s death. For bold assumptions, vigorous style,
and great reading, this work must be greatly admired; but all his theories
are based on second principles, and Christianity, as a divine institution,
is ignored. It startled the world into admiration, but has not retained
the place in popular esteem which it appeared at first to make for itself.
He is the English _Comte_, without the eccentricity of his model.

_Sir Archibald Alison_, 1792-1867: he is the author of _The History of
Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration
of the Bourbons_, and a continuation from 1815 to 1852. It may be doubted
whether even the most dispassionate scholar can write the history of
contemporary events. We may be thankful for the great mass of facts he has
collated, but his work is tinctured with his high Tory principles; his
material is not well digested, and his style is clumsy.

_Agnes Strickland_, born 1806: after several early attempts Miss
Strickland began her great task, which she executed nobly--_The Queens of
England_. Accurate, philosophic, anecdotal, and entertaining, this work
ranks among the most valuable histories in English. If the style is not so
nervous as that of masculine writers, there is a ready intuition as to the
rights and the motives of the queens, and a great delicacy combined with
entire lack of prudery in her treatment of their crimes. The library of
English history would be singularly incomplete without Miss Strickland's
work. She also wrote _The Queens of Scotland_, and _The Bachelor Kings of
England_.

_Henry Hallam_, 1778-1859: the principal works of this judicious and
learned writer are _A View of Europe during the Middle Ages_, _The
Constitutional History of England_, and _An Introduction to the Literature
of Europe_ in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. With
the skill of an advocate he combines the calmness of a judge; and he has
been justly called "the accurate Hallam," because his facts are in all
cases to be depended on. By his clear and illustrative treatment of dry
subjects, he has made them interesting; and his works have done as much to
instruct his age as those of any writer. Later researches in literature
and constitutional history may discover more than he has presented, but he
taught the new explorers the way, and will always be consulted with
profit, as the representative of this varied learning during the first
half of the nineteenth century.

_J