restoration of royalty was at hand; while it was not unreasonable to suppose that Thiers, who had formerly been an adherent of Louis-Philippe, would use his influence on behalf of the Orleanist branch. But, as we have seen, he preferred his own personal rule as President of a republic to the position of Prime Minister under a king. From the moment when he became chief of the Executive power he set himself in opposition to the Orleanist princes, objecting first to their return to France and then to their taking their seats in the Assembly. His advocacy of the Republic as the only possible form of government in France became more and more open as time went on; and this policy, which, in part at least, was due to personal motives, must be reckoned as one of the chief factors in the failure of the Monarchists to attain their aim. The dogma of Divine Rght held by the Comte de Chambord, his refusal to accept the tricolour flag, and the alliance of his followers with the antiOrleanist elements in the Assembly, which drove the Marshal to seek support among the moderate Republicans, was the second factor of importance. A third was the dream of politicians belonging to the Left Centre that they could establish a Conservative Republic, because they cared more for the form than for the substance. Later on they came to regret bitterly the rapid development of democratic ideas under the Republic they had helped to create, but they laid the blame of their disappointment on the Monarchists. Bismarck threw his weight into the scale on the side of the Republic, because he believed France would thereby be weakened and rendered powerless for attack. Lastly, the triumph of the Republic has been attributed to the unconscious feeling, even of the Monarchists, that it was the natural and inevitable outcome of universal suffrage, and to the gradual disinclination of all parties to remain satisfied with a provisional expedient such as the Septennate.

With the resignation of the Marshal there disap peared from politics the only man who, if the nation had desired it, would have exercised the power entrusted to him by the laws of February 1875 of proposing the restoration of monarchy. The Republic may be regarded as thenceforth definitely established. Not even the discredit inflicted on it by the incidents which led to the

retirement of Grévy in December 1887, or the momentary popularity of Boulanger, the would-be dictateur d'opéra comique, could suffice to injure its solidity.

Of the three works which stand at the head of our list, perhaps none is properly entitled to be regarded as history in the strict sense of the word, even apart from the difficulty of so treating recent events. M. Hanotaux' book, which, if we may judge from his devoting two volumes (and one yet to come) to the presidency of Marshal MacMahon, promises to extend to a great length, contains several chapters to which the term 'history' may justly be applied; and it is impossible to refuse our admiration to the picturesque narrative and to the philosophy of politics to which he frequently treats his readers. But he introduces too many extracts from despatches, speeches, even from newspapers, and from the writings of his contemporaries, to please us. We should prefer to learn what is his appreciation of public men and their utterances. Nevertheless his work is a useful compilation from contemporary documents, and no student of the period can afford to neglect it. Is it too much to hope that his last volume may contain a full index? A few slips, which any English reader can at once correct, are of no importance; but we are at a loss to conceive why he should go out of his way to accuse Great Britain of having,

in her exclusive devotion to commercial interests, profited by the help of Napoleon III. She joined him' (says M. Hanotaux)' at the outset of all his adventures, only to desert him as soon as he was inextricably involved. She understood how to stop him at the decisive moment, and to snatch from him, when the opportunity occurred, the fruits of his victory. It was thus in the case of the Crimea, in China, in Italy, and in Mexico' (vol. i, p. 9).

It is not difficult to show that this charge is without foundation. That Great Britain was dragged into the Crimean War by Napoleon III for his own purposes, and that he brought it to a close when she was willing to continue it, is notorious. In China, Great Britain, which furnished far larger forces than France, gained no more than her ally; and when, in 1859, the Peiho disaster occurred, the French squadron was absent, engaged in the conquest of Lower Cochin-China. It was not Great Vol. 210.-No. 418.

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Britain, but the attitude of Prussia, that in 1859 prevented Napoleon from going on to liberate Venetia. In Mexico Great Britain was entirely justified in withdrawing from the expedition, undertaken conjointly with France and Spain, when she found that Napoleon III had resolved to convert the Mexican Republic into a monarchy with an Austrian archduke as emperor-a scheme altogether outside the scope of action originally agreed upon.

The work of M. Zevort is an exceedingly useful book of reference; and the appendices supply a series of important political documents. His hero is Gambetta, and his sympathies are distinctly Republican. From the language of M. Denis we are led to conclude that he is a partisan of the moderate Legitimists. He seems to lose few opportunities of saying something to the discredit of Thiers. His accounts of the negotiations of the Monarchists with the Comte de Chambord in 1873 and of the passing of the constitutional laws in 1875 are excellent examples of his work.

The memoirs mentioned in our list are naturally of a different order. Their authors were directly concerned in the affairs of which they treat. The three volumes of M. de Marcère are highly interesting, as they deal with events down to the end of the Septennate from the point of view of a Conservative Republican. He is the apologist of Thiers. The Marquis de Brézé, who, for the greater part of our period, was the political agent at Paris of the Comte de Chambord, narrates the negotiations for the recall of the Legitimist sovereign with the discreet exactness which becomes a loyal and devoted confidential servant of a king. The memoirs of M. Thiers are, as might be expected, chiefly concerned with vindicating the part played by himself. They are none the less valuable as embodying the judgment of the great bourgeois on his own actions. But among all the books in this class to which we have referred, the palm must be accorded to the Souvenirs Politiques' of the Vicomte de Meaux, who appears to have belonged to the moderate Legitimist party, for the continuity and fulness of his narrative, for its admirable style, and for the manner in which the interest is sustained throughout.

ERNEST SATOW.

Art. 6.-HERODOTUS THE HISTORIAN.

1. Herodotus. Books VII, VIII, IX. By R. W. Macan, D.Litt. London: Macmillan, 1908.

2. Hérodote, Historien des Guerres Médiques. By Amédée Hauvette. Paris: Hachette, 1894.

3. Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte. By Hans Delbrück. Erster Theil: Das Alterthum. Berlin: Georg Stilke, 1900.

4. The Campaign of Marathon. The Campaign of Xerxes. The Campaign of Plataea. By J. A. R. Munro. Journal of Hellenic Studies,' 1899, 1902, 1904.

THE recent publication of Dr Macan's volumes on the last three books of the History of Herodotus marks the completion of what is beyond doubt the greatest edition of that author in the English language, an edition which, moreover, will bear comparison with the great works on the same subject published in Germany and elsewhere. Dr Macan has been responsible for the editing of the last six books out of the nine; and it says something for his courage that he has deliberately brought to completion an edition, of which the first volume, edited by Prof. Sayce, was subjected to a criticism hardly less severe than that which the editor applied to the author. It is now more than twenty years since this first volume was published; and time, the reviser of judgments, has brought it about that the criticism of author and editor alike is less severe at the present day than it was when that volume appeared.

The endeavour of such works as those which are catalogued at the head of this article is to eradicate the element of falsehood from the great story of the past. It is true that they are largely concerned with minute detail; but truth in history can only be attained by truth in detail. 'It is only' (says Polybius) 'by the combination and comparison of the separate parts of the whole-by observing their likeness and their difference-that a man can attain his object, can obtain a view at once clear and complete, and thus secure both the profit and the delight of history.' It is notable that in these books this process of enquiry after the truth is applied to an author like Herodotus. His attitude towards historical truth is difficult to

characterise. He makes little profession of exactness, and no profession of desiring to educate his fellow men; yet he took, in certain departments of his work, considerable trouble to enquire into professed facts, and he displays the intent to impress upon others some of the major premisses of his own philosophy of life. But his main object was, as he himself says in the opening chapter of his work, that the actions of men may not be effaced by time, nor the great and wondrous deeds displayed both by Greeks and Barbarians deprived of renown.' He wishes to inform men as to the actions of the past; he does not express any desire to instruct them as to their actions in the future. He wanted to tell a great story well; and that was probably the extent of his real ambition.

The story of the Persian Wars was good enough in itself. There was no reason to make deliberate fictitious additions to a tale the bare incidents of which were quite sufficient to attract the interest of the readers for whom he wrote. There is not one shred of substantial evidence that he invented any element in that part of his narrative as to which he could obtain information by personal enquiry; and for his main story the evidence was avail able from the land and people of Greece itself. To it and to them he resorted. The land told its story to one who, whatever his defects, was by far the best and most conscientious topographer of the historians of the ancient world; and, where he is following this special path of investigation, he treads with no uncertain foot. But, where he is dealing with the human evidence, he is conscious of the difficulty of arriving at the truth; and one of his greatest merits as an historian is that, when he feels that the truth is not definitely ascertainable, he makes no arbitrary choice between conflicting items of

evidence.

He has sometimes been charged with an artless credulity. It is probable that he was neither very artless nor very credulous. He had, indeed, a very catholic taste as to that in the history of the past which was worth preserving; in fact he preserved much to which the term history can hardly be applied. Yet the world would have been poorer had he not recorded the legends and the good stories of his day; and poorer, too, in the historical