MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER AS HISTORIAN.*

IT is not surprising that Mr. Arnold-Forster should have been drawn to employ his undoubted gifts for lucid exposition and narrative in the production of a short popular History of England, and the volume before us affords in the main a quite sufficient justification of his conduct in yielding to that ambition. Its aim, before all, is to make English history inter- esting to persons with little or no previous information on the subject. Primarily, no doubt, it is written for quite youth- ful readers; but the author also hopes that it may meet the case of those who have either never been taught the history of their country in an effective fashion, or having forgotten what they learnt, wish to have the leading features and principal teachings of the story brought simply and clearly before them. For such ends Mr. Arnold-Forster's book seems to us in many respects both well conceived and well executed. It would not be safe, we should imagine, to depend upon this volume alone as a preparation for an examination, nor would it be desirable that examinations should be adjusted so as to cover merely the ground dealt with by Mr. Arnold-Forster. His method is that of selecting and concentrating light upon certain classes of facts which he deems of special interest and representative value. The correlative of this is, perhaps unavoidably, the neglect or very cursory treatment of other facts which in themselves are possibly, in some cases at least, of not less importance than those on which the author fixes his readers' attention. What may be called the Rembrandtesque method of writing history might be danger- ous in the hands of a writer deficient in conscientiousness or fairmindedness. Its very effectiveness, if well done, might serve to give a distorted view of the course of events, which, received at an impressionable period in the life of the reader, might remain with him always. No such danger, however, attaches to Mr. Arnold-Forster's treatment of his subject. Later on we will indicate certain aspects of our history which, as it seems to us, ought to receive some notice, or more than is here accorded to them, even in a work on the scale of this volume. But as a broad sketch of our island-story, it seems to us to be justly written as well as—which is essential for its purpose—attractively composed.

No one by whom or to whom this book is read will fail to realise, if he has a normal amount of reason and imagination, the continuity of English history, the connection of the pre- sent with the past, and the profound abiding significance of the internal and external struggles of our forefathers. Nor, we should imagine, can it be studied without producing a genuine sense of the intense interest which the critical periods of English history possessed for those whose lot it was to live through them. Notable among the passages of which the interest, both contemporaneous and permanent, is brought out by Mr. Arnold-Forster in a manner suited even to humble • A History of England, front Ow Landing of Julius Calor to Hu Prasont Day. By H. O. Arnold-Forster. London : Comsell and Co.

capacities, are the winning of the Great Charter, the Elizabethan period, the troubles of the seventeenth century, especially on their political side, and the "expansion of England." An Imperialist to the core, possessed to the

full of a lofty sense of the world-wide mission of the

British race, and of the glories of the achievements of British arms by sea and land, Mr. Arnold - Forster is also imbued with a genuine love of freedom. These characteristics do not always go together. Both are needed in one who would be a safe guide to the less instructed of his countrymen in forming their attitude of mind towards their country's past. In dealing with the Elizabethan period, Mr. Arnold-Forster succeeds remarkably well in giving an idea of the thrill of enlarged outlook and abounding achievement, in the physical and intellectual spheres, which must have possessed the England of those days. At this point, as at many others, his naturally graphic style is much enhanced in its effect by his illustrations. He gives two maps, illustrating the known world before and at the close of the Tudor period. In the first, more than half of Africa and the Northern part of Asia are represented as hidden by clouds, under which, of course, lie also the whole of the American and Australian Continents. In the second, the clouds have rolled back from the coast-line, at any rate, of practically the whole of Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America, and of the larger part of North America. The contrast is startling enough to impress any intelligent child's imagination, and its teaching is driven home by a simply worded account of the discoveries of the great explorers wha took part in "rolling back the clouds," and particularly of the Englishmen who were distinguished for their share in that work. The story of the Armada, and of the events leading up to it, is told with the clearness and force which might be expected from one so deeply versed as Mr. Arnold-Forster in naval affairs and in the practice of

expounding them to the popular understanding. He takes equal pains, and with not less good results, in setting forth indications, which the quite juvenile or otherwise uninformed

mind may apprehend, of the magnificent literary heritage which we derive from the Elizabethan age. These sketches of the literature of various periods seem to us very happily conceived, with a view both to completing the picture of the periods in question, and to stimulating a desire for acquaintance

with the writers themselves. Thus in the chapter on the literature of the Stuart period, we have nearly three pages about Milton, of whom we are told that he "was a Puritan,

who lived among the Puritans, heard their speech, and under- stood their thoughts. It was natural, therefore, that in his poetry he should speak of religion, which formed so great a part of the life of the Puritans, and that the language he used should frequently be taken from the Bible, from which the Puritans often quoted, and which they held so dear.

But," continues Mr. Arnold-Forster, "Milton was also a scholar, who had been educated at the University of Cam- bridge. He had learned Latin and Greek, and was familiar with the writings of the great Greek and Latin authors. It

is not strange, therefore, that in his poetry we should find many words and thoughts which are taken from the Bible, side by side with many that are taken from the writers of Greece and Rome." These sentences, followed by a few appropriate illustrations, and preceded by a brief reference to the political side of the poet's life, are very judiciously calcu- lated to enable the youthful reader to "place" Milton in his own mind, and, we should think, to quicken in many a desire to know something of his works.

Another point in which Mr. Arnold-Forater's "aptness to teach" appears is his wise use of the art of recapitulation. Thus, at the end of the Stuart period, the flux and reflux of events in which are very liable to produce confusion in youth- ful, and even some adult, minds, as to the balance of results obtained, he sums up the net effect of the constitutional changes

which had come about from the death of Queen Elizabeth to that of Queen Anne, in a short chapter devoted to the purpose, written in a very clear, pointed manner. We will quote a few sentences here :— "it the end of the Tudor Period we found Queen Elizabeth reigning as an almost absolute Sovereign, Parliament with scarcely any real power, and the Queen taking the foremost part in everything which concerned the government of the country The Divine Right of Kings to rule was accepted as a truth which could hardly be questioned, and with the Divine Bight of Sings to govern there has also come the right divine of Kings to govern wrong.'" [Mr. Arnold-Forster makes great use of italic and other special type.] "When the Stuart line came to an end on the death of Queen Anne, all these things bad changed. Parliament bad become all-powerful. The Divine Right of Kings was an exploded idea in which only a few old-fashioned Jacobites believed. The Sovereign still took some part in governing the country, but a much less active part than in Tudor days. It was the King's Ministers who really carried on the business of the country, and who were responsible for the success or failure of the King's Government."

The manner of the growth of the British Empire is set forth very plainly in these pages. The following lucid passage is a good example of the kind of clue which Mr. Arnold- Forater gives his pupils—for so we may almost call his readers —to the wars of the eighteenth century from the British

point of view. In a short chapter on "England and the Quarrels of Europe" in George I.'s time, we are told that— "There was not one of the great Powers of Europe which was not ready to fight in order to keep its colonial possessions; but to none of them, save to England, was the possession of new colonies and new outlets of commerce the most important thing to be gained by war. The Continental Powers were always con- cerned first of all to strengthen or enlarge their own borders on the Continent of Europe. Prussia and Austria, France and Spain, Sweden and Russia, were perpetually struggling to deprive each other of territory. It was the good fortune of England that she could make no claim to the extension of her boundaries at home. The frontier of the United Kingdom was clearly marked by the waters of the ocean ; and thus it came about that during the many conflicts which disturbed Europe the European Powers were nearly alwari ready to give up to England some distant colony or territory in exchange for the right to keep or to take some part of the soil of Europe."

There is much of the philosophy of history in those few sentences, in a form readily assimilated by any boy or

educated man; and thus guided—and the guidance is repeated where necessary—the reader, of whatever age, will pass profitably through Mr. Arnold-Forster's stirring (though necessarily brief) narrative of British deeds of heroism by land and sea. His sketch of the wars with Revolutionary and Imperial France is full of vigour and movement, and is so drawn as to bring out with reiterated and unmis- takable force the lesson—enforced by Mr. Arnold-Forster at all

suitable opportunities, beginning with the services of Alfred the Great's Navy in clearing the Channel of the Danes—that

in the command of the sea lies the one guarantee for Britain's safety, as for the preservation of her Empire.

As has been already 'hinted, the very effectiveness of this volume, containing only eight hundred pages—the space of which for letterpress is much reduced by the number of excel- lent illustrations — is not obtained without considerable sacrifices. For example, while much of the history of England before the Norman Conquest, including the con- version of the English, is dealt with in a very interest- ing manner, there is no allusion to the very important question of England's early ecclesiastical allegiance, which was practically determined by the Council:of Whitby, and all

reference to the main work of St. Wilfrid and to that of Archbishop Theodore, the foreign organiser of the Church of England, is absent from Mr. Arnold-Forster's pages. Nor, again, ion go intervallo, is there any treatment whatever

either of the Wilkes controversy or of the career of Warren Hastings. Such omissions as these appear to us almost too serious to be defended on any theory of selection that aims at a fully, representative outline of the development of British history, — Ecclesiastical, Parliamentary, and Imperial. Still, so far as it goes, and it goes a long way, Mr.

Arnold-Forster has produced a volume which lays a good foundation, and which cannot but serve to stimulate among its readers a genuine interest in the nation's story.