charge an army in position? Alas! it was but too true— their desperate valour knew no bounds, and far indeed was it removed from its so-called better part-discretion. They advanced in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed towards the enemy. A more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who, without the power to aid, beheld their heroic countrymen rushing to the arms of death. At the distance of twelve hundred | REV. WILLIAM STUBBS-JOHN RICHARD GREEN. The Constitutional History of England, two vols., 1875, by the REV. WILLIAM STUBBS, is an excellent account of the origin and development of the English constitution down to the deposition of Richard II. 'The roots of the present lie deep in the past,' says Mr Stubbs, and nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is. It is true, constitutional history has a point of view, an insight, and a language of its own; it reads the exploits and characters of men by a different light from that shed by the false glare of arms, and interprets positions and facts in words that are voiceless to those who have only listened to the trumpet of fame.' The author of this learned and important work for six years held the office of Inspector of Schools in the diocese of Rochester, then became Regius Professor of Modern History in Oxford, and in 1869 was elected curator of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Besides his Constitutional History, Mr Stubbs has published a collection of charters from the earliest period down to the reign of Edward I., and has edited and translated various historical works. Having been born in 1825, Mr Stubbs, still in the prime of life, has, we trust, many more years of useful and honourable labour yards, the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. The first line is broken; it is joined by the second; they never halt or check their speed an instant. With diminished ranks, thinned by those thirty guns, which the Russians had laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flashing steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's death cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries, but ere they were lost from view, the plain was strewed with their bodies and with the carcasses of horses. They were exposed to an oblique fire from the batteries on the hills on both sides, as well as to a direct fire of musketry. Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing as they rode up to the guns and dashed between them, cutting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through the guns, as I have said; to our delight we saw them returning, after breaking through a column of Russian infantry, and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the battery on the hill swept them down, scattered and broken as they were. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale -demi-gods could not have done what we had failed to do. At the very moment when they were about to retreat, an enormous mass of lancers was hurled on their flank. Colonel Shewell, of the 8th Hussars, saw the danger, and rode his few men straight at them, cutting his way through with fearful loss. The other regiments The English are not aboriginal—that is, they are not turned and engaged in a desperate encounter. With identical with the race that occupied their home at the courage too great almost for credence, they were break-dawn of history. They are a people of German descent in ing their way through the columns which enveloped them, when there took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of civilised nations. The Russian gunners, when the storm of cavalry passed, returned to their guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled with the troopers who had just ridden over them, and, to the eternal disgrace of the Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and canister on the mass of struggling men and horses, mingling friend and foe in one common ruin! It was as much as our heavy cavalry brigade could do to cover the retreat of the miserable remnants of that band of heroes as they returned to the place they had so lately quitted in all the pride of life. At thirty-five minutes past eleven not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of these bloody Muscovite guns. Mr Russell is a native of Dublin, born in 1821, and studied at Trinity College. In 1843 he was engaged on the Times; in 1846 he was entered of the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1850. In 1856 he received from Dublin University the degree of LL.D. Besides his account of the Crimean war, Dr Russell has published his Diary in India; his Diary North and South, containing the result of observations in the United States; My Diary during the last Great War, 1873; and other works. an ARCHIBALD FORBES, like Dr Russell, engaged on the press as a special correspondent, published account of the Franco-German war, and Soldiering and Scribbling, a series of sketches, 1872. Mr Forbes is a native of Banffshire, son of the late Rev. Dr Forbes, Boharm. before him. Influence of Germanic Races in Europe. the main constituents of blood, character, and language, infusion of other elements and by the nature of the soil through which it flows. The system which has for the last twelve centuries formed the history of France, and in a great measure the character of the French people, of which the present condition of that kingdom is the logical result, was originally little more than a simple adaptation of the old German polity to the government of a conquered race. The long sway of the Romans in Gaul had re-created, on their own principles of administration, the nation which the Franks conquered. The Franks, gradually uniting in religion, blood, and language with the Gauls, retained and developed the idea of feudal subordination in the organisation of government unmodified by any tendencies towards popular freedom. In France accordingly feudal government runs its logical career. The royal power, that central force which partly has originated, and partly owes its existence to the conquest, is first limited in its action by the very agencies that are necessary to its continuance; then it is reduced to a shadow. The shadow is still the centre round which the complex system, in spite of itself, revolves: it is recognised by that system as its solitary safeguard against disruption, and its witness of national identity; it survives for ages, notwithstanding the attenuation of its vitality, by its incapacity for mischief. In course of time the system itself loses its original energy, and the central force gradually gathers into itself all the members of the nationality in detail, thus concentrating all the powers which in earlier struggles they had won from it, and incorporating in itself those very forces which the feudatories had imposed as limitations on the sovereign power. So its character of nominal suzerainty is exchanged for that of absolute sovereignty. The only checks on the royal power had been the feudatories; the crown has outlived them, absorbed and assimilated their functions; but the increase of power is turned not to the strengthening of the central force, but to the personal interest of its possessor. Actual despotism becomes systematic tyranny, and its logical result is the explosion which is called revolution. The constitutional history of France is thus the summation of the series of feudal development, in a logical sequence which is indeed unparalleled in the history of any great state, but which is thoroughly in harmony with the national character, forming it and formed by it. We see in it the German system, modified by its work of foreign conquest, and deprived of its home safeguards, on a field exceptionally favourable, prepared and levelled by Roman agency under a civil system which was capable of speedy amalgamation, and into whose language most of the feudal forms readily translated themselves. English National Unity, 1155-1215 A.D. The period is one of amalgamation, of consolidation, of continuous growing together and new development, which distinguishes the process of organic life from that of mere mechanic contrivance, internal law from external order. The nation becomes one and realises its oneness; this realisation is necessary before the growth can begin. It is completed under Henry II. and his sons. It finds its first distinct expression in Magna Carta. It is a result, not perhaps of the design and purpose of the great king, but of the converging lines of the policy by which he tried to raise the people at large, and to weaken the feudatories and the principle of feudalism in them. Henry is scarcely an English king, but he is still less a French feudatory. In his own eyes he is the creator of an empire. He rules England by Englishmen and for English purposes, Normandy by Normans and for Norman purposes; the end of all his policy being the strengthening of his own power. He recognises the true way of strengthening his power, by strengthening the basis on which it rests, the soundness, the security, the sense of a common interest in the maintenance of peace and order. The national unity is completed in two ways. The English have united; the English and the Normans have united also. The threefold division of the districts, the Dane law, the West-Saxon and the Mercian law, which subsisted so long, disappears after the reign of Stephen. The terms are become archaisms which occur in the pages of the historians in a way that proves them to have become obsolete; the writers themselves are uncertain which shires fall into the several divisions. Traces of slight differences of custom may be discovered in the varying rules of the county courts, which, as Glanvill tells us, are so numerous that it is impossible to put them on record; but they are now mere local by-laws, no real evidence of permanent divisions of nationality. In the same way Norman and Englishman are one. Frequent intermarriages have so united them, that without a careful investigation of pedigree it cannot be ascertained-so at least the author of the Dialogus de Scaccario affirms-who is English and who Norman. If this be considered a loose statement, for scarcely two generations have passed away since the Norman blood was first introduced, it is conclusive evidence as to the common consciousness of union. The earls, the greater barons, the courtiers, might be of pure Norman blood, but they were few in number; the royal race was as much English as it was Norman. The numbers of Norman settlers in England are easily exaggerated; it is not probable that except in the baronial and knightly ranks the infusion was very great, and it is very probable indeed that, where there was such infusion, it gained ground by peaceable settlement and marriage. It is true that Norman lineage was vulgarly regarded as the more honourable, but the very fact that it was vulgarly so regarded would lead to its being claimed far more widely than facts would warrant: the bestowal of Norman baptismal names would thus supplant, and did supplant, the old English ones, and the Norman Christian name would then be alleged as proof of Norman descent. But it is far from improbable, though it may not have been actually proved, that the vast majority of surnames derived from English places are evidence of pure English descent, whilst only those which are derived from Norman places afford even a presumptive evidence of Norman descent. The subject of surnames scarcely rises into prominence before the fourteenth century; but an examination of the indices to the Rolls of the Exchequer and Curia Regis shews a continuous increase in number and importance of persons bearing English names: as early as the reign of Henry I. we find among the barons Hugh of Bochland, Rainer of Bath, and Alfred of Lincoln, with many other names which shew either that Englishmen had taken Norman names in baptism, or that Normans were willing to sink their local surnames in the mass of the national nomenclature. The union of blood would be naturally expressed in unity of language, a point which is capable of being more strictly tested. Although French is for a long period the language of the palace, there is no break in the continuity of the English as a literary language. It was the tongue, not only of the people of the towns and villages, but of a large proportion of those who could read and could enjoy the pursuit of knowledge. The growth of the vernacular literature was perhaps retarded by the influx of Norman lords and clerks, and its character was no doubt modified by foreign influences under Henry II. and his sons, as it was in a far greater degree affected by the infusion of French under Henry III. and Edward L. : but it was never stopped. It was at its period of slowest growth as rapid in its development as were most of the other literatures of Europe. Latin was still the language of learning, of law, and of ritual. The English had to struggle with French as well as with Latin for its hold on the sermon and the popular poem: when it had forced its way to light, the books in which it was used had their own perils to undergo from the contempt of the learned and the profane familiarity of the ignorant. But the fact that it survived, and at last prevailed, is sufficient to prove its strength. A Short History of the English People, by JOHN RICHARD GREEN, Examiner in the School of Modern History, Óxford, 1875, has been exceedingly popular. Though somewhat inaccurate in details, the work is lively, spirited, and picturesque, and must be invaluable in imbuing young minds with a love of history, and especially of that of the British nation. The opening sentence, for example, at once arrests attention : sea. Old England. not affect to disguise the interest with which I have traced it through all the events of history.' The historian was born in 1815, and was called to the bar in 1838. In 1856 he was appointed Clerk-assistant of the House of Commons, and in 1871 he succeeded to the higher office of Clerk. He had previously (in 1866) been made a Knight Commander of the Bath. Sir Thomas has written several treatises on the law, usages, and privileges of parliament, and contributed to the Edinburgh Review and other journals. Free Constitution of British Colonies. It has been the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to spread through every quarter of the globe their courage and endurance, their vigorous industry, and their love of freedom. Wherever they have founded colonies, they have borne with them the laws and institutions of England as their birthright, so far as they were applicable to an infant settlement. In territories acquired by conquest or cession, the existing laws and customs of the people were respected, until they were qualified to share the franchises of Englishmen. Some of these-held only as garrisons-others peopled with races hostile to our rule, or unfitted for freedom-were necessarily governed upon different principles. But in quitting the soil of England to settle new colonies, Englishmen never renounced her freedom. Such being the noble principle of English colonisation, circumstances favoured the early development of colonial liberties. The Puritans, who founded the New England colonies, having fled from the oppression of Charles I., carried with them a stern love of civil liberty, and established republican institu tions. The persecuted Catholics who settled in Maryland, and the proscribed Quakers who took refuge in Pennsylvania, were little less democratic. colonies founded in America and the West Indies, in the seventeenth century, merely for the purposes of trade and cultivation, adopted institutions-less democratic, indeed, but founded on principles of freedom and self-government. Whether established as proprietary colonies, or under charters held direct from the crown, the colonists were equally free. For the fatherland of the English race we must look far away from England itself. In the fifth century after the birth of Christ, the one country which bore the name of England was what we now call Sleswick, a district in the heart of the peninsula which parts the Baltic from the northern seas. Its pleasant pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, its prim little townships looking down on inlets of purple water, were then but a wild waste of heather and sand, girt along the coast with sunless woodland, broken only on the western side by meadows which crept down to the marshes and the The dwellers in this district were one out of three tribes, all belonging to the same low German branch of the Teutonic family, who, at the moment when history discovers them, were bound together into a confederacy by the ties of a common blood and a common speech. To the north of the English lay the tribe of the Jutes, whose name is still preserved in their district of Jutland. To the south of them the tribe of the Saxons wandered over the sandflats of Holstein, and along the marshes of Friesland and the Elbe. How close was the union of these tribes was shewn by their use of a common name, while the choice of this name points out the tribe which, at the moment when we first meet them, must have been strongest and most powerful in the confederacy. Although they were all known as Saxons by the Roman people, who touched them only on their southern border where the Saxons dwelt, and who remained ignorant of the very existence of the English or the Jutes, the three tribes bore among themselves the name of the central tribe of their league, the name of English-chamber, appointed by the governor, assumed the place men. Mr Green has also published a volume of Stray Studies (1876), in which are some fine descriptive sketches of foreign places-Cannes, San Remo, Venice, Capri, &c. SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY. A continuation to Hallam's Constitutional History, though not expressly designated as such, appeared in 1861-63, entitled The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III. (1760-1860), by SIR THOMAS ÉRSKINE MAY, K.C.B., three volumes. To the third edition (1871) a supplementary chapter was added, bringing down the political history of the country to the passing of the Ballot Bill in 1871. The work is able and impartial, and forms a valuable repertory of political information and precedents. Continually touching upon controverted topics,' says the author, I have endeavoured to avoid as far as possible the spirit and tone of controversy. But, impressed with an earnest conviction that the development of popular liberties has been safe and beneficial, I do Other The English constitution was generally the type of these colonial governments. The governor was the viceroy of the crown; the legislative council, or upper of the House of Lords; and the representative assembly, chosen by the people, was the express image of the House of Commons. This miniature parliament, complete in all its parts, made laws for the internal government of the colony. The governor assembled, prorogued, and dissolved it; and signified his assent or dissent to every act agreed to by the chambers. The Upper House mimicked the dignity of the House of Peers, and the Lower House insisted on the privileges and grants of money for the public service. The elec of the Commons, especially that of originating all taxes tions were also conducted after the fashion of the mothercountry. Other laws and institutions were copied not less faithfully. Every colony was a little state, complete in its legislature, its judicature, and its executive administration. But at the same time, it acknowledged the sovereignty of the mother-country, the prerogatives of the crown, and the legislative supremacy of parliament. The assent of the king or his representative, was required to give validity to acts of the colonial legislature; his veto able to bind the colony by its acts, and to supersede annulled them; while the imperial parliament was all local legislation. Every colonial judicature was also subject to an appeal to the king in council, at Westminster. The dependence of the colonies, however, was little felt in their internal government. They were secured from interference by the remoteness of the mother-country, and the ignorance, indifference, and preoccupation of her rulers. In matters of imperial concern, England imposed her own policy, but other wise left them free. Asking no aid of her, they escaped her domination. All their expenditure, civil and military, was defrayed by taxes raised by themselves. They provided for their own defence against the Indians, and the enemies of England. During the Seven Years' War the American colonies maintained a force of twenty-five thousand men, at a cost of several millions. In the words of Franklin: They were governed at the expense to Great Britain of only a little pen, ink, and paper: they were led by a thread.' CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM-H. M. STANLEY WILLIAM MASSEY. The British consul in Abyssinia, Mr Cameron, and other Europeans, having been detained captives by Theodore, emperor of Abyssinia (1868), an expedition was fitted out for their release, under the command of Sir Robert Napier (now Lord Napier of Magdala), which resulted in the defeat of the Abyssinians, the conquest of their capital city, Magdala, and the recovery of the English captives. The emperor, Theodore, committed suicide. A History of the Abyssinian Expedition was published in 1869 by CLEMENTS ROBERT MARKHAM, who accompanied the expedition as geographer. Mr Markham had served in the navy, and in the expedition in search of Sir John Franklin. He was born in 1830, is author of Travels in Peru and India, a Life of the Great Lord Fairfax (1870), Spanish Irrigation (1867), and various geographical papers. A volume by HENRY M. STANLEY, the adventurous special correspondent of the New York Herald, appeared in 1874, entitled Coomassie and Magdala, the Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa. Mr Stanley said: 'Before proceeding to Abyssinia as a special correspondent of the New York Herald, I had been employed for American journals-though very young-in the same capacity, and witnessed several stirring scenes in our civil war. I had seen Americans fight; I had seen Indians fight; I was glad to have the opportunity of seeing how Englishmen fought. In Abyssinia I first saw English soldiers prepared for war.' And Mr Stanley acknowledged that more brilliant successes than attended these two campaigns which England undertook in Africa, in behalf of her honour, her dignity, humanity, and justice, are not recorded in history. A History of England during the Reign of George III., by WILLIAM MASSEY, M.P., is a popular work, exhibiting no great research, but impartially and pleasantly written. It deals chiefly with the progress of society, and the phases of social life and manners. Gambling in the Last Century. instituted to evade the statute against public gaminghouses. But every fashionable assembly was a gaminghouse. Large balls and routs had not yet come in vogue. A ball seldom consisted of more than ten or twelve couples; and the practice of collecting a crowd of fine people to do nothing, is an invention of recent date. When a lady received company, card-tables were provided for all the guests; and even where there was dancing, cards formed the principal part of the entertainment. Games of skill were seldom played. Brag, crimp, basset, ombre, hazard, commerce, spadille-the very names of which are hardly known to the present generation-furnished the excitement of play, and enabled people of fashion to win and lose their money without mental effort. Whist was not much in vogue until a later period, and was far too abstruse and slow to suit the depraved taste which required unadulterated stimulants. The ordinary stakes at these mixed assemblies would, at the present day, be considered high, even at clubs where a rubber is still allowed. The consequences of such gaming were often still more lamentable than those which usually attend such practices. It would happen that a lady lost more than she could venture to confess to a husband or father. Her creditor was probably a fine gentleman, or she became indebted to some rich admirer for the means of discharging her liabilities. In either event, the result may be guessed. In the one case, the debt of honour was liquidated on the old principle of the law-merchant, according to which there was but one alternative to payment in purse. In the other, there was likewise but one mode in which the acknowledgment of obligation by a fine woman would be acceptable to a man of the world. EDWARD A. FREEMAN. A copious and excellent History of the Norman Conquest has been published (1867-1876) by EDWARD A. FREEMAN, author of various his torical works. Mr Freeman was born at Har borne, Staffordshire, in 1823; was elected scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1841; filled the office of examiner in law and modern history in 1857-1864; and was created honorary D.C.L. in 1870. He began his career as a writer on architecture, having published in 1846 a volume on Church Restoration, and in 1849 a History of Architecture. This was followed by the Architectural Antiquities of Gower in 1850, which reached a second edition in 1851, as did also the Window Tracery of England, which had also been published in the previous year. The Architecture of Landaff Cathedral followed, and then the History and Conquest of the Saracens in 1856. The History of Federal Government appeared in 1863. The first volume of The Norman Conquest of England-which was merely introductoryappeared in 1867, and the second in 1868, both reaching a second edition in 1870, whilst the third volume was published in 1869, the fourth in 1872, and the fifth in 1876. The Popular Old English History was published in 1871, as well as Historical Essays, collected from various reviews. Mr Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest may be ranked among the great works of the present century. Death of William the Conqueror, Sept. 9, 1087. The vice which, above all others, infested English society during the greater part of the eighteenth century, was gaming. Men and women, the old and the young, beaux and statesmen, peers and apprentices, the learned and polite, as well as the ignorant and vulgar, were alike involved in the vortex of play. Horse-racing, cock- The death-bed of William was a death-bed of all fighting, betting of every description, with the ordinary formal devotion, a death-bed of penitence which we resources of cards and dice, were the chief employment may trust was more than formal. The English Chroniof many, and were tampered with more or less by almost cler [William of Malmesbury], after weighing the good every person in the higher ranks of life. The proprietary and evil in him, sends him out of the world with a clubs White's, Brookes's, Boodle's-were originally | charitable prayer for his soul's rest; and his repentance, 92 625 late and fearful as it was, at once marks the distinction between the Conqueror on his bed of death. and his successor cut off without a thought of penitence in the midst of his crimes. He made his will. The mammon of unrighteousness which he had gathered together amid the groans and tears of England he now strove so to dispose of as to pave his way to an everlasting habitation. All his treasures were distributed among the poor and the churches of his dominions. A special sum was set apart for the rebuilding of the churches which had been burned at Mantes, and gifts in money and books and ornaments of every kind were to be distributed among all the churches of England according to their rank. He then spoke of his own life and of the arrangements which he wished to make for his dominions after his death. The Normans, he said, were a brave and unconquered race; but they needed the curb of a strong and a righteous master to keep them in the path of order. Yet the rule over them must by all law pass to Robert. Robert was his eldest born; he had promised him the Norman succession before he won the crown of England, and he had received the homage of the barons of the Duchy. Normandy and Maine must therefore pass to Robert, and for them he must be the man of the French king. Yet he well knew how sad would be the fate of the land which had to be ruled by one so proud and foolish, and for whom a career of shame and sorrow was surely doomed. But what was to be done with England? Now at last the heart of William smote him. To England he dared not appoint a successor; he could only leave the disposal of the island realm to the Almighty Ruler of the world. The evil deeds of his past life crowded upon his soul. Now at last his heart confessed that he had won England by no right, by no claim of birth; that he had won the English crown by wrong, and that what he had won by wrong he had no right to give to another. He had won his realm by warfare and bloodshed; he had treated the sons of the English soil with needless harshness; he had cruelly wronged nobles and commons; he had spoiled many men wrongfully of their inheritance; he had slain countless multitudes by hunger or by the sword. The harrying of Northumberland now rose up before his eyes in all its blackness. The dying man now told how cruelly he had burned and plundered the land, what thousands of every age and sex among the noble nation which he had conquered had been done to death at his bidding. The sceptre of the realm which he had won by so many crimes he dared not hand over to any but to God alone. Yet he would not hide his wish that his son William, who had ever been dutiful to him, might reign in Eng land after him. He would send him beyond the sea, and he would pray Lanfranc to place the crown upon his head, if the Primate in his wisdom deemed that such an act could be rightly done. Of the two sons of whom he spoke, Robert was far away, a banished rebel; William was by his bedside. By his bedside also stood his youngest son, the English Etheling, Henry the Clerk. And what dost thou give to me, my father?' said the youth. 'Five thousand pounds of silver from my hoard,' was the Conqueror's answer. 'But of what use is a hoard to me if I have no place to dwell in?' 'Be patient, my son, and trust in the Lord, and let thine elders go before thee.' It is perhaps by the light of later events that our chronicler goes on to make William tell his youngest son that the day would come when he would succeed both his brothers in their dominions, and would be richer and mightier than either of them. The king then dictated a letter to Lanfranc, setting forth his wishes with regard to the kingdom. He sealed it and gave it to his son William, and bade him, with his last blessing and his last kiss, to cross at once into England. William Rufus straightway set forth for Witsand, and there heard of his father's death. Meanwhile Henry, too, left his father's bedside to take for himself the money that was left to him, to see that nothing was lacking in its weight, to call together his comrades on whom he could trust, and to take measures for stowing the treasure in a place of safety. And now those who stood around the dying king began to implore his mercy for the captives whom he held in prison. He granted the prayer. The last earthly acts of the Conqueror were now done. He had striven to make his peace with God and man, and to make such provision as he could for the children and the subjects whom he had left behind him. And now his last hour was come. On a Thursday morning in September, when the sun had already risen upon the earth, the sound of the great bell of the metropolitan minster struck on the ears of the dying king. He asked why it sounded. He was told that it rang for prime in the church of our Lady. William lifted his eyes to heaven, he stretched forth his hands, and spake his last words: 'To my Lady Mary, the Holy Mother of God, I commend myself, that by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.' He prayed, and his soul passed away. William, king of the English and duke of the Normans, the man whose fame has filled the world in his own and in every following age, had gone the way of all flesh. No kingdom was left him now but his seven feet of ground, and even to that his claim was not to be undisputed. The death of a king in those days came near to a break-up of all civil society. Till a new king was chosen and crowned, there was no longer a power in the land to protect or to chastise. All bonds were loosed; all public authority was in abeyance; each man had to look to his own as he best might. No sooner was the breath out of William's body than the great company which had patiently watched around him during the night was scattered hither and thither. The great men mounted their horses and rode with all speed to their own homes, to guard their houses and goods against the outburst of lawlessness which was sure to break forth now that the land had no longer a ruler. Their servants and followers, seeing their lords gone, and deeming that there was no longer any fear of punishment, began to make spoil of the royal chamber. Weapons, clothes, vessels, the royal bed and its furniture, were carried off, and for a whole day the body of the Conqueror lay well-nigh bare on the floor of the room in which he died. With the fourth volume of his history Mr Freeman ended what he termed his tale-the tale of the Norman Conquest of England. He had recorded the events which made it possible for a foreign prince to win and to keep England as his own. In the fifth volume he traced the results of the Conquest-the fusion of raceswhich was accomplished with little or no violence during the reign of William's son, Henryand the important changes that then took place in the language and arts of the English people. JOHN HILL BURTON. The history of Scotland was left by MR FRASER TYTLER at the period of the union of the crowns under James VI. A subsequent portion has been fully treated by MR JOHN HILL BURTON, advocate, in a work, entitled History of Scotland from the Revolution to the Extinction of the Last Jacobite Insurrection (1689–1748), two volumes, 1853. This work has received the approbation of Lord Macaulay and all other historical readers; it is honestly and diligently executed, with passages of vigorous and picturesque eloquence-as the account of the battle of Killiecrankie, and the |