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a grave historian, but as a partisan of Wilkes, Beckford, and Junius-as if he had been poaching on their preserves for the choicest flowers of violent and vulgar rhetoric. To answer these and other accusations in detail would be quite beyond the question. If George III. was the vain, selfish, unscrupulous tyrant he is described by Mr. Green, how is it that the longer he reigned the more was he beloved by his subjects? How is it that when dynasties were falling, and revolutions were subverting all other thrones, the throne of George III. stood safer and securer every hour? How is it that in spite of his youth and inexperience, in spite of the numerous difficulties he had to encounter at the outset, his government became at every decade more firm, more steady, and more acceptable to his subjects? How is it that he lived down the bitter, factious, and unscrupulous opposition of a party who had resolved to dictate to him what ministers he should choose and what measures he should follow, until, not merely the House of Commons, as Mr. Green insinuates, but the people at large rallied round the King and withdrew all confidence from his opponents? Every fresh historical investigation has lightened the load of malignant aspersions once resting on his memory. Nobody now, except Mr. Green, believes in Burke's 'Thoughts on the present Discontents,' or accepts, as an accurate statement of facts, his theory of an interior cabinet of the King's friends.' No one now thinks that this clever but unscrupulous calumny was anything better than a party invention to conceal the incapacity of the Whigs and their mutual recriminations. It is not true that George III. in ten years reduced government to a shadow, even on Mr. Green's own showing; for with all the array of talent against him, with the Stamp Act and other measures hostile to the American colonists bequeathed to him by the Whigs, Lord North's administration, though not free from mistakes, defied all attempts to shake it. Equally untrue is it that the King forced the American colonists into revolt. That revolt was the result of causes over which the King had no control. It would have come under any circumstances. Was the King to allow the claim of Independence? Was he to submit without a struggle to the dismemberment of the Empire-for America was as much a part of the Empire as Scotland or as Ireland? That, at all events, was not the opinion of the nation, not of Chatham, not of Burke, not of Rockingham, not of Bedford. What would Mr. Green have? The right of the mother-country to tax the Colonies had always been insisted on, though not enforced. It was asserted by all parties alike, however divergent their political opinions. In deference to the will of the nation

the

the King was bound to assert that right when it was called in question on the other side of the Atlantic. Whatever might be his private opinions he could do no otherwise; for that he acted from a sense of duty and not wholly from inclination is now very well known. Burke might argue that it was inexpedient to press the right, but the clearer judgment of men in general saw that the question could not be so decided. It was a right that we claimed, and as a right it was denied; and it was nobler for this country, and for America itself, that it should be so, and that by Lord North's reduction of the tax to a nominal sum the baser motives of gain should not demoralise or confuse the question. As to Mr. Green's remark that by this tax the nation was brought to the brink of ruin he is only airing himself as a poet or epigrammatist. The statement is mere nonsense. The War of Independence, measured even by its material results, was not less advantageous to us than it was to our Colonists. Instead of diminishing it augmented our prosperity.

We cannot spare room for further criticism, or we should be inclined to protest against Mr. Green's tirade that, it is touching even now to listen to such an appeal of reason and of culture against the tide of dogmatism which was soon to flood Christendom with Augsburg Confessions, and Creeds of Pope Pius, and Westminster Confessions, and Thirty-nine Articles." Nor can we dwell, as we had intended, upon his singular hostility to the Church of England. But we cannot forbear noticing his strange assertion that the Church of England alone among all the religious bodies of Western Christendom has failed through two hundred years to devise a single new service of prayer or of praise.' If that remark be intended to apply to the public services of the Church of England, we are not inclined to accept it as any condemnation. But if it is to be taken in its largest sense, if Mr. Green includes in it devotional services for the use of families or individuals, or of praise in the sense of hymnology, he has forgotten Ken, Wilson, Keble, and a score of others.

Upon inaccuracies in detail we have not insisted, prejudicial as such inaccuracies must be in a manual intended for schools, for it is not to be expected that in so wide a subject they could be altogether avoided. Our objections are of a graver and more general kind. It is against the whole tone and teaching of the book that we feel ourselves called upon most emphatically to protest. Under the disguise of a school history, Mr. Green has

* 'Short History,' p. 307.

† Ibid. p. 610.

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disseminated the most violent opinions in politics and religion. His design is not the less subtle and dangerous, because, in accomplishing this object, he has ingeniously perverted facts, and in the ardour of his temperament has misrepresented the conduct and motives of men; of those especially who have upheld the Church and the Monarchy. His sympathies are not with order, but with disorder; not with established Government, but with those who have attempted to overthrow it. In the most ardent and furious of the leaders of the French Revolution he finds a real nobleness of aim and temper'* which he denies to the champions of good government, or the peaceful upholders of religion and morality. To him the aristocracy, in conjunction with the Monarchy, are the plagues of mankind, united in a dire conspiracy against popular freedom, progress, and development. Is this a history, we ask, to be put into the hands of the young and incautious? Is it from this they are to learn wisdom and moderation, to form just and equitable judgments of past events, or of the great actors of times that are gone? Is this the teaching by which they are to estimate rightly the deeds of kings, the worth of an aristocracy, the beneficial effects of order and religion? We think not. We have warned our readers against the errors and tendencies of Mr. Green's book. It is for them to exercise the necessary precautions, both for themselves and for those who are committed to their care and guidance.

ART. II.-1. Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel. By Mrs. John Herschel. London, 1876.

2. Analyse historique et critique de la Vie et des Travaux de Sir William Herschel. Par M. Arago. Paris, in the 'Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes' for 1842.

In the of

N the early part of the seventeenth century there was a great persecution of the Protestants in Moravia. Among those who fled from their homes during the evil days were three brothers, named Herschel, who became possessed of land in Saxony, and settled there. One of the brothers established himself as a brewer at Pirna, near Dresden. Abraham Herschel, the son of the Pirna brewer, was landscape-gardener to the King, and obtained considerable reputation by his skill and taste in his profession. Isaac Herschel, Abraham's third and youngest son, was born in 1707. Declining to follow the profession of a

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gardener, to which he was destined, the young man resolved to devote himself to music, and became a hautboy-player in the Hanoverian Royal Guard. At an early age Isaac married, and settled in Hanover, where he had a large family, two of which were William-afterwards the great astronomer, whose name is so familiar to English ears-and Caroline, the subject of the present memoir.

The fame of Sir William Herschel as an astronomer is perhaps second only to that of Sir Isaac Newton; but few are aware how greatly he was indebted to his sister. For forty years, from the time when he first commenced his career of astronomical discovery until the grave closed over him, Caroline Herschel never quitted him. She was his trusted assistant; it was she who performed the vast and complicated numerical calculations that made his observations available to science; she was his amanuensis, and, till he married late in life, his housekeeper. It was she who converted his rough notes into lucid papers to be read before learned societies; she did for him an amount of labour which filled those who were in the secret with amazement; she served him with a great and unwearied love, content to stand aside and claim no share in the credit of all the great works he performed. It is hard to find a parallel to the entire self-abnegation with which she gave up all the energies of her mind and body to him.

The volume now before us brings the life of this very remarkable lady for the first time before the general reader. It is in many respects extremely entertaining; it is full of racy extracts from her letters and journals. We make acquaintance with a very original mind; we learn to admire a very warm-hearted woman, full of prejudices and oddities, but with an absence of selfishness as charming as it is uncommon. But we cannot help regretting that the authoress did not extend her plan, and that the opportunity has been lost of making us better acquainted with Sir William Herschel. No life of that great astronomer has been written, and we should have been well pleased if the publication of the present memoir had been made the occasion of remedying the defect. It would have been easy for the authoress to satisfy the not ungraceful curiosity of the world respecting the life of her distinguished ancestor; but the memoir adds but little to our knowledge of him. Those who are acquainted with the scattered notices of his life may sometimes see, in a chance phrase of Miss Herschel, the correction of a mistake, or a hint which may make clear some hitherto doubtful point; and to those who know Sir William Herschel's work, the present volume is like a personal introduction to the workman. But the

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general reader cannot fairly be expected to possess this knowledge. Nowhere throughout the book are we told the meaning of the astronomical activity in which the brother and sister passed their lives. We cannot be expected to care much about mere hard work apart from sympathy with its object; and even intellectual toil is uninteresting unless we are allowed to share the hopes and fears of the labourers. We hear of Sir William Herschel grinding for sixteen hours at a stretch at one of his telescope mirrors, and of Miss Herschel reading to him as he works, and putting food into his mouth by bits, while he continues his monotonous labour without removing his hands; but the anecdote is unmeaning unless we know why he toiled so hard a railway signal-man sometimes works even longer without creating any public enthusiasm. The real interest of the incident lies in this: that Sir William Herschel had conceived the idea of a new form of telescope, and was labouring with almost frenzied energy to put it into execution, that the plan succeeded so well as to revolutionise all previous methods of making reflecting telescopes, and laid the foundations of modern Stellar astronomy. This is the kernel; the 'Memoir.' gives us but the shell. Again, throughout the book we have not a hint as to the boundary of Herschel's peculiar province in astronomy; in what condition he found the science; wherein he improved it; what object he proposed to himself; and how far that object was attained. It seems to us that the life of his faithful assistant, who shared all his labours and all his hopes, cannot be intelligently told without at the same time telling us this. We may be made to admire the energetic woman; but Miss Herschel would have felt anything but pleased if any one had admired in her the woman, at the expense of the astronomer.

The authoress sometimes does less than justice to the gifted lady who is the subject of her book. During her life, as her brother's assistant, he was, of course, commanding officer; his was the invention, the genius, the rapid intuition, and, most properly, the lion's share of fame. To her lot fell the duty of patient attention; hers was the labour of calculation; the arrangement and transcription of rough notes. Mathematical analysis belonged to him; arithmetical computations were handed over to her. But to carry out his instructions and to perform the tasks assigned to her required a large range of knowledge, as well as indomitable perseverance. It is therefore not fair to the memory of Miss Herschel to make it appear that she was profoundly ignorant of even rudimentary mathematics. To give an instance: an extract is given in the memoir, under the date 1786, from a MS. book belonging to Miss Herschel, and sent by her from Hanover

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