6 MAY 1871, Page 24

Mr. C. D. Yonge has revised his History of England

(Longmans), and brought it down to the death of Lord Palmerston. It is a work on which much industry has evidently been spent, and which is certain to be useful, as indeed any manual of the kind would be, in which an intelligent writer has utilized with care, as Mr. Yonge seems to have done, such books as Mr. Freeman, Mr. Fronde, and Mr. Burton, to mention not a few of the most recent contributors to historical Mora- tare, have given us; but we do not see that it possesses any singular merits. The style is certainly cumbrous and confused, and the volume has the capital defect, especially hateful to a reviewer who must pick out test passages, of being wholly destitute of an index. Even a full table of contents—and we have a tolerably satisfactory one here—is not a substitute for this absolutely necessary furniture of any handbook that aspires to be complete.