Volume 1 — NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Volumes I. and II. 8vo., pp. 447 and 501. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

In these two luxurious volumes we have the first instalment of an important work upon the most important period of English history. Six other volumes are to follow. Mr. Froude is a thorough good Protestant. His main purpose in this history seems to have been the glorification of the English reformers. For the worst sovereigns of the house of Tudor he displays an enthusiastic admiration which, one is tempted to believe, is half genuine sentiment, and half love of paradox. Catholics, of course, he could not have expected to satisfy; but he has gone too far to please even the members of his own Church. Of Henry VIII., whose apologist he has appropriately been called, he draws a flattering portrait:

"If Henry VIII.," he says, "had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black {716} Prince or of the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigor by a temperate habit and by constant exercise." His state papers and letters lose nothing by comparison with those of Wolsey and Cromwell. He was an accomplished musician; he wrote and spoke in four languages; he was one of the best physicians of his age, an engineer, and a theologian. "He was 'attentive,' as it is called, 'to his religious duties,' being present at the services in the chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life." In private he was good-humored and good-natured. But "like all princes of the Plantageuet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to contend." "He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him he was perhaps the greatest of his contemporaries."

Mr. Froude does not believe that the king's scruples respecting the validity of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon were inspired by his affection for Anne Boleyn. "They had arisen to their worst dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn." But Mr. Froude's narrative of the king's early intercourse with Anne is extremely unsatisfactory, not to say disingenuous. How long Henry may have cherished his scruples in secret, our author affords us no means of guessing; but the earliest intimation which he finds of an intended divorce was in June, 1527. It was in 1525, he says, that Anne came back from France and appeared at the English court. This is an error, and is inconsistent with other statements in the same chapter; the date was 1522; and almost immediately afterward the king began to pay Anne marked attention. Her celebrated love-passage with Lord Percy took place in 1523. Mr. Froude speaks of it as follows: "Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself." Now what will be thought of our author's honesty when we say that Cavendish repeats again and again that the match was broken off by command of the king? Lord Northumberland did not appear in the matter at all until Wolsey, by his majesty's orders, had remonstrated with the young nobleman, and threatened him with dire consequences if he should persist in a pursuit which was displeasing to his sovereign. Mr. Froude carefully suppresses all allusion to intercourse between the king and his fair favorite, until the project of the divorce was well advanced,—not discussing or discrediting the statements of other historians respecting Henry's early passion for Anne Boleyn; but simply putting them behind his back, as matters of which it did not suit his purpose to take notice. This fashion of writing may do for romance, but not for history.

In demanding a divorce from his first queen, Henry has, as we might suppose, Mr. Froude's full approval:

"It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII. had been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the interests of the kingdom; if he had forborne, while his request was pending, to affront the princess who had for many years been his companion and his queen; if he had shown her that respect which her {717} high character gave her a right to demand, and which her situation as a stranger ought to have made it impossible to him to refuse, his conduct would have been liable to no imputation, and our sympathies would without reserve have been on his side. … His kingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience, it may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his children; and looking upon it as the sentence of heaven upon a connection the legality of which had from the first been violently disputed, he believed that he had been living in incest and that his misfortunes were the consequence of it. Under these circumstances he had a full right to apply for a divorce."

With all its faults, Mr. Froude's book tells many wholesome truths in a very forcible manner. Here is an admission which from such an out-and-out Protestant we should hardly have looked for; he is speaking of religious persecution:

"We think bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is inevitable from the constitution of the world. … The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms; while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and there which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality, where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which, by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who entertain them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not any more believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is necessarily fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were supposed to be attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to rise among us, making murder a religious service; if they gained proselytes, and the proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to ourselves, the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas More, only being as much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul is more terrible than the single and momentary separation of it from the body. There is, I think, no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of persecution, except only this: that as we are now convinced of the injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of harder nature and more narrow sympathies enforced them without reluctance, and even with exultation."

The following extract from an account of the feelings of the mass of the English people during the early stages of the divorce affair, must be rather unpalatable to the High-Church Episcopalians:

"They believed—and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only leading member of the privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not under the same delusion—that it was possible for a national church to separate itself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to crush or prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental system could still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those mysteries were dispensed should minister in golden chains. This was the English historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the second Henry, and the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a thing of words and paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew well that an ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation of doctrine; that plain men could not and would not continue to reverence the office of the priesthood, when the priests were treated as the paid officials of an earthly authority higher than their own. He was not to be blamed if he took the people at their word; if he believed that, in their doctrinal conservatism, they knew and meant what they were saying; and the reaction which took place under Queen Mary, when the Anglican system had been tried and failed, and the alternative was seen to be absolute union with Rome, or a forfeiture of Catholic orthodoxy, proves after all that he was wiser than in the immediate event he seemed to be; that if his policy had succeeded, and if, {718} strengthened by success, he had introduced into the Church those reforms which he had promised and desired, he would have satisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the nation."

From an introductory chapter on the social condition of England in the early part of the sixteenth century, we extract the following graphic passage, as an example of Mr. Froude's fascinating style. Doubtless most of our readers will agree with us in wishing that so graceful a pen had been more worthily employed:

"The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are two expressions, corresponding one to the other, which we frequently meet with in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether the condition of things was or was not what it ought to be. We read of 'merry England';—when England was not merry, things were not going well with it. We hear of the 'glory of hospitality,' England's pre-eminent boast,—by the rules of which all tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked: to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for his dinner; for his lodging, perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall, with a billet of wood for a pillow, but freely offered and freely taken, the guest probably faring much as his host fared, neither worse nor better. There was little fear of an abuse of such licence, for suspicious characters had no leave to wander at pleasure; and for any man found at large, and unable to give a sufficient account of himself, there were the ever-ready parish stocks or town gaol. The 'glory of hospitality' lasted far down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, 'came in great bravery of building, to the great beautifying of the realm, but to the decay' of what he valued more. "In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest, carrying their hearts high, and having their hands full. The hour of rising, winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the laborers went to work, and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and examined,—if the account given was insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made 'unhonest' shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be looked to by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with him. At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his farm, or to do what be pleased. It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but colored with a broad, rosy English health."

THE AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA AND REGISTER OF IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1864. 8vo., pp. 838. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The Annual Cyclopedia grows more and more valuable and interesting every year. The present volume is a great improvement upon all that have gone before it. The course of events has been unusually varied and startling, and the topics suggested by it appear to have been for the most part selected with good judgment and treated by competent writers. We have under the head of "Army Operations" an admirable history of Sherman's great march and of Grant's campaign in the wilderness, both illustrated with maps. The article on the "Army of the United States" abounds in information respecting the number of troops, organization, supplies, department and corps commanders, etc., such as everybody wants to have, but nobody knows where to look for. Under the titles of "Confederate" and "United States Congress" we have a complete political history of our country during the last year, while the condition and progress of the several foreign states are treated in their proper places. A great deal of interesting matter is given in the articles on the "Anglican" and "Greek" Churches, "Commerce" and "Commercial Intercourse," "Diplomatic Correspondence and Foreign Relations," "Finances of the United States," "Freedmen," "Freedom of the Press," "Geographical Explorations and Discoveries," "Literature and Literary Progress," "Military Surgery and Medicine" (profusely illustrated), "Navy," "Ordnance," "Petroleum," etc., etc. {719} Under the head of "Public Documents" is the most correct translation of the Pope's Encyclical and syllabus of errors condemned that has yet appeared in this country. Biographical sketches are also given of the most distinguished men who died during the course of the year.

SONGS FOR ALL SEASONS. By Alfred Tennyson. With illustrations by D. Maclise, T. Creswick, S. Eytinge, C. A. Barry, H. Fenn, and G. Perkins. 16mo., pp. 84. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

HOUSEHOLD POEMS. By Henry W. Longfellow. With illustrations by John Gilbert, Birket Foster, and John Absolon. 16mo., pp. 96. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

The series of "Companion Poets for the People," of which these two volumes are the first issues, deserves special commendation as an example of the way in which cheapness and elegance may be combined. For half a dollar Messrs. Ticknor & Fields offer us a neat little book, printed in the best style of typography, on rich tinted paper, with a clean broad margin, and some twelve or fifteen wood-cuts by reputable artists. The selections appear to have been made with good judgment, and include some late pieces of both Tennyson and Longfellow which are not to be found in previous editions of their works.

THE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND, AND IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS, FRANCE, AND NORTHERN EUROPE. IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, REVIEWING D'AUBIGNÉ, MENZEL, HALLAM, BISHOP SHORT, PRESCOTT, RANKE, FRYXELL, AND OTHERS. By M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop Baltimore. Fourth revised edition, Two volumes in one. 8vo., pp. 494 and 509. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

We welcome this new and improved edition of the best antidote that has yet been prepared for English readers to the common misrepresentations of Protestant historians of the reformation. Archbishop Spalding's book has been so long before the public, and has been received with such general favor, that it would be superfluous at this late day to enter upon a general examination of its merits. It will prove a valuable guide to the student of English and continental history; he will find here the chief points made against the Church, by the long list of writers named in the title-page, taken up and answered by a prelate of high reputation for sound and thorough scholarship. Dr. Spalding of course does not deny that there were abuses in the 16th century which ought to have been abolished; but he contends that the gravity and extent of these disorders have been greatly exaggerated; that they generally originated in the world and its princes, not in the Church; most of them being due to the fact that bad men were thrust into high ecclesiastical places by worldly-minded and avaricious sovereigns; that there was a lawful and efficacious remedy for all such evils, which consisted in giving to the popes their due power and influence in the nomination of bishops and in the deliberations of general councils; in a word, that "reformation within the Church, and not revolution outside of it, was the only proper, lawful, and efficacious remedy for existing evils;" and finally, "that the fact of Christians having at length felt prepared to resort to the desperate and totally wrong remedy of revolution was owing to a train of circumstances which had caused faith to wane and grow cold, and which now appealed more to the passions than to reason, more to human considerations than to the principles of divine faith and the interests of eternity."

THE YEAR OF MARY; OR, THE TRUE SERVANT OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. Translated from the French of Rev. M. d'Arville, Apostolic Prothonotary. Edited, and in part translated, by Mrs. J. Sadlier. 12mo. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.

This is a work intended for the use either of private persons or of confraternities, sodalities, and similar associations formed in honor of the Blessed Virgin. The matter is distributed into exercises, the number of which is fixed at seventy-two, because our Lady is supposed to have lived seventy-two years on earth. One exercise is appropriated to each of the Sundays and principal festivals of the year.

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The reverend author writes with simplicity and unction, and has given us a really devout book. The translation seems to be very well done.

CEREMONIAL, FOR THE USE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Published by order of the First Council of Baltimore, with the approbation of the Holy See. Third edition, carefully revised and considerably enlarged. With illustrations. 12mo., pp. 534. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This book is almost indispensable to clergymen, and very convenient for laymen who wish to understand the beautiful ceremonies which the Church has appointed for the various festivals and services of the ecclesiastical year. It was originally compiled by Bishop Rosati, of St. Louis, and formally adopted by the council of Baltimore in 1852. The extensive additions which are now published with it were made by direction of the late Archbishop Kenrick, of Baltimore. They consist of the ceremonies of low mass, low mass for the dead, and the manner of giving holy communion within the mass or at other times; instructions for the priest who is obliged to say two masses, from the decrees of the sacred congregation of rites, approved under the present pope; the manner of singing mass without deacon and sub-deacon, and the vespers without cope-bearers, in accordance with approved usages of the best-regulated churches in Italy; the mode of giving benediction with the blessed sacrament, in which the ceremonial of bishops and the various decrees of the sacred congregation of rites are strictly followed; Gregorian notes to guide the celebrant and sacred ministers in singing the prayers, gospel, epistle, confiteor, etc.

The illustrations, intended to show the proper form of various church utensils, church furniture, etc., constitute a valuable feature of the book.

MEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF ONE DAY IN EACH MONTH. Compiled from the writings of Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by a Religious. Published with the approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore. 18mo., pp. viii., 154. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This little book is designed for the use not only of religious communities, but of persons in the world who may feel disposed to devote a day now and then exclusively to the affairs of their souls. The exercises consist of three meditations and a "consideration," for each month in the year, arranged after the manner of the exercises of St. Ignatius.

STREET BALLADS, POPULAR POETRY, AND HOUSEHOLD SONGS OF IRELAND. 16mo., pp. 312. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

The poems contained in this little volume are by a great number of authors, and of course of very different degrees of merit. Most of them are of a patriotic nature; a good many are amatory; and two or three seem to have no business in the collection at all. For example, Lieut-Colonel Halpine's "April 20, 1864," is a poem of the American rebellion. Mr. John Savage's "At Niagara" is certainly neither a street ballad nor a household song, nor is it part of the popular poetry of Ireland any more than of our own country. We dare say, however, that nobody will feel disposed to quarrel with the editor for including these spirited pieces, as well as others we might mention, which do not properly belong under the categories mentioned in the title-page.

Among the best known writers whose names appear in the table of contents are William Allinghain, Aubrey De Vere, Samuel Fergusson, Lady Wilde, Gerald Griffin, and Clarence Mangan.

THE MONTH OF MARY, FOR THE USE OF ECCLESIASTICS. Translated from the French. 32mo., pp. 207. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.

This little manual is intended exclusively for ecclesiastics, especially students in theological seminaries. It sets forth, for each day of the month, some trait of the life of the Blessed Virgin, first as an object of veneration and love, secondly, as a model of some virtue of the clerical state, and finally, as a motive of confidence. It is brief, suggestive, and practical.

The Man without a Country (Boston: Ticknor & Fields) is a reprint in pamphlet form of a remarkable narrative which appeared originally in The Atlantic Monthly.

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