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 9* S. VII. MARCH 16, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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session of the other. Desiring in his heart to defend the Protectorate by laws and not by arms, Cromwell still found military despotism thrust upon him. Cromwell. Dr. Gardiner says, was, in truth, "the heir and successor of Strafford like Strafford, throwing himself open to the charge of apostasy, and, like Strafford, shifting his instruments and his political combinations for the sake of the people, whom he aimed at governing for their best advantage." A second parallel, which has often previously been instituted, between Charles I. and Cromwell, when each of them contended against the same antagonist, " a Parliament resolved to subject all other institu- tions in the State to its sole will and pleasure," com- mends itself to him. " The difference between the two men lay, in the first place, in the support given by Charles to a system of external obedience and conformity, whereas Oliver strove for a system of the utmost practical liberty in thought and belief; and, in the second place, in Charles's habit of clinging to formal legality, whilst Oliver, having an army at his back, preferred to break openly through the meshes of the law when they entangled his feet. Charles, when necessity arose or appeared to arise, fumbled over the knot of his destiny in his effort to unloose it ; Oliver hacked at it with his sword." The saddest chapter in the book is, naturally, that on the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland. It is shown, however, that this was in its conception due to the Long Parliament, and was sketched out before Cromwell was in a position to make his might felt. Parliament it was which, in 1642. decreed the confiscation of the estates of the rebels, "setting aside from the forfeited land 2,500,000 acres for the Adventurers who advanced money for the reconquest of Ireland." It was at Cromwell's instigation that the Act for the satis- faction of Adventurers and soldiers was passed, but Cromwell "had not sufficient acquaintance with the Irish problem to treat it as a whole, even from the English point of view." A general trans- plantation, the effect of which would have been to crowd a very large majority of the Irish nation into a rocky and inhospitable district, in which it would be impossible for it to find adequate sustenance, was feared. After long hesitation the good sense of Cromwell perceived that the scheme was im- practicable. It is pleasant, however, to turn away from a record of folly and ineptitude. How recur- rent are conditions is more than once sho\vn. Speaking of the time when courts - martial were established for the purpose of trying the Irish rebels, Dr. Gardiner says : " So the renewed struggle was carried on in all its horror. As in the days when Bruce was holding out against the officers of Edward I., the men who were thieves and mur- derers to the one side were heroes and patriots to the other." How much alteration, it may be asked, is necessary to fit these words to to-day ? In regard to the small measure of success which attended Cromwell's interference on behalf of the Vaudois, it is shown to be due to special circumstances in Cromwell's diplomatic relations with France, which were unlikely to recur. The last words in the text deal with the refusal of Cromwell to renounce his assumed right to take up the cause of the Huguenot, dpropos of which Dr. Gardiner says : "The seeds which were ultimately to come to an evil fruitage in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were being unwittingly sown by the self - constituted Protector of the Protestant world." Dr. Gardiner's latest contribution to history maintains the high

level to which he has accustomed us. The maps include England and Wales, showing the districts assigned to the Major-Generals ; Ireland as divided by the Act of Satisfaction ; the Vaudois valley ; and the lands surrounding the Baltic. There are also plans of the attack on San Domingo and Tunis and Porto Farina.

London Memories, Social, Historical, and Topo- graphical. By Charles William Heckethorn. (Chatto & Windus.)

MR. HECKETHORN'S work is a companion volume to his ' London Souvenirs,' on the merit of which we have already spoken. It gossips pleasantly con- cerning features of old London now obliterated, on wells and springs, priories and religious houses generally, conflagrations, frosts, tempests and floods, and kindred subjects, and is always read- able and sometimes instructive. All that we can urge against it is that political bias is too apparent, and that the language of condemnation employed is continually too violent. When Mr. Heckethorn asks, " What sort of women and girls were they who placidly listened to Shakespeare's plays in their coarse originality?" we dissent entirely from the conclusion he would have us draw, and answer, "Every whit as pure-minded and good as those who listen to the problem plays of to-day." The arraignment of our ancestors is ferocious : " In planners they [our ancestors] were barbarians, and in morals reprobates. In science they were not worthy to tie our shoe-strings. The periods in our history which are considered the brightest in our national intellectuality, what did they produce? Chiefly plays and poems which, instead of adding to human progress, demoralized the Court, and through that the whole nation, down to its very dregs. Nothing will elevate man but science. The italics are our own. Neither religion nor culture, according to Mr. Heckethorn, will ele- vate a nation. Only the steam-hammer and hygiene ! All through the same intemperance of language prevails. When describing the penance undergone for witchcraft in 1440 by the Duchess of Gloucester, Mr. Heckethorn says of the [Lord] Mayor, Sheriffs, and Companies of London, " Fools all of them for taking a part in a farcical punish- ment for an impossible crime." We sympathize with some of Mr. Heckethorn's views, out we dislike his method of advocacy.

The Mind of the Century. Reprinted from the

Daily Chronicle. (Fisher Unwin.) How far these articles, reprinted from the Daily Chronicle, represent the mind of the century we will not presume to declare. As a rule the canvas is too small for the picture to take a permanent place in a gallery, lake the question of poetry, the subject of which comes first in the volume, Mr. Lionel Johnson, who discusses it, seeks in less than eight pages to deal with the poetry of Eng- land, France, Germany, Italy, and to some extent with that of America and Scandinavia. So far as a newspaper article is concerned, this may be well enough, though even then it can have no special significance. When it is sought to make of the whole a permanent record, its inadequacy becomes obvious. A few phrases such as "the sombre negations of Leopardi," " the bright impieties of Heine," "that magnificent anomaly, Walt Whit' man," and " Byron, the least perfect of great poets " do little to vivify a summary in which Keats is a