ry into this
multitude of pieces, into what kettle or cauldron will they throw him that
will boil him into youth and unity again? The scattered members are all
that will remain to us. But our impatience on this matter would be very
fruitlessly expressed. Such is the mode, such the fashion in the gentle
craft of authorship. It were better, perhaps, to submit at once with a
good grace--take whatever is worth the having, come in what shape it will,
and keep our own good-humour into the bargain.

Amongst these fragmentary sketches, few have pleased us more than the two
small volumes that designate themselves as _Byways of History_. Indeed,
without pretending to do so, and notwithstanding their desultory nature,
they give a very fair picture of the great period of the middle ages of
which they treat, in its darker as well as its brighter points of view.
There is also more novelty in the anecdotes than could have been expected,
considering how well gleaned a field the authoress has had to traverse;
and there is a playfulness in the style which, to youthful readers
especially, will be found very attractive, though it may not always be
sufficiently pungent to stir the stiffer muscles that grow about the upper
lip of a sexagenarian critic.

"Byways" in history there are, strictly speaking, none at all; least of
all can the peasant war in Germany, the principal subject of these
volumes, be thought to lie amongst the secondary and less important
transactions of the past. Whatever facts throw light upon the temper and
modes of thinking of a bygone age, are of the very essence of history,
though they may not immediately relate to crowned heads or official
dignitaries. Yet, adopting the latitude of common speech, the title is
significant enough. It is not the actions of kings and emperors, or the
fate of nations and dynasties, that the fair historian undertakes to
record; and as such a narrative is generally looked upon as the highway of
history, she who diverges from it may be said to be traversing its byways.
Only the byways, be it understood, may be the very roads which a good
traveller would first and most industriously explore.

Ladies are said to hold it as one of their prerogatives to be a little
unreasonable in their exactions, and a little self-contradictory in their
sentiments. Our authoress appears, in one point, disposed to assert this
prerogative of her sex. In ordinary cases, we know of nothing more
impertinent than t