, gives a detailed account of the separations. It is interesting to compare these volumes with another kindred series, Bremond's Histoire Litteraire du Sentiment Religieux en France, of which the first five volumes have now appeared. There is much that is common to the two undertakings the same period, the same leisurely method with numerous quotations from forgotten writers, the same attempt to describe inner qualities of the soul ; but the differences are more marked and more significant. In some ways Dr. Jones is more wide-seeing than Bremond ; at any rate he shows the greater appreciation of what was going on elsewhere outside his own particular field. But the human scope of one book is large, while that of the other is com- paratively small. And here it is the French book that has the advantage. It is a small world, the Quaker world, and few outside it will fail to wonder whether it was worth while to have written on such a scale. The very size of the history militates against its making more widely understood the very fascinating ideals and achievements of the society. It is, after all, family history on an extended scale, the history of a group of like- minded people, who starting with a similarity of natural temperament have been led on to a similarity of religious experience, and have coalesced into a society where they can support and reinforce one another. In the early days when they imagined that the whole world ought to be like themselves, and set out heroically, if quixotically, to make it so, it was a beau geste. But when they resigned themselves to be a peculiar people, they resigned also the claim of their history to be more than a family affair ; the history of a very distinguished, always honourable, often heroic, family, no doubt ; and, as such, it will always have interested readers, and an inspiring effect. But with Bremond we are in a larger world, richer in initial temperament, richer in religious experience, with less feeling of spiritual aristocracy and more of religious fellowship and democratic brotherhood. There is a sameness about the Quaker portraits which contrasts markedly with the variety of French saintliness. You are glad to spend a week with the first, and will enjoy and profit by it ; while you would wish to spend a year with the second. In any case, however, you will offer warm thanks to the authors of this Quaker history for a very welcome week. W. H. FRERE. Lord Hood and the Defence of Toulon. By J. HOLLAND ROSE (Cambridge : University Press, 1922.) THERE is an element of the paradoxical, which is at the same time peculiarly appropriate, in the fact that the first volume published by Dr. Holland Rose in his new capacity as professor of naval history at Cambridge uhould be concerned with an episode in which the navy was after all not engaged on its own business, but was trying to perform a task properly belonging