Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/107

 9* s. VIL FEB. 2, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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war to an inefficient conclusion." With this brilliant feat for such, whatever its results, it was it is well to compare the deeds of Cumberland at Puerto Rico and the capture of a Spanish carrack at Cezimbra Road, the latter a stupendous feat, since, in addition to being three times as big as any vessel of the attacking force, the carrack in question was manned by a fresh and picked crew, was imme- diately under the guns of a formidable fort, and had, in addition, the support of galleys twice as numerous as the English fleet. It is not, of course, for the first time that these deeds are recorded, the particulars being supplied in the ' Naval Tracts ' of Sir William Monson in Churchill's 'Collection of Voyages and Travels.' Monson, whose share in the deeds he depicts was highly honourable, wrote, however, from distant memories, and is scarcely trustworthy as an historical authority. Drake died during the period with which Mr. Corbett deals, and the most noted among his successors include Essex and Ralegh. Howard of Effingham (the Lord High Admiral), Lord Thomas Howard, Sir Francis Vere (Colonel-General of the English Low Country Brigade), Sir George Carew, the Earl of Cumberland, Sir Richard Leveson, Lord Mountjoy, Monson, and very many others, are vividly de- picted. Ralegh, whose intellectual greatness is con- ceded, is the subject of severe stricture, though it is owned that to judge him with confidence is im- possible. " His name has never held a real place

m the roll of our great admirals Ralegh never

did anything on the sea that Essex did not do better ; there is nothing that Ralegh ever wrote on the naval art that cannot be matched by something as sagacious and far-sighted from the lips or pen of Essex." On the whole, however, it is conceded that on Ralegh, above all others, fell the mantle of Drake. Mr. Corbett's book is brightly and well written, and his narrative is animated. Admirable illustrations in photochrome of Essex and other worthies, and process reproductions of Ralegh and Cumberland, together with maps and other designs, add to the attractions of a readable and trustworthy volume, embodying the fruits of much research in quarters that have only become acces- sible within recent years.

Le Dix-neuvieme Sidde. (Librairie Hachette.) IT may hardly be said that a book such as this is impossible elsewhere than in France. Nowhere else, however, so far as we recall, has any- thing of the kind been attempted. In a single volume of some four to five hundred pages we have here portrayed the manners, the arts, and the ideas of France during the past century. The work is essentially national. Other countries except so far as their history is interwoven with that of France, are unmentioned. The work is devoted to the development of French ideas, th( record of French accomplishment, the exposition o: French genius. It is neither political, controversial, nor in the active sense historical. From the period of Napoleon to that of Pasteur the progress and influence of France are traced, the whole being accompanied by some hundreds of illustrations o social and political scenes, combats, domestic in teriors, art and social life, together with portrait! of the most distinguished actors in the long drama of history. The change wrought by t long period of time is more sensible in the develop ment of a nation than of an individual. Some scores or, perhaps, hundreds exist who, having been

orn in the eighteenth century, have managed

o draw breath in the twentieth. Perceptible

nough is, of course, the influence of time upon

uch, connecting as it does the infant with the

entenarian. It seems nothing, however, beside

hat of the century which has seen the intro-

uction of gas and electricity, of railways and

elegraphs, and the application to daily life of

he magical discoveries of science. This subject

would lead us further than we can go. It will

onvey some idea of the change that has been

wrought when we think that the past century,

which at its outset knew no better method of

ridging space than by the primitive and clumsy

xpedient of the semaphore, ends with a dream,

ess wild than appeared at the outset some that have

)een realized, of entering into direct communication

with Mars.

So far as the book before us is concerned, the representatives in France of the nineteenth century are assumed to be Hugo, Pasteur, Delacroix, Rude, and Berlioz, a selection that no one could have dreamed of making at the middle of the century. The selection may pass, though we fancy that others might have been selected whose influence is destined to be more permanent. With this it is Dresumptuous for Englishmen to deal. Napoleon is, )f course, the most potent and abiding influence ay which this volume is permeated. He is not directly named, however, as such, just as, if we were asked to name the principal blessings with which we are surrounded, we should probably neglect to count the air, without which our existence would cease. A stormy history is that which has to be recorded. In the year 1801 the waters had scarcely subsided after the great Revolutionary storm. Yet the century was to witness five further revolutions, a hostile occupa- tion (with which, patriotically, the compiler does not occupy himself overmuch), and the supremacy of the Commune, to which is due the destruction of some of the noblest and most beautiful of French monuments. These shocks have been survived, and the intellectual, artistic, and social life of France shows now scarcely a trace of their influence. That peace even in the most martial of countries has "her victories no less renowned than war" is proved in the fact that the frontispiece to the volume, recording the century's triumphs, consists of a portrait of the great chemist Pasteur in his laboratory.

Beginning with the Consulate and the Empire, the book deals in its opening chapter with the Tuileries and the Elysee, the earliest of the full- page illustrations depicting, respectively after Delarpche and Isabey, Napoleon crossing the Alps or visiting manufactories in Rouen, or the arrival of the diligence in the court of the " Messageries." This period closes with a view of the degraded and discrowned statue of Napoleon lying supine, and the portrait, by Delaroche, of Napoleon himself sitting solitarily and moodily on the rocks of St. Helena. A changing procession of rulers then begins afresh with the apotheosis of Louis XVIII. from the cupola of the Pantheon. " 'Twere long to tell and sad to trace" the progress of the ever- changing phantasmagoria of rulers, as shown in reproductions of State pageants or the designs of caricaturists, the succession of State functions being varied by grim pictures of barricades held by boys and half-naked narridans. A tragic episode is con- stituted by the last days of the unfortunate Em-