Tho now number of the English Historical Review is an
excep- tionally interesting one. A passage of Byzantine history which even in the pages of Gibbon is dark and doubtful, is to some extent lighted up by Mr. E. W. Brooks, in an article entitled" The Emperor Zenon and the Isaurians." Mr. Brooks certainly indicates,
in a very effective manner, how the Isaurians, who originally gave much trouble to the Byzantine Emperors, were in the long- run made their useful servants, in accordance with a scheme the authorship of which is traced to the Emperor Leo. This paper is fol- lowed by one on Anglo-Saxon law, in which is displayed the almost appalling learning of Sir Frederick Pollock; and another on "Naval Preparations of James II. in 1688," based on the " Admiralty Letters" in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cam- bridge. Finally, we have a short but conclusive " note" by Mr. Frederic Dixon on the celebrated and unfortunate Lally's visit to Great Britain in 1745. Mr. Dixon makes it tolerably evident that at the time Lally was supposed to be in Scotland aiding the Pretender, ho was really in Sussex or Kent, trying to organise a rising with the help of the smugglers, who were Jacobites to a man. The " Notes and Documents " in this number of the English Historical Review, including Hyde's draft of a Declara- tion to be issued by Charles II. in 1649, are more than ordinarily fresh, and the reviews of books are marked by care and variety.
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