The Character and Times of Thomas Cromwell : a Sixteenth-
Century Crttivism. By Arthur Galton. (Cornish, Birmingham.) —A careful and, we think, on the whole a just account of Cromwell, of his Royal master, of Anne Boleyn, and sundry other persons of less account who are mixed up in their history. Henry is a very different person from the great statesman who appears in Mr. Fronde's pages. Cromwell Mr. Galton takes to have been an able, unscrupulous man, who saw the set of the times, and addressed himself to guide it. "There has been no lasting reaction against the scheme or the conclusions of Cromwell. There are not many of our statesmen whose work has endured the test of time so well as his." This has a special reference to the character given to the English Church by Cromwell's policy. Of Anne Boleyn he speaks with decision,—" She was almost certainly not guilty of the offences which were laid to her charge." But he hints at graver crimes, which it did not suit the Government to mention,—the death of Katharine of Arragon, we may suppose, among them. "She was a cold-hearted, unscrupulous, relentless
woman but her greatness is undeniable." This is a very able essay, owing its parentage to Oxford.
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