REVIEW.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1507, 17 January 1901, Page 28

REVIEW.

“A History of Our Own Times, noun 1880 to the Diamond Jubilee/' oy Justin McCarthy. London: Chatto and Windus. Wellington: Whitcombe and Tombs. Cheaper edition, price 6s.

The utility and popularity of Mr Jstin McCarthy’s “History of Our Own Times” have been naturally enhanced by the publication of an additional volume in which the record of Her .Majesty's reign, which the author had previously written as far as 1880, has now oeen brought up to the Diamond Jubilee. The same admirable qualities which gained go many favourable criticisms for the - original work, are to he found yet more agreeably exemplified in the volume before us. There is the same pleasant alliance of brightness and vigour in the style, the same careful generalisations, and yet more careful detail, the same absence of personal and 1 party bias. Mr McCarthy, it has been said, writes for the multitude. Whether there be an implied sneer in this or net, we cannot say, but it would be well indeed .bad writers of. much more pretentious historical works than that under consideration exhibited more of the admirable characteristics which have cc>ntributeu so largely to Mr McCarthy’s successThat a volume of over 400 closely yet clearly printed pages should be devoted to the events of less than eight years may suggest the possibility of a verbosity which does not, however, exist in Mr McCarthy’s direct yet fascinating chronicles. The truth is that in many trespects the period with which the historian has dealt- was so thickly studded with important events as to rank •amongst the most momentous periods o-f her Majesty’s reign. That period witnessed, amongst other events, the return to office of Mr Gladstone for a long tenure of power and his famous yet futile attempt to solve the Irish problem. Within that period took place the deaths of two such utterly dissimilar yet almost, each in his own way, equally powerful leaders, as Beaconsfield and Parnell; it included some! of the most costly, and, directly and indirectly considered, most important of Britain’s many “little wars” ; it witnessed' the firstshadows of the present struggle in South Africa —but the list is too long to be continued. Mr McCarthy, in his new volume, as in, the volumes of the original work, follows closely the course of political history, not only in Great Britain, hut on the Continent, and in other parts of the world. One first turns, however, and that very naturally, to his account of Mr Gladstone’s two last administrations, and more particularly to the story of the Irish problem in its later developments. Himself an Irishman, an Irish patriot, an ardent Home Ruler, the reserve, prudence and unfailing good taste with which Mr McCarthy deals with the successive Home Buie Bills, the famous “Parnellism and Crime” publications, the evil deeds, and yet more evil end of the forger and perjurer, Pigott, with the scandal, and the revolt in committee room’ 15, which followed, meiri t high praise. xne record is a triumph of accuracy and 1 fair play to both great political parties, and to the Irish Nationalists and their leader. Almost equally interesting are the chapters which deal respectively with the Bradlaugh episode, the Egyptian war, and the retirement of Bright from the Gladstone Ministry, with the Soudan and Benin campaigns, and with the Venezuela dispute. Facts, dates and figure-3 are manipulated in such a way as to make the record the easiest and most delightful reading. In his treatment of the Jameson Raid, the South African Committee’s inquiry, and the earlier troubles with “Ooin Paul,” there is perhaps here and there just the slightest tendency to personal bias, but tnis perhaps is more apparent than eral, and it is only fair to remember that the chapters dealing with the South Africa question were written before the outbreak of the present war. As in his preceding volumes, Mr McCarthy pays laudable attention to social developments and changes, and one of the most voluble features of an every way admirable work is the series of short “character sketches” in which the historian limns in brief the public careers and personal traits of the many eminent men, famous in politics, science, art and literature, who passed away during the period under review. Nothing, for instance, to take three political sketches, could be better than the brief biographies of Beaconsfield, Parnell and Ran-

son, Browning, Huxley,Anthony Trollope, Tyndall, George Eliot, Cardinal Manning, and the Rev Charles Spurgeon. We could write at. much greater lengtn in praise of what is a finely executed, intensely' interesting, and unquestionably most useful contribution to the history of the century, but already the limits of available space have been passed, and we can only, in. conclusion, express the hope that the volume may find many readers in this colony, not only amongst politicians and our public- men generally, but amongst the ever increasing ranks of New Zealanders who take pleasure in good, and instructive literature.