STUDIES IN IRISH HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.
Studies in. Irish History and Biography. By C. Litton Falkiner. S4ligniansmaid Co. 12s. 6d.)—Although Mr. Falkiner does not, la-sicaling with those questions of Irish politics which, in Lord
Roaebery's phrase, have not "passed out of Irish history," wield the pen of a Fronde, a Lecky, or a Goldwin Smith, yet his magazine articles of the last few years on such interesting subjects as "The Grattan Parliament and Ulster," "Sir Boyle Roche," "The French Invasion of Ireland in 1798," and "Thomas Steele" were well worth collecting and republishing in volume form. They indicate careful reading, if not in the true sense original historical investigation ; are brightly, if not brilliantly, written; and are marked by a fairness in judgment and an amenity in tone which are too rare with writers on Irish subjects. Thus, although Mr. Falkiner is forced to allow of the extraordinary Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, that "the shamelessness with which he flaunted in the eighteenth century a profligacy which would have disgraced the worst examples of the fifteenth betokened a Borgia rather than a Wolsey," he also admits that Hervey "united to the manners of a grand seigneur a devotion to art which would have done no discredit to a Medici." Of the purely historical essays the most valuable are "The Grattan Parliament and Ulster" and "The French Invasion of Ireland in 1798," the first because it demon' strates the historic continuity of Ulster politics, and the second because it is at once the most concise and most picturesque account of "the '98" that has yet been published. Of the biographical articles the happiest is "Sir Boyle Roche"; it shows that Sir Boyle deserves to live in Irish history, not only for his " bulls " and blunders, but as a personage of social and political importance. An essay on the much-maligned Thomas Fitzgibbon, first Earl of Clare, is valuable as a non-contentious paper on a contentious subject, and also for the letters from and about Clare from various collections in the British Museum which it gives, The following from Thomas Pelham to the first Lord Stanley of Alderley is worth quoting —"Of Lord Clare I am tempted to say I thought him a great statesman. He was not one to amalgamate well with others. High-minded, confident, harsh, often governed by his own view of politics only, he was a man to be wondered at more than to be loved in his station, and few of those near him would feel inclined to value him as he deserved. But when brought to a fair judgment, the right estimation of him could not be refused. He was a man amongst all his countrymen the most suited to his time Had Lord Clare never existed I do believe the rebels would have been the masters in a great part of Ireland, and that the Union would not for years to come have taken place." •
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