With Milton and the Cavaliers. By Mrs. Frederick Boas. (J.
Nisbet and Co. Us.)—Mrs. Boas draws portraits of Charles and his chief friends and courtiers, of Cromwell and of the leading Puritans, of some of the great Churchmen and Nonconformist divines of the seventeenth century, and draws them with sufficient skill, if not with any surprising vigour. We have little fault to find with her estimates. On the difficult subject of Laud she expresses herself with moderation ; though when she describes him as the friend of Buckingham, she might have said something as to the absolute incongruity of such a friendship. In this, as in other matters, Laud suffered his sense of political expediency to silence his conscience. He kept all his life a day of humiliation in remorse for his shameful compliance in the matter of the Earl of Devonshire and Penelope Rich, but could not see that his intimacy with the shameless profligate Buckingham was a renew- ing of the offence. Bunyan, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, and Fox Mrs. Boas is equally able to appreciate. In literary matters we do not feel that her judgment is equally to be trusted.
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