Catharine d' Aragon, et lee Origines du Schism Anglican. Par
Albert du Boys. (Victor Palm°, Paris.)—M. du Boys' work can only be described as a chastened pamphlet; he himself would probably not claim for it that it is a sober and impartial history. In his dedica- tion to Cardinal Manning, he sufficiently indicates his position, by giving as a synonym for "Les Origines du Schisme Anglican" the much less ambiguous and polite "Les Commencements de Cette (Euvre de Mares." Many of what metaphysicians of a parti- cular school would style "con-causes" of Anglicanism its most de- voted adherents at the present time are anything but proud of; there is no defending that portion of the history of HenryVIII. which embraces the divorce of Catharine of Aragon and the marriage to Anne Boleyn. But a writer who starts with the belief that Anglicanism is simply " cette ceuvre de tinObres" is morally certain, however conscien- tious he may be, to look upon its secondary causes as its sole ones. This is transparently the case with M. du Boys. Not that he seeks deliberately to be unfair to Henry VIII. ; on the contrary, he gives ample justice both to his great natural capacity and to the success of his career up to a certain point, being here in perfect agreement with Mr. Fronde. Where he errs is in attributing the accomplishment of the ceuvre de tenebres too exclusively to Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn, in leaving out of consideration the fact that he was far too shrewd to have revolted from Rome, had he not been certain that the morally and intellectually strongest section of his subjects had, in heart at least, revolted before him. M. du Boys shows his ignorance of the state of feeling in England at the time of the divorce of Catharine, by hinting that if Charles of Spain had sent a few thousands of his soldiers to the aid of the insurrec- tion in the North of England which resulted from that divorce, Henry would have been dethroned, and the infant Church crashed. As the champion of the unfortunate Catharine herself, however, M. du Boys deserves the greatest credit both for veracity and for chivalry. No writer has hitherto been at such pains to ransack special sources of historical information, in order to present to the public a trust- worthy portrait of this Queen, the sacrifice of whom every honourable Anglican regards with regret and shame.
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