The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886

II.--1. The Christian Brothers, their Origin and Work, with a sketch of the Life of their Founder, The Venerable Jean Baptiste de la Salle. By Mrs. R. F. Wilson. London, 1883.

2. La Premiere Annee d'Instruction Morale et Civique: notions de droit et d'economie politique (Textes et Recits) pour repondre a la loi du 28 Mars 1882 sur l'enseignement primaire obligatoire: ouvrage accompagne de Resume, de Questionnaires, de Devoirs, et d'un Lexique des mots difficiles. Par Pierre Laloi. Quatorzieme Edition. Paris, 1885.

3. Report of the Committee of Council on Education (England and Wales). 1884-85.

4. Seventy-fourth Annual Report of the Incorporated National Society. 1885. 325

III.--The State Papers of the Venetian Republic; namely, Cancelleria Inferiore, Cancelleria Ducale, Cancelleria Secreta, preserved in the Convent of the Frari, at Venice. 356

IV.--1. Journal of a Residence in Norway during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836. By Samuel Laing, Esq. London, 1837.

2. Le Royaume de Norvege et le Peuple Norvegien. Par le Dr. O. I. Broch. Christiania, 1878.

3. Official Reports of Prefects on the Economic Condition of the Provinces of Norway in 1876-80. Christiania, 1884.

4. Publications of the Statistical Bureau Christiania. 384

V.--A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq.; Secretary, first to the Council of State, and afterwards to the Two Protectors, Oliver and Richard Cromwell. In Seven Volumes, containing authentic Memorials of the English affairs from the year 1638 to the Restoration of King Charles II. Vol. III. London, 1742. 414

VI.--1. Oceana, or England and her Colonies. By James Anthony Froude. London, 1886.

2. Through the British Empire. By Baron von Huebner. 2. vols. London, 1886.

3. The Western Pacific and New Guinea. By Hugh Hastings Romilly, Deputy Commissioner of the Western Pacific. London, 1886. 443

VII.--The Apostolic Fathers: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp. Revised Texts, with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Translations. By J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Bishop of Durham. London, 1885. 2 vols. 467

VIII.--1. An Address delivered to the Students of Edinburgh University on Nov. 3, 1885. By the Earl of Iddesleigh, Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh.

2. Hearing, Reading and Thinking: an address to the Students attending the Lectures of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching. By the Rt. Hon. G. J. Goschen, M.P.

3. The Choice of Books and other Literary Pieces. By Frederic Harrison. London, 1886. 501

IX.--1. Popular Government. Four Essays. By Sir Henry Sumner Maine. Second Edition. London, 1886.

2. Democracy in America. By Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated by Henry Reeve. New Edition. London, 1862.

3. On the State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789. Translated by Henry Reeve. Second Edition. London, 1873. 518

And other Works.

X.--1. Fourth Midlothian Campaign. Political Speeches delivered, November, 1885, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. Edinburgh, 1886.

2. John Morley: The Irish Record of the New Chief Secretary, 1886.

3. Ireland: A Book of Light on the Irish Problem. Edited by Andrew Reid. London, 1886. 544

And other Works.

ART. I.--_Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora._ Edited by Henry Richards Luard, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Registrary of the University, and Vicar of Great St. Mary's, Cambridge. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. 7 vols. 8vo. London, Vol. I. 1872--Vol. VII. 1883.

Some of our readers are not likely yet to have forgotten the remarkable essay which the late Professor Brewer contributed to our pages in 1871, and which has since been reprinted in the volume of 'English Studies,' published shortly after the author's death in 1879. English History owes a larger debt to few men of our time than it owes to Mr. Brewer. As a teacher whose pupils were always eager to listen to all that fell from his lips, and whose enthusiasm never failed to awake a kindred spark in the minds of those who looked to him for light in dark places and guidance along tortuous paths of research, Mr. Brewer has had few equals, and perhaps has left no successor who can compare with him. As a writer he was always brilliant, lucid, and vigorous, and his unrivalled 'Introductions' to the Calendars of Letters and Papers, concerned with the reign of Henry VIII., will long continue to be read by all students of our History, as necessary and indispensable interpreters of the vast storehouses of original documents which he did so much to rescue from the oblivion or obscurity to which they had previously been consigned. But it was as an organizer of research that Mr. Brewer earned his greatest fame and achieved his greatest success, and it was to him more than to any one man, to his immense persistence in urging upon the powers that be a more generous freedom of access to our Records, and to his prodigious powers of work in arranging and tabulating the enormous masses of documents of all kinds which constitute the Apparatus of English History, that this country stands indebted, and will remain indebted as long as our literature lasts.

In the Essay on 'New Sources of English History' the learned author has given us a startling account of the deplorable condition into which some of the most precious of our national manuscripts had been allowed to fall--of the utterly chaotic state of our depositories--of the hopelessness, the despair which must needs have come upon one student after another who might be fortunate enough to be turned loose into the various prison-houses of our muniments--and of the efforts made, and happily at last made with splendid success, to cleanse the Augean stable, and to let the world know something of the wealth it contained. With characteristic modesty Mr. Brewer said nothing of his own part in all that laborious and sagacious organization which resulted in our obtaining the magnificent Calendars, which have opened out to us all 'that new world which is the old' that had become almost forgotten or unknown. He was not the man to assert himself, he knew that posterity would give him his due, but with a simple desire to stimulate research, and to show how much remained to be done, and how much to be discovered and made known, he drew the attention of his readers chiefly and primarily to the value of the Calendars, and to the important results which those Calendars had already produced, and were destined to produce hereafter. He had quite enough to say upon this point, and if his life had been spared, it is probable that he would eventually have given us a more comprehensive account of the series of volumes which, though now issuing from the press pari passu with the Calendars, were originally undertaken a little later. Such an Essay by such a master would indeed have been an important aid to the student, but at the time of Mr. Brewer's lamented death the day had hardly come for such a resume; and even now, though so much has been achieved, so much and so well, the hour has hardly arrived nor the man for taking a comprehensive survey, and giving to the public an intelligent and intelligible account of that other Library of Chronicles, and biographies, and letters, and cartularies, and those other memorials of the Middle Ages in England, which it is to be feared are hardly as well known as they ought to be, nor as widely studied as they deserve.

Meanwhile it is high time that attention should be drawn to that noble series of volumes now issuing from the press under the editorship of scholars whose reputation is assured, and whose work continues to enhance their reputation--high time that we should begin to do something like justice to the labourers, who have deserved so well at the hands of such Englishmen as have any sentiment of loyalty to the great thoughts, the great doings, and the noble lives of their forefathers. The philosopher, who 'holds the mirror up to nature,' has not of late, as a rule, missed his reward. The historian, who in his dogged, patient, toilsome fashion holds the mirror up to the life of bygone ages, has received among us scant recognition, and generally is rewarded with but barren honour. What has been done and still is doing will be best understood by briefly reviewing the progress of that movement, which has brought about the great revival of English Historical study, and under the influence of which the opinions and convictions of educated men have passed through a very decided change, one destined to produce still greater and more unlooked for changes of sentiment and belief before the present century shall have closed.

It is just fifty years since 'the Father of Record Reform,' as he has been justly called, received his patent creating him Master of the Rolls. Although as far back as the year 1800 a Commission was issued for the methodizing and digesting the National Records, and for printing such calendars and indexes as should be thought advisable; and though during the next twenty-seven years many works of supreme interest and importance were printed at the public expense, the enormous extent of our National Records were known to few, and the difficulty of consulting them, (dispersed as they were through a score of different depositories) was enough to deter all but the most resolute enquirers. It was Lord Langdale who first set himself to reduce the chaos of our archives into something like order. When the old Record Commission expired in 1837, it was by Lord Langdale's influence that the Public Record Act was passed on the 14th of August, 1838, whereby the Records named therein were placed under the custody of the Master of the Rolls for the time being, and hereupon a new era began. Nevertheless it was not till July 1850 that a vote was obtained from the Treasury for the erection of a national depository, wherein our vast archives should be assembled under a single roof, and not till 1855 that the magnificent Tabularium in Fetter Lane was opened for the reception of our muniments.

Lord Langdale died in April 1851;[1] he was succeeded in the Mastership of the Rolls by Lord Romilly, then Sir John. A happier choice could not have been made. To Lord Langdale belongs the credit of carrying out the grand scheme for consolidating the various collections of documents, which, as we have said, had up to this time been widely dispersed, and the very existence of the larger mass of which was known only to a few experts. To Lord Romilly we owe it that the great original sources of English History so assembled have been rendered accessible to any student who desires to consult them; and it is to him, too, that we are indebted for the issue of that unrivalled series of 'Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Invasion of the Romans to the Reign of Henry VIII.,' which has laid the foundation for a science of history firmer and deeper and wider than before was believed to be even attainable.