SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review trkother forms.] Michel de L'Hospital. By C. T. Atkinson. (Longmans and Co. 4s.)—Michel de L'Hospital was Chancellor of France fi om 1560 to 1568, and served his country as well as the furious partisanship of the time permitted him. He was what fanatics call an opportunist ; an honest man, a lover of liberty. As a natural reward for these virtues, he narrowly escaped assassina- tion at the St. Bartholomew. For once Catherine held her hand; the Church party planned his death, and was delighted by a false report that it had occurred—" one of the most pernicious of the Huguenots" they called him—but this was too much even for the Queen. She sent troops to protect him and assured him of "pardon." "I did not Arnow that I bad deserved either death or pardon" was his dignified comment on the royal message. Mr. Atkinson has made an admirable study of de L'Hospitals character and personality. He was one of the men who have done much for France, and have received little but ingratitude as their reward. Another outcome of an academical prize—Mr. Atkinson's book won the "Lothian Prize Essay" at Oxford last year—is The Causes of the War of 1792, by J. H. Clapham, M.A. (Cambridge University ,Press, eis. 6d.), the "Prince _Con- sort Dissertation" for 1898. Mr. Clapham has studied State papers and printed- books, and • all the miscellaneous literature which so largely increases the, historian's task in the present day, and has developed out of these Materials a -consistent picture of European diplomacy as it was somewhat more than a century ago. One thing strikes 'us at 'once, that the parts now being played are curiously like to those in the drama of that time. The only Power that seemed absolutely to know its own mind was Russia, steadily pursuing its own objects. Our own desire was to stand outside. Let France weaken herself was the thought of our statesmen, for when she is strong she can do what she: always wishes to do,—injure us. A hundred years and half a dozen changes of government in Paris have made
no charge in-the, root, fact of the situation. . .
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