of Europe. Those men were mostly reared in country homes, ou wholesome though maybe coarse fare, aud under the pure canopy of heaven, not fed on white bread and adulterated beer or spirits, working in cellars and warehouses into which the full daylight seldom or never penetrates. How is it that we are so behind other nations in this matter of the physical education of the people. I believe it is because our middle and upper classes hold such a high place among the athletes of the world, that we are blind to the deficiencies in this respect of their brothers of a lower station in life. I do not suppose it would be possible to find more perfect specimens of young healthy manhood than are to be seen in our larger colleges and universities, but this should only make the contrast between their condition and that of the young lads who hang about the public-houses and roam the streets of our large towns more apparent and more startling. These young men want not only physical development, but the discipline which a course of gymnastic training would give them. It is now eighty years since Germany first established the Turnverein, or National Gymnastic Association, which by its thorough and systematic training of the entire population in gymnastic exercises, strengthening to the body and nerves, and productive of physical courage, many believe to have been in no slight degree instrumental in the thorough defeat which the French sustained at the hands of the Germans in 1870. The French seem to think this partial explanation of their defeat to be not without some possible

war they have taken steps to teach their youth to strengthen their bodies by manly exercises. Perhaps it will be necessary for us to undergo some such national humiliation.

I trust, however, that we shall learn our lesson without the infliction of punishment, which may overtake us, in other ways than by the means of the sword. The arts of peace cannot be carried out successfully by men and women feeble in body and weak in health. Physical strength is almost as much required in the peaceful contests of every-day life as in wars; and other things being equal, the nation which has the healthiest and sturdiest human material with which to work, will produce the best and most salable manufactures. We are, as a nation, dependent on the productions of our hands and brains. We cannot produce in these islands food sufficient to supply our necessities. We must therefore purchase it, and we can only purchase it by manufacturing for our neighbors, and thus earning money sufficient to pay for the food we buy. It is therefore imperative that we shall be able to make better goods than our neighbors, in order to attract their cus tom; and how can we hope to surpass them in the excellence of our manufactures if the intellect of our designers is weakened by bad health, and the bodies of our artisans and laborers are suffering from lassitude and depression?

This question of Physical Education is one therefore which all classes of the community should support: the working men for their own sakes and for that of their children; military and naval men for the reputa

tion of their country's arms; philanthropists and divines for the love of their fellow-men; employers and capitalists for the sake of improved trade; and statesmen lest they find that the Britain which they profess to govern is sinking before their eyes, borne down by no foreign foe, but undermined through physical causes which might have been avoided but for the blindness and obstinacy with which they have fixed their gaze on distant objects and questions of haute politique, to the neglect of nearer and less interesting but more indispensable reforms connected with the health and physique of the people of Great Britain and Ireland. LORD BRABAZON, in The Nineteenth Century.

PROFESSOR STUBBS, THE

HISTORIAN.*

The pleasure and satisfaction of a reader of this volume is somewhat damped by the feeling that it contains the last will and testament of Bishop Stubbs as an historical writer. He has brought together the fragments of his work at Oxford as a sign that he has retired from the labors of a student to the occupa

*Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History and Kin dred Subjects, delivered at Oxford. By William Stubbs, D. D. (Oxford, 1886). -[Prof. Stubbs, born in 1825, ranks in the very first order of English historians. We doubt if there are five men, now liv ing, who write in English, who can be placed in the same order with him. It seems strange that his monumental work, The Constitutional History of England (3

vols., 1874-1878), has not been republished in this country.-ED. LIB. MAG.]

tions of practical life. He tells us in his preface that he has committed these lectures to the press as a means of weaning himself gradually from the habits of a literary life, "the love of correcting proof-sheets." Perhaps he did not think when he wrote that sentence how great a testimony he incidentally bore to the patient and careful temper which has been the result of his mental discipline. To be able to correct proof-sheets with attention implies. an absolute power of self-concentration on the work in hand; to be able to delight in the process implies a fullness of knowledge which makes accuracy an instinct, and enables a writer to weigh what he has written apart from the sources which helped him as he wrote. It is a noticeable fact that scarcely any book embracing such a mass of details as Dr. Stubb's Constitutional History ever appeared from the press with a list of errata containing so few misprints.

Throughout the lectures which this volume contains runs a protest against the statutory obligation." in accordance with which the lectures were delivered. Dr. Stubbs

complains of the "compulsion to produce something twice a year, which might attract an idle audistudent. He can scarcely hope to ence," as unworthy of a serious carry with him the sympathies of his readers, who feel that had it not been for that compulsion they would not have enjoyed this we had almost written, posthumous-volume. In fact, we cannot help rejoicing that some external force drove Dr. Stubbs against his will to shown us a side of himself and of his pursuits which might otherwise have passed away unrecorded. He

has shown us how an earnest student, brought into the presence of a mixed audience, can temper his knowledge with humor, and cut of the storehouse of his learning can bring forth things new and old. These lectures will hold a place in English literature for other reasons than their merits as a contribution to historical science. They will be a valuable record of the progress of study in Oxford for eighteen eventful years; they will contain the materials of a study of the life of an Oxford professor, and they will give posterity an insight into the character of Bishop Stubbs, which here expresses itself as it had not the opportunity of doing either in the pages of the Constitutional History or in the prefaces to the Rolls Chronicles, or even, it may be, in episcopal charges delivered in his diocese of Chester. The contents of this volume are miscellaneous, but correspond to different sides of their writer's activity. Some deal with the condition of historical studies, especially in Oxford; others, as those on Learning and Literature at the Court of Henry II., were suggested by the work of editing chronicles; others, on The History of the Canon Law in England, are the results of Dr. Stubbs's careful labor as a member of the ecclesiastical courts commission. One lecture was suggested by passing events in English politics, The Medieval Kingdoms of Cyprus and Armenia. Four lectures on the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. remind us sadly of what we have lost by the cessation of the Constitutional History at the accession of the Tudors. We feel that in those lectures the outlines of English history in the beginning of

the sixteenth century are for the first time sketched with firmness and precision. The character of Henry VIII. as drawn by Dr. Stubbs is truer than that given by any other writer. It takes into account the conditions of the times, not only in England, but in Europe; it is founded upon a knowledge of the sixteenth century, and does not carry into those times the ideas and prejudices of a later age; it recog nizes the psychological problems of Henry's character, and admits an evolution of his self-will. It is a model of what historical portraiture should be, at once charitable and just; charitable, because through the ages the historian sees in historical personages men of like passions with himself, animated by complex motives, not to be judged, like heroes or villains in a play, by a few actions only, but by the prolonged activity of their lives; just, because men have to be judged by the far-off results of their doings, which, however natural they may be, are not therefore to be justified.

It is needless to discuss the new suggestions with which these lectures abound, or to consider the value of the general views which they contain. The principles laid down in the lectures On the Purposes and Methods of Historical Study and On the Characteristic Differences between Medieval and Modern History, will seem to some to be disputable. Those who call history a science, and mean thereby that it can produce results which can be easily popularized and reduced into maxims for political use, will find small satisfaction from Dr. Stubbs. To him the value of historical study lies in its educational efficacy to