practically wanted, instead of granting a cut and dried constitution, extremely unlikely to work, at the expense of scandalising all who thought as he did himself that his spiritual office was much more important than his temporal.

What a ruler of genius might have done is another question, but Pius never undertook to be a ruler of genius, and it is unreasonable to assume that unless he was that he was to do nothing: he did what he could, and for the first eighteen months of his reign he got on better than Joseph II. when he began his reforms. The first effect of the revolution of February was that he had to grant a constitution, which he did with a commendable mixture of frankness and caution, the good effects of which were wholly neutralised, without much blame to anybody, by the fatal disposition of the most moderate constitutionalists to insist on preliminaries which he could not grant. As soon as it appeared that the Chambers and the Parliamentary ministry were not to be invested with the full Sovereignty of the ecclesiastical state, Mamiani and Farini and the rest began by their unrestrained impatience and distrust to play into the hands of Mazzini, who with fiendish subtlety or angelic constancy did everything to keep alive the popular excitement, as when the reaction came he expected to reap the harvest of their discontent. But there was a more serious difficulty than even the desire to get rid of clerical government, and that was the desire to get rid of Austria, which began to tell increasingly when the heroism of the people of Milan had relieved their city from the Austrian garrison. Here, again, Pius IX. did his best, and it cannot be said his best was bad. Before the revolution of February he had asserted both his territorial and spiritual independence of Austria, while he had done his best to discourage the chimerical expectation of his becoming the head of a republican federation in Italy. When action of some kind was forced upon him, he applied himself to forming a customs league which might have led to a more intimate union among the princes of Italy, and when it became certain that Austria would have to fight if she meant to recover her ascendency, he heartily sanctioned the enthusiasm of the volunteers so far as it could be directed to the defence of the Roman State, which was by no means secure in case of Austrian successes. When the army insisted on taking part in the national movement, he first unequivocally expressed his disapproval, and then under pressure from his ministers made a series of concessions, carefully guarded, but still against his better judgment, which were systematically represented as meaning more than they did. Meanwhile he remonstrated paternally with the Emperor of Austria against attempting to reconquer his Italian possessions, and did everything to induce Charles Albert to cooperate with him in forming an Italian league which would reduce to a minimum his personal responsibility for the contingent which he had already placed under Charles Albert's command. That high-minded and generous sovereign was unfortunately incapable of frank co-operation with anybody, and even apart from this his own situation

might have excused him for pressing for a simple alliance and deferring the question of

confederation to calmer times. All this time one ministry at Rome succeeded another, the prospects of Charles Albert grew black and those of Radetsky bright, and the Parliament and the mob went on insisting that the Pope had declared war against Austria implicitly, and ought to declare it explicitly; the city had become so unruly that it had been advisable to warn the Jesuits to retire long ago. At last came the short-lived ministry of Rossi. Mr. Legge the short-lived ministry of Rossi. Mr. Legge recounts fully, candidly, significantly, how Rossi was murdered; how for two days the city was given up to the mob, who made themselves accomplices of his murderers: how devoid were the Chambers, his colleagues, his successors, of either will or power to do anything for order or justice; and yet he thinks it was flagitious perfidy in Pius IX. to leave Rome as soon as he could. Mr. Legge does not think constitutionalism was made for man; he thinks man was made for constitutionalism. So far, it might seem that Mr. Legge came to curse the Pope, and behold he has blessed him altogether. Underneath his "tale of sound and fury

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Told by a Briton' signifying nothing," one discerns the story of an upright, intelligent, benevolent ruler succumbing blamelessly in an impossible task: he had not deceived his subjects; they betrayed him because he refused to allow them to deceive themselves.

At Gaeta the scene changes. The Pope still retained his personal kindliness of feeling and his willingness to do good to individuals, but in politics his calm simple nature seemed to have changed itself with a strange easy ominous completeness. He acted as if he had but one thought, that the humiliation of the Roman clergy would soon be over, and that the rebels would be punished as they deserved. He was not bound, as Mr. Legge supposes, to promise the constitutionalists all they wished on the absurd supposition that then they would be able to save Rome from Mazzini and the French; but he did nothing (perhaps there was nothing to do) to make it easier for his subjects to submit to him than to submit to the invader-did he wish to do any thing? Another and a pleasanter transition accomplished itself at Gaeta: for three years the Pope had been the centre of the hopes of the visionaries who looked to the future; for five and twenty years he was to be the centre of the gathering enthusiasm of the visionaries who look to the past. His meditations on the Immaculate Conception are the first stage of the process of which the speeches, which are such an offence to Mr. Gladstone, delivered since the Piedmontese occupation of Rome are the latest. In the eleventh and in the twelfth century the temper and the weapons with which the Papacy fought the Empire, the only mediaeval sovereignty with the pretensions of the modern state, often seemed suicidal to people who wished well to the Church. Pius IX. has done more than seemed possible to revive the temper of the twelfth century among those who still believe.

G. A. SIMCOX.

Account of the Executors of Richard Bishop of London, 1303, and of the Executors of Thomas Bishop of Exeter, 1310. (Camden Society).

THIS Volume contains the final accounts drawn up by the executors of two bishops in the fourteenth century, in order to obtain a release from their duties. They consist of inventories of household and landed property, statements of the performance of the legacies, and of the expenses of the exetors in discharging their office. The bishops in question are-Richard de Gravesend, who held the see of London from 1280 to 1303; and Thomas de Bitton, or Button, Bishop of Exeter from 1292 to 1307. Neither of them made any great figure in history, and these accounts do not afford much personal information concerning them, being concerned merely with their property.

The landed property of the bishops being the temporalities of their respective sees, was of course taken possession of by the Crown immediately on the bishopric falling vacant; but the stock of cattle and hay and corn already cut, and arrears of rent, were considered as the bishop's personal property, and are therefore accounted for by the executors. On the other hand, crops still standing went with the land, and the executors were obliged to furnish seed corn and fodder for the teams of oxen and horses necessary for working the farms during the vacancy. The list of manors does not tally in either case exactly with that given in the "Valor Ecclesiasticus" of Henry VIII. By the time the latter was compiled, the see of Exeter possessed two more manors than in Bitton's time. Kaergal, which the editor states in the preface is not included in the Valor, will be found mentioned in the printed edition as Gargonle, an evident misprint for Gargoule. The property of the see of London was more subject to change. In both lists the number of manors held by the see is twenty-four, but only eighteen of the, names mentioned in Gravesend's account are to be found in the Valor, and one of these, "Sunnebery," is changed to "Sudbury."

The personal property of the two bishops consisted principally of plate, hangings, and clothes. It is curious that in the inventory of Bishop Gravesend's effects there is no mention of furniture except bedding and carpets; and in Bishop Button's list there is little but a couple of bedsteads, a chair or two, and some chests for packing. No doubt the heavier articles of household use, such as tables and benches, belonged to the house, and were not considered as the personal property of the bishop. The cooking utensils and the contents of the buttery were claimed by the cook and butler respectively as their perquisites.

The chapels of both bishops contained a goodly array of plate, vestments, and service books. Those of the Bishop of Exeter are valued at 967. 148. 10d.; while the Bishop of London's chapel furniture was worth. 1347. 188. 8d., the excess being chiefly in plate. The latter possessed a pair of gloves decorated with goldsmith's work and enamel, which were sold for 5l., equal to more than 607. in the present day. Bishop Bitton, on

the other hand, was contented with commoner and more useful articles, for though thirteen pairs are mentioned, they were sold for only 10s. the lot. He had, however, a much better collection of service books than Gravesend, whose chapel seems only to have contained two portiforia, a missal, a psalter, and some sheets of vellum containing the offices for the dead, a very small collection for a bishop's chapel, and none of them worth more than a pound. Both these portiforia are of the Sarum use, but in Bishop Bitton's inventory the use is not stated. The style of decoration of the vestments is only mentioned in one instance that of a chasuble, embroidered with the arms of the Kings of France and England. This was, of course, before the Kings of England quartered the lilies of France with their own leopards. Why the arms were united in this case there is no indication. Could this vestment have belonged to the chapel of Prince Louis of France when he came to assume the crown of England at the invitation of the barons? Bishop Gravesend's lack of books in the chapel is atoned for by the collection kept in his wardrobe. Most of them are theological or ecclesiastical, including writings of Jerome, Alexander of Hales, and Eusebius, and books on canon law. Physical science was not entirely neglected, however, for we find in the list a book of Avicenna valued at 100s. and another Liber Naturalium, which was given to a poor scholar for the good of the soul of its late but the price of it was only 3s. The most valuable item of the library was a bible in thirteen volumes, worth 107., which the bishop bequeathed to Stephen de Gravesende, his nephew, rector of Stepney, who succeeded to his uncle's see in 1318. Among Bishop Bitton's chapel furniture is enumerated a fly flap made of cloth of tars," by no means a common item in an English inventory. It was used by an attendant to keep flies from settling on the altar during the performance of mass. These insect plagues must have been more troublesome in Devonshire than elsewhere in England, for we find that the Bishop possessed a mosquito net, which certainly cannot have been an article in common use in England, as it seldom, if ever, occurs in inventories of furniture.

owner;

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Among Gravesend's jewels is found an "instrumentum ad purgandum dentes." This is probably a toothpick, not a tooth-brush. It is coupled with a silver seal, and was doubtless itself of silver, and suspended with the seal to a short chain. In later centuries jewelled toothpicks were common enough, worn round the neck or hanging to the girdle.

The funeral expenses of both bishops were heavy, 1401. and 2701. Much of this expense, however, was for money distributed at the funeral. At Bitton's obsequies more than 16,000 poor persons received one penny each; while the recipients of Gravesend's charity were more than twice as numerous, and many of the mourners were also entertained at a feast, which cost at least 201. Among the funeral baked meats figure swans, fowls, and rabbits; and ginger and other spices form no inconsiderable item in the expenditure. In each case the

tomb was constructed of marble. Bitton's tomb, before the high altar of his cathedral, was opened during the last century, and a chalice, paten, and sapphire ring were discovered in the coffin. Of these a drawing is given in the present volume. Gravesend's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral, according to Dugdale, was destroyed in the reign of Edward VI.

We have only noticed here a few of the subjects which this volume illustrates, as it would be impossible to do more. Though inventories may not be very amusing reading, they give a great insight into the manners and habits of our forefathers, and help the mind to realise and see their daily life-a thing of great importance in the study of history. The inventories themselves, as far as can be judged without seeing the originals, are accurately printed, and the appendix contains an analysis of the contents of both lists, which considerably faciliC. T. MARTIN.

tates reference.

Fair Lusitania. By Catharine Charlotte, Lady Jackson. With Twenty Illustra tions from Photographs. (London: R. Bentley & Son, 1874.)

A PRETTIER Volume than this we have seldom handled: we could have wished that its contents realised more fully the promise of its fair outside. The authoress, indeed, is frank enough to tell us that her book is "merely a collection of extracts from a desultory diary, with letters written during a recent visit to Portugal;" but even this candid avowal has not saved us from some disappointment.

Lady Jackson has spent a considerable time in Lisbon, and has also visited Oporto, Cintra, and a few other places of interest. She has seen very much what the ordinary tourist in Portugal is accustomed to see, and her descriptions of scenery and people are pleasant enough. She has some taste for art, but honestly confesses her ignorance of its technicalities. Being unable to reproduce in words the impressions made upon her by such sights as the Church of Santa Maria de Belem and the Cloisters at Batalha, she has done the best thing she could in giving us admirable engravings of their beauties. In fact, we may say that the chief value of her book is that it draws attention in a popular way to the many charms that "Fair Lusitania" possesses, and may thus be the means of inducing lovers of art and antiquities to visit a region which has lately been too much neglected.

For Portugal is but rarely visited nowadays. It has fallen out of repute as a healthresort-fashion as much as anything else seems to govern the choice of sanatoria-and to sportsmen it has never offered many attractions. Yet now and then a salmon may be caught even as far south as the Douro, and in the northern streams the fishing, especially for trout and grayling, is fishing, especially for trout and grayling, is very good. On the plains of Estremadura and Alemtejo may be seen sand-grouse and bustards-both great and little-in abundance; quails and woodcocks are well distributed, and in the Gerez and Estrella ranges -districts almost unknown to Englishmengenuine sport of the highest type is to be had.

There the wolf, the lynx, and the wild-boar have their haunts, and among the rugged Gerez mountains (the grandest scenery in Portugal) the ibex still maintains its existence.

These, however, are matters upon which Lady Jackson is silent; but of sport in one rather dubious form she was an enthusiastic spectator. Nearly a whole chapter of her book is devoted to the description of a bullfight at which she was present. During the season there are bull-fights at Lisbon every week; but it was Lady Jackson's special good fortune to be there when a famous Spanish matador exhibited his skill. The entertainment was sufficiently exciting, though less so than would have been the case in Spain, for in Portugal it is only the fighters, and not the bulls, that run any risk of life

:

"Be not shocked," says Lady Jackson, "at my bull-fighting propensities; for as l'appétit vient en mangeant, so, I think, were the toirada to be repeated to-morrow, my young companion and I should be found in the Praça de Sant' Anna, in the front row of cadeiras. We certainly shall if

El Pollo appears there again.”

But the artist, the architect, and the

antiquary (who will travel most conveniently if united in the person of one individual), may be most sure that their visit to Portugal will not be unprofitable. It is true that in the larger towns many of the churches were ruined by the evil influence of the Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but there may still be found—especially in remote districts-many untouched examples of Romanesque and Saracenic architecture. The "flamboyant" style at its best and at its wildest is over-represented, yet it is interesting to view it in connexion with the so-called 'plateresque," which is rather a form of house-decoration than a style of architecture. Here and there in out-of-the-way towns the tourist will stumble upon mansions the magnificence of which will surprise him. They were often erected by men, cadets of noble families, or sprung from the lowest ranks, whom the wealth of the Brazils had enriched, and whose pleasure it was to build a palace in the humble town which gave them birth.

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Of course no one would quit Portugal without visiting Bragança, rich in associations and antiquities; Guimaraens, the birthplace of Affonzo Henriquez; the wooded heights of Busaco, and those rival beauties Batalha and Cintra. To the last and best known of these places Lady Jackson went by train, and her experiences of the Larmanjat railway, if amusing in themselves, are not comfortable reading for possible passengers or shareholders. On this line, we are told, the rails are made of wood, which have a tendency to swell in the rainy season and throw the carriages off the line. Yet the same system is pursued on the railway which is being constructed to Torres Vedrasand this in a country where the mineral wealth is vast, and waits only to be developed! English energy and English capital may work wonders in Portugal.

Ŏf Cintra itself Lady Jackson writes in terms of unqualified and excusable rapture. Byron, in one of his letters, says that the scenery "unites in itself all the wildness of the Western Highlands with the

sad fate.

Of the state of literature in Portugal Lady Jackson has nothing favourable to say. The popular novelist Camillo Castello Branco seems to unite in himself all the vices of Mrs. Radcliffe and Miss Braddon; and as to poetry, its voice has long ceased to sound in the land of Camoens and Bernardes. Except in Lisbon and Oporto there seems to be an utter stagnation of thought throughout the kingdom.

Lady Jackson, as we have said, writes in a pleasant and natural way, and with the aid of the engraver and binder has succeeded in making a very attractive volume. We cannot add that she has contributed much to our knowledge of the interesting and neglected country which she visited, and her book is, in our opinion, better suited to the drawing-room than to the library.

CHARLES J. ROBINSON.

Debrett's Illustrated Peerage and Titles of Courtesy. Debrett's Illustrated Baronetage with Knightage. Debrett's Illustrated House of Commons and the Judicial Bench. (London: Dean & Son, 1874, 1875.) The County Families of the United Kingdom. By Edward Walford, M.A. (London: R. Hardwicke.)

Debrett, which is stated to be the oldest work of reference in the world, has now entered upon its seventeenth decade. The Debrett of 170 years ago would be a real curiosity, and we should like to be able to compare it with the volumes now before us. There are now 571 peers and peeresses of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and twentyeight spiritual peers of England. On the roll of the Lords summoned to Parliament in the reign of King Henry III., 200 names occur, fifty of which are those of the spiritual barons. Between the wars of the Roses and the decapitations under the Tudors, nearly all the ancient nobility perished, and during the reign of Elizabeth the ducal order became extinct or in abeyance, and continued so until revived by James I. in the person of his favourite Villiers, whom he made Duke of Buckingham. It is a fact well known that no male descendant of any one of the twenty-five barons appointed conservators of the public liberties as granted in Magna Charta can now be found among the Lords.

In the third year of King Henry V. there were four dukes and fourteen earls. The dukes, and also two of the earls, were princes of the blood royal. The barons then, as at all times both before and since, greatly outnumbered all the other ranks in When Henry VII. summoned

the

peerage.

his first Parliament, only twenty-nine temporal peers could be found including the barons. At the Act of Dissolution forty-two temporal peers voted, many of whom were new men, indebted, as Lingard says, "for their honours and estates to the bounty of Henry or of his father."

Sir Henry Spelman, writing about the year 1630, says, "The whole body of the baronage is, since the dissolution, much fallen from their ancient lustre, magnitude, and estimation,' while the ancient honours of nobility had been conferred upon "the meanest of the people, on shopkeepers, taverners, tailors, tradesmen, burghers, brewers, and graziers." On the accession of King James I., the honour of knighthood was conferred upon seven hundred persons. Higher honours were also bestowed with so lavish a hand that, as Stow tells us, many murmured at and ridiculed such profusion; and a pasquinade was seen fixed on the door of St. Paul's offering to teach weak memories the art of recollecting the titles of the new nobility.

Twenty years ago it was asserted on good authority that out of the forty-one noblemen who were enriched by the spoils of the abbeys, only eight had their representatives in the male line; and Mr. Erdeswick noted that, within the space of a hundred years, three-fourths of the estates in a county passed into the hands of new families. The latter observation made the Marquess of Halifax say that founding a family seemed to him like children's play when they build houses of cards which a shake or puff of wind throws down again.

who are

It is stated in the preface to Debrett's Peerage that "at the present time there is more than the customary number of peers without heirs, and that at least three peers are uncertain whether they have heirs." The bulk of the work, however, "increases annually, inasmuch as the creations far exceed in number the titles that become extinct."

It is both amusing and instructive to compare Mr. Evelyn Philip Shirley's Noble and Gentle Men of England with the volumes before us, especially with Mr. Walford's voluminous work, The County Families of the United Kingdom, which is yearly increasing in bulk, one hundred and fifty additional names having been added to the present edition. In Mr. Shirley's comparatively small and modestMr. Shirley's comparatively small and modestlooking volume, we find the names of three hundred and thirty-one county families in England now existing who were regularly established in their respective counties, either as knightly or gentle houses, before the dissolution of the monasteries, and "inheriting arms from their ancestors" at that period.

Mr. Walford gives six hundred and eightyeight names in the county of York alone! In the same county Mr. Shirley gives twentyseven names only; and although, perhaps, a few names might justly be added to the list -one, to our certain knowledge, should bethe disparity is something startling.

The "Genealogical Volume,' supplemental to the County Families, which Mr. Walford promises us at no distant date, will serve to winnow the chaff from the grain, and show how many of the twelve or fifteen

thousand persons named in the work are entitled to the addition to their names of the title of esquire, so lavishly bestowed, or even to the more humble, but really higher, title of gentleman. If the heralds were once more to make their visitations, as in days gone by, probably not more than half the number would be able to make good their right to bear arms, or to show even the four descents required of those aspiring to be considered of gentle birth. A wit, living in the time of King James I., remarked that knights were becoming so thick in the land it would soon be hard to find a gentleman. The same observation might be made now, only substituting the title of esquire for that of knight. Mr. Walford, alluding to the saying of King James 1. that he could make a lord but not a gentleman, tells us that the bearing of arms, not of titles, has ever been considered as the distinctive mark of true noblesse." On the other hand, as the old herald, Master John Gwillim, pursuivant of arms, wisely remarks, if those descended from noble ancestors, "honoured for their good services with titles of dignity as badges of their worth, vaunt of their lineage or titular dignity, and want their vertues, they are but like base serving-men, who carry on their sleeves the badge of some noble family, yet are they themselves but ignoble persons.”

66

The next volume of Debrett will, we hope, record the termination of the abeyance in the ancient baronies of Montacute (1299), Monthermer Montacute (1357), and Montagu. The late Countess of Loudoun, sister to the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, claimed to be the senior co-heiress through Richard Neville, the great Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, called "the King Maker," and his granddaughter Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury and Warwick, daughter, and eventually heiress, of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, brother to King Edward IV. and King Richard III. The Countess of Salisbury was the last living descendant of the Royal House of Plantagenet, who, when upwards of seventy years of age, was dragged to the scaffold by Henry VIII. for the alleged crime of high treason. She married Sir Richard Pole, K.G. Her eldest son, Henry Pole, Lord Montagu, also beheaded on a pretended charge of treason, left no son, and from Katherine, his eldest daughter, married to Francis Hastings, second Earl of Huntingdon, the late Countess of Loudoun claimed in direct descent. The fourth and youngest son of the Countess of Salisbury was the celebrated Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.

The improper assumption of titles seems to be on the increase, and we cordially unite with the editor of Debrett in the desire that such an anomalous state of things should cease to exist, and that some proper tribunal should be established where rival or fictitious claims may be summarily and effectually adjusted. The Codrington baronetcy has long been claimed by two gentlemen. The right of one claimant to the title was acknowledged by the Heralds' College, but in defiance of that decision the title is

still borne by both. It is very desirable that the subject should be taken up seriously in Parliament, and that a commission should

be issued to enquire into, and report upon, the present state of the College of Arms, and the best means of making it more effective and its decisions more respected. The editor of Debrett says, "during the past year much labour was entailed upon me in investigating the claims of correspondents who asserted that their names ought to be inserted," and that "in respect to baronetcies, many new claimants came forward with insufficient data, while others based their rank upon the most ridiculous assumptions; e. g. :" (1) "I have heard from my father, who had heard from his father before him, that at a banquet given at Oxford to Charles II., His Majesty was graciously pleased to confer a baronetcy upon my ancestor, who presided at the entertainment.' (2) "My father used to tell me that his grandfather had heard his father say that it was reported in the family that he was a baronet, because his grandfather had been one, but dropped the title when he fell into poverty. I am the direct heir, and, having made a lot of money, have taken up the title."

That "Antiquarians will appreciate the additions that have been made to the historical and traditional notes in the Baronetage" we doubt not, but that they will appreciate also the emendations that have been made in the heraldic engravings and emblazonments throughout the work, by the authority of the Windsor Herald, must be regarded as more open to question. Certainly, no one with any knowledge of good heraldry will regard the debased specimens of heraldic drawings in the work with anything but contempt, and for the honour of the Heralds' College we hope that the Windsor Herald had but little participation in the production of such wretched caricatures of true heraldry.

The study of heraldry is once more becoming popular, and as good examples of ancient heraldic drawing become more known, the debased style still clung to with such tenacity by seal engravers who "find arms," "heraldic artists so called, who daub on coach panels, and (we regret to say) the professional heralds themselves, must give place to a more intelligent and artistic way of representing the devices of heraldry. We trust that publishers of heraldic works also will, ere long, see the necessity of giving better illustrations.

Out of many instances which might be named, one will suffice to show the necessity in a work like Debrett for the appointment of some competent herald to examine from time to time the shields of arms introduced, and so avoid the ridiculous blunders which, without such supervision, must necessarily occur. In the House of Commons, the arms of Earl de Grey, M.P. for Ripon, the son of the Marquess of Ripon, are incorrectly given. His paternal coat of Robinson is shown impaled with the coat of Vyner, the paternal arms of the Marchioness of Ripon. The correct blazon would be the Robinson coat only, with a label, the difference of the heir, or eldest son, during his father's lifetime. When from want of heraldic accuracy in marshalling coats of arms a man is made to marry his grandmother or his mother, as in the case above mentioned, such heraldic displays become

ludicrous. Mr. Boutell tells us that he once "saved a Minister of the Crown from quartering the arms of his own wife upon a sculptured shield in his own mansion," and we have lately saved another man from having something equally preposterous painted on his carriage. In the House of Commons the engravings from ancient seals of corporations are interesting, and some among them are fairly well drawn and engraved, but they are spoiled by the absurd twists and scrolls, supposed to be ornaments, by which they are surrounded. The Essay on Heraldry, which is appended to the last-named volume, will, we hope, prove useful, and tend to popularise a science too long neglected, because misunderstood.

we

By the courtesy of the editor of Debrett enabled to give some particulars respecting the early editions of the work which may be interesting to our readers. The original editor of Debrett was a bookseller of that name in Piccadilly. The character of the work has undergone many changes. A century ago the then editor inserted many personal anecdotes of a character which would not now be tolerated. It was afterwards issued in two small volumes, 16mo, in which the information afforded was more genealogical than it had previously been, and about forty-five years ago the scope of the work was enlarged, and it resembled Burke as now issued. In this form it was continued until about twelve years since, when the form was again altered, the specialty being the amplification of details respecting living members of the titled aristocracy, and the exclusion of all substantial reference to deceased per

sons.

The present volumes contain a vast amount of both useful and interesting information, and give evidence of the painstaking care bestowed on their compilation. They are reasonable in price, and less unwieldy in size than other publications of the kind. We think it only just to add that the unfavourable comments which we have felt bound to make on the heraldic illustrations apply with equal force to similar engravings in other more pretentious works of the same class, as also to nearly all modern publications on heraldic subjects.

JOHN HENRY METCALFE.

Chaucer. The Prioresses Tale, Sire Thopas, The Monkes Tale, The Clerkes Tale, The Squires Tale, from the "Canterbury Tales." Edited by the Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1874.)

THIS is another of the Bowdlerised texts for schools and colleges which the Clarendon Press Delegates are issuing; and the expurgations are made with increasing strictness. In 1873 Shakspere was allowed to utter "I would to God," and "o' God's name," in his Richard II. in the Delegates' Series, but now in 1874, Chaucer's Monk is prohibited from saying "I vow to God"-"I vow [in feyth]" is the proper phrase-and his "by God is turned into "in feith," or sone," while many characteristic stanzas are left out on account of one word in them that might offend Mrs. Grundy. Even some of the daintily delicate Prioress's words have

"ful

been thought too bad for Mrs. G. to hear. Well, Chaucer anyhow is better than Chaucer nohow; and all Chaucer students will be glad that, by this present volume, increased knowledge of the poet they love will be gained by many young folk, whom they wish to share in the enduring pleasure they themselves have got from that master of pathos, humour and fun, who, 600 years after the great Cynewulf's time, arose and showed that England again possessed a poet. After its first working on the spirit of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and producing first the milder Cadmon, secondly the deeper and truer poets the author of Judith and Cyne. wulf, Christianity seems to have deadened the genius of the Anglo-Saxons. Bishop Lupus's impassioned "Sermon on the Sins of his Countrymen, and their Degradation under the Danish Invasions," is the only later piece worthy of mention; and the dull AngloSaxon homilies and treatises were succeeded by a set of like Early-English ones, showing for some 300 years after the Conquest no spark of genius, except perchance a few touches in Layamon, and the alliterative Gawayne and Morte Arthure; a few Hymns to the Virgin Mother and Child came always home to the English heart; a few lines in the Owl and Nightingale-the nightingale for whom blossoms spring, whom the fair lily welcomes, and the rose with its redness bids sing; a few love poems-the Beautiful Lady whose head is like the sunbeam at noon, whose presence heaven here; and The Land of Cockayne, that airy, happy, chaffy exposure of the life and naughtiness of monks and nuns, which Chaucer himself never beat. When, then, real poetry reappeared in English, it had lost very much of its old Anglo-Saxon quality; its form was changed, and its spirit too. Alliteration had yielded its pride of place to "light ryme,' and Piety had become second to Love. Cynewulf had turned into Chaucer. (I pass over William's Piers Plowman as in no true sense a "poem," however great a work it is.) The reason of the change was, that by Chaucer's time the upper classes had become English, and spoke English; and their Norman descent made them call for chivalric themes. By Chaucer's day the Crusade passion had faded, but Love was in full bloom. So the most scanty Anglo-Saxon love-touches"Maiden, eyes' delight" (three words, and no more), with the like-turned into Chaucer's filling almost every early work he wrote with love. Cynewulf's Finding of the Cross, and Andreas, became Chaucer's Legende of Good Women. Cynewulf's Seafarer, with his sad unrest, whom buds of spring called only to sail again over the whale's home, changed to Chaucer's Pity, moaning his unrequited love, to his Mars, Anelida, Troylus, all echoing the same cry; cry;" to his spring worship, when gladder times came to him, of the "flowre white and rede," the daisy that typified his love—

"care-full

she that is of alle floures flour, Fulfilled of alle virtue and honour."

Granted the same Anglo-Saxon soil, and Norman cross, Italian culture, had changed the like old shrubs in the Plowman, &c., yet

* His humorous work was later.

It seems rather hard, to a Chaucer-lover, to have even a school-book of Chaucer go out without some few words to lift the young student into the feeling which one has oneself for the old poet's tender and beautiful Tales; but Mr. Skeat has kept all this down, and referred boys to where they can find it. Let us, then, take Mr. Skeat on his own ground, and examine first some of his new points. On the dates of the Tales, Mr. Skeat tells

line as

Tragédie is to seyn a certeyn storie,

why does one want a for, from the B-type MSS., stuck in between is and to?

NEW NOVELS.

(Lon

Out of the World. By Miss Healy. The Work-a-day World. By Holme Lee. don: Sampson Low & Co., 1875.) (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1875.) John Dorrien. By Julia Kavanagh. (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1875.) Brigadier Frederic. By MM. ErckmannChatrian. (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1875.)

Her Idol. By Maxwell Hood. (London: Samuel Tinsley, 1875.)

Out of the World is one of those stories of English plot, which M. Octave Feuillet's French scenery, French characters, and ladies find so dull on wet days in the country.

saying that Turner's Burial of Wilkie is early, and his Winchilsea (say) late; or that the Fornarina preceded the Peruginesque Virgins of Raffaelle. Surely the Monk's Tale goes with the late Ballad of the Visage without Painting, and the Cook's Tale is one with the Miller's and Reeve's. Mr. Skeat says,

next that in the Prologue we ought to reject, in the Prioress's description, the last

three words "and Prestes thre" thus leaving the nun no Priest to tell a talealthough I have shown, from the instance of the five priests at St. Mary's Abbey, Winchester, that three might well have accompanied the Prioress on her pilgrimage, the chief Magister being specially her priest, while the two Domini were but secondary. Next, Mr. Skeat thinks that, although Chaucer had

written hundreds of four-measure lines in couplets, and hundreds of five-measure lines in couplets, at the end of stanzas, yet he had not head enough to write, of himself, fivemeasure couplets continuously, without Machault showing him how to do it. The step from one to the other is surely simple enough to be within Chaucer's powers. Further, Mr. Skeat lays down the canonfor the first time in print-that "nearly all of Chaucer's tales that are in stanzas are early; and nearly all that are in the usual couplets are late.” * Of the two exceptions that one has always felt to this rule, Mr. Skeat allows Sir Thopas, but denies the Monk's Tale (late, I am sure), which has prevented my trusting it. Next, Mr. Skeat's insistance on the necessary pronunciation of the final e at the end of a line (where I believe it was generally silent) leads him to say that before the caesura every final e must (not may) also be pronounced, so that sone (son) is two syllables in the following line :

"Eek thou that art | his sonë | art proud | also." To my ear the e ruins the run of the line, and I hope to show elsewhere that the theory is a mistaken one. But whether one holds it or not, I regret greatly that this text appears without the central pause-mark in every line which (with few exceptions) all the best manuscripts of Chaucer retain. One last objection: Mr. Skeat has occasionally altered, unnecessarily as I think, his

*The old tempting-looking suggestion that Chaucer wrote both his four-measure poems-"Dethe of Blaunche," and "Hous of Fame"-before any of his five-measure ones, has been long exploded.

out every clue that promised further illustrabecause he has thrown new light on the source tion or elucidation of every subject and word; made most happy hits, as in identifying of the Squire's Tale, from Marco Polo; has

Chaucer's "wikked neste' of the Monk's

Tale with Sir Oliver Mauny, who betrayed King Pedro of Spain; and because, in every line of text and note, in every word glossed, there is evidence of that scrupulous care and diligence which has won Mr. Skeat the high scholars of America, Germany, and Great reputation he holds among the English Britain. Differ from Mr. Skeat as you will, ledge, and work. you must respect his thoroughness, know

his Introduction-1. Sums up my late finds In the present little book Mr. Skeat, in about Chaucer's life; 2. Gives Mr. Bradshaw's and my arrangement of the Tales, adding the days of the journey; 3. Notes the incompleteness of the Tales, and suggests that Gamelyn was to be the basis of the Yeoman's Tale; 4. Discusses the succession of the tales; 5. The form and subject of each of the tales in his volume, with

much new matter about the Monk's and

Squire's Tales; then deals with 6. Chaucer's grammatical forms; 7. His metre and versification; 8. Gives a metrical analysis of the Squire's Tale, Part I. 9. States the method of forming his text, to take my print of the best MS. of the A type, Lord Ellesmere's, as his basis, and never alter it without notice, except in trifling details; 10. Gives a list of useful books. Then come, in 127 pages, the Tales named abovePrioress's, Sir Thopas, Monk's, Clerk's, and Squire's with head-links and Proems of the Man of Law, and Shipman, and the Nun's Priest's Prologue, all most carefully edited. Then eighty-four pages of capital notes, and eighty-three of Glossary, with etymologies to all the words. Lastly, four pages of Index of Proper Names. It is a sound and scholarly book. F. J. EURNIVALL.

M. HUCHER'S edition of what he regards as the earliest version of the Legend of the Holy Grail, Le Petit Saint Graal, has just appeared. It is the prose version of the Old French poem printed by M. Francisque Michel and reprinted by Mr. Furnivall, which, though called "Saint Graal" by some, is named "Joseph d'Arimathie" by others; inasmuch as it tells Joseph's adventures, his collecting the blood in the dish of the Last Supper, his journey with it to England, &c.

and the law-abiding character of the British novel reader will recognise with pleasure many trusted favourites in the incidents of Out of the World. Here are the sprained Virgil first introduced to polite literature, ankle, the tête-à-tête in the storm which the secret stairs, and the runaway horse, rather a fine specimen of the breed. The ties, and a certain want of delicacy in the use of these stock adventures and old propercharacter, or at least the manners of the heroine, Aimée de Marsac, detract from the The young lady just named is half American merit of what is really a readable book. by birth, and as her Republican tone makes it unlikely that she will find a husband in Paris, she is taken to a dreary Pyrenean the Legitimist Marquis of the district. Paul château, to be wooed by Paul, the son of and Aimée fall in love with each other, in the process of making a treaty not to let themselves be disposed of by their parents. A wicked younger brother, Albert, and a passionate Basque peasant girl throw obtheir affection, which ultimately stacles of the usual sort in the path of round, and is all square." The best characters in the book are Paul's sisters, doomed

comes

by their father to old maidenhood. Jeanne, who unites a thwarted love of pleasure to an ecstatic devotion, and a genius for the stage, is really an original and admirable character. Mila, the peasant girl, is a skilful compound of Tessa in Romola, and Hetty in Adam Bede. Out of the World is not written with sufficient care to make up for the want of natural delicacy and grace which a story of this kind requires, but it about the new French Constitution, and that "marches," as political writers say so often is the great thing after all.

"The World is too much with us" just now, what with Miss Braddon's Strange World, Miss Healy's Out of the World, and Holme Lee's Work-a-day World. This last tells the whole life and adventures of Winny Hesketh. Winny is a governess, and one of the nicest of that depressing sisterhood, the governesses of fiction. If the new views of woman and her education can but make this incomprise class a thing which can only occur in historical novels of a remote period, the reviewers of the future will have reason to bless the name of Miss Cobbe, of Mr. Holloway and of the energetic founders of Girton. Holme Lee writes the story of her girl Stoic, who "makes up her mind not to mind it," somewhat in the style of Mrs.