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United Kingdom, appearing now six years later. To such a book the reviewer cannot apply the ordinary canons of criticism by which he would rate the common run of historical writings. Distinctly there is here no new contribution to English history as such. A simple read- ing of the list of authorities, as given by the author in the preface, precludes any expectation of meeting new or novel facts in his pages. His data have all been presented to the public before, and well presented too. And yet the book is as fresh and vigorous and stimulating as a breath from one of the author's Canadian snowfields. There is not a dull line in it.
This effectiveness is due in part to the author's well-known origi- nality and vigor, which show no sign of abating, in spite of the burden of seventy-six years. The Three English Statesmen, or the perhaps better-known Lectures on Modern History, reveal no more power, nor glow with more of the fire of youth. But even more than to style the author owes his strength to the practical spirit which per- vades all his work. Upon him the ideas of the scientific school of his- tory have little hold; to him "truth for truth's sake" is an empty abstraction. History to him is always an open volume ; a scripture, full of commandments and prohibitions, with a direct and meaningful application to the present. If the past have no lesson for the present, it is not history.
Goldwin Smith, in short, belongs to a noble school of historians who are now passing away ; who read the history of nations to explain existing political or moral conditions ; who gave the personal equation full play, and tilted their glasses heavenward, often with eyes hooded or vision clouded ; who consulted history as theologians used to con- sult the Scriptures, to find the texts wherewith to tack together some favored system.
There is always the smell of burning powder about such men. They write with vigor. They paint with much color furious color sometimes often descending to mere political pamphleteering. Yet such books have their place. They may add little to historical knowl- edge ; but even your fish-cold scholar may gain new life and stimulus by reading them. It is much to have the moral vision, even of the scientific historian, clarified at times by such furious blasts, and be reminded again and again that he, after all, deals not with sticks and stones, but with men and women, moral beings, who move in categories far other than the mollusks who vegetate in the silent sands of some antediluvian strand; that his data are the ideals, passions, motives, acts,
