Ivan the Terrible: his Life and Times. By Austen Pember,
M.A. (A. P. Marsden.)—Mr. Pember has thought the accession of a new Czar a good occasion for the revival of the story of Ivan the Terrible. Most folk will be inclined to say absit omen, and yet, as Mr. Pember says and shows, Ivan's career was important as well as awful,—" important as concerns the expansion of the Russian dominion, important with regard to the checks adminis- tered to the Tartars, and the consequent decline of Mahom- medanism in Eastern Europe, and important with respect to the tardy development of the Russian people, whose centuries of sub- servience it largely explains." Mr. Pember's book will be found an interesting and (in tone) moderate account of an awful period even for Russian history. As one reads, one is tempted to come to the conclusion—as the only charitable one under the circum- stances—that Ivan was essentially a madman. Mr. Pember's book would have been even more satisfactory than it is had it been better condensed.
Previous page
