be to deny thee any reasonable request of thine! Meantime agcend and sit beside me on my throne, while I speak a few words to my people.'

“ He seated the gentle Queen beside him on the throne. The King then spoke, and all listened in silence, both high and low. He addressed the Lord Mayor :

" • I will restore to you my royal favour as in former days, for I duly prize the expense which you have incurred, the presents you have made me, and the prayers of the Queen. Do you henceforward avoid offence to your sovereign and disrespect to his nobles. Preserve the ancient faith ; despise the new doctrines unknown to your fathers ; defend the Catholic Church, the whole Church, for there is no order of men in it that is not dedicated to the worship of God. Take back the key and sword; keep my peace in your city, rule its inhabitants as formerly, and be among them mý representative.' "- vol. ii. 373.9.

In this, as in a hundred other such anecdotes, it will be a great delight to a Catholic to trace the control held by the Church over the rough, free manners of our ancestors, ming. ling with every incident of their lives and deaths. She surrounded them with hier ameliorative influence, and laid in wait to catch, at their rebound, the passionate and powerful beings that must otherwise have been wholly lost by their selfwill. It is a curious study, too, to mark how exquisitely (humanly speaking) the Catholic Church was fitted for such a mission,-a study fraught with encouragement to every Catholic, and which may teach us faith in the resources of our Church, in her struggle with the varying evils of human society in this as in each successive age. In the work before us, there are ample materials for such a study; it is full of curious and useful information, and delightfully entertaining. Miss Strickland tells us in her preface, that “the personal histories of the Anglo-Norman, and several of the Plantagenet Queens, are involved in such great obscurity, that it has cost years of patient research among English and foreign chronicles, ancient records, antiquarian literature, and collateral sources of information of various kinds, to trace out the events of their lives from the cradle to the grave.”-vol. i. p. 12. She acknowledges her obligations to “the courteous aitention" of various heralds, and a long list of noble and learned friends to whose libraries and MSS. she has had access. To Mr. Howard of Corby and his son, whose ancestress Queen Adelicia, is one of the most beautiful and perfect lives in the series, she is especially indebted; and her thanks for assistance received'in searching the British Museum, the Bibliothèque Royale, the Augmentation Record Office, and the documents of the Camden Society, show the various and copious sources from which she has derived her information; of the variety and extent of which we can give no idea. Upon her London readers she has conferred obligation by connecting many fine old stories and scenes with the seldom-visited monuments of their city. How many

of them are aware that such beautiful remnants of domestic antiquity exist as these which the authoress tells uis she was admitted to view, by " the courteous permission of the Rev. Henry Milman."

“The apartments of the abbot of Westminster are nearly in the same state, at the present hour, as when they received Elizabeth and her train of young princesses. The noble stone-hall, now used as a dining-room by the students of Westininster school, was, doubtless, the place where Elizabeth seated herself in her despair ‘alow on the rushes, all desolate and dismayed.' Still may be seen the circular hearth in the midst of the hall, and the remains of a louvre in the roof, at which such portions of smoke as chose to leave the room departed. But the merry month of May was entered when Elizabeth took refuge there, and round about the hearth were arranged branches and flowers, while the stone floor was strewn with green rushes. At the end of the hall is oak panelling latticed at top, with doors leading by winding stone stairs to the most curious nests of little rooms that the eye of antiquarian ever looked upon.

These were, and still are, the private apartments of the dignitaries of the abbey, where all offices of buttery, kitchen, and laundry, are performed under many a quaint gothic arch, in some places even at present rich with antique corbel and foliage. This range, so interesting as a specimen of the domestic usages of the middle ages, terminates in the abbot's own sanctum or private sitting-room, which still looks down on his lovely quiet flower-garden. Nor must the passage be forgotten, leading from this room to the corridor, furnished with lattices, now remaining, where the abbot might, unseen, be witness of the conduct of his monks in the great hall below. Communicating with these are the state apartments of the royal abbey, larger in dimensions and more costly in ornament, richly dight with painted glass and fluted oak panelling. Among these may be noted especially the organ room, and the antechamber to the great Jerusalem-chamber,—which last was the abbot's state reception-room, and retains to this day its gothic window of painted glass of exquisite workmanship, its curious tapestry, and fine original oil portrait of Richard II.”—vol. iii. p. 409-10.

The same accuracy with which Miss Strickland has verified the scenes of the incidents she records, she has carried into the narrative itself. Minute particulars, fragments of verses, letters, &c., are preserved, which are beautiful in themselves, and carry the mind back forcibly to those ancient times. Some of the verses are most grotesque, others very elegant, especially the following nearly literal translation in which the authoress acknowledges her obligation to Mr. P. H. Howard) of a hymn to King Henry VI, which has much of the forcé and fervour of our finest church compositions.

“'SALVE, MILES PRECIOSE.
“ Hail, Henry, soldier of the Lord !
In whom all precious gifts accord,

Branch of the heavenly vine;
Rooted in charity and love ;
Serenely blooming as above,

The saints angelic shine.
Hail, flower of true nobility !
Honour, and praise, and dignity,

Adorn thy diadem;
Meek father of the fatherless,
Thy people's succour in distress;

The church's strength and gem.
“Hail, pious king, in whom we see
The graces of humility

With spotless goodness crown'd;
By sorrow stricken and oppress'd;
To those who vainly sigh for rest,

Mirror of patience found.
Hail, beacon of celestial light,
Whose beams may guide our steps aright,

Thy blessed course to trace;
In virtue's paths for ever seen,
Mild, and ineffably serene,

Radiant with every grace.
“Hail, whom the King of endless time
Hath called to angel choirs sublime,

In realms for ever blessed;
May we, who now admiring raise
These all-unworthy notes of praise,

Share in thy glorious rest." "-vol. iii. p. 351-2. Miss Strickland's style of writing is most agreeable: it is graceful, occasionally arch, but has at all times a warmth and earnestness which shows the authoress to be fully impressed with the noble character of the work she has undertaken.

• Facts, not opinions,' should be the motto of every candid historian ; and it is a sacred duty to assert nothing lightly, or without good evidence, of those who can no longer answer for themselves. I have borne in mind the charge which prefaces the juryman's oath, VOL. X.NO, XX.

MM

it runs as follows: * You shall truly and justly try this cause; you shall present no one from malice; you shall excuse no one from favour,' &c. &c.

"Feeling myself thus charged, by each and every one of the buried Queens of England whose actions, from the cradle to the tomb, I was about to lay before the public, I considered the responsibility of the task, rather than the necessity of expediting the publication of the work. The number of authorities required, some of which could not be obtained in England, and the deep research among the Norman, Provençal, French and monastic Latin chroniclers, that was indispensably necessary, made it impossible to hurry out a work which I hoped to render permanently useful.”—vol.i.p.x.

Unhappily, in the second series, she will have quitted the sphere of the “ Norman, Provençal, French, and monastic Latin chroniclers,” for the cold dry records of diplomacy and intrigue ; already we feel that the age of poetry and chivalrous sentiments is passing away; we are aware beforehand of the influence of those cruel and convulsive times times of evil men and evil passions, from which we are emerging after a mortal struggle. Yet this part of the work will possess an interest of its own: many minor historical points will, we doubt not, be cleared up; many characters placed in a truer light by Miss Strickland's patient accuracy. Let her but preserve the same spirit of truthfulness, without fear or favour, and her work, while it will be eagerly read by all parties, will (we doubt not) afford to Catholics ‘many an answer to old charges, many a solace for ungenerous calamities. That Miss Strickland, whatever be her peculiar views, is inclined to do strict justice, we need give no other proof than that she has submitted her work to the critisism of the most learned, impartial, and accurate historian of our own, or perhaps any other country; and has thus given a guaranty to the public which must raise her high in the rank of historians.

Art. X.-The Quarterly Review for Dec. 1840.
OUR

UR readers will recollect that in our previous article on

this subject, in the last number of the Dublin Review, we concluded our exposure of the shameless and almost incredible falsehoods, and self-contradictions, of the article called “ Romanism in Ireland,” by citing a passage in which the writer of that article declared (p. 165 of the Quarterly Review) that, “in the kindness of the Irish landlords, much abused and calumniated as they were, there was every thing to keep the peasantry quiet!” The reader will also recollect, that in answer to a falsehood so flagrant and so foolish, we adduced the authority of Mr. John Wilson Croker, of the Times newspaper, and of Mr. Sadler of Leeds, to show that such misery as was inflicted by the Irish landlords upon the peasantry of that country was unprecedented upon the face of the earth, in degree and amount; and that we finally wound up this part of the case by shewing that the Quarterly Review itself, in another place, charged these identical Irish landlords--not those of a bye-gone, but those of the present generation—with “exTORTING unheard-of pecuniary rents from a destitute tenantry-rents which were only paid by the exportation of the great bulk of the food raised in the country, leaving to the actual cultivator å bare subsistence upon potatoes, eked out with weeds." The reader will also recollect that the

passage in the Quarterly Review from which this last extract was taken, concluded by ridiculing the absurdity of expecting that the miserable population of Ireland should respect and obey a system of laws, which invested the landlords with the power of sweeping off, to other lands, the whole produce of the people's industry, and absolutely starving the wretched natives who produced it.” It may appear to be a mere waste of time to bestow any further notice upon an article which seems to be a mere compost of malignity, imbecility, falsehood, fatuity, and the very dregs and lees of ignorance itself. Having, however, undertaken the task, we shall persevere in the disgusting occupation of presenting to the reader some more specimens of a composition, which, for the union of almost all descriptions of baseness, we believe to be unparalleled in any department of literature making any pretensions to any degree of respectability.

Such persons as have done us the honour to peruse our previous article upon this subject, will, no doubt, have been sufficiently astonished at the statements and inferences of the Quarterly Review for December 1840, upon the conduct and character of the landlords and peasantry of Ireland. Something even yet more extraordinary remains, however, to be told. In page 164, the reviewer expresses himself, upon the same subject, in the following words :

"Patience under suffering, however acute, is a characteristic of the Irish peasantry. How, then, can the attribution of these outrages to disputes about land be reconciled with another fact so often, we hope and believe ! so calumniously urged against the Irish landlords,

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