A Short History of the British Commonwealth. Vol. II. By
Ramsay Muir. (G. Philip. 15s. net.)
In his second volume Professor Muir deals with the last century and a half, from the Peace of Paris in 1763 to the Peace of Versailles in 1919. He is an accurate and also an attractive writer. He selects judiciously from the immense mass of facts, and dwells on the main tendencies of each successive chapter in a wonderful story. As he observes, many wise men thought that the Peace of 1782-83, by which we recognized the independence of the American Colonies, marked the end of British greatness ; but "a second British Empire came into being within the generation following the loss of the first." How that happened, and how the new Empire developed, is the inspiring theme of an admirable book. Professor Muir does not venture to read the future, but he declines to believe that Great Britain herself has " passed her grand climacteric." He likens her to the banyan-tree ; "even if the parent stem decays, the great many stemmed giant remains a single living entity."
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