the great Whig statesman, never omits to mention that he was only sowing his wild oats. He tells us that as time goes on we shall find him in his private life a model husband, scarcely able to tear himself away from the tranquil domesticities of St. Anne's Hill; and in public life a statesman of the loftiest virtue, to whom was mainly due the improvement of political morals among public men during the last thirty years of his career. After 1774

Fox tended steadily and perceptibly throughout his life towards higher views and quieter ways, until his sweet and lofty nature had lost all trace of what had been disastrous and nearly fatal to him in his early circumstances and training. Before he was old, or even elderly, a moralist would have been hard to please who would not allow him to be a good man, and assuredly the most imaginative of novelists could not have invented a better fellow.'*

There is no lack of eulogy in the biographer's comments, but, for all that, less well-informed readers of the Early History' are in much the same position down to 1774 as Fox's contemporaries of that date, and cannot help judging him by his actions as therein narrated. Indeed they are likely to be more severe judges than contemporaries who had been under the wand of the magician.' Those who know most, in recalling to mind the history of Fox's subsequent life, will most regret that Sir George Trevelyan has not himself narrated the upward career of his hero, but has chosen to confine the story of his life to the period before his regeneration. After all, even as to his last thirty years, men are not so completely agreed as to the statesmanship, the patriotism, or even the invariable rectitude of Charles Fox, as to make an able and eloquent vindication of his career undesirable or unwelcome. We cannot pretend, therefore, to accept as altogether satisfactory Sir George Trevelyan's excuses contained in the preface to his new work. The story of Fox could, in our judgement at least, well be told without describing in detail the battles of Lexington and Bunker's Hill. Authors, however, have a right to choose the subjects of their own books; and we presume, therefore, we must rest content with the glimmer of hope contained in the last paragraph of the preface, viz.: The story of the times in which Fox lived ' and wrought has hitherto been told as it presented itself to the author; and he trusts that his telling of it may interest others sufficiently to encourage him in continuing it.'

The American Revolution, Part 1, p. 28.

The first chapter of the new volume treats solely of Fox, but it does not take up and pursue the story of his life where the Early History' left it. The American Revolution' is an entirely distinct work from the 'Early History of Charles James Fox.' The first thirty pages again refer to the gay and reckless period of Fox's youth down to the fateful year 1774, and give us besides, as we have already noticed, a glimpse of a future far beyond the range of the present volume. Sir George Trevelyan shows his reading of Fox's character and temperament as shown in his whole life in commenting as follows upon his voluminous correspondence. First comes 'the scapegrace epoch, which began earlier than is easily credible, and ended far sooner than is generally supposed. Then, when his own ruin, and still more the sorrow which he had brought upon others, had taught him to look life gravely in the face, there succeeded the period of eager and anxious repentance. That period was a short one for two reasons. First, because he was a man who, when he was minded to do right, did it, and did not talk about it; and next, because those he most warmly loved, and had most deeply pained, passed beyond the reach of his protestations. And then, until his life and his public career were terminated together, there followed an enormous mass of letters, dealing openly and copiously with many subjects, but with none in which he did not take a keen and unaffected interest-letters clear and easy in style, lofty in tone where the matter demanded it, and animated everywhere by the same fire which, in his carly correspondence, was expended in vivifying less valuable and much more questionable material.'

The last thing Fox intended when he first left Lord North's Government was to ally himself with the Opposition, and in a few months' time he was restored to office by the Prime Minister, who thus testified his kindly feelings towards his young friend, and his sense of the importance of retaining the support to the Ministry of a member who had already shown his power, and his readiness to use it. In a few months more Fox was again out of office; and it seemed clear enough that no subordinate position in any Ministry or party would long satisfy his deserts or his ambition. This time he was in earnest. He was a man who never did anything by halves, and it was not long before his old friends felt the full weight of his bitterest hostility. Under these circumstances he could not help being drawn into political association with the Rockingham Whigs, a band of men whose high character and purity of motives sustained in a bad time the credit of English statesmanship. Lord Rockingham and Burke, Sir George Savile, the Duke of Richmond,

and Lord John Cavendish were politicians of a very different stamp from the men with whom he had hitherto acted, and they might well at first have looked askance at the dubious record of their new ally. But in 1774 disasters had fallen thick upon Charles Fox. His father had paid his debts to the amount of 140,000l., and he, though cleared of debt for the moment, was absolutely penniless. Devotedly attached to his family, he had lost before the year was out father, mother, and brother. It was natural that the Opposition chiefs, seeing him standing at last

' alone, unhappy, and in earnest among the ruins of his joyous and careless past, should begin to watch his course with interest and soon with sympathy. At the earliest indication which he gave of a desire to enrol himself in their band, they received him with open arms. He became first the comrade, then the ally, and at length the adored and undisputed leader of men from whom, in whatever relation he might act with them, there was nothing but good to learn.'

The dissension between Great Britain and her colonies proved the making of Fox. For the first time in his life he found himself employing his transcendent abilities and straining every effort in a good cause, in which, with all the strength and conviction of his nature, he thoroughly believed. His character thenceforward grew; and once more we regret that our author has not undertaken the task of tracing this growth, which began with his alliance with the Rockinghams, throughout his eventful career till his death in 1806, the idolised leader of the Whigs and virtually the Prime Minister of George III.

The portrait of Charles Fox as drawn by his nephew, Lord Holland, and by Lord John Russell, has long been before the world. His personal charm is a commonplace of every memoir of the day. By general consent he stands almost, perhaps quite, the first among the greatest masters of parliamentary debate that this country has produced. In a very singular degree he had the power of attaching men to himself, of acquiring their lifelong devotion, and of substituting an overmastering enthusiasm for their leader for their own individual judgement on the politics of the time. A man of generous and wide sympathies, he flung himself into great causes with an ardent passion which carried away his friends as well as himself, and which was specially calculated to inspire with vigour, in the early days of the American war, the sagacious and patriotic, though somewhat sluggish, counsels of the Rockinghams. Fresh evidence is continually coming to light bearing upon the career of Fox, and of the

way in which his contemporaries, at different periods of his life, regarded him. After all, Sir George Trevelyan, in his two books, delightful reading as they are, has done little more than start his hero on his career. The true place of Fox among English statesmen cannot, of course, be adjudged with reference to events before 1776. Indeed it is especially in his later career that we should welcome a sympathetic yet impartial examination of his attitude towards the problems and the difficulties which the country had to face. Fox was idolised by his friends, but he never won the complete confidence of his countrymen. By the light of modern information, not accessible to previous biographers, the life of Charles Fox, as a whole, remains to be written; but it is time to turn to the true subject of Sir George Trevelyan's new book, which is not Fox, but the American Revolution.

It is necessarily with very different feelings that ordinary readers of history on the two sides of the Atlantic approach the period of the War of Independence. The same page which speaks to the American citizen of the statesmanship, the courage, and the patriotism of the founders of the Great Republic, describes for the Englishman the most disastrous epoch in the long history of his nation. The decade 1766-1776, the period treated in the present volume, shows Englishmen and English institutions at their worst. The personal qualities of the monarch, the narrow-mindedness, folly, and weakness of the statesmen who surrounded rather than advised him, the incompetence of generals and admirals, the corruption and inefficiency of the House of Commons, all conspired to bring upon the nation humiliation, suffering, and loss without parallel in our historylosses and sufferings, moreover, which, in the view of Englishmen of our own day, not less than in that of Americans themselves, were incurred in a fundamentally bad

cause.

The recollection of the bitterness of that struggle passed away, as was natural, far more rapidly from English than from American memories; and we have long ago learned to expect from our historians a treatment of the period of the War of Independence and of the causes which led to it free from all taint of national partisanship and prejudice. Englishmen now read with sympathy of the courageous stand made even against themselves by men of their own flesh and blood in the cause of freedom-a feeling admirably

expressed in the lines of the late Poet Laureate, who possessed in such a singular degree the power of rendering in perfect language the wisest and highest sentiments of his day. Undoubtedly public opinion in this country now fully endorses the view of Lord John Russell, who forty years ago insisted that the Declaration of Independence flowed naturally from the free and equal laws which the English race had carried with them to the West, and was in truth but a corollary of the Bill of Rights.t

Perhaps prejudices due to party feeling die harder than those which spring from national rivalry. A belief, amounting with many good people almost to superstition, in the absolute continuity of party tradition and in the consistency from generation to generation of party principles, widely prevails. According to this theory, the modern 'Liberal' is the true descendant of the Rockingham Whigs, and is bound to rejoice and triumph in the wisdom and the virtues which inspired his political ancestry; while the modern Tory,' as a matter of course, joyfully takes up the cudgels for King George III. But even in those days there were 'Whigs and Whigs,' and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion, so painful to a true party man, that either Lord Chatham or Lord Rockingham, equal in virtue if in nothing else, must have been a dissentient.' Surely historians should be able, after the lapse of a century and a quarter, to approach these matters with open minds. Times, parties, the minds of men, have all changed; and even Charles Fox as he was at his best period, even after thirty years of good Whig company, were he to come to life again, would not, we venture to think, be accepted without demur as a fit and proper person' to lead the Liberal party.

We must, however, take times, and parties, and statesmen, and even grave historians as we find them. Party feeling is not yet dead, and, however superior historians may show themselves to mere national prejudice, readers will do well to remember that the human feelings of their instructors are not always proof against the bias due to the perennial conflict of Whig and Tory. It is an undeniable truth that Englishmen find it a greater difficulty to judge fairly the conduct and motives of political opponents among their fellow citizens, such as Fox or Lord North,

mes of C. J. Fox, by Lord John Russell.