REVIEW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3764, 28 February 1874, Page 5 (Supplement)

REVIEW.

General Sketch of European JTistori/. By E. A. Freeman, D.0.1/,"late Feilow of Trinity College, Oxford. London: .MacMillan and Co., 1873.

Nothing promises better for the progress of education .in the future than that our leading men in the various branches of human knowledge have at length begun to write school books adapted not only for advanced students, but for the upper classes ;oE the primary schools.- Nothing has been more melancholy than the miserable fragmentary and objectless compilations placed in the hands of the children composing those classes, where bits of geology jostled frag-ments-of poetry, arid moral tales were freely mixed up with chemical experiments.' History'was dealt with in these works, niuch in the same manner ; they were larded with ■isolated narratives of important events, which were shorn of all interest by ignoring their connexion with previous history and subsequent events, and by the entire strangeness of the names of the actors and places. The school histories were scarcely better. Dry unmeaning catalogues of names and dates unmercifully follow each other page after page, and no attempt is made to show how one event led to another, or that the personages of old times were men and women of like passions with ourselves. It was this absence of all human interest in these books, which in all probability led the late Mr J. S. Mill, in Bis inaugural address at St. Andrews, to argue against the teaching of history in schools, and has caused more than one experienced schoolmaster of our acquaintance to declare that the historical novels of Scott and Bulwer, and Shakespeare's historical plays, are the best histories for boya and girls. This much wo can affirm that our love of history, which has grown with our growth and strengthened with our years, dates from our tenth year, when a whole summer's day, from morhing till dark, our new friend Ivanhbe was our companion beneath a spreading birch tree. Whence, indeed, can a child gain a more vivid impression of the state of thing;., produced by the Conquest, than from those charming pages ? There are the two hostile races, dwellers in the same land, living face to face. ;

Where is the luxuriant eager life of England; reviving from the long winter of the middle apes, better painted than in Kenilworfch? King Jamie we know intimately, and how Scot 9 appeared to Englishmen, and England to the Scots from the Fortunes of Nigel. No disquisition on the civil wars appears dull to the student who has mastered Woodstock and Peveril of the Peak in his early youth. In a thousand pages the Covenanters, with their stern unyielding faith, the desperate gallantry of the Royalists, the devotion of the clans, and the intrigues of the leaders on both sides, live with a vigour that infuses life into t'-:e dry bones of history. Who ever conceived of Louis XI., that knew; not Quentin Durward; or realized the "Scot abroad," to whom Quentin's worthy uncle, and stout Major Dugald Dalgetty were strangers ? Nor must we from our catalogue of histories for the young omit "Esmond," and "The Virginians." Except one burrows into the biographies, and letters, and journals of the time3—a work for mature years and full leisure—where else shall we realise so vividly the social life of the ■ days of good Queen Anne and the George 3 ? True, historical accuracy is often departed from-; but that we may correct in after days ;or even if we do not, what matter? We have feen the actors in the great events of old in the fle3h. The dramatic truth is preserved ; and, what is one chief aim of historical study, wo have watched human hearts be&ting with our emotions under a garb very different from that of the much-vaunted nineteenth century, in days when individuality went for something, and Mrs Gamp was not. But these, though the best of books for schoolboys, are not school-books/ It would be desecration to call them so. No boy worth his salt requires the shadow of compulsion to drive him to their pages. Mr Freeman's book is eminently a schoolbook, and we hereby venture strongly to recommend it to the New Zealand University Council as a text-book for European History more within the capacity of candidates of sixteen, and less punishing to the parental purse, than Hallam, Creasy, aud Bryce. It'may be procured for ss, while the authorised text-books would stand the recalcitrant father in at least £5, and after all be a long way over the head of his son. Mr Freeman's object has been by a rapid conspectus of Enropean History to provide a framework in which hereafter may beset more detailed studies of particular periods of sections of history. Mr Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, for instance, which is named by the University authorities, is one of the best historical works in our language, but its value is doubled when wo learn brieily from Air Freeman the causes which, from the remotest times, led up to the Constitution of that Empire, and its general relations with the world beyond its limits. Mr Freeman teaches us its functions and anatomy, of which we are perhaps apt to lose sight in the full and finished work of Mr Br.\ cc. Mr Freeman has in fact accomplished a feat which, until the best men—the men of original research—entered the lists, seemed hopeless ; he has produced a book which the most advanced student of history, and any intelligent schoolboy of fifteen, may read with equal pleasure and profit. In Greece, in Germany, throughout Europe, but above all in Eugiand, he has proved himself the foremost English historian longago. His present taskis indeed humbler, but not less difficult or useful. No one who had not by dint of lifelong labour and original research mastered European history in detail as a whole, could have given us thi3 "sketch" with its exact proportion, its perfect perspective, and its admirable unity. The mere abbreviator or compiler knows neither what to omit or what to retain. His task is to compress, not to exhibit the anatomy of his subject in a few leading characteristics. If a large map has to be reduced by a skilful hydrograpber, say, for school purposes, he will seize on the marking features of the country, and boldly depict them. The bungler will insert much that, is of inferior value, omit much that is cardinal, and after all present but an unintelligible blur. Mr Freeman's work is eminently one not to be judged of by quotation. A sample of that, the main merit of which is severe adherence to his preconceived plan, can give no more idea of its merits than a single brick of a whole house. It can only be judged as a whole. His plan is simple and true. He looks upon the whole history of bur race,

from its fh-Bt appearance on the European' stage to the great era of Christ and the first Emperors, as tending to the establishment of the Empire. The unity of the Empire continued until it was Christianised, and then he traces the consolidation of the States of the modern world from the dissolution of the Empire. We have said; advisedly, that an extract by which to indicate the merits of the book was like a brick as a sample of a house. However, to prove the quality of the material, we will lay before our readers Mr Freeman's account of the growth, of towns in tho Middle Ages. It may be detached from the structure with less injury to itself than 'perhaps any other fragment wo could select, and well illustrates the lucidity and breadth of his treatment and the limpid clearness of his style :- — :

Another thing must here lie mentioned which was of special importance at the time we have just come t®. This was the growing up of the towns iuto greater—in some parts into the very first—importance. In the old state of things— Greek and Roman—the towns had, so to speak, been everything. Every freeman was a citizen of some town or other, and the Roman dominion throughout was a dominion of one city bearing rule over other cities. The Teutonic settlements everywhere drove the towns back. None of the Teutonic nations were used to a town life. They looked upon the walls of the towns as a prison. In Britain, our own forefathers, who knew nothing at all of Roman civilisation, seem at first^to have utterly destroyed the Roman towns, and it was not till some time after the first conquest that new English towns began '.o arise very often on the old Roman sites. In the other Provinces, the Goths, Franks, and other Teutonic settlers did not destroy the Roman towns, but they lost Tcuch of their importance and local freedom. But as civilisation began to grow again, new towns began to spring up, and the old towns to win back something of their old greatness. In Germany the Saxon emperors were groat founders of towns ; and both there and in other parts of the Empire the old and new towns alike gradually won for. themselves gre.it privileges, which made them almost independent .within their own walls. And, as the Imperial power declined, and the counts and dukes grew into sovereign princes, so in the same way the free Imperial cities grew into sovereign commonwealths, acknowledging only the outward supremacy of tho Emperor. And in many cases like the towns of old Greece and Italy they joined together in league for mutual defence. Thus in' Northern Germany, the- Hanseatic League— the league of the great trading towns—became a great power in all the Northern Seas, and often gave law to the E"iugs of Denmark' and Sweden. But the part of the Empire where towns rose to the highest pitch of greatness, was Italy, especially the northern part. There, from the eleventh century onwards, the towns, as we may say, became everything,, just as they had been in old Greece. Here nearly the whole country was parted out among the dominions of the different cities, and the whole land became again an assemblage of commonwealths, independent of any power but that of the Emperor. But, though the freedom of the Italian towns became greater than that of the towns in Germany, it was not so lasting. In Germany a great many of the towns always kept their freedom, and. three of them—the Hanse towns of Lubeck, Bremen, and Hamburg-are separate' commonwealths even now. But in Italy most of the cities fell, just as those of old Greece did long before, into the hands of native lords or tyrants, or into those 6t foreign princes. Tims it was that' Italy became divided, or rather grouped together, into the various principalities which have lately been joined together into the restored Kingdom of Italy. But a few Commonwealths contrived to go on till the end of the last century, and one very small one—that of San Marino—remains still. . ■••■ : ■-••

We think we need quote no more to convince our readers of Mr Freeman's power of combining brevity with clearness1 and, within due limits, thoroughness, or of his power of expressing his ideas in language that the simplest; may" understand, and the most cultivated imitate with advantage. Very different this from the high-polite extracts, which form the staple of "Advanced Readers " and the like, which seem chosen mainly for the length of their words. It is no mean art to present in such pure and simple phrase, deep and complicated problems. It is the meanest of arts to att' mpt to hide Bhallowneas and poverty uuder the cloak of high-sounding phraseology. . i

We need onlyaddthat Mr Freeman's sketch appears only as the framework to be filled up by the histories of the several countries of Europe, which are entrusted,to separate writers, though he edits and is reponsible for the whole series. Volumes on Englandy Scotland, France, Germany, and Greece are already in preparation. If Mr Freeman's fellowlabourers are inspired with only a measure of his spirit, this will be one of the most valuable series, as regards the intellectual culture, to those who have not the time or opportunity to consult the originals of history, which our age has seen, at all events in England.