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NA TURE 



\Dec. 31, 1874 



collecting the fresh and unbiassed opinions of eminent 

 men in many walks of life, not only of artists, musicians, 

 engineers, but eminent lawyers, judges, administrators, 

 scholars, divines. No doubt it is possible that some of 

 these classes would have failed to appreciate the necessity 

 for answering the queries addressed to them, and the 

 answers might have proved scanty ; but, if obtained, the 

 comparison must have afforded most interesting results. 



Though I have spoken of Mr. Galton's conclusions as 

 being in some degree disappointing, it ought not for a 

 moment to be supposed that they are not worth the 

 trouble incurred by the investigator and his correspon- 

 dents. It is the extreme difliculty of the problem 

 attacked which makes Mr. Galton's efforts seem less 

 successful than some might have e.xpected. The origin 

 of genius or conspicuous success is the last thing which 

 will be explained in the long progress of science. All 

 that ought to have been expected was that Mr. Galton 

 might form some comparative estimate of the several 

 component tendencies which usually contribute to its 

 production. If we look to practical conclusions, the in- 

 ferences to be drawn from the answers concerning educa- 

 tion are alone worth all the labour spent upon the book. 

 The fact that about a hundred of the leading scientific 

 men of the day are mostly in favour of a wide and varied 

 range of studies in the school and college curriculum, 

 seems to me a conclusion of great significance. 



W. Stanley Jevjns 



GREEN'S "HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH 

 PEOPLE " 

 A Short History of the English People. By J. R. 

 Green, M.A., Examiner in the School of Modern 

 History, Oxford. With Maps and Tables. (London: 

 Macmillan and Co., 1874.) 



WE deem this work to come within the province of a 

 scientific journal for two reasons : — First, Mr.Green, 

 so far as we know, is the first who, throwing aside with just 

 contempt the " drum and trumpet " method of writing 

 history, has attempted to trace the various influences or 

 forces that have combined to mould the English people 

 and make them what they are at the present day ; second, 

 because he has noticed in detail certain important 

 episodes in the history of English science. The only 

 work we know of that approaches in plan the history of 

 Mr. Green is Knight's " Pictorial History of England ;" 

 but it is only on the surface that any resemblance exists. 

 Knight's history is divided into sections, each of which 

 deals with one of the various ways in which English 

 energy has found scope— in politics and war, in literature 

 and science, in commerce, agriculture, religion, and social 

 life ; but no attempt whatever is made to show the result 

 of the combined influence of the forces acting and reacting 

 through these departments on the English people as a 

 whole. In reality, the distinction drawn between these 

 various spheres of human energy is as arbitrary as the 

 distinction between ancient and modern history ; one 

 might as well attempt to show the resultant of any number 

 of physical forces, by attending separately to the action 

 of each, without paying any heed to their action in com- 

 bination. Mr. Green deserves all the credit due to the 

 originator of a bold and happy idea, and still greater 



credit for having worked out this idea with marvellous 

 success. His history he calls a "short" one, but in the 

 space of his Soo pages we venture to say he conveys a 

 fuller and juster idea of the progress of the English nation 

 than any previous author has done ; nay, in very few 

 instances has the whole life of any one period been more 

 clearly and adequately set forth than will be found to be 

 the case in these pages. 



"At the risk," Mr. Green says in his preface, "of sacri- 

 ficing much that was interesting and attractive in itself, 

 and which the constant usage of our historians has made 

 familiar to English readers, 1 have preferred to pass lightly 

 and briefly over the details of foreign wars and diplomacies, 

 the personal adventures of kings and nobles, the pomp of 

 courts, or the intrigues of favourites, and to dwell at length 

 on the incidents of that constitutional, intellectual, and 

 social advance in which we read the history of the nation 

 itself ... I have restored to their place among the 

 achievements of Englishmen, the 'Faerie Oueen' and 

 the ' Novum Organum.' 1 have set Shakspere among the 

 heroes of the Elizabethan age, and placed the scientific 

 inquiries of the Royal Society side by side with the vic- 

 tories of the New Model." 



Mr. Green begins his history in " Old England," as he 

 happily calls Sleswick, the fatherland of the English people ; 

 and with charm.ing clearness and simplicity and well-sus- 

 tained enthusiasm, traces step by step their ever-widening 

 development from the time the original conqueringcolonists 

 landed in Kent down to the present century. Mr. Green's 

 power of discovering and bringing into bold rehef the 

 true causes of events, and of exhibiting in few and telling 

 words the real characters of the multitude of actors that 

 have played their busy parts on the restless stage of 

 English history, is rare. We can only repeat that his 

 work is the only existing _history of England that has 

 been written on anything like scientific principles. 



Throughout his work Mr. Green gives prominence to 

 the intellectual development of the people ; in an inte- 

 resting section on the Universities, in chap. iv. (1215 — 

 1217), in conection with the origin and growth of Oxford, 

 a masterly sketch is given of the life and work of Roger 

 Bacon, and the premature birth of English scientific re- 

 search. Again, in a chapter on " the Revolution," a more 

 detailed and thoroughly intelligent account is given of 

 the scientific work of Francis Bacon, and of the "Begin- 

 nings of English Science," including the birth of the 

 Royal Society. These sketches show that Mr. Green 

 has not only mastered his authorities, but is also perfectly 

 competent to trace the various stages by which science 

 has attained its present all-important position. And, 

 as the world progresses, historians of this class will be 

 more and more in demand, for if things hold on in their 

 present course, it will become more and more clearly 

 recognised that the only satisfactory history of a people 

 is the history of the growth of science, in its widest 

 sense, among that people. 



As an example of Mr. Green's method and style, we 

 quote the paragraph, in connection with Francis Bacon, 

 on the " Beginnings of English Science" : — 



" It was this lofty conception of the position and des- j 

 tiny of natural science which Bacon was the first to" 

 impress upon mankind at large. The age was one in 

 which knowledge, as we have seen, was passing to fields 

 of inquiry which had till then been unknown, in which 

 Keplci- and Galileo were creating modern astronomy, in 



