The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-07 00:00:00

LITERATURE

Lectures on the History of Eng'and 13 am
L tegman. Lecture IV. The .Reign of Edward
L, 1272-1307. Longman, Green, end Co.
Another of these exhaustive hctaies on our
national history enables us, in lea than a hundrad
pages octavo, to survey, not superficially, but
searchingly and comprehensively, the whole of the
memorable epoch embraced within the reign of our
First Edward. That reign extended over an inter-
val of time exactly equivalent to the period set
down, in the calculations of actuaries and statis-
ticians, as the lifetime of a generation. Beginning
in 1272 and ending in 1307, Edward's reign was
lengthened out, in other words, to a period of
exactly thirty-five years. It was a reign that left
its stamp upon our annals. It was a reign, the record
of which is eminently worthy of being again and
yet again related. As it is here related by Mr.
Longman, it stands out to view distinctly, com-
pletely, and as a whole. We obtain a knowledge
of the epoch in its entirety—and yet, while we are
obtaining it, we examine it, almost one might say,
bit by bit, in detail, as though it were slowly pass-
ing under the lens of a microscope. Mr. Longman,
reversing the ordinary system, begins his historical
survey of a reign where others usually terminate it.
Before uttering one syllable, for example, before
penning one sentence upon the reign of Ed-
ward 1., he gives his hearers originally,
his readers now, a rapid summary of the character
of that monarch. Contrasting Edward I. with his
father Henry 111., he says :—" The one was weak
and yielding ; a man to be loved, although deceitful;
of elegant tastes and habits ; and, of a decidedly
pious frame of mind. The other was strong
and stern ; of quick feelings and powerful intel-
lect ; bold and active ; fond of field sports ; some-
what of a tyrant, and sometimes faithless, it
must be owned ; but yet, in the main, noble
and just. He was a conqueror, whose con-
quests, not only gave greater strength to Eng-
land, but bettered the conquered ; and lastly,
he was a King, is whose reign law and justice
made forward strides.' Describing the persona)
appearance of King Edward L, Mr. Longman
a.,y-s; • very graphically—" In person, he was
tail and broad-chested ; his hair was flaxen
in his youth, bec-ne brown in his manhood, and
grizzly gray in his old age. In one thing, he was
much like his father. His left eyelid drooped, and
almost covered the eye; yet his face, and his whole
bearing, b( spoke him a• -man of wisdom and of
courage." While, of the simplicity of the, great
King's personal habits, meaning in regard to his
very costume, the lecturer goes on to remark the"'
Edward I. "so much despised all outward pomp,
that from the day of his coronation he never again
wore his crown ; and, except on great occasions, he
never used purple, scarlet, or rich fur in his
garments ; but generally appeared in a plain
coat, lined in winter with some common fur."
In this particular—not • very unlike other still
greater men than bin self, before and since. Napo-
l' on the Great being conspicuously amongst the
number—distinguishable, as be was, in the midst of
his gorgeous staff and escort, in his little unplumed
hat,-, his grey greatcoat, and his jackboots—with
the glint of a star just visible under his half but-
toned green uniform undercoat as a colonel of
chassears, and the plain cross of the. Legion of.
Honour twinkling at his button-hole as he rode.
Remembering that in Edward I.'s reign occurred
the conquest of Wales and the most famous of the
wars with Scotland, the wars in which William
Wallace shone forth as the kingly Hero and
Robert Bruce as the heroic King of the Sects—the
tale here, told again so very succinctly and pic-
turesquely is worth the telling : more particularly
when the reader finds in the narrator, as Mr. Long-
man's reader unquestionably does (even the most
captious will readily acknowledge this), a writer of
admirable perspicacity, As exemplars of his manner
as a narrator, or rather as an epitomiser of great
events, we will give his tersely written record of
the Rise, and again immediately afterwards of the
Fall, of Wallace :
At length, when the country was left to its fate by the
greater nobles, there arose, from among the lesser barons, a
man who long struggled successfully against the Engl sh
dominion, and who, had he not been thwarted by the quar-
rels among his own countrymen, would doubtless have
driven the English out of Scotland. This was William
Wallace of Eldert.lie. In th' se days, bodily strength and
courage were of the greatest importance, and Wallace had
an iron frame, and a statute which was a most gigantic, A
quarrel with some English officers drove him to revolt; he
was insulted in the town of Lanark, and would have been
killed in the streets, had he not been sheltered in the house
of his sweetheart, until he was able to escape to the neigh-
bouring woods. Here, by degrees, he collected together
those who had refused submission to Edward, and they
chose him for thei' chief. He, and his brave little band,
began by attacking straggli, g parties of the English, and
in these attacks he was generally successful. The paths
across the mountains, and the ways from one part of the
country to another, thus became well known to him; ano
the knowledge thus acquired, was of great use to him in
his contests with the English troops. His countrymen be-
gan to trust him more and more, and he was roes at the
head of a large body of Scottish exiles. Sir William Douglas
was the first noble who came with his vassals to Wallace's
support ; with their united forces they gained greater suc-
cesses, and by degrees some of the most powerful of the
Scottish nobles were not ashamed to fight under the banner
of Wallace.

There remained only one man, who still defied the power
of Edward, who still eluded hie vengeanc-. This was
Wallace. Soon he too came within the conqueror's grasp;
betrayed .by his fickle, faithless, jealous countrymen. He
was tried for treason, and condemned to suffer death, by a
cruel and ignominous process; which was put in execution
on August 23, A.D. 1305. It is sad that a monarch, who,
for nearly his whole life, kept and deserved a character for
wisdom and for justice, should thus, at its close, wipe out,
with a bloody hand, the almost unqualified praise which
would otherwise has e been his due. Wallace was not
guilty of treason ; for although Edward claimed to be King
of Scotland, he was never recognised as such by the Scot-
tish nobles. Edward was master of Scotland, and might
have made himself ifs King ; but his right was only that of
conquest, and the right of resistance remained to the con-
quered, so long as there was any hope of success. Wallace,
it is true, was guilty of savage cruelty, and his brutality to
those whom he over came, on many occasions, cannot, I
fear, be 'doubted. But the acts of Edward himself might
have made him look at the deeds of Wallace with less
severity ; he was powerful, and might have pardoned.
Vain, however, was this savage punishment; the mangled
remains of the dead hero appealed to his countrymen more
eloquently than his persevering courage when alive, and
within six months of the death of Wallace, Scotland was
once more free.

As a truly valuable digest of the history of a great
reign, these abbreviated annals of the thirty-five
years during which the first Edward held the
sceptre of England in his warrior-grasp, are
not unworthy—and this is high praise we know
—these foreshortened annals are not unworthy
of one of the eminent firm of publishers distin-
guished among other things as the publishers
of Lord Macaulay. The Fifth Lecture, announced
we observe as very shortly tc be published, will
complete the first volume by giving a narrative of
the Reign of Edward the Second, embellished
with a map of Scotland in the 13th century, and a
plan of the Battle of Bannockburn—the whole
being crowned by that most welcome and useful of
all additions to a historical work, a copious alpha-
betical index.

CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN'S CHEAP
AND POPULAR PUBLICATIONS.

Another batch of these very instructive, and some
of them very amusing, petiouicals has come to hand
too late for notice anicng the magazines for April.
We are nevertheless not disposed to pass them by
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prise on the part of the firm from whose establish-
ment they
are being i-sued from month to month
ro admit of our either overlooking thutn altogether,
or treating them, when seen, with inoifference.
Cassell's publication,, side by side with the publi-
cations of the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh,
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legislation is inquiring about " National Educa-
tion," these, and ()the: publications of a kindren
ambition, are acting in the good cause—and
they are doing this good cause yeoman's
service systematically and energetically. Here
we have again sqaandered before us, in a chtap
snd wholesome form, abundant proof that itia se.
A twenty-eighth fivepsnny part of " Casselt's Illus-
trated History of England : " a sixteenth seven-
penny part of a new illustrated edition of "Cassell's
Popular Educator:" a eixty-fourth fivepeuny part

of I Pap( ;
sixuunny uninbtr o• liiustrattd
D c'n;nary,' tote;her with one or two other ikric.di.
cols of a similar kind, not necessary here to be enu-
merated. It is like good seed sown broadcast over
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feel tolerably certain will priug up and yield fruit a
hundredfold.