g should never seem
dogmatic or positive on questions in regard to which age and learning
were in doubt." Such a sentence might perhaps suggest the idea that Mr.
Towle's History was intended for the more youthful reader, but when you
read, farther on, in the analysis of Henry's character, "It was fitting
that so fine a soul should be illustrated by brilliancy of intellect and
eloquence of speech, that so precious a jewel should be encased in a
casket of beauty and graceful proportion,"--or when you learn, in
another place, that "the eloquence of Stephen Partington stirred the
religious element of Henry's _character, which appreciated and admired_
superior ability of speech,"--we say, you can no longer doubt that Mr.
Towle addresses himself to minds as mature as his own. It is natural
that an historian whose warmth of feeling is visible in his glow of
language should be an enthusiastic worshipper of his hero, and should
defend him against all aspersions. Mr. Towle finds that, if Henry was a
rake in youth and a bigot in manhood, he was certainly a very amiable
rake and a very earnest bigot. "There can be no doubt," says our
historian, in his convincing way, "that he often paused in his reckless
career, filled with remorse, wrestling with his flighty spirit, to
overcome his unseemly sports"; and as to the sincerity of his
fanaticism, "to suppose otherwise is to charge a mere youth with a
hypocritical cunning worthy of the Borgias in their zenith." Masterly
strokes like these are, of course, intended to console the reader for a
want of distinctness in Mr. Towle's narrative, from which one does not
rise with the clearest ideas of the civilization and events of the time
which he describes.

We can understand how great an attraction so brilliant and picturesque
an epoch of history should have for a spirit like Mr. Towle's; but we
cannot help thinking it a pity that he should have attempted to
reproduce, in such an ambitious form, the fancies which its
contemplation suggested. The book is scarcely too large for the subject,
but it is much too large for Mr. Towle, whose grievous fashion of
_padding_ must be plain enough, even in the few passages which we have
quoted from his book. A writer may, by means of a certain dead-a-lively
expansive style of narration, contrived out of turns of expression
adapted from Percy's Reliques, the Waverly Novels, the newspapers, and
the imitators of Thackeray's historical gossip, succeed in filli