New Histories
THE widespread belief that the Industrial Revolution was a period of unrelieved misery for the masses is 'seriously questioned by Miss M. C. Buer in her very able and interesting study of Health, Wealth and Population in the Early Days of The Industrial Revolution (Routledge. 10s. 6d. net). The population of England increased rapidly between 1760 and 1821, but the increase was due not to a higher birth-rate but to a lower death-rate. Miss Buer has collected a mass of evidence to show that, while Watt's steam engine and the new machines were developing the factory system, physicians and philanthropists were introducing immense improvements in social and personal hygiene. Preventive medicine was beginning its triumphant career, and, after Waterloo, English writers of authority could boast that their countrymen enjoyed better health than the nations of any other country, except Scotland. There was much yet to be done, but we need no longer suppose that the factory system had made things worse than before, as many pessimistic authors have declared. * * * Mrs. C. S. Peel's lively and amusing A Hundred Wonderful Years (Lane, 15s. net) sketches the social and domestic life of the century from George the Fourth's reign to the present day. She portrays, with many apt quotations from memoirs and novels, the life of the Court, the rich, 'the middle classes, the servants' hall and the Poor, and she illustrates her text with an abundance of old Prints and drawings. The early Victorian fashions, which are well represented, have an unfailing interest. To their voluminous amplitude the present mode offers an extreme contrast ; but we must not forget that revolutlkinary Paris; ender the Directory, had reduced woman's costume to a minimum, as it is now, and Fashion's wheel may turn full circle again. * * * A History of Siam, by Mr. VV,.'A. R: Wood, the British Consul-General at Chiengmat (T.-Fisher Unwin, 15s. net), is the first complete history of the country to appear in English, and deserves commendation as a lucid narrative. The Siamese or Tai migrated from Southern China, fleeing from the Mongols, and built up anew Striti on the ruins of the old Cambodian empire, whose mighty temples still stand in the jungle. They were incessantly engaged in war with Burma, and their capital, Ayuthia, was taken and destroyed more than once. But Siain has continued to remain independent, and Mr. Wood's sympathetic liOok helps to explain the fact. * * * Mr. Laurence Irving' has wick. A Selection of the Principal Voyages, Trafftques and Discoveries of the English Nation by Richard Hakluyt (Heinemann, 10s. 6d. net), with an introduction and many attractive drawings, which. may be commended to readers young and old. The narratives of the voyages of Hawkins; Drake and Cavendish, and of the Armada are reprinted literally; and will be found most entertaining, Miles Philips's story of his captivity on the Spanish Main is a typical Eliza. bethan tractwhich illustrates the anti-Spanish temper of the time and emphasizes the- cruelties of the Inquisition. Kingsley, no doubt, used it in writing Westward Ho
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