The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-27 00:00:00

LITERATURE•

History of the Stanleys of Knowsley. By William
Pollard. One vol., pp. 232. Edward Howell,

Liverpool.

A handsome octavo volume, embellished with an
excellent photographic likeness of the ex-Premier,
by way of appropriate frontispiece, here relates, in
a dozin readable chapters—very well worthy of
preservation upon our bookshelves afterwards,
as a historical and reliable record of one of flit,
noblest families in the Peerage of England—all
that is entitled to particular notice in the History
of " The Stanleys of Knowsley." The starting
point, as a matter of course, is the advent to this
country of William the Conqueror. There are three
distinct branches, however, of the genealogical tree
representing the race or house of Stanley. There js
the oldest branch of all, the main trunk, perhaps,
we should rather say, of the Stanleys of Hooton,
in Cheshire. Then, again, there is that other
branch of the Stanleys of Alderley, also in
Cheshire, the head of which is the present Lord
of that title, whose original ancestor was Sir John
Stanley, the youngest son of Thomas, first Baron
Stanley, father of Thomas, first Earl of Derby.
It is with the Stanleys of Knowsley, however, as
the title of the work intimates, that Mr. Pollard,
the compiler of this interesting memorial narrative,
has mainly or rather exclusively to do. In it due
mentio n is made of the several occasions on which
the Stanleys have been directly connected by mar-
riage with royalty—the blood of the Plantagenets
as well as of other illustrious families flo wing in their
veins : they themselves having possessed royal power
for a considerable period in the Isle of Man. Their
history in effect shines conspicuously forth, here and
there, in the history of the country, in the annals
of tha nation, in the reigns of our most
famous sovereigns. It was Sir Edward Stanley
who took so conspicuous a part in the Battle of
Flodden. It was Sir William Stanley who,
after fighting side by side with his kinsman, Lord
Stanley, on the field of Bosworth, at the close of
that desperate struggle, placed the crown, torn
from the helmet of Richard 111., on the head of
Henry VII., till then Earl of Richmond. It was
James, the seventh Earl of Derby, commonly called
The Great Stanley," who, by reason of his loyal
adherence to the fortunes of King Charles 1.,
died the death on the scaffold under the axe of
the executioner. The principal interest of the
narrative dates, naturally enough, from the creation
of Thomas, first Earl of Derby, in the year 1485,
and culm mates, it may be said, when the writer
comes to the record, in his eighth chapter, of the
life and career of the present Earl, of Edward
George Geoffrey, Fourteenth Earl of Derby, who,
in point of fact, is the real hero of the buok. An-
other, of course briefer, chapter is devoted to the
ex-Preinier's heir, the Right lion. Lord Stanley,
her Majesty's Principal Secretary of Stat.!. for Fo-
reign Affairs—the three concluding chapters of the
volume, the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, re-
lating respectively to the Family Mansion
and Park at Knowsley, to the Family Arms with
the motto Sans Changer, and to the circumstances
which necessitated amid general regret the with-
drawal of the noble Earl a few months since front
his high position as First Lord of the Treasury.
To Lord Derby himself the main interest attaching
to the volume is, we repeat, directly traceable.
And the account here given of him as a statesman,
as a scholar, as an administrator, as a Party
Chief, as three times Prime Minister of England,
as for upwards of forty years one of the most gifted
orators and debaters within the walls of Parliament,

is one in a great measure really worthy of the
theme, and will certainly be read with the highest
satisfaction by all those—whether Whig or Tory,
Liberal or Conservative, Radical or Constitu-
tionalist—who may take the volume in band, for
no matter how cursory an examination. At that
portion of the narrative in which the author of the
book comes to the consideration of Lord Derby's
extraordinary powers as an orator and as A
debater, he adduces, in the following order,
the opinions already expressed upon that
subject by Mr. Rochester, by Lord Macau-
lay, by Sir Edward l3ulwer Lytton (now Lord
Lytton), by Sir Archibald Alison, and by the Times
newspaper. And certainly the high eulogiums
pronounced by those writers will be borne out by the
present generation, by thousands of Lord Derby's
own immediate contemporaries, who have hung
delighted upon

"- the pure Saxon of that silver style."
Before closing our remarks upon Mr. Pollard's very
interesting volume, we would suggest the advisability,
in the probable event of its running soon into a
second edition, the exceeding advisability, of its un-
dergoing at his hands a very considerable amount of
revision or emendation. For example, on opening
the volume at pages 178 and 179, we note ou those
two confronting pages no less than five errors of the
press or of the pen. Thus—the second line of the
first poetical quotation should run—
" Bert) Stanley meets—how Lnot here] Stanley scorns the
glance !"
While the first line of the second quotation should
run—

" Yet who not listens with delighted smile,"
not " delightful smile," which would be absurd•
Obviously, again, the passage, later on, should
read "ho had listened with awe to the :rolling
thunders of Burke, ho had witnessed the brilliant
but harmless lightnings [not " thunders" again !] of
Sheridan" and so forth—for Whitebread reading of
course Whitbread—slips, all these, admitting of
easy rectification. By one of these casual over-
sights of the press, LDrd M icaulay is made to say
that the Earl " male himself, upon the instant, 0.4
it were, master of his art, instead of affecting this
[read, rather, effecting this] slowly, ' at the expense
of an audience.'" The book is worth emending, thug,
because it is really and eminently worthy of preser-
vation.

It is understood that the too vacant commis"
sionvrships of Irish National Education are to be
filled up by the appointment of Mr. Justice
Morris in place of the late Lord Bellew and °I
the Rev. Charles Morrell in room of the Rev'
John Hall, the former as a Catholic and the
latter as a Presbyterian representative ou the

board.
The Gentleman's Magazine appears in a new for
noW
and under new management. Its place
among the shilling monthlies. at
Mdlle. Artot seems to have made a furore
Moscow. After a representation of " Otello 511
was called for, says the Ga:e
tie Musicale, fourteen

times.