Dutch in the seventeenth century. There is also a chapter on economic development, but Mr. Van Loon does not enter into a study of the effects of Dutch liberalism on foreign trade, which, in the eyes of the Tariff Reform Party of England, was the main factor in the fall. He rather indicates the rivalry of England and the lack of naval preparedness as the essential factor. The story is told in a kindly sort of way, with considerable literary skill, and should appeal to the general reader as well as to the college class.

A general survey of the Western Orient and Europe from B. C. 44 to A. D. 1453 is still, in spite of Gibbon's genius, a legitimate field for historical enterprise. The drift of world politics today gives an additional interest to such a history when it bears the attractive title East and West through Fifteen Centuries (Longmans, Green and Company, 1916; xxvi, 605, xii, 675 pp.) which Brigadier-General G. F. Young has given to his work, of which two volumes-out of four-are now published. The volumes are imposing in size and attractively gotten up. A series of illustrations in half-tone runs through the text and an apparatus of maps is added. But as for the history itself one is compelled to admit, as one lays it down, a saddening sense of the unrealized possibilities. The author is not without a sense of the need of keeping up with recent scholarship, and has familiarized himself with its results where they are readily accessible. But the book is written without a real mastery of the technique of scholarship, and in some ways its conclusions seem little short of crude. It is surely at least a questionable judgment to regard Constantine as the greatest of all the emperors; but, whatever one may think of his personal genius, the empire under him did not reach "a higher plane of civilization and enlightenment than before." There is no hint of the social and economic decay which made his vast empire a hollow shell, and only a familiar narrative of the so-called migrations. The style is straightforward and reveals the honesty of purpose of the author, who as an amateur has done well. But this is not a task for amateurs.

The Manchester University Press continues to publish the excellent series of historical texts and studies of which mention has been made in earlier numbers of this QUARTERLY. Two volumes have recently appeared which will add to the high regard in which this series is held by all students of history. The chronicle of John of Reading, monk of Westminster, covering the years 1346 to 1367, and the parallel annal known as the anonymous Canterbury Chronicle, have been brought together and edited with exhaustive textual and historical notes by the competent hand of Professor James Tait, under the title, Chronica

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Johannis de Reading et Anonymi Cantuariensis, 1346–1367 (Manchester, at the University Press, 1914; xi, 394 pp.).

Likewise the text of The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole (Manchester, at the University Press, 1915; xxi, 284 pp.) has been edited and published by Margaret Deanesly in the same series. This fourteenth-century hermit and poet should be of interest to all students of medieval mysticism, and his Latin works have not been published before. The work of the editor has apparently been done with scrupulous care and the apparatus is helpful for a further study of the mystical trend to which Rolle contributed.

In the last few years a great change has come over the character of history text-books. The social and descriptive history has largely replaced the old, annalistic manual. The change has been especially notable lately in English history where the dynastic outlines held their own longer than our presidential divisions. But few better books for schools can be found, so far as interesting and picturesque narrative goes, than Dr. F. W. Tickner's Social and Industrial History of England (London, Longmans, Green and Company, 1915; xii, 721 pp.), which covers practically all phases of the nation's life except the purely political. Unfortunately, for American high-school use it contains some details which lie quite beyond the sphere of secondary school culture-as for instance in the matter of Elizabethan literature-but a discriminating teacher will find it very useful; and for junior college classes it should be a welcome handbook.

The handy little volume by Mr. George M. Priest of Princeton University entitled Germany Since 1870 (New York, Ginn and Company, 1915; xvi, 199 pp.) is well arranged and clearly written, and while obviously intended for the class-room should be of service to the general reader as well.

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