Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/283

 ii s. vii. APK.L 5, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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nd throughout the country deeds were burnt
 * > the accompaniment of peals of bells, while the

eople danced to the cry of ' Vive la Repub- que ! ' ' After the Terror the College de France jmained standing, " but the Professor of History jund it advisable to select his subjects from ae ancient world." In the last year of the Con- ulate Napoleon abolished the Academy of Moral nd Political Science, and created a department f Ancient History and Literature, but no place ras found for modern and mediaeval history, Ithough Daunou was appointed to the control f the national archives.

A chapter is devoted to the Romantic School 'hierry and Michelet ; followed by the Political chool Guizot, Mignet, Thiers. Of Thiers's Consulate and Empire ' Mr. Gooch says :

It must always occupy a prominent place in istoriography. It was written by one of the jremost political figures of the century. It was mong the main factors in the growth of the [apoleonic legend." But Thiers knew little of rermany, and " his knowledge of England was bill less, and one of the blots on his work is is failure to do justice to the policy of Pitt and ae genius of Wellington."

The story of France is closed with the disaster f 1870. Of Napoleon III. Mr. Gooch writes hat he ' suffered first from adulation, then from alumny. There is no longer need for either, [is reign was brilliant and deadly, superficial and ragic. He was a mixture of Machiavelli and )on Quixote, whom it is impossible to hate, lowever severe the judgment both of the ruler nd the man, the impression he leaves is rather of lelancholy than of anger."

As regards our own country, the English eople were slow to take interest in history, partly, 10 doubt, from the way in which it was taught a schools, with the drudgery of learning by rote he dates of the kings and queens and a few of the vents that took place during their reign. Sharon Burner's ' Anglo-Saxons,' Gibbon, Robertson, and lume failed to take hold on the general reader. ?hen came Hallam's ' Europe in the Middle ^ges,' from which " may be dated the beginning if systematic historical study in England." )f Lingard Mr. Gooch says that " he won reputa- ion as a serious historian by his ' Antiquities if the Anglo-Saxon Church.' Though the object i the book was to glorify the Catholic centuries, ie wrote with a reticence that rendered it palatable o Protestant readers." Of Macaulay's Essays ilr. Gooch writes with enthusiasm : "If Macaulay .id not invent the historical essay, he found it if brick, and left it of marble." Macaulay, ,s Mr. Gooch rightly says, " was the first English writer to make history universally inter- sting." There are many still living who re- nember the rapid sale of the volumes of his History ' on publication, and the rush to iludie's to Obtain the loan of them by such is could not afford to buy. Never before or ince has the public been so excited over the ublication of an historical work. Of the Essavs, >tr. Gooch thinks that on Warren Hastings per- laps the most brilliant. There are only two o which exception is taken : that on Burleigh, ' a thoroughly mediocre performance," and that 'ii Bacon, " the most dramatic failure of his Macaulay's] life." Bacon, however, has been ince vindicated by $ixon and by Spedding.

The only other writer of that period who gave an impetus to history was Carlyle when he wrote that " wild, savage book," ' The French Revolu- tion,' that had come " hot out of his own soul, born in blackness, whirlwind, and sorrow." Mr. Gooch criticizes its faults and mistakes, as he does those of ' Frederick ' ; but we cannot agree with him that while 'Frederick' is "full of purple patches," it "adds little to knowledge." He is, we consider, altogether too hard on Carlyle, although he says of him that he was "the great- est of English historical portrait-painters."

An epoch in historiography occurred in 1869, when Green published his ' Short History.' " The hero of the book was the people ; only thus could English history be conceived as a whole. The deeds of kings fall into their prcper place,, and we hear little of drums and trumpets." As Mr. Gooch well puts it, " the history of England was no longer an old almanack/ but the development of a living organism, the English people."

We trust we have said enough to induce students to purchase the book for themselves- In a future edition Mr. Gooch will no doubt make additions, and we hope he will then give more space to the work of recent historians. We would also put in a plea for Charles Knight, who, although he had no pretensions to scholar- ship, produced the first popular complete history of England, full of good illustrations.

The Flemings in Oxford : being Documents selected from the Rydol Papers in illustration of the Lives and Ways of Oxford Men, 1650-1700. Edited by John Richard Magrath. Vol. I. 1650-1680;. Vol. II. 1680-1690. (Oxford Historical Society.) THE interest of these papers lies not more in the picture they give us of Oxford life during the latter half of the seventeenth century than in the insight they afford into the relations between Oxford and? the world outside. Daniel Fleming was a North- Country magnate, a large landholder in Westmor- land, Cumberland, and Lancashire, a man of family and of sufficient wealth, himself the father of fifteen children, and a person whose education and! natural capacity fitted him to discharge worthily the obligations of his position. He had been him- self a Commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, and to Oxford he sent four of his eleven sons three to- Queen's, one to St. Edmund Hall. From the vast mass of correspondence preserved by him Dr. Magrath has selected, and most minutely anno- tated, all that is dated from Oxford, or addressed to Oxford, as well as any other letters which may serve to illustrate the outlook and temper of Oxford men who had passed beyond the range off the University. To these he has added numerous extracts from Daniel Fleming's great book of accounts, which are concerned rather with domestic life in the North than with Oxford, but include many interesting items bearing on the schooling of boys : the customs, the books used, and the attitude- of masters and scholars towards one another, as well as details of expenditure for wages, journeys, and the more casual demands of daily life.

The student will seek in vain for any outstand- ing personality, any touches of genius, any new or shrewd judgment on the important affairs then enacting, in the correspondence of these Oxford men. Daniel Fleming is by much the most striking figure here presented, but none of his friends seems.