fessed to rest everything, or in that Revealed Religion which is the Christian's trust. The dim and uncertain light which is found in all lands to exist in the human mind, tells, to ancient Greek and to modern barbarian, the same tale of a displeased God, and a judgment to come. With strange inconsistency, Parker preferred this twilight of the soul to the sunshine of the Gospel, and yet he rejected the only distinct lesson which it taught to man. With kindred fatuity, professing to love and honour the Bible above all other books, he accepted only that one idea which he professed to have learned from "Absolute Religion" without the Bible, and rejected everything which Revelation had added to man's previous light! He thus concocted a creed which is neither that of Heathenism nor that of Christianity; and which, having no root in any known fact, or in any natural consciousness, is the most utterly baseless and unsupported collection of ideas that is to be found among all the dreams of vain and presumptuous man.

FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND: QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE REFORMATION.

History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Reign of Elizabeth. Vol. II. London: Longman, Green, and Co. 1863.

We now take up the second volume of Mr. Froude's history of the reign of Elizabeth, or the eighth volume of his History of England. It carries us from 1559 to 1567. It has the same merits as its predecessor, and the same defects. It is always interesting. Our modern writers of history, Motley, D'Aubigny, and Kinglake, appear to have brought themselves to the conclusion, that the chief merit of history lies in rapid description and bright colouring; and in this respect Mr. Froude is equal to the best of them. In those nobler qualities which make a Thucydides, or, notwithstanding all his faults, a Clarendon, they have nothing in common. They can all of them make out a good case for or against the cause they have taken in hand. Not one of them can grasp the whole truth of the history of the times of which he writes. Mr. Froude has the additional fault of writing memoirs rather that a history. Disraeli, the statesman's father, wrote an amusing volume on "the quarrels of authors;" the appropriate title for Mr. Froude's volume now before us would be, "the quarrels of two queens." However, since queens they were, their quarrels, like those of ancient kings,

afflicted their people sorely, and the consequences of them are worthy of attention.

As regards Elizabeth, the chief person in the drama, the reader will soon come to the conclusion, that if in this first decade of her reign she betrayed more faults than we expected, her difficulties, too, were far greater than we supposed. We have to strike the balance anew; but, after all, though the totals differ, the result is much as it was before. We must still pronounce her one amongst the greatest of English or European sovereigns.

The volume opens with a chapter on the state of Ireland. It is in these digressions we find our recompense; these episodes contain what there is of real history. In this chapter we may read prophetically the lawless state of Ireland at this moment, and the sorrows of the Irish Church. The country was still, when Elizabeth began to reign, the land of savages. Whatever St. Patrick had done for Ireland in early days, or Popery in later times, or the Protestant missions more recently introduced by the good young Edward VI., all this had been swept away. Even the Pale-that part of Ireland in which a nominal Protestantism existed-was in a state no less wretched than the Papal districts purely Irish. The wild inhabitants of the latter are described by a correspondent of the Privy Council. He says, "They exercise no virtue, and refrain from no vice; they neither love God or hate the devil; they worship images, and are open idolaters. Their oaths are by books, bells, and other ornaments, which form their religion; their greatest oath is by their lord's or master's hand, and he who forswears it must pay a fine, or sustain a worse turn. They rest on the Sunday, and on the week days they are not idle, but worse employed." Murder they commit without remorse, only that having killed one of a clan, "they lightly never cease," no doubt in self-defence, "killing all of that name." Adultery was not common amongst them, for the best, or rather worst of all reasons-marriage was almost unknown. No wonder, then, that they "neither honour father or mother. Neither do they covet; simply because they seize all that is their neighbour's as their own. Thus they live," says the correspondent," and thus they die; and there is none to teach them better." As in all savage lands, this population melted away, and the land lay desolate; "people will not come to inhabit where there is no defence of law." Within the Pale, the garrison plundered the farmers, or paid for what they took in the base brass shillings in which they received their own wages. Sir Henry Sidney, after a residence of six years amongst them, says :

"The English Pale is overwhelmed with vagabonds; stealth and spoil daily carried out of it; the people miserable-not two gentlemen

in the whole of it able to lend twenty pounds. They have neither horse, nor armour, nor apparel, nor victual. The soldiers be so beggar-like as it would abhor a general to look on them; yet so insolent as to be intolerable to the people, so rooted in idleness as there is no hope by correction to amend them, yet so allied with the Irish, I dare not trust them in a fort or in any dangerous service."

The savage chieftains-the legitimate monarchs they claimed to be of ancient Ireland-quarrelled and fought. First they rose against the English-they were put down; then they turned their arms against each other, and finally made their appeal to Elizabeth in London. Shan O'Neil had been proclaimed chief in Tyrone by the votes of the people, on the sacred hill of Tara; he had gained some advantages in battle over the English, and he now demanded from Elizabeth an English lady for his wife. It was not easy to satisfy him, for his pretensions were lofty: "I ask your majesty to marry me to some gentlewoman of noble blood, meet for my vocation"—his vocation was the sword. He adds, "I will make Ireland all that your majesty wishes, for you." He had carried off the Countess of Argyle, he detained her as his prisoner, compelled her to live with him as his wife, and committed other atrocities; but he was a person of sufficient importance to make his own terms. He received a large allowance for his expenses, and brought with him a train of followers. Arrived in London, he astonished the peaceable citizens not less by his insolence than by his savage grandeur and the ferocity of his attendants. He was brought, however, to kneel in the queen's presence, and to confess his crimes, in a form which Cecil is said to have drawn up for him :

"The council, the peers, the foreign ambassadors, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, were present in state as if at the exhibition of some wild animal of the desert. O'Neil stalked in, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair curling on his back, and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from under it with a grey lustre, frowning, fierce, and cruel. Behind him followed his gallowglasses, bare-headed and fair-haired, with shirts of mail which reached their knees, a wolfskin flung across their shoulders, and short broad battle-axes in their hands.

"At the foot of the throne the chief paused, bent forward, threw himself on his face upon the ground, and then rising upon his knees, spoke aloud in Irish.

"Oh! my most dread sovereign lady and queen, like as I Shan O'Neil, your majesty's subject of your realm of Ireland, have of long time desired to come into the presence of your majesty to acknowledge my humble and bounden subjection; so am I now here upon my knees by your gracious permission, and do most humbly acknowledge your majesty to be my sovereign lady and queen of England, France, and Ireland; and I do confess that for lack of civil education I have offended your majesty and your laws, for the which I have required

and obtained your majesty's pardon. And for that I most humbly from the bottom of my heart thank your majesty, and still do with all humbleness require the continuance of the same; and I faithfully promise here, before Almighty God and your majesty, and in presence of all these your nobles, that I intend, by God's grace, to live hereafter in the obedience of your majesty, as a subject of your land of

Ireland.

"And because this my speech being Irish is not well understood, I have caused this my submission to be written in English and Irish, and thereto have set my hand and seal; and to these gentlemen, my kinsmen and friends, I most humbly beseech your majesty to be a merciful and gracious lady.''

Shan returned home only to be again a rebel, and his warfare was of the most ferocious kind. In all but the title he was the sole monarch of the north. In other parts of that unhappy kingdom, the leading chiefs seized on or contended for the mastery. In the west, the O'Briens and Clanricardes shared the glens and moors of Galway, Clare, and Mayo. The province of Munster was fought for by the Butlers and the Geraldines, with a fury which Mr. Froude compares to the bursting out of a volcano-like a volcano too in the havoc which it spread. Even now the picture drawn by those who were witnesses of the sight, can scarcely be read without emotion. Through Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Cork, a man might ride twenty or thirty miles, nor ever find a house standing; and the miserable poor were brought to such wretchedness, that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them; yea, they did eat one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for a time."

If all be not a fable that Irish historians have related of the humanity of its people before the dawn of western civilization, her descent to a state of barbarism such as this in the sixteenth century has still to be explained. None of her conquerors, Picts or Danes or more hated Saxons, displayed such utter brutality. Fierce in war, they all sometimes cultivated the arts of peace. But, tempting as it is, we must not enter upon the inquiry this train of thought suggests. Elizabeth would, if she could, have redressed the grievances which she found existing. She would have ruled Ireland with a firm but with an upright hand. She would have extended to it the benefits of the Reformation. She would have planted faithful preachers in every district; for even in England they

could not be had for every parish. But her lieutenants were violent men, whom Cecil frequently rebuked, but could not restrain; and her ecclesiastical advisers in Dublin could think of no better method of extending the Reformation, than by destroying the language, and instructing the Protestant ministers to imitate one of the worst errors of popery. They were to read prayers out of a Latin prayer-book, and to preach, those of them who could preach at all, not in Irish, but in English or in Latin. What were the consequences, the state of Ireland, civil and religious, at this hour mournfully tells.

A peace was concluded with France in 1564, and, as Mr. Froude says, it came not an hour too soon. The Pope was already plotting the murder of Elizabeth. It had been decided at Rome, in secret council, "to allow," that is, to instruct, Roman Catholics in disguise to hold English benefices as professing Protestants, to take the oaths of allegiance, and to serve the Holy Church as opportunity might offer. The Pope was not very particular as to the means: the end he sought was the death of his victim. The facts have been long known to historical students; the proofs of them are given in Strype's "Annals of Elizabeth;" but we are not the less obliged to Mr. Froude, to whom unhappily all religions seem alike indifferent, for publishing them once more. He will probably be credited by thousands who may read his book, but who would turn a deaf ear to more earnest men.

"Remission of sin to them and their heirs, with annuities, honours, and promotions, were offered to any cook, brewer, baker, vintner, physician, grocer, surgeon, or other, who would make away with the queen; the curse of God and His vicar was threatened against all those who would not promote and assist, by money or otherwise, the pretences of the queen of Scots to the English crown.' The court of Rome, once illustrious as the citadel of the saints, was given over to Jesuitism and the devil; and the Papal fanatics in England began to weave their endless web of conspiracy, aiming, amidst a thousand variations, at the heart of queen Elizabeth."

There are fashions in literature and fashions in history, just as in more trifling matters; just as unreasonable, and therefore quite as transient. At present, the humour is to decry Elizabeth. We have not formed our estimate of her character on slight grounds, and are led, in consequence, to be a little concerned to defend her reputation. Her character stands out in fine contrast with that of the scoundrel Pope and his Cardinals. Some of her Irish officials had attempted to poison Shan. Elizabeth, on hearing of it, wrote to her viceroy Sussex,-"We have given commandment to show how it grieveth us to think that any such horrible attempt