THE MIDDLE AGES REVISITED.
The Middle Ages Revisited. By Alex. Del Mar. (The Cam- bridge Encyclopedia Company, New York. 3 dols.)—This is one of those treatises the elaborate character of which is some- times the envy and sometimes even the despair of English scholars. It takes nearly four hundred pages to treat of the Roman government and religion and their relations to Britain. Mr. Del Mar makes it tolerably clear at the outset what he is driving at :—" When civil strife had so much exhausted the Romans that they were unable to prevent the overthrow of their re. publican institutions or resist the erection of the Heptarchy, they accepted from their tyrants a, form of religion so impious and degrading as to speedily disgust the better class of citizens and turn them against a Government in whose establishment they had formerly taken an active and patriotic part. This feeling found popular echo in distant provinces like Judea and Britain, and it led to those frequent insurrections which distinguished the first century of our era. The religion which led to these insur- rections was the worship of Cesar as the Creator. This is the pivot upon which • turned the history of the Roman world for many centuries, yet only the faintest allusions to it will be found in our standard works of reference." There is no doubt whatever that by way of making good hie main propositions Mr. Del Mar gives us here the results of an enormous amount of out-of-the-way reading, presented, too, in a style which is eminently fascinating in virtue of its sheer earnestness. Such chapters as those on "The Sacerdotal Character of Gold," "The Rise of the Medieval Empire," and "The Worship of Cesar " speak for themselves. It
would take a learning equal to Mr. Del Mar's own either to con- firm or to controvert the positions he takes up, but even the fairly intelligent, if slightly sceptical, reader will find this book enjoyable, much as is a roomy country-house the owner of which has in mercy to his guests fitted up various rooms in addition to the library with hook-shelves. It may be added that though Mr. Del Mar has many hard things to say of Christian rulers, be retains his conviction that "through its singular capacity to continually renew itself Christianity is destined to always remain the paramount religion of the civilised world."
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