William Ewart Gladstone, and his Contemporaries. By Thomas Archer. Vol.
IV., 1860-1853. (Mackie and Son.)—Mr. Archer completes in this volume what is practically a history of England during the last fifty years. We have taken occasion to speak of his work while it has been in progress, and we now wish to renew and complete our acknowledgments of its great merit. The difficulties which beset such a task as that which he has now accomplished are very great. Foremost, of course, stands the problem of expressing. conviction without becoming a partisan. Mr. Archer has not, indeed, like the Pollio to whom Horace addressed his famous warning, a civil war to relate ; but he has to tell of some very fierce struggles, in which the antagonists have not always been content with moral force. And he has to deal with controversies, both political and social, from which the bitterness has by no means passed away. He has his views on these matters, and he does not attempt to conceal the fact that they are such as a biographer of Mr. Gladstone might be expected to have ; but he is, as far as we can see, jest and candid. Then there is the difficulty, which is in one sense more embarrassing, of keeping doe proportion between various events. Most of us have subjects in which we are especially interested, and are disposed to be discontented with the brevity with which they are sometimes of necessity treated. Here, again, Mr. Archer seems to steer skilfully a very perplexing course. A reader will, of course, now and then miss something that he looks for, but he will acknowledge, on the whole, that the book is well managed in this respect. Add to this a very lively and vigorous style, and you have a book which fairly has earned much praise.
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