one to apply to Miss Cora L. Schofield's 'Life and Reign of Edward IV.' The author is already known to scholars by her thesis on the 'Star Chamber,' and by several learned articles in Historical Reviews on both sides of V the Atlantic. The book before us is wholly founded ontem original research, of the deepest and most patient kindagat among the MSS. in the Record Office, the British Museum ra and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. All the Rolls s Warrants, Inquisitions, and Accounts have been laid he e under contribution, as well as the printed Calendars of s State Papers and the Chronicles of all Western European on countries. Through this maze of diverse materials Miseattle Schofield sails with an ease, an evident pleasure to herself lewb and indeed, a grace, such as few learned historians have r succeeded in showing. And these qualities, it must be siera remembered, are shown in the account of a period pel hitherto held to be one of the darkest and most dismal rh in our history. Miss Schofield is, moreover, absolutely ju impartial: her 'subject' is very far from being either aer 'villain' or a 'hero' to her; indeed she has no herole unless it be the simple patient sufferer Henry VI, and no fe arch-villain. More strange still, Miss Schofield is never o dull; a reader not usually interested in history might Ro pick up the book, expecting to be bored, and find a good sa deal of difficulty in laying it down; and if it were not for its inordinate length, in comparison with the slight interest of the period, one would be tempted to say that is here is History as she ought to be wrote.' Shall we as seem fanciful if we say that the writer of whom, in this matter, Miss Schofield most reminds us is Leopold von sli Ranke? Like that great man she has such complete no mastery of her details that she never seems to need to that 'force a conclusion,' nor to indulge in premature or of speculative generalisations. Like him, she makes those details tell the story; and this, we think, is supremes art. There is just the right amount of quiet humour, ase for instance, in this hit at the shuffling King Charles VII 'to ask others to aid a helpless Queen is one thing, to aid her yourself is another' (1, 116); or, again, take the picture of the Mayor and Common-Council of London when letters from Edward and Warwick, with exactly opposite commands (or entreaties), arrived on the same day (1, 574). She seldom draws a character'; more Som the Iften, with a few happy touches thrown in, she leaves he story itself to throw it up into relief: thus, Philippe Commynes himself has not left us a better picture of ouis XI than Miss Schofield-and yet nowhere does she ake any attempt at a formal description of him. The triguing Legate Coppini-'no lover of danger'-whose elp in 1461 was so invaluable to the House of York, ad who paid so dearly for his shiftiness when he got ack into the clutches of Pope Pius II, is one of the veliest persons in the book. Yet Miss Schofield appears know her own limitations, for she evidently has no aste for battle-pieces, and quietly stands aside when owton or Tewkesbury might have tempted her to become loquent; nor does she attempt descriptions of scenery, or of medieval towns, nor, save in the instance of St feorge's Chapel, Windsor (Edward IV's greatest building Bat), of churches. There are just a few Americanisms which we regret, g. the frequent use of to loan as a verb, and loaned s a participle; program; antagonise; imposter; but arprisingly few for such a long book. There are a ew queer words like issuance, beautification; Bishophancellor Rotherham is sometimes spelt Rotheram ; nd there is a curious omission of the word 'nineteenth' n p. 3, Vol. II, which makes nonsense of a very happy oint in Edward IV's mental development. On 1, 120, wash-outs' is not, as one might think, a bit of modern lang, but a strange word to describe a piece of a road roken by floods. The Scala Celi (in Rome) II, 451, is robably a slip between the Ara Celi and the Scala Santa. here are no maps, but the want of them is not seriously alt, and, thank Heaven, there are no ridiculous reprouctions of medieval drawings! Perhaps the worst ant is some kind of date-headings for chapters, if not ›r pages; Miss Schofield expects our attention to be very lose, or we may miss the fact that she has got a year head of her readers here and there. All the praise that we give must not be taken to lean that we can agree with the author in all parculars; if we found her differing from Sir James amsay, except where such difference depended upon ɔme new discovery of her own, we should not hesitate say that Sir James's inferences were probably the the of A Du sco at st whe I wou or th more defensible; and we do find it hard to assent to her view that Edward was not a 'bloody' king. She has however, made out a very good case to the effect that he really began his reign, at the age of nineteen, with the ice best intentions, and that the ministers of Henry VI's and last years were mainly to blame for their own overde throw. They were, and their terrible Queen was, vindic -conl tive to the last degree. So were many of Edward's own supporters, including, perhaps, the famous King-maker feli himself. Yet let us be fair, even to Warwick; there dipl were 'no savage reprisals' when he had the government in his own hands during the brief Lancastrian restoration of 1470-1. Edward, says Miss Schofield, was not natur loral ally vindictive, nor was he, like his stupid father, 'rash hasty, and indiscreet' (1, 123). His fault, in the first half of his reign, was that he gave too little thought to. possible dangers ahead, including a 'certain small boy (afterwards Henry VII) with a pious and cultured mother,' whom he almost accidentally captured at Pem broke (1, 202). As soon as an enemy became powerless to: hurt him Edward gave him no further thought'. . . 'like all easy-going people he detested a quarrel' (1, 315, 343) .. he was almost incapable of cherishing anger long So the poor fellow was twice caught in a trap, and al last began to realise how deep and vindictive were the treasons and the traitors, even of his own party, wh stood round him. When he did realise this his cha racter steadily changed for the worse. Adversity, which quickened his wits, certainly lessened his mercy. And i was a horribly cruel age, the age in which torture wa first definitely used to extract evidence, the age in which the headsman, 'seldom enjoyed his breakfast unless i were preceded by an execution.' To us, at least, it seem as if Edward was, in this matter, even a little worse, of more indifferent to the sacrifice of human life, than hi grandson, Henry VIII-and this is saying a good deal rain at by tantl nting ed t ore th his neve his wer pre སྐྱ too at le Even when he was at his laziest Edward had neve been a fool. 'He understood the temper of the English people far better than Warwick ever did' (1, 450). Hi greatest 'crime,' or at least that which sat most heavily on his own conscience, the judicial murder of his brother Clarence in 1478, is almost excused by Miss Schofield who is the first historian to show that, from 1468, if no arlier, Clarence had aimed at the crown for himself, nd was ready to sell himself (and his country) to any one who would help him to get it. If there is a villain in he piece it is George Duke of Clarence (see especially II, 9, 207); and indeed it is very difficult to see what the ost high-minded King-and Edward was very far from eing that could have done with such a brother, except ill him. Miss Schofield is at her best in following the thread if tangled diplomatic intrigues. These were tangled adeed when the game was being played by a Louis XI, a cots Duke of Albany, traitor to both countries, a comaratively loyal Duke Philip of Burgundy and his wholly isloyal son Duke Charles the Rash, a Duke of Milan ke Francesco Sforza, a Pope like Sixtus IV; when alais lay at stake between England, France, and Burundy, and when no one on the Continent really knew hether it would pay him better to support the claim of ancaster or that of York to the English throne. The rrible drain of money which Calais meant is well rought out by the author; the wages of the garrison ere constantly in arrear, the men were always on the lge of mutiny. Edward, on the whole, seems to us to ave grasped the essential fact that he could not give it pany more than he could give up invoking, and actually retending to give effect to, his hereditary claim on the rench crown. 'His people expected this of him.' Miss hofield is, we think, inclined to overrate the warlike mper of his people in this matter; yet it is quite evident at, whenever the King gave out that he intended to ecover his inheritance' in France, his usually stingy mmons were ready with a large grant, although they rice took precautions, not unlike that of their successors the reign of Charles II, to see that the money granted ould be spent only on the coming war. In 1475 Iward took to France the largest and best appointed my that left the shores of England before the Revolun; and, as we know, he brought it safe home, without low struck and with large French pensions in his own cket and in the pockets of his chief councillors. The thor does not blink the fact: Edward had sold nself to Louis' (II, 155): yet he had honourably resed to abandon his Breton ally to Louis's vengeance. Дет that TO LO ainly be d his he ha The difficult business of Scotland Edward seems to have managed quite as well as, if not better than, any of his predecessors, although it was not till the end of his reign that he recovered Berwick, which Margaret had sold to the Scots as the price of help. And it certainly look as if he had a fair control of his own country when he was able, without help from Parliament, to send acros the border a very large army which, in 1482, swept up t Edinburgh and took that city. Even so, we hesitate to accept Miss Schofield's figure of 20,000 soldiers,' althoug we agree that this must be considered the most remark able fact in the King's career' (II, 387). It was the futur Richard III who led this remarkable fact' to victory. Nor was this comparatively sordid King so dishones financially as one would have expected. He did no repudiate the heavy debt (largely inherited from th Lancastrian government) to the Merchants of the Staple he remitted a portion of the first subsidy granted to hin by Parliament: his 'benevolences' were a monstrou innovation on constitutional practice, but they probably spared the country a much more serious and regula form of taxation, and they do not appear to have ruine any individual contributors. When he had becom owing to his private financial speculations in woo cloth, and other exports, a very rich man, Edward se about paying his debts in a fashion not common amon mediæval kings, and also set about a serious reductio in the expenses of his household. In breaches of the Seventh Commandment his private life was notorious scandalous, and he has even been compared to Louis X of France; but while there is evidence that his debaucher (and perhaps gluttony as well, for he grew very corpulen killed him at the age of forty, there is none that b allowed his concubines to influence his policy, exce when Mistress Shore contrived to beg off some victi destined to the block or to some ruinous fine. Nor there any hint of the darker vices which Miss Norga is obliged, in guarded fashion, to admit as probab indulged in by Richard I. dar Ter heat Hari mpar Edward IV thus stands before us, most vivid portrayed, yet a subject for doubt. We cannot exact 'place' him in the gallery of our Kings. He was not great man, or a good man, or a very bad man; yet |