proposals to Elizabeth, but-as he says, not with the intention of really marrying her; but to prevent her from listening to any proposals from Richmond. Bucke, however, is very partial to the house of York.

Upon the whole, we believe that of all the crimes with which it has been the fashion to load the memory of Richard, the only one that can fairly be brought home to him is the murder of his nephews; and from that we fear his character cannot be cleared.

The execution of the noblemen his enemies, was after the most approved fashion of the day, as followed by all parties; and to charge it as a peculiar crime on Richard would be to do him a peculiar injustice. He exemplifies, as Mr. Turner very properly observes, the consequence of once getting a bad character.' The treatment of the unfortunate Earl of Warwick by Henry the Seventh was equal in atrocity to any of the deeds that have been charged on Richard. Yet his character has been handed down to posterity, not with forbearance merely, but with eulogy.

The brief reign of Richard was marked by anxious and successful endeavors to ameliorate the state of society and better the condition of the people, by the enactment of many wise, liberal, and judicious laws. He reformed abuses; and his acts of private benevolence are multitudinous. He gave a pension of £100 a year to Lady Oxford, the wife of his untiring enemy, during her husband's exile, and while in hostility to him. He entrusted to Lady Hastings the keeping of all her castles; a noble mark of confidence and presented her with the wardship of her son and heir; a most valuable pecuniary favor, which doubtless many powerful men were seeking for. He gave an annuity of 200 marks to the Duchess of Buckingham, and paid her husband's debts; as he did also those of the Bishop of Exeter, his mortal enemy; and performed many other acts of benevolence for which any other man would have been held up to the admiration of the world. But he had committed one cruel and unpardonable sin; and therefore his very good has been evil spoken of. Lord Bacon, who has recorded everything against him, says that his cruelties ' and parricides, in the opinion of all men, weighed down his vir'tues,' thus admitting the unquestionable existence of the latter; and adds, that he was a king jealous for the honor of the English 'nation.'* He fell the victim of treachery unparalleled in those whom he trusted and honored most; and he has never yet had justice done him, we mean by the world in general.

We are sorry to find that Miss Lawrance has brought her labors to a close. She conceives that the field of modern English history has of late been so extensively and ably reaped,

* Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh, p. 2.

that little remains to reward the gleaner.' Yet Miss Strickland is about to thrust her sickle into it; and why not Miss Lawrance? Her sickle is as sharp and her arm as able, and we doubt not that her sheaf would be quite as full as her neighbor's. We half suspect that her tastes are not that way tending. In her histories of the middle (or as she delighteth to call them, the mediaval) ages, she finds herself more at home, and herein lies one great point of difference between our two authors. Miss Strickland spares no pains to do justice to her subject, and having done that to the best of her abilities, she appears to be satisfied; and so indeed she may be but Miss Lawrance, while she does justice to her subject, luxuriates in it, and commits herself to it with an abandonment, and a kind of joyous identification, that shows it to be to her a labor of love. Of this, her two chapters on society during the middle ages, and on the English poets, are a sufficient proof. To these chapters we must confine our notice of Miss Lawrance's volume; which we do the rather, because, as we stated in our notice of her first, her opinion of the middle ages very nearly agrees with our own. We still think, however, that her representations on certain points are rather couleur de rose; and we must notice these exceptions only, because we have no room at present to do more.

It is principally with regard to the condition of the lower classes, and the influence of certain institutions on it, that we differ from Miss Lawrance, though we are afraid that what we shall say may be somewhat unsatisfactory, as we must rather indicate than discuss. Perhaps we shall put the matter in the smallest possible compass by saying at once, that we do not conceive the condition of the lower orders of society to have been so much better in the middle ages than it is now, as Miss Lawrance seems to suppose; and we must briefly illustrate our meaning.

In the first place-though the means of procuring the necessaries of life might perhaps be more abundant in some caseswages, &c.,-those necessaries themselves were not always to be procured. One half of the year's provision was to be laid in before the winter, and if the winter's stores were insufficient, 'there were no markets from whence an additional supply could be 'obtained, and the lord of wide estates and numerous manors 'might be reduced to the most annoying privation through the 'mismanagement of the mistress of the family.'-p. 30. Now if this happened to great and rich men, to what must not the poor be liable?

Again; speaking of the extensive charities of the time, Miss Lawrance concludes, but at a time when political convulsions 'might reduce the loftiest to beggary, when famine might in a single winter consume the savings of years, or pestilence sweep

away the whole family, and leave the aged man desolate, that 'spontaneous and abundant charity was not too great.'-p. 18. Surely such things as these, the pestilence perhaps excepted, could scarcely happen in our days, and in England.

Neither can we think that all those undefinable enjoyments which we so emphatically describe by the word comfort, were known in those days as they are at present. It is only when civilization has nearly reached its height, that the numerous minute conveniences which make up the sum of comfort are to be met with. In proportion as civilization is incomplete, luxury and want, splendor and squalor, will alternate with each other. Fresh green rushes might have been strewn in the halls of the noble every day, or in those of the affluent plebeian every week; but we have it on the authority of contemporary writers, that in the houses of the lower ranks, these vegetable carpets were suffered to continue till the accumulation of filth beneath them. was ready to breed infection. The dreadful pestilences of the middle ages were probably owing in some measure to such causes; and the horrible cutaneous disorders with which the lower classes were afflicted, from wearing woollen next the skin, which was never changed till worn out, were never fully eradicated till the use became general in later days, of (saving Miss Lawrance's presence) linen shirts, and their feminines.

Last, not least, the uncertain tenure on which property and life were held is sufficient to turn the balance in favor of later times. The small butcher' might have his tea-spoons and his silver brooches and clasps; or the tanner his mazer pitcher' worth three shillings (£2 5s.), and his two robes worth a mark, and cape worth half a mark; but if robes, and cape, and life were at the discretion of arbitrary power, he was not greatly to be envied.

At the first tournament held in London, in the reign of Edward the Third,

The scaffold on which Philippa and her ladies were placed fell down, fortunately without doing any injury, but so incensed was the young king at the builders, that he ordered them to be instantly executed, and it was only the earnest entreaties of the gentle Philippa, who actually threw herself on her knees before him, that prevailed with him to grant their pardon.'-p. 120.

Now we certainly think that any rational carpenter would wish to live on what he could procure even for a shilling a day under the government of some modern Sardanapalus like George the Fourth, rather than with two costly robes and one mazer pitcher, to be hanged by the great Plantagenet.

We perfectly agree with Miss Lawrance, that the state of

society in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was preferable in many respects to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth.

Chivalry no doubt was highly useful in tempering the spirit of the dominant orders during the middle ages. Nevertheless we think Miss Lawrance overrates its value. When equal laws and rights were wanting, the power of the sword, directed by the precepts of benevolence, might possibly be the next best thing. It would be useful only during a certain state of society, when man was on his transit to better times. Its hold was on the imagination and on the heart; judgment and justice, strictly speaking, had nothing to do with it. And hence when reason, and justice, and utility were elevated to the rank of guiding powers, and man became possessed of security as a right, it naturally died away. It could not influence greatly the happiness of the masses, and we much doubt whether it ever appeared to them so splendid an institution as it seems to have been to us; and what it appeared to those who were contemporary with it, as far as they were concerned, it must have been. Proximity lessens marvel, and distance is required for every object to ensure its full effect. If we stood beneath the arch of the rainbow, its glories would elude our sight.

Art. VII. 1. The Bible Monopoly Inconsistent with Bible Circulation: a Letter addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Bexley. By ADAM THOMSON, D.D. 8vo. PP. 92. Snow.

2. Monopoly and Unrestricted Circulation of the Sacred Scriptures Contrasted. By JOHN CAMPBELL, Author of 'Jethro.' 18mo. pp. 106. Snow.

A

FTER all that has been attempted, by poetry and oratory, in the way of eulogy on the art of printing, its excellence and value have never yet been fully expressed nor even understood. Mankind have been already so long familiar with its wonders, that it is not easy for them rightly to conceive of a time when the state of human communication was different from what it is at present; and still greater is the difficulty of correctly apprehending the nature and extent of that difference. What would. the world have thought, in the middle ages, at the sight of one of our great metropolitan printing establishments, springing up at once in the midst of Europe in its finished state? What would speedily become the condition of our British population were the art of printing to be now prohibited, and men reduced once more to the pen and the pencil for the accomplishment of

all those objects which are meanwhile effected by type, stereotype, the hand-press, and steam power? What would be the amazement of Guido de Jars were he to arise from the dead, to be introduced into Bagster's or the Oxford Bible-warehouse, and to be presented with the glorious results of modern printing in all its varieties of form and language?* We now look back, with wonder and pity, at the labors of such a man; but perhaps we are ourselves, in one respect, in a condition which will supply to the students of a future age materials for feelings of still greater amazement,-feelings partaking less of compassion than of contempt and censure-when they shall read of the restrictions which are in the nineteenth century permitted to be laid upon this glorious invention-restrictions, too, which chiefly relate to the multiplication of copies of the word of God. The Bible monopoly has of late, however, excited very considerable attention, and it is probable that the bulk of our readers have, more or less, been led to reflect upon the subject. The labors of Dr. Thomson and of others, who have fought by his side, have done great and good service in the cause, and the results already realized are well worth all the toil and all the talent that have been expended in the controversy.

Of the present state of the question we may have occasion to speak at the close; but meanwhile we proceed to inquire a little into the legal character of the patent-a subject which has not yet been brought before the public mind during the existing contest. It is possible that the people of England may be laboring under a strong delusion, and fearing where there is no cause of fear. On this point we have an instance upon record as curious as it is serious. By letters patent of King James I. the Stationers' Company and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had obtained the exclusive privilege of printing almanacks, by virtue of a supposed copyright in the crown. This monopoly had been submitted to, from the date of the grant in the former century, till Thomas Carnan, a spirited bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard, commenced a publication of almanacks in defiance of the patent. He greatly improved the article, and the sale was very considerable. The two universities and the Stationers' Company filed a Bill in the court of Exchequer for an injunction to restrain him, praying that the copies sold might be

* A curious fact respecting this prototype of patient penmen was brought to light in the year 1796, at the sale of Sir William Burrell's books, among which was a MS. Bible on vellum, beautifully written with the pen and illuminated. This was the work of half a century; Guido began it in the 40th year of his age, and brought his work to a close in his 90th year, anno 1294, in the reign of Philip the Fair, as appeared by the writer's own autograph at the front of the book.

VOL. IX.

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