VII.-Rig-Veda-Sanhitá. The Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans. VIII.-1. Half-Hours with the best Letter-Writers and Auto- biographers. By Charles Knight, Editor of Half- 2. History of Letter-Writing, from the Earliest Period to the Fifth Century. By William Roberts, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. London, 1843 IX.-1. Report on Military Organisation. (Ordered to be 2. Report on the Administration of the Transport and Supply Departments of the Army. (Presented by 3. Reports (3) on Arrangements in force for the Conduct 221 NOTE to No. 256, p. 424.-In the Article on 'Sir Charles L-1. The Overthrow of the German Confederation by Prussia in 1866. By Sir Alexander Malet, Bart., 2. The Times,' 'Standard,' and 'Daily News' News- II.-Life of Henry John Temple, Third Viscount Palmerston, with Extracts from his Journals and Correspondence. By the Right Hon. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, G.C.B., M.P. Vols. I. and II. London, 1870 - V.-1. The Military Resources of Prussia and France. By 2. L'Armée Française en 1867. Dix-neuvième Edition. VI.-1. Geschichte der Revolutionszeit von 1789 bis 1795. Von Heinrich von Sybel. Dritte, vermehrte u. ver- besserte Aufl. 3 Bde. Düsseldorf, 1865-6. 2. History of the French Revolution. By Heinrich von Sybel. Translated from the third edition of the original German work, by Walter C. Perry, Esq. 3. Oesterreich und Preussen gegenüber der franzö- 4. Oesterreich und Deutschland im Revolutionskrieg. Ergänzungsheft zur Geschichte der Revolutionzeit von 1778 bis 1795. Von Heinrich von Sybel. 5. Die Politik der deutschen Mächte im Revolutions- kriege bis zum Frieden von Campo Formio. Von Hermann Hüffer. Münster, 1869. 6. Polens Untergang und der Revolutionskrieg. Von Heinrich von Sybel. In 'Sybel's Historische Zeit- schrift,' vol. xxiii. 1. Heft. Munich, 1870 2. Lieder zu Schutz und Trutz. Berlin, 1870. 3. Gedichte. Von Ernst Moritz Arndt. Berlin, 1860. 4. Theodor Körner's Sämmtliche Werke. Berlin, VIII.-1. Modern Warfare as influenced by Modern Artillery. By Colonel Macdougall. London, 1864. 2. Report of the Royal Commission on the Volunteer 3. Memorandum upon the present Military Resources THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. . ART. I.-History of England, comprising the Reign of Queen Anne until the Peace of Utrecht. By Earl Stanhope. THE HE Age of Augustus, the Age of Louis Quatorze, the Elizabethean Age, the Age of Queen Anne! Why do these four ages or epochs emerge so prominently from the broad current of history or stand like land-marks in the intellectual progress of mankind? To penetrate to the occult causes of such social phenomena might prove as difficult as to show why good seasons alternate with bad seasons, or why one particular year in a century is marked by exceptionally good harvests or the reverse. But there is one property or circumstance common to each of them. They one and all succeeded revolutionary times; times when the minds of men had been agitated and disturbed, when the crust of old opinions had been broken, when thought had been cast in new moulds, when popular energies had been roused and stimulated, when latent forces had been called forth and put in action by ambition, religion, cupidity, vanity, or fear. The coming of the vivifying influence was invariably marked by the troubling of the waters: in Rome, by the death-struggles of the Republic; in France, by the Fronde; in the England of the sixteenth century, by the Reformation; in the England of the beginning of the eighteenth, by the Revolution of 1688. It may be doubted whether any of these ages owed much to the exalted personage with whose name it is imperishably linked. As regards Augustus and Louis, it is to be observed that the influence of arbitrary power is benumbing, not inspiring. A constellation of genius was never yet created by patronage; and if poets are improved by basking in royal favour (which we doubt) historians, orators, warriors, statesmen, and philosophers, are pretty sure to be deteriorated by the atmosphere of a court. Augustus, prompted by Mæcenas, admitted Virgil and Horace to his intimacy: it was his proudest boast, not devoid of plausibility, that he found Rome brick and left it marble: but he Vol. 129.-No. 257. B found found it palpitating with vigour and vitality; he left it torpid and inanimate, with nothing coming on to replace what was going off, with all the springs of future excellence poisoned or dammed up, with public and private virtue cankered in the bud. The Grand Monarque dealt like Augustus with the intellectual capital accumulated to his hand by the stir and turmoil of his nonage. It wasted away apace under the absolutism of his settled and matured authority. His great qualities-and he had manyoffered no compensation for the independence of thought and action which he destroyed; and if he condescended to make Racine and Molière contribute to his amusement, it will be remembered that one of the last acts of his reign was the exile of Voltaire. No reader of Motley or Froude will give Elizabeth credit for the worthies and celebrities of her reign: for Drake, Raleigh, and Sydney; for Shakespeare, Spenser, and Ben Jonson, or even for the Cecils and Walsingham. The utmost praise that can be conceded to her on their account is, that she grudgingly accepted their homage or their services, and allowed them to envelope her in a flood of light which has hitherto been accepted as personal glory. It was hopelessly beyond the range of loyalty, flattery, or subserviency, to perform the same kind office for Queen Anne--to connect her otherwise than nominally or discreditably with the characters and achievements which illustrate her times. Her place in history is fixed by that single sentence of Voltaire:- A few pairs of gloves of a singular fashion, which the Duchess (of Marlborough) refused to the Queen, a bowl (jatte) of water that she let fall in her presence, by an affected stumble, on Mrs. Masham's gown, changed the face of Europe.' It is difficult to imagine a duller more commonplace couple than her Majesty and her spouse, Prince George of Denmark, with their seventeen children, not one of whom survived to maturity. She was imperfectly fitted by nature to play the humblest of feminine parts, to suckle fools and chronicle small beer;' and it was the severest satire on royalty to see her exerting a volition of her own. That she generally meant well, did not much mend the matter; indeed, rather aggravated the mischief; for what is more to be deprecated in state policy than the obstinate, narrow-minded unreasoning desire to act rightly or do good? At the epoch in question a female sovereign liable at any moment to be set in motion by a prejudice or a caprice, capable of * Scribe's clever comedy 'Un Verre d'Eau' is based upon this incident. displacing |