156 A Century of Science 



Protector in belittling Vane. The remarkable ad- 

 vance in fairness and breadth of view which histori- 

 cal studies have made within the last fifty years 

 is nowhere better illustrated than in the spirit in 

 which the seventeenth century in England is treated 

 by Masson and Gardiner as contrasted with Ma- 

 caulay. It is no longer the fashion to depict indi- 

 viduals or parties as wholly saintlike or quite the 

 reverse, and it is beginning to be practically recog- 

 nized that there are two sides to almost every ques- 

 tion. 



The need for an adequate life of Sir Harry Vane 

 has been most thoroughly and admirably satisfied 

 by Mr. Hosmer. As a biography and as a histori- 

 cal monograph, it deserves to be ranked among the 

 best books of the day. It paints a lifelike picture 

 of the man, and it describes, in a broad, generous 

 spirit and with keen philosophical insight, the 

 causal succession of events in one of the most 

 momentous political contests the world has ever 

 seen. We are getting far enough away from the 

 seventeenth century to realize the critical impor- 

 tance of the struggle in which kingship was struck 

 down in England just as it was attaining unchecked 

 supremacy in all the other great nations of Europe. 

 We can put the Great Rebellion into its proper 

 place in the series of conflicts which have so far 



