good to call us Saxons.* The familiar opposition between Normans' and Saxons' wipes out, as Sir Francis shows, the real facts of the case. It makes us fancy the Saxons' to be some foreign and extinct people, instead of being simply ourselves. It was the English people over whom William claimed to reign; it was the English people among whom he established himself and his foreign followers, and it was the English people into whose greater mass the smaller Norman element was gradually absorbed. It was the English language which he strove in vain to learn, but which his youngest Englishborn son spoke seemingly from his childhood. It was the English law which he confirmed; King of the English' was the highest title which he handed down to his descendants, and it was to the known loyalty of Englishmen that those descendants appealed against the assaults of Norman traitors.‡ By using the delusive' name of Saxon' where writers of the time know no name but Englishman,' we not only wipe out a characteristic of the age, but we give up our national inheritance, we separate ourselves from those earlier periods of our history from which William himself had no will to cut us off.

Sir Francis Palgrave's remarks on the effect of the Conquest on language deserve most attentive study, but we have no space to do more than call attention to them. Like the whole of the chapter on the Results of the Conquest, they are mere hints which we long to see worked out at greater length.

* This is perfectly clear of the age of William, it is not quite so clear as to earlier times. Eginhard (Vita Karoli, p. 25) calls Alewine 'Saxonici generis hominem,' and (Annales, 808) a certain Ealdwulfde ipsâ Britanniâ natione Saxo.' Now Alcwine certainly, and Ealdwulf probably, were Northumbrians, therefore not Saxons. But in Eginhard's time the two nations had not coalesced, the name of 'Anglia' was hardly known, and the names of its inhabitants might well be used confusedly. Even in the sixth century Gregory the Great speaks of the Jutish Æthelberht and his people as Angli.' The point is that, in the eleventh century, 'English' and not 'Saxon' was the name of the nation and the word opposed to 'Norman.'

† Sir Francis Palgrave (vol. iv. p. 225) has clearly made this out. Henry, born in England of a crowned King and Queen of the English, was throughout looked on by the English as a kind of countryman. It would quite fall in with the policy of William at the time of Henry's birth to cause him to learn the English language.

See Ord. Vit. 667 A. Compare the Chronicle A. 1088.

m

ves.

may

nport

poke of w're there

And among these hints we come across one hint mo portant than all, and one of especial interest to ou The readers of our former articles on kindred subję perhaps remember that we called attention to the vas ance of the reign of Henry II., whose accession w as almost equivalent to a second Conquest.' fore rejoiced to find Sir Francis Palgrave reach substanarently by tially the same conclusion as ourselves, though of what Dr. a different process. We were speaking mainlof what Dr. Vaughan calls Revolutions of Race,' of the retical subjecter foreigners. tion of natives of England of both races to Sir Francis is speaking, as is his wont, ofrmal laws and institutions. The changes in the law com,nly attributed to Angevin greatthe Conqueror Sir Francis attributes to can find the most grandson. In all these circumstances evident and cogent proofs that a great rolution was effected, not by William, but by Henry Planta net.' (vol. iii. p. 601.) To this revolution' Sir Francis attrites the introduction of those special feudal incidents which commonly attribute to the Conqueror, but of which Sir Frais's own researches have discovered no trace either in Engled or in Normandy before the accession of the line of Anjou. Here then is a most important line of inquiry barely hinted and in no way worked out. This again makes us deeply gret that we have from the hand of Sir Francis Palgrave only a fragmentary account of the reign of William and of the reign of Henry no account at all.

As a composition, the masterpiece of Sir Francis Palgrave is his history of the reig of William Rufus. For our own sakes we would gladly echange it for a finished narrative of the reign of his father, but it is a gain to have any portion of our national history thus recorded by Sir Francis in his best manner. Every reader can judge for himself of the life-like tale which Sir Francis had wrought out of the actions of the who ever sat on worst man-possibly not the worst ruler

the throne of England. We can add our own witness to the unfailing accuracy of the whole narrative. Sir Francis has here no theories which could possibly lead him astray, and his unvarying sympathy for everything good and generous finds the fullest play in this part of his history. The portraits of Anselm, the true saint, great, not in any commanding political ability, but in the simple majesty of his righteousness, of the King, highly gifted by nature, ever and anon in his worst

* Ed. Review, vol. cxii. p. 159.

days

vice ov

are port

*

from ing signs of nobler capacities within him, but sinking to worse till he reached a depth of wickedness and which history is obliged to draw a veil-both these s drawn indeed with a master's hand. We must not confound struggle between William and Anselm with the later strug between Henry and Thomas. The latter was a struggle be en two political principles, each of which had in that day muto say for itself; but the opposition of William to Anselm waimply the natural opposition between evil and good. The Stship of Thomas, though sincere, was still artificial; he h theory of what a saintly bishop ought to be, and he consc sly tried to act according to that theory. Anselm had no they at all; he simply obeyed the instincts of his own conscien and the laws of the society to which he belonged. The though clearness of insight and fairness of judgment with whichir Francis Palgrave has set forth the lesser ecclesiastical staggle of the eleventh century gives us another ground for regtting that we cannot have from his hand a picture of the grea ecclesiastical struggle of the twelfth century. We should be well pleased to enlarge on many other points in this volum, especially in the two brilliant episodes on Scotland and the First Crusade. In the Scottish chapter, again, we have another personal picture, that of Queen Margaret, draw in Sir Francis Palgrave's best manner, and we have a clearer oscription than can perhaps be found anywhere else of the proess by which the Teutonic element in Scotland finally triumped over the Celtic. It is most singular to trace how, on the ne hand, the Celtic kings gradually estranged themselves from their own people, and identified themselves with the Teutonic portion of their subjects, and how, on the other hand, the Teutons-in plain words, the English-in Scotland gradually adopted the name and the national feelings of the Celts whom they continued to look upon as enemies or bondsmen. No part of the book too is fuller than this of those passages in which Sir Francis in some sort assumes the prophet's mantle, and deals forth those denunciations against our own age and our own nation of which some of us may dispute the justice or the relevancy, but of which no one can deny the earnestness or the eloquence. The chapters on the Crusade are equally brilliant, but, with regard to a large portion of their contents, we are obliged to part company with Sir Francis. We cannot think that he

Greater and lesser in England; in Christendom generally the two epithets would be reversed.

has done justice to the Crusaders. We cannot thin that the crusading spirit was in itself so essentially unrighpus as he represents it. We mean of course the mere gene principle of the Holy War, as distinguished from the vast ass of individual folly and wickedness with which that Ply War was in practice disgraced. A few schemers like phemond may have taken the cross with the ulterior object overthrowing the Eastern bulwark of Christendom and of rving kingdoms for themselves out of the tottering empire Alexius. But surely no such calculations animated the reat mass of the Crusaders, good and bad. And surely, if rms are ever to be borne at all, the Christian nations of Euroe were fully justified in drawing the sword to preserve the rigt of performing what they looked on as the holy work of pilgrnage to the Sepulchre of Christ. In so saying, we of coursesimply defend the principle of the Crusade. On the actua conduct of most of the Crusaders Sir Francis Palgrave may be as severe as he will.

We end our remarks with a feling of real sorrow that nothing more from the same hand can follow this noble fragment. As critics we regret tha it is only in a posthumous work that Sir Francis Palgrav has done his powers full justice, that we have had no opportunity of congratulating the living author on so brilliant a success, or of arguing out with him those points on which ve still hold his views to be unfounded. We have endeavoured to treat the dead writer as we should have treated hin had he still been spared to us. We have endeavoured to record our general admiration, our general agreement, and at the same time to point out the frequent exaggerations of Sir Francis's theory, and also to express our regret that one of the noblest of England's worthies has found at his hands a treatment so unworthy of his deserts. But if Sir Francis Palgrave has been cut off while the greater part of his task was still imperfect, he has left behind him hints which may make the fortune of more than one future historian. A full examination of the effects of the reign of William the Conqueror as compared with those of the reign of Henry II. would be a worthy subject for any one of the foremost of those true historical scholars who have at last learned to draw the knowledge of English history from the only sources where it can be found.

ART. II.-A Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its Antiquities, Egraphy, Geography, and Natural History. Edited by WILLIAM SMITH, LL.D. In 3 vols. London:

1863.

2. A Cyclopædiaf Biblical Literature. Originally edited by JOHN KITTO,.D., F.S.A. 3rd edition, greatly enlarged and improved. Edited by WILLIAM LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D., FA.S. Vols. I. and II. A. to L. Edinburgh: 1862-4.

TH

HE proverb which ascribes a huge book as a huge evil did not contemplate thecase of dictionaries and works of reference; nor will any one inclined to apply it to them, except perhaps the unfortunate tudent whom Dr. Smith invites in his Preface to read his thee thick imperial octavos 'through from beginning to end.' We confess that even our own critical appetite has not enabled us t devour the whole of the six thousand closely-printed columns which compose the Dictionary of the Bible, still less the even ampler instalment of its yet more ponderous rival. With the later, however, we have long been familiar in its original form; and with the former, of which we purpose more especially to speak, we have continued to make acquaintance since we noticed it ast January, turning to it constantly, both as occasion requird and as a systematic examination of its various departments has led us. Meanwhile we have given careful attention to the remarks of our contemporaries-some of them couched in terms we think of too indiscriminate praise-others of blame, which, though by no means indiscriminate, and evincing indeed in more cases than one a profound knowledge of Biblical subjects, has yet appeared to us far too sweeping and severe for the faults which have been either detected or alleged. But detailed criticism of a work like this is apt to involve a more than proportionate expression of censure. Having ourselves no wish to dwell on blemishes excepting so far as they affect the prevailing complexion of the book, we shall give to our own remarks a more general character, attempting rather to estimate the somewhat changed position which the Bible is now assuming in the economy of Christianity, and the help which the works before us afford to the devout and thoughtful student.

The revived study of the Bible in this country is one of the most remarkable features of our time, and one which is doubtless destined to be further and yet further developed. Revived