11 SEPTEMBER 1880, Page 24

Imperial England. By Montagu Burrows, R.N., M.A. (Cassell, Petter, and

Galpin.)—This is but a mean result of the richest Pro- fessorship of the University of Oxford. To think what is done in return for the poorest stipends in Germany, and then to compare with it this meagre and feeble volume ! All that can be said for it is that Professor Burrows pays—and pays, we suppose, to the best of his ability—his debt to his party. George III. is ranked with "Alfred the Great, Edward I., and Queen Elizabeth." Well, it is better to be busied in harmless speculations of this kind, than to degrade the dignity of the office with the doubtful tactics of election committees. Perhaps it would be better still to let the world outside Oxford forget that there is a Chichele Professor, or, if it must needs be reminded of him, at least to avoid the scandal of such writing as this coming from the pen of one of the chief officials in a learned University :—" When we turn from the considerations which display and justify the Foreign Policy of Great Britain at the conclusion of the first period of our history, and regard the position of the young monarch among his ministers, in what a labyrinth do we find him involved! What a task awaited him ! Pierced by the reed on which he leaned, the in- competent Lord Bute, his brother's friend (surely never anything but an honourable friendship)," &c. What a sentence this last !