George Porter, dying five days before they could rejoin the 'Alert.' Some of the other sledging parties suffered even more severely. And after the return of the Expedition, Captain Nares did not escape animadversion, on the ground that he had neglected to furnish the sledges with lime-juice, though he had a supply on board. The question was eagerly canvassed; and we confess that we think his defence complete. He argued that in former expeditions lime-juice had not been considered indispensable; that where it had been possible to employ it, it had often failed to save the men from the disease; while other crews which had not used it had been comparatively healthy; and finally that in this instance it must have been useless, since it was frozen into a mass so solid and hard that the men could have had no means of melting it; as indeed had been the case in 1852 and 1854, in a far more southern latitude.

By the last week in June all the sledging parties had rejoined the 'Alert,' and it did not require long consideration to decide that the expedition must be abandoned. Out of the Alert's crew of fifty-three men, there were only nine 'fit for hard work.' Captain Nares therefore quitted his winter quarters to rejoin the Discovery,' and when he reached her, he found that her crew was in no respect in better condition; indeed she had lost more men than the 'Alert.' He therefore at once decided to return to England. But the weather was so unfavourable, and the ice still so solid, that it was August 20 before the two ships could leave their anchorage. And even then

their dangers were not at an end. They had to contend with storms of unusual violence; they were more than once beset with impenetrable fogs they were a whole fortnight reaching Allman Bay, scarcely 120 miles from the winter quarters of the 'Discovery;' while the ice in front seemed so unbroken that they even anticipated the possibility of having to pass a second winter in the North, and began to calculate with no little anxiety how it would be possible to husband their coal. At last, on September 6, the ice began to move, and on the 7th a channel was cleared, of which they promptly took advantage. Still their progress was slow; and it took them nine days more to reach Lancaster Sound. Nor was it till October 4 that they recrossed the Arctic circle. From that day their progress, if slow, was steady, and on November 2 they entered Portsmouth Harbour, to receive the hearty congratulations' of the Queen; which were cordially re-echoed by the whole service and the whole nation.

Sir G. Nares, in his preface, endorsing the last sentence of Commander Markham's Report (i. 395) asserts his conviction that the failure to realise the expectations which had been entertained of reaching the North Pole was due solely to the fact that the North Pole is unattainable by the Smith Sound route.' And Admiral Richards, in his Introduction to these volumes, to which we have already referred, sums up the result of the Expedition by saying that "if the main object of the explorers was not attained, it cannot be said that they were less successful than any of their predecessors. The bold and skilful seamanship which carried the ships to the extreme limits of navigation, and placed the "Alert" alone in a position

in which no ship had ever passed an Arctic winter, was worthy of the leader, and an earnest of what would have been accomplished had it been in man's power to command success. The subsequent deeds of the officers and crews under circumstances of trial and suffering which have rarely been equalled, can never be surpassed '—(xxxviii).

But, though the gallant admiral, than whom no one is better able to estimate the difficulties of such expeditions, or the practicability and value, in all their bearings, of the objects aimed at by them, refuses to speak of this last voyage as having failed, or even to pronounce positively that its objects can never be accomplished, he still thinks it 'more than questionable' whether it be justifiable to send out another such expedition at the cost of so much suffering and so much treasure. Geography has little to gain by it; science perhaps less.' And he points out that 'there are wide fields for geographical and scientific research in other regions by which the whole human race would be gainers' (Introd. xl). He evidently implies an opinion that it is in those other regions that England should henceforth exert her energies, and we confess that we agree with him. We would be the last to undervalue that enterprising eagerness for fame

'that the clear spirit doth raise

To scorn delights, and live laborious days '—

The

which has been the parent of so many noble deeds, and which, we are proud to say, has never associated more heroic souls in any country than in our own. But, going a little beyond Admiral Richards in this, we do believe that both the objects hitherto aimed at by Arctic expeditions have been conclusively proved to be unattainable, while it is clear that they cannot be pursued except at the almost certain cost of valuable lives, and of a permanent undermining of the constitutions even of those who return in apparent safety. fact is not without its significance, that of all our explorers of those Northern Seas, Sir John Ross and Sir G. Back, whose decease has occurred while these sheets were going through the press, are, as we believe, the only ones who have ever seen a seventieth birthday. And our sailors deserve better of their country than that they should be sacrificed in the pursuit of objects almost certainly unattainable, and if attained, in the opinion of such judges as Admiral Richards, of very small and doubtful value.

While, therefore, we gladly contribute our meed of admiration to the crews of the 'Alert' and 'Discovery,' we cannot forbear expressing a hope that the journal of their commander is the record of the last Arctic expedition.

History of the English People. By JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A.. Vol. II. "The Monarchy,' 1461-1540. "The Reformation, 1540-1603. (Macmillan and Co.)

THIS second volume of Mr. Green's work is as attractive, as brilliant, and as philosophical as the first. As dynasty after dynasty are bowed off the stage of history, he shows no inability to realise the new actors under the new conditions. The reader may not always

like his rationale of English history, but it is always a vigorous one; and is sure to excite either attraction or repulsion in a considerable degree.

There is, it may be allowed, a considerable amount of cross division always unavoidable in a history, which attempts a philosophical classification of the facts; and it was probably not to be helped that Mr. Green should label the period from 1461 to 1540 'The Monarchy,' and that from 1540 to 1603 'The Reformation,' though the monarchy of Mary or of Elizabeth which falls after 1540, was to the full as imperious and as ruthless as that of the earlier Tudors; or, again, though the movement towards Reformation, or, at all events, towards unsettlement, was as pronounced in the reign of Henry VIII. as it was at any time afterwards. Mr. Green has rightly discerned in the one case as in the other, that the predominant force out of many political energies was that which he has seized as the characteristic of each period.

With few exceptions each of these chapters is a monograph; and may be read for its own sake, not merely as a link in the narrative. Among these many brilliant episodes, there is none which the author has conceived with more life and colour, or put upon his pages with greater spirit, than that of the 'Revival of Learning.' He gives willing and liberal appreciation to the leaders of the 'new Learning,' or, as he calls it, the Renascence,' Colet, Erasmus, More, Archbishop Warham. His sketch of the latter has been elaborated with a care, not unnatural in an author who himself writes from Lambeth Palace, in whose halls the kindly Archbishop once dispensed his hospitalities, and may be thought an oblique compliment to his patron, the present occupant of the see. We may quote it, though it is somewhat long :

'Learning found a yet warmer friend in the Archbishop of Canterbury. Immersed as Archbishop Warham was in the business of the State, he was no mere politician. The eulogies which Erasmus lavished on him while he lived-his praises of the Primate's learning, of his ability in business, his pleasant humour, his modesty, his fidelity to friends, may pass for what eulogies of living men are commonly worth. But it is difficult to doubt the sincerity of the glowing picture which he drew of him when death had destroyed all interest in mere adulation. The letters, indeed, which passed between the Churchman and the wandering scholar, the quiet, simple-hearted grace which, amidst constant instances of munificence, preserved the perfect equality of literary friendship, the enlight ened piety to which Erasmus could address the noble words of his preface to S. Jerome, confirm the judgment of every good man of Warham's day. The Archbishop's life was a simple one; and an hour's pleasant reading, a quiet chat with some learned new comer, alone broke the endless round of civil and ecclesiastical business. Few men realised so thoroughly as Warham the new conception of an intellectual and moral equality before which the old social distinctions of the world were to vanish away. His favourite relaxation was to sup among a group of scholarly visitors, enjoying their fun, and retorting with fun of his own. Colet, who had now become Dean of S. Paul's, and whose sermons were stirring all London, might often be seen with Grocyn and Linacre at the Primate's board. There, too, might probably have been seen. Thomas More, who, young as he was, was already famous through his lectures at S. Lawrence on "The City of God." But the scholar-world found more than supper or

It

fun at the Primate's board. His purse was ever open to relieve their poverty. "Had I found such a patron in my youth," Erasmus wrote long after, "I, too, might have been counted among the fortunate ones." was with Grocyn that Erasmus, on a second visit to England, rowed up the river to Warham's board at Lambeth, and, in spite of an unpromising beg nning, the acquaintance turned out wonderfully well. The Primate loved him, Erasmus wrote home, as if he were his father, or his brother, and his generosity surpassed that of all his friends. He offered him a sinecure, and when he declined it he bestowed on him a pension of a hundred crowns a year. When Erasmus wandered to Paris, it was Warham's invitation which recalled him to England. When the rest of his patrons left him to starve on the sour beer of Cambridge, it was Warham who sent him fifty angels. "I wish there were thirty legions of them," the Primate puns in his good-humoured way’-(p. 83).

His estimate of the young King Henry VIII. is very high: and he hardly seems to make sufficient allowance, in describing the king's qualities with extravagant praise, as he does, for the courtly adulation, which was the besetting sin of the age, to a degree which arouses the reader's surprise, and almost contempt. He is an admirer of Henry almost to the degree of Mr. Froude, which is saying much. No one would gather from his pages, that if ever there was a wicked man upon earth, it was Henry VIII. of England; and the more repulsive because he endeavoured to veil his vices with pretences of religion. It is significant, in regard to this, to look at the characters of the ministers and tools with whom he chose to work. Those who were not weak were wicked; and those who were not wicked were almost without exception, weak. Such as were neither wicked nor weak refused to be the agents of his designs; stopped short at some point or other of obedience; and then met their deaths at his hands. Of the one class Cromwell is the most conspicuous example; of the other Cranmer. Mr. Green's sketch of the destroyer of the monasteries is powerful and repulsive. He does not deny the great powers and unbending will of that bold, bad man, the unscrupulous instrument of a sovereign, whose ruthless passions he fooled and encouraged to the very top of their bent. But it is really impossible to 'whitewash' so mere a ruffian; and Mr. Green, though too favourable to him, as we think, in some respects, does not even attempt to do so. He died unpitied as he had lived unpitying; and his fame is a thing with which no historian concerns himself.

Space will not suffer us to comment, point by point, on the remainder of Mr. Green's narrative. But we must give a word of cordial appreciation to his portraiture of Elizabeth, which is full of insight and vigour. The volume will be very helpful to such as will, without taking it as an infallible guide, use it to quicken their conceptions of the actors in the great drama of the sixteenth century, and of the connexion of the facts of its history.

Nouveaux Mélanges d'Archéologie, d'Histoire et de Littérature sur le Moyen-âge. Par le P. C. CAHIER et le P. A. MARTIN, de la Société de Jésus. 4to. Vol. IV. Bibliothèques. (Paris: Firmin Didot.)

SOME years ago Fathers Martin and Cahier, of the Society of Jesus,

already known by a splendid work on the stained-glass windows of the cathedral of Bourges, determined upon publishing jointly a miscellaneous series of essays and disquisitions referring to mediaval history, archeology, and literature. Father Martin, an enthusiastic artist, had contributed the plates, and his collaborateur was to supply the letter-press. The hand of death unfortunately struck down the former of these gentlemen before he could see the result of his labours, and the task has now devolved upon Father Cahier to edit, single-handed, the large collection of materials which they had so industriously brought together.

Four volumes of the Nouveaux Mélanges d'Archéologie have already been issued, treating respectively of Church decorations, ivories, miniatures, enamels, &c., mystic and symbolic curiosities, libraries. Each instalment is a large and handsome quarto, profusely illustrated with woodcuts, steel engravings, and chromo-lithographs, and it would be quite impossible to name, either in England, France, or Germany, a work containing details of a more valuable description on the history of the middle ages. Father Cahier is not only a real savant, thoroughly familiar with his subject, and applying to the investigation of it all the resources of the most extensive learning; he likewise possesses the qualities of an admirable polemist, and we find in his style abundant specimens of that humeur gauloise which tells so effectively when it is kept within the bounds of propriety and decorum. Father Cahier hits hard, but always at the right place, and on the right person.

The volume treating of medieval libraries is the latest of the collection, and here our author has enjoyed the opportunity of disposing quietly, yet effectively and conclusively, of a few propositions which are still regarded as axioms by what is called the Liberal party. We should say, in the first place, that the original sketch of the work appeared forty years ago, in M. Bonnetty's Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, and that it was designed as a negative answer to the old question whether Christianity has been injurious to the progress of human knowledge in general, or, at any rate, to the development of certain sciences. About the years 1838 and 1839 there existed on the other side of the Channel a great enthusiasm for mediæval studies, but only from the artistic point of view. Whilst admiring the cathedrals of Chartres and of Rheims, the adepts of the romantique school were none the less attached to the opinions of Voltaire, and their keen appreciation of medieval architecture did not lessen their detestation of priestly intolerance, as they called it. The lapse of nearly half a century has, of course, to a very important extent transformed the study of Church history, and a great many of our honest and intelligent adversaries have been led to modify their original views, if not to reject them altogether; but, on the other hand, it would be absurd to deny that the anti-Christian movement is spreading, and the epithet clerical, which is so freely bandied about, now serves to designate not merely Ultramontanists and Catholics, but Christians in the widest sense of the word. It is, therefore, extremely opportune to publish such treatises as the Nouveaux Mélanges, and we may