6

will receive from that measure cannot be estimated,' and Richelieu himself characterised it, in his Mémoires, as the 'most audacious and most cruel resolve of which the history of all time makes mention.' A cry of horror passed through Europe as the dreadful tale was circulated, with, of course, all possible exaggerations, of which one was that 30,000 Moriscos, men, women, and children, had been thrown into the sea.

The general hatred of the Spaniard throughout Europe, and especially that of the Protestants, was infinitely increased by this measure; but the economical and financial disturbance and ruin which followed, affected more deeply the welfare of the individual and the nation. Professor Philippsen calculates that the Moors carried out of Spain, in gold and silver coin and in movable valuables, property to the amount of about three and a half millions of ducats. And as the Moors took away all the best coin, and left nothing but the debased mintage behind, this abstraction alone caused immense financial confusion throughout the land. All such industries, too, as remained to Spain had been in the hands of the Moors; the cloth of Murcia, the silk of Almeria and Granada, the leather of Cordova, all held a high reputation, but from that time they were never heard of more. The lower kinds of industries, such as potteries, carpet-making, rope-making, shoemaking, and others, suffered equally. The Moors, too, had been the great bankers of the country, and being able to give higher interest than the Spanish bankers, they held in their hands, in trust, the greater part of the moneys of widows and orphans and religious bodies, and the majority of these found themselves deprived of a large part of their income by the departure of the Moors. The great banks of Spain, that of Valencia and that of Barcelona especially, became utterly bankrupt. The agriculture of Spain, which was generally in the worst possible condition, now ceased utterly in many parts of the country. The fields lay untilled and gave no harvest, and the immense wastes called the despoblados, the unpeopled districts, now began to have an existence. As was natural, the cultivators of the poorer parts of the soil of Spain came forward to take possession of the rich farms vacated by the Moorish cultivators, while the poor dry soils which the intricate and ingenious system of canalisation of the Moors had alone rendered productive, fell back into a state of waste. Many districts, formerly thickly peopled, remained without a living soul, and the houses and cottages upon them fell into ruins. The only people in Spain who profited by the expulsion were, as was natural, the Duke of

Lerma and his family. The duke contrived to squeeze for himself 250,000 ducats out of the flying Moriscos; his eldest son, the Duke of Uceda, 100,000; the Conde de Lemos, the husband of his daughter, about the same sum, and other members of the family in the same proportion.

While thus in Spain the powers of dissolution and death were, under the guidance of a perverse, corrupt, and senseless government, let loose over the whole country, the mild and provident rule of Henri IV. had already healed the wounds which civil war had inflicted upon France. Industry and commerce had reached a flourishing condition, the population had increased, the financial power of the whole nation had become vigorous; and the taxes, although proportionally reduced, gave richer returns. The national debt had been diminished, the war treasury was full, and the arsenals were piled with arms, cannon, and ammunition of all kinds. Peace and order reigned throughout the kingdom, and the internal antagonism between Catholicism and Calvinism, between the monarchial power and feudal pretensions, was, if not entirely set at rest, yet removed into the background and reduced to silence. In his foreign relations the king had been equally successful. The last twelve years of the reign of Henri IV. were intended by him to be a mere prelude to the accomplishment of his great design, the abasement of the power of the House of Hapsburg, and patiently, year by year, while he was feeding and fostering the vital forces of his people, he contrived, by a subtle and farsighted diplomacy, to place himself at the head of the anti-Spanish party in Europe. He was content, during this period, to avert the blows which were aimed at him, to goad on the enemies of the House of Hapsburg, and to give them such scant support as he prudently could. His first great success in diplomacy was the establishment of peace between the Republic of Venice and the Papal See, where hostilities seemed almost inevitable. By this peaceful victory, which he owed as much to his correct judgment and the adroitness and readiness of his diplomatists as to the consideration which his well-filled arsenals and new levies gave him with foreign powers, his reputation was immensely increased in Europe. But a still greater diplomatic victory was reserved for him in 1609, in the leading part which he took in the conclusion of the twelve years' truce between Spain and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The fact of the peace of the Netherlands having been brought about by the influence of the French king raised France still higher in public esteem than the arrangement of the Veneto-Papal difficulty. In the latter case a war was merely averted, in the former it was con

On June

cluded after half a century of embittered conflict. 22, 1609, the States-General wrote to Henri IV.: We assure 'your Majesty that next after God we thank your hands for 'the maintenance of this State, and that we and our descen'dants shall feel ever bound to recognise this with unending 'thankfulness and devoted service.' Pope Pius V. could not himself forbear from expressing his admiration for the dexterity and prudence which gave Henri IV. the position of being regarded as the umpire of Europe without drawing a sword or firing a shot. But this same peace, which had brought such honour to France, was quite as derogatory to the name and greatness of Spain. After forty years of incessant fighting, and after countless expenditure of blood and treasure, Spain, which aimed at the dominion of the world, had not been able to conquer a handful of rebel fishermen and sailors. The recognition of the sovereignty of the United Provinces by this ambitious, bigoted, and inflexible power was the outward and visible sign in the eyes of Europe of its decadence, and announced at the same time the victory of the cause of political and religious freedom over that double form of despotism with which Spain endeavoured to oppress her subjects.

It is during the two or three years preceding his death, when his active career was cut short by assassination, that we have most to admire the active, comprehensive, and farsighted political wisdom of Henri IV. There was no movement which took place in any part of Europe which he did not attempt to turn to account, and, by means of it, to make fresh allies for the great purpose which he meant to be the crowning glory of his life. The time now seemed ripe, and before the chill of old age set in, while his heart and mind were still young, as was shown too scandalously in his strange passion for Charlotte de Montmorency, he determined to begin his great design of the liberation of Europe. Much has been fantastically invented about this great design, based chiefly on the pages of the untrustworthy memoirs of Sully. It has been supposed that Henri IV. had in contemplation a great scheme for remodelling the map of Europe and founding a Christian republic, formed of a free federation of independent states. After the searching criticism to which Professor Philippsen has subjected the memoirs of Sully, this legend will no longer be repeated; but what Henri IV. really had in view was the abasement of the house of Austria as the great enemy of religious tolerance and national independence in Europe, and of Spain as one of the chief members of it. With the eyes of true political genius Henry IV. had seen how the preponderance of power which Spain and Austria had

exercised in the destinies of Europe from the days of Charles V. was to be transferred to France, and his whole reign from the Peace of Vervins was a preparation for attacking the might of Hapsburg not only in its citadel but through all its bulwarks and outer defences; and the war which he meditated was to be carried on with the aid of allies not only in the Netherlands, but in Germany and Italy. In Italy Henri IV. had long been carefully preparing his way for an alliance offensive and defensive with the Duke of Savoy-an alliance which assured him of the support of one of the most powerful states of Italy, and of the ingress and egress by the Alpine passes necessary for the security of all military operations south of the Alps. And not only might he regard Savoy as completely won over to his side, but also Mantua and Venice. Nor in Germany was he less active; and although his negotiations for influencing the German electors in the choice of a successor to the unfortunate Rudolph were not eminently successful, yet he brought about a confederation of the German Protestant princes at Ahausen, whose rapid extension throughout Germany secured him a united body of allies in the very heart of Germany. How an event long foreseen, the vacancy of the succession of the duchy of Juliers and Cleves, the possession of which at that time was of the utmost importance on account of its posi tion between the territories of rival Protestant and Catholic powers, made Henri IV. at once pass from the stage of speculative politics to that of active energy and prepare for war on an immense scale, while he endeavoured to find allies among all the Protestant powers of Europe, and how the knife of Ravaillac put a stop at once to the workings of his active and politic brain and to the beatings of his human heart, is too well known to detain us here. The hand of a miserable assassin put a check to the march of the thousands of French troops already on their way to the frontiers charged with the execution of designs which might have averted the Thirty Years' War, and advanced by a century the cause of religious freedom and national independence in Europe.

We take leave of Dr. Philippsen's volumes with regret. They are not only full of interesting matter, but the style is generally worthy of his theme. If it is not so simple, lucid, and terse as that of Ranke, it has different qualities of rich, graphic, and vigorous abundance, although this leads sometimes to repetition and an involved construction which makes his pages sometimes somewhat difficult to read. A good translation of the work would be a desirable boon for the British public, and would be worthy of a permanent place in every good English library.

ART. IX. The Phenomena of the Electric Discharge with 14,400 Chloride of Silver Cells. A Discourse by WARREN DE LA RUE, M. A., D.C.L., F.R.S., delivered at the Royal Institution, Jan. 21, 1881. London.

THE

HE frequently-quoted remark that history repeats itself is certainly borne out by the records of scientific invention. Not very long after the discovery had been made that an inflammable and illuminating gas could be distilled out of coal, and burned, as it streamed out of pipes, both for heating and lighting purposes, a company was formed, as will still be remembered by many readers of the present day, which undertook to render the gas portable' otherwise than by pipes, and to deliver supplies of it for household use in carts. This in the case of the gas was accomplished by pumping it into strong iron cylinders, and by then allowing these mechanically condensed stores to flow back out of the reservoirs through a minute orifice and in a continuous stream when a restraining tap was turned. Now, if there be any agent with which human ingenuity is familiar that would seem unlikely to be amenable to such handling as storage for transport, this certainly might be expected to be the case with electricity, the most impatient and refractory of the natural forces which are dealt with by man. A few short weeks ago any speculative innovator, who had proposed to deliver condensed electricity for domestic use, like milk, in cans at the door, would certainly have been looked upon as a very wild and unpractical visionary. Yet this seems to be very nearly what can now actually be done according to the recent announcement that four leaden cans of condensed electricity have been sent from Paris to Sir William Thomson at Glasgow by a special messenger, delivered safe and sound at their destination, and since examined and experimented upon by the distinguished electrician to whom they were forwarded. Sir William Thomson found that after the journey of seventy-two hours there was still stored up in the four leaden reservoirs electrical force enough, if put to mechanical work, to raise one million pounds one foot high. One of the four cells was discharged and then re-charged from Sir William's own battery in the laboratory at Glasgow, and after ten days it was found that it still contained power enough to lift 260,000 pounds one foot high. The case containing the four cells sent from Paris to Glasgow was a wooden box one foot square, and weighed, with its contents, seventy-five pounds. Each of the four cells