The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-07 00:00:00

SPAIN.

MADRID, Oct. 7.

The Government has received intelligence from
Andalusia and Catalonia that several bands of
Republicans have been signally routed in those
provinces. The insurrection may now be consi-
dered as vanquished. The people are animated by
the best spirit.
Notwithstanding the disturbances in the country,
the troops destined to proceed to Cuba are being
embarked daily.

LITERATURE.

Hepworth Dixon's New Work.

Her Majesty's Tower. Vol. 11. By William llep-

worth Dixon. Hurst and Blackett.

llepworth Dixon has never done anything finer
than this second volume of his history of the Tower
of London. It is not, as cynical cavillers might
have suggested, the sweeping together of the lit-
tered contents of his portfolio after the completion
and the brilliant success of the original volume
already published. The former volume, as we
all know, has rapidly run through six edi-
tions. It has " told" upon the reading public
in a manner quite exceptional ; and its success
throughout has been legitimate, has been unforced,
has been spontaneous. Those who know the
work can thoroughly understand how it won its way
with such a swing of ease into this sudden and SU3-
tained popularity. It was precisely the kind of book
to fascinate the reader's attention. It was a splen-
did piece of word-painting from beginning to end.
It peopled anew, in all the ancient pageantry of
times long gone by, the courtyards, the drawbridges,
the dungeons, the walled gardens, the skyward leads,
the nooks and crannies, the galleries and corridors,
the portcullised gateways, and the iron-barred

grim and grey old Towers of Julius, which are
associated with so many of the noblest, the grand.
est, and the most pathetic of our national and
historical recollections. Described as the scene
and the people were, with a wealth of colouring,
both Her Majesty's Tower and its memorable in-
habitants started to view, as we turned the pages of
that volume, as though the Past were, again Pre-
sent, as though we were looking not upon the con-
fronting leaves of an open volume, but rather than
that through the wonder-working lenses of a ste-
reoscope. Brilliant though that first volume was,
however, as a series of historical descriptions, the
second and concluding volume is of far higher
value in our consideration. Its purpose is higher.
The author in it deals less with external appear-
ances and more with the inner significance of
events and incidents, many of which have been
either misapprehended, or, far worse than that,
have been monstrously and deliberately misrepre-
sented. Mr. Dixon takes a hitherto unrecognised
truth in this way, and vigorously welds it anew
upon the anvil of his bold and manly judgment.
And sentence by sentence as he does so, his words
have often the weight and the telling effect of a
series of blows from some ponderous sledge-hammer.
'rake as an instance of this his whole narrative of
the famous Gunpowder Plot. Chapter after chapter
unfolds to the enthralled, and, in many cases, we
doubt not, the astonished reader, the windings, and
the doublings, and the turnings of that once be-
wildering, and, as it erstwhile seemed, inscrutable
labyrinth. "Powder Plot Room," " Guy Fawkes,"
" Origin of the Plot," " Vinegar House," " The
Conspiracy at Large," are the headings of five of
these masterly chapters. And how they are written
throughout let us show by a single passage by way
of quotation. 'Thus speaks Mr. Dixon of the Plot
itself and of its immediate origin :--
" Those who throw the blame on Catholics miss the
moral of the crime. The men who contrived, the men who
prepared, the mon who sanctioned, this scheme of assassi-
nation were, one and all, of Protestant birth. Father Per-
sons was Protestant born. Father Owes and Father
Garnet were Protestants born. From what is known of
Winter's early life, it may be asseuned that he was a Pro-
testant. Gatesby and Wright had been Protestant boys.
Guy Fawkes had been a Protestant ; Percy had been a
Protestant. The minor persons were, like their chiefs,
apostates from their early faith, with the moody weak-
ness which is an apostate's inspiration and his curse.
Tresham was a convert, Monteagle was a convert, Digby
was a convert. Thomas Morgan, Robert Kay, and Kit
Wright were all converts. The five gentlemen who dug
the mine in Palace-yard were all of English blood and of
Protestant birth. But they were converts and fanatics,
observing no law save that of their own passions ; men
of whom it should be said, in justice to all religions, that
they no more disgraced the Church which they had
entered than that which they had left. The plot was
the main clerical effort of that Spanish conspiracy
against English law which the converted Jesuits had been
trained to conduct; a political conflict in which these
English Jesuits appealed to the sword and perished by
the sword."

" From one—all," says the proverb. "Ex pede
Herculem," says another. Noting one step, to
stalwart tread all through may be readily conjec-
tured, may be appreciated by anticipation. And
the dramatic interest of the work as a whole may
be recognised, we cannot but think, at the merest
glance when looking down the headings of the
chapters in the two-paged table of contents. Ex.
gr.—November, 1605—Hunted Down—Search for
Garnet—The Catholic Lords—The Wizard Earl—
The Escape—Pursuit—Dead in the Tower—Powder
Poisoning. It is a new justification, or authentica-
tion of Lord Byron's dictum that " Truth is strange
—stranger than fiction !" These headings of a
historical and arcl.zeological work by a shrewd and
searching student of the past, are like the sensational
titles of the incidents of some work of fiction by a
master-romancist, such a writer, let us say, as the
author of "Monte Cristo," and " The Three Mus-
keteers." Volume 11. of " Her Majesty's Tower,"
so admirably supplements Volume 1., already fami-
liar to Mr. Dixon's world of readers, that it is like
the fitting together of two semi-circles—the work is
rounded to a whole. Among all his works it is the
one most worthily inscribed to his Sovereign, for it
is, among them all, at once the most brilliant and
the most attractive.