my closets are now full to overflowing; and I am contemplating a speedy remittance of some of them to Mr. Sotheby or Mr. Christie."

It would be worth while to ascertain what the old-booksellers think on this matter. Are the works in question really so scarce that a multiplication of them unimproved is desirable?

Which Monasticon may the projectors have in view? That by Dodsworth, Dugdale, and Stevens, in five folio volumes; or that by Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel in eight? I should rather hope, if reprinting is all they intend, that it might be the former; for, whilst in some respects less bulky, there is much in Stevens's portion especially, that is skimmed over very summarily in the modern book, a book which ought to have extended to twenty volumes instead of eight, to have been completed on the scale on which it was commenced.

And, moreover, if we can believe some recent advertisements, the modern edition of the Monasticon has been reprinted-literally reprinted,— its errors and its deficiencies unrepaired: but is such really the case? I cannot believe it; but rather suspect it must be a bookseller's pretence, to take off the still lingering "remainder" of the Caley performance.

To return to the Ecclesiastical History Society. Let us hope, at least, that, if it proceeds, it will present us with improved editions, not mere reprints, and especially of the Works of Strype, in which, I must admit, I feel particularly interested, and to which I shall now, with your permission, confine the remainder of my remarks.

It is to be remembered that the Works of Strype have been already reprinted, we cannot say edited, by the University of Oxford. The only advantages of that edition over the original one are a more portable form, and a General Index to the whole series. But the truth is, Mr. Urban, that Strype really wants a great deal of editorial castigation. He is frequently incorrect in his copies of documents, occasionally injudicious in his inferences, and sometimes even mistaken in his statements of facts. With your permission I may take a future opportunity of substantiating all these charges; but at the same time I am

prepared to maintain that among the existing ecclesiastical historians Strype is the best as a general authority, as he deals in those minute particulars, and refers to those original documents, by which alone the working of the Reformation from the reign of Henry VIII. to the end of Elizabeth can be developed, and effects traced to their

causes.

The works of Strype, though they may be divided into historical and biographical, partake more of the former than the latter character. For though some are presented to us as the lives of the Archbishops and others, yet they relate more to the times than the men, and in many cases he has related the same events in two, and sometimes more, of his works.

His compilations consist rather of the materials of history, than history itself; as, in order to ascertain all the circumstances attending any one event, such for example as the "Act of Uniformity," the reader is referred by the index, perhaps to the Annals, the Memorials, and the Life of Grindal. In each of these he will have to seek, and afterwards to combine, the various materials respecting it.

Hence Strype has been charged with needless repetitions and trivial details ; and it is this peculiarity which makes him a rather difficult author to edit, since his materials are thus distributed through his several works, either historically or biographically, as best suited his immediate purpose. Indeed, he often gives only parts of letters and documents, where the whole is essential to the elucidation of the facts to which they refer; and in other cases he contents himself with the bare mention of such evidences, and places them in an appendix.

The sources of his information are various; but his chief source for the reign of Elizabeth is the Burghley Papers. These are contained in the Lansdowne MSS. and their description occupies the first volume of the Catalogue of that collection. All these letters and papers were in Strype's possession, and such as he used have glosses of the illegible words, and other marginal notes, in his own handwriting. Besides these there are a great number of volumes of Fox's MSS. and many others in the Harleian MSS. stated in

the catalogue to have been bought of, or to have belonged to, Strype. These consist of letters, historical collections, speeches, and various state documents, from the Reformation to the end of the reign of Elizabeth; some originals, and some copies, which Strype consulted and employed in various ways. All these should be carefully examined, and a catalogue made of them under heads or subjects, errors corrected, and omissions supplied. Many will be found here entire, which Strype has given only in abridgment.

In the Cottonian MSS., particularly in Cleopatra, will be found several curious original documents relative to the state of the church during the reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. Elizabeth, and Mary, which require to be examined and collated.

Some curious biographical and local documents, relative to the University of Cambridge, and its several colleges, are contained in Baker's MSS. in the Harleian MSS. and also in Cole's Collections, Addl. MSS.; and many others, both of Cambridge and Oxford, in the Lansdowne, Birch, and Sloane MSS.

Among the Lansdowne MSS. are the voluminous collections of Dr. White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, consisting of ecclesiastical history and biography; particularly Nos. 1022, 1023, 1024, in three thick folio volumes, containing a History of the Church of England in Notes (almost daily), from 1500 to 1717, and embracing a short notice of all the events, acts of parliament, books, letters, and other minute particulars, during that lengthened period. These form most valuable materials for ecclesiastical history, as the greater part of their contents may be verified and completed from the printed books and MSS. in the Museum. This interesting collection does not appear to have been known to Strype, or noticed by any subsequent writers.

I have enumerated the above as some of the materials, but by no means the whole, that are to be found in the various collections in the British Museum; to which must be added the collections at Lambeth, the State Paper Office, the Rolls Chapel, Sion College, Fulham, and the two Universities. But, taking the British Museum alone,

6

I should conceive that the manuscripts which I have now enumerated should at least be consulted for a new edition of Strype's Works, in order to render it a book of reference both for the clergy and laity of our Established Church.

Whilst the present spirit of earnest investigation into the precedents and progress of the Church continues to prevail, it is evident that some standard of historical evidence is required, on whose authority secure reliance might be placed, and to which all parties would be ready to turn with equal confidence.

Although time and custom may have slightly modified the forms of our Established Church, yet her truly Protestant principles, one would hope, are unaltered. Efforts have indeed been made to restore her to her state on the dawn of the Reformation, when she was essentially Roman, and many of the obsolete usages of that period have been attempted to be performed as part of her service in some localities; but such attempts have been generally rejected with indignation by the congregations, and the ministers who performed them have received ecclesiastical censure. Another party has endeavoured, with as little success, to strip the service of its form, and reduce it to the simplicity of a dissenting conventicle. But still our Ritual remains uninjured, and the fabric of our Church is as sound as at its first erection on its Protestant basis.

These facts have been rendered more striking in our time than at any former period, not excepting even the time of the Puritans during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.; yet few, comparatively speaking, can trace the various causes which have contributed to the stability of our Church, or duly appreciate the wisdom and caution with which her original foundations were laid. It is this species of information that is now required, and which can alone establish the true Protestant faith in the minds of her members, equally removed from Popery on the one hand, and Puritanism on the other. On the whole, I think it will be allowed that something better is required than another reprint of Strype, uncollated and unimproved.

Yours, &c. B. D.

Florentine History, from the earliest authentic records to the accession of Ferdinand III. Grand Duke of Tuscany. By H. E. Napier, Capt. R.N. F.R.S. Post 8vo. 6 vols.

THE author of the Florentine History, as we learn from the dedication, is brother to Major-General Sir Charles Napier, Governor of Scinde, to whom the work is inscribed, and to whose aid he owns himself indebted. For ten years of sickness and affliction, this undertaking, as he tells us, has been his companion, thus exceeding Horace's well-known rule of letting nine years elapse before publication. Anticipating an objection to the length of the work, the author asks, in the person of one of his readers, "But why write so long a story about so small a country?" (Vol. i. p. ix. Pref.) And his answer is, because the lessons of history, "which are the records of experience, and the beacons of human error, may, as in the Grecian republics, be taught with equal benefit from the acts of a small as a great community: because Florence performed as conspicuous a part in Italy as Athens did in Greece." This, however, is rather assuming the office of a professor of political science. He defends himself by the authority of Bacon: "As for the corruptions and moths of history, which are epitomes, the use of them deserveth to be banished, as all men of sound judgment have confessed." (Advancement of Learning, b. 2, p. 79.) Still there is a medium in all things, and the student, who, as Mr. Percival observes, in his History of Italy, is deterred by the size of Sismondi's work, in sixteen volumes, may fairly complain that a portion only of the subject is here extended over six.

The book begins wordily, and though the thoughts are often just, and must have occurred to many, yet they are not always in place. We do not open a work on history, to ask or solve the question, "For what purpose are we here ?" And when the author calls it GENT. MAG. VOL. XXIX.

a question more easily asked than answered," we would ask in turn, why did he raise the spirit he finds it so difficult to lay? Nay, we differ widely from him, for the question may be easily answered, if the inquiry be made in the right quarter. It might partly have been answered from his own words, at p. 281, when speaking of Clement IV. "He was summoned . . . to answer . . . . at a far higher tribunal than that of mundane history." Still it is out of place here, however appropriate in such writers as Hutcheson, who says at the outset of an ethical work, "Intrandum igitur in hominum naturam, ut perspiciamus quid simus, quidnam victuri gignamur, et quos Deus non esse jusserit." (Phil. Moralis Inst. Compend. b. 1, c. 1, p. 2.)

Capt. Napier goes out of his way to abuse the English administration of Ireland,* whence we infer that this work has not only been his companion, but also his political common-place book, for several years. We are better pleased with this general view of his proper subject.

"No great cause of policy really divided the factions [of Florence]: they struggled for no political triumph, but unmitigated power; yet always under the standard of some popular grievance, a cause noble in itself, but unstable as their own sincerity." (p. 5.)

The author has adopted Italian views of ecclesiastical history, when among the contemporary potentates in the second chapter he gives "Popes from St. Peter to Adrian I." It should have been Linus or Clemens; but perhaps he merely copied another list, without meaning to involve himself in questions of this kind.

Florence has, properly speaking, no ancient history, or a very slender one;†

ignorant people." (P. 609, from Fran. Čei, Mem. Stor. p. 111. MS.)

From vol. iv. we select a favourable specimen of the author's criticism, on the grant of emoluments arising from the sale of indulgences in Germany, by Leo X. to his sister Maddalena Cibo, Histoire du Concile de Trent, livre 1, pp. 15-16, for which he refers to Sarpi and Guicciardini :

In

"Robertson (vol. ii. book ii. p. 114) denies this grant, principally because it is not to be found in the pontifical archives by the search of an individual. dependent of the likelihood of such a grant having been destroyed by Leo or Clement, after its mischievous effects were made public, or remaining in the archives of the Cibo family, the facility of missing such a document amidst the enormous masses of the Vatican is apparent. But Guicciardini is too accurate, and was too well acquainted with even the secrets of the Medici, to be doubted on a subject then so notorious, and F. Paulo is too heavy a weight to shove aside so lightly, nor is it likely to have been invented." (p. 223, note.)

The miscellaneous chapter of century XV. with which this volume begins, includes a character of Machiavelli, though slightly antedated. It is too long to quote entire, but Captain Napier considers that much undeserved odium has clung to Machiavelli, partly from personal enmity during his life

time.

"Machiavelli was in principle a thorough Republican, though not unwilling, from positive distress, to accept office from the Medici. His discourse on Florentine reform, written by command of Leo X. shows his real feelings, all tending, even in so delicate a position, to the re-establishment of liberty; and the whole tenor of his life proves it, not even excepting his Prince,' in which (considering the sovereign's interest as the especial object,) pains are taken throughout to identify it with the love of the people." (p. 59.)

We doubt whether any uniform theory concerning the Prince can be constructed, for it involves too many contradictions. It is not the production of a mind, apparently at least, either entirely patriotic or entirely unprincipled; it has some views that are right, and some that are sadly distorted; and in all probability its real

character will ever remain a problem in literature.

This volume goes down to 1532. The fifth brings the subject on to 1737. Of the second dynasty of the Medici, Capt. Napier says that, "By the exhaltation of Alessandro de' Medici to the dukedom, Florence became an established hereditary principality, and must henceforth be spoken of rather in the name of her absolute

sovereigns, than as a self-acting community." (p. 1.) In a note he observes that, as Tuscany now loses all interest as an independent state, the "miscellaneous chapter" is discontinued, and its contents are interwoven with the narrative.

While glancing at European history he speaks eloquently of our "royal pedant."

"The undecided conduct of James I.

kept Europe in suspense; the glory of Elizabeth oppressed him; her helmet and corselet were too ponderous for a mere pedant to sustain, and the national spirit was for a while repressed, until, gathering new force, it burst on his son's head, and destroyed the monarchy." (p. 386.)

At p. 410, on the occasion of the negotiation of a marriage between daughter of Cosimo II. the queen, his Prince Henry, son of James I. and a mother, is said to have told Lotti, the Florentine resident at London, that slight ties held Prince Henry to the Church of England. But his attachment is thought to have been to Puritanism, and precarious indeed would have been the foundation to build a hope of Rome's recovering her authority upon. The compromising spirit, however, of the reigns of James and Charles was not only a source of political weakness to England, but appears simultaneously, if not causally, with an increase of the amount of crime, which diminished quickly again under the Commonwealth.* We say if not causally, because such a spirit tended to paralyse the moral effects of the Reformation, rity just referred to, were very great. which, according to the eminent autho

Dismissing, however, this subject, in which England unhappily appears

*See Mr. Wright's volume on "Saint Patrick's Purgatory," preface, p. vi.