The History of Twenty-Five Years

TWENTY years have passed since the last volumes of Sir Spencer Walpole’s History of England, from the end of the great war in 1815 to the Indian Mutiny, were published; but a history at once so accurate and so popular in the best sense must be in constant use both by readers and students, who will welcome the beginning of a new work,¹ which is practically a continuation of the old — with a difference. An English history of the twentyfive following years, years so momentous for Europe and America as well, cannot be confined for the most part, as in the earlier period, to a résumé of the domestic legislation of Great Britain. The epoch of the reconstruction of Italy, the formation of the German Empire, the culmination and downfall of the second Napoleonic régimé, and the American Civil War, was naturally a time of abnormal activity in the Foreign Office.

As before, Sir Spencer Walpole’s point of view is that of a Whig, perhaps we should now say, a conservative Liberal, and his admirable qualities as a historical writer are even more marked in the present than in the earlier volumes. As is fitting in one of his traditions and training, his outlook is always statesmanlike. His judgments are sober, temperate, and well-considered, and, so far as is possible in one with clearly defined opinions, impartial. Fine writing is not attempted, nor the production of epigrams; but the straightforward and always lucid style is a proper exponent of the clear thought and sure grasp of the subject in hand, no matter how complicated it may be or how much darkened by diplomacy. From this book the general reader actually may obtain some understanding even of the Schleswig-Holstein question, and of the way in which Bismarck — as yet strangely ignored or undervalued by the chancelleries of Europe — used it in laying the foundations of his great plan for Prussian aggrandizement. There is an eminently fair and accurate account of the American Civil War, and, in connection with it, of the Mexican imperial tragedy. But the most striking portion of the work is that which treats of the union of Italy, the advance of Prussia, and the decline and fall of the Second Empire. These chapters are of absorbing interest, so skillfully does the writer use the mass of material now available, in constructing what must perforce be a rigidly condensed narrative.

In contrast with these great themes, fifteen years of parliamentary history might seem somewhat colorless. But the historian has so lively an interest in his subject, having now reached a time within his own cognizance, in whose works those near to him bore honorable part, that his narrative is full of vitality. Especially — and with abundant reason — does he wax eloquent over the achievements of Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer, that changed a period of extravagance into one in which “economy, or even parsimony, was popular.” His account of the close of Lord Palmerston’s long career, which extended from the old order into the new, and his summing up of that statesman, are peculiarly intelligent and discriminating. Indeed, most of his characterizations deserve that praise, though, as is inevitable, sympathetic portraits are contrasted with studiously fair ones. Ten years remain to fill the scheme of Sir Spencer Walpole’s latest work, and his review of that decade is something to be looked forward to with a very real interest. S. M. F.