English Party Leaders and English Parties, front Walpole to Peel.
By W. H. Davenport 'Adams. (Tinsley Brothers.)—Mr. Adams is one of the most industrious and versatile bookmakers of the period, he is equally at home with the beauties of nature and with the " Beauties " of society. His subject has in the present instance, however, been too mach for him. He has simply read up the most popular books on British history during the last one hundred and fifty years, he has drank pretty deeply of Macaulay and Lecky, and in two heavy volumes presents us with the results of his reading. The book indeed little more than a collection of political biographies of Walpole,
the two Pitts, Fox, Burke, Canning, and Peel. As the style is thin, the book is good for little else than setting readers on the right track. Mr. Adams is, we presume, what used to be styled an "Old Whig," and his opinions are sufficiently modest and moderate. But his views are by no means carefully formed. He takes for granted the old gossip about Bolingbroke's action at the time of the death of Queen Anne. Why, too, should Burke, although he had all the imagination and nearly all the brains and conscience of the Rockingham section, be dealt with as a "party leader ?" The chapters on Canning and Peel are the best ; but Mr. Adams, in his account of the latter, very strangely omits to mention that in his last speech in Parliament, Peel made a pointed reference to Lord Palmerston and the famous Cris .Romanus oration. Is Mr. Adams now quite sure that he is right in saying (Vol. I.) that " Toryism " has ceased to represent the ideas it once represented ?
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