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No. 424, May 8, 1858.] THE LEADER. 449
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MK. FORSTER'S ESSAYS. Historical and Bio...
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THE ART OF WAR. Elementary History °f *l...
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No. 424, May 8, 1858.] The Leader. 449
No . 424 , May 8 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER . 449
Mk. Forster's Essays. Historical And Bio...
MK . FORSTER'S ESSAYS . Historical and Biographical Essays . By John Forster . 2 v . bls . Chapman and Hall . The reader who expects to find in these volumes mere reprints of essays contributed to Quarterly Reviews will be pleasurably disappointed . ^ Mr . Forster has now published , for the first time , two essays , one of which , at least , will take rank among the standard works of reference for the history of England during the seventeenth century . We refer to that on the Grand ¦ Remonstrance . Of the historical essays , indeed , only one is a republication , and that has been developed by important additions . So far , Mr . Forster is justified in claiming for the contents of his first -volume the character of original contributions to history . Of the biographical essays , four have appeared hi tlieQuarterlies , but all have been largely amplified and elaborately revised , and , as Mr . Forster says , they were from the first , not reviews in the ordinary sensebut independent biographical studies , illustrating the lives and
, works . of favourite English writers from a point of view determined by the author himself ; and thus superior in freshness , interest , and value , to any m & ve analyses of works upon a larger scale . " The many additions in the present publication , " says the preface , " are meant to g ive to the design greater scope and fulness . ' They are most considerable in the memoirs of Foote and Steele , and in the former particularly the picture has been rendered more complete by citations judiciously selected , and accompanied by commentaries which prov e Mr . Forster to be almost as much a master of the manners of the times as Foote himself . The biographical essays , we should remind the reader , treat of Daniel Defoe , Sir liichard Steele , Charles Churchill , sind ltichard Foote ; the historical , of the Grand llemonstrance , the . Tlaritagenets and Tudors , and the Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell . Of the historical , that on thy Grand Itemonstranoe is the most remarkable ,
and we wish to direct especial attention to the fact that they who read Mr . Forster ' s first volume will study in its pages a magnificent passage of English history -which has never before been presented to their observation . They may have read Lingard and Plume , Clarendon and May ; they may have thumbed a score of modern compilations without knowing what ^ vas that glorious llemonstrance which widened the foundations of English liberty , or how it-struggled . through parliament during two months of fierce and passionate debate . Those discussions in the House of Commons formed , perhaps , the most important series of events prior to the erection of the King ' s standard at Nottingham , and yet , as Mr . Forster shows , they have been unaccountably slurred over by historians . Not even the Grand Eemonstrance itself is read or known . ' Mr . Forster has exhumed it from . , beueath the mighty monumental dulness of the Rushworth folios ,-where'it had
lain undisturbed for more than two centuries—an obscurity to which Clarendonhad deliberately consigned it , for Hyde was a garbler by instinct , and from his falsilied summary Hume and others have derived their imperfect and misleading -versions : Eight or nine lines in Hallam , and a dozen lines in X-ingard , ah 'incidental mention in Macaulay , and a paragraph in Disraeli , have told the living generation what it knows of the Grand Remonstrance , and if we turn to Godwin we find that he has not a word to say concerning that foundation of a new Magna Cbarta . Yet the State Paper itself exists , as it was signed and sealed on the ' Westminster Runnymede , breathing the lire , of the old Parliamentarians , embodying their case against the King , and constituting the most authentic statement ever put forth of the wrongs endured by all classes of the English people during the lirsfc fifteen years of the reign of Charles the First . Here it is , the most solid and unimpeachable ictures the condition
justification of the great rebellion in existence . It p of the three kingdoms at the time when the Long Parliament met ; it describes the measures taken to redress remediable wrongs , and deal out penalties to the wicked ; it appeals to the laws of the realm ; it warns the nation against factious inti-igues ; 5 t rebukes political backsliders ; it accuses the Romanising Bishops and the Papacy ; it calls upon the King to dismiss his infamous counsellors , and declares for the re-establishment of public liberty , the rights of the Commons , the freedom and the purity of religion . At the same time it is a moderate and dispassionate appeal , though warm and rapid in its ( low of argument , with " quick impatience of allusion , " a minute subdivision of'dctails , a " passionate x-eiteration of topics . " Presenting the pith of this memorable but half-forgotten document to the reader , Mr . Forster also undertakes to lender it intelligible . " For by the use of manuscript records as yet unemployed by any writer or historian , it will be possible to illustrate the abstract to be given of the llemonstrance , by an account of the debates respecting it in the House of Commons , and these with relation as well to itself as to its antecedents and consequences , far more interesting , because more minute and faithful , than any heretofore given to the world . " And what is Mr . Fors tor ' s authority ? The blurred and blotted manuscript of Sir Siinond D'Ewes , bound up in live volumes in the British Museum , written often on the : backs of letters , fragmentary , irregular , often all but illegible , and now and then entirely so . Certainly , the fae-similc accompanying the essay compels us to believe that Mr . Forster encountered a most repulsive labour in deciphering those notes kept in parliament by Siiuond D'Ewes from 1040 to lu' 45 . Mr . Forster has not only supplied a full and critical analysis of the Grand Remonstrance , with an account of the circumstances under which it was introduced and debated , but he has painted most carefully and suggestively the bcenea in the House } of Commons during that protracted discussion , furnishing a striking contrast with the parliamentary life of the present day . All tins narrative has an interest—indeed a fascination—for these who care to trace the vicissitudes of the Rnglish constitution during the tempestuous epoch of the civil wars . What a singular state of manners is disclosed by the anecdote of an unknown messenger bringing to the House of Commons , forPyni , si letter containing a piece of rug that had covered a plague-wound , and designed to touch him with the infection , when one member objected to another taking notes , when motions were not permitted to be made in the House of Commons after noon , when African , pirates swept the coast of Cornwall , commanded in sonic cases by Englishmen—Sir Fmucis Verncy being supposed to have established himself among the pirates of Tuniswhence French scoured the Severn and the Dutch captured East Indiamen in the Channel , when Elizabeth Cottrcl was condemned to death for
stealing one of the King ' s dishes , when the soap monopolists so adulterated their manufacture that they burnt the laundresses fingers , and when , during the Irish rebellion , stripping , torture , mutilation , whipping , drowning , starvation—after the Persian fashion—and the disembowelling of women , were amon " the punishments inflicted by Catholic fury upon Protestantism . As Mr . Forster says , the historian May is no exaggerated or partial writer , and . the Grand Remonstrance authoritatively bears out his declarations . No one can pretend to study in its completeness the history of the period just antecedent to the great rebellion without carefully reading Mr . Forster ' s work—for a work of great research and ability it is- —on the Grand Remonstrance . He describes the House of Commons as it sat in those days—the chamber itself , the arrangement of the benches , the clerks' " . seats , the Speaker ' chair , the solemn , bearded , puritan reformers , the peaked and ruffed gentlemen , the steeple-hats and Spanish cloaks , the swords and bands , the forms of parliamentary procedure , and the progress of the debates . In
what spirit Mr . Forster writes maybe exemplified by a quotation of his last sentence : — " It was for late generations to enjoy what was thus toiled for so gallantly , and only with infinite suffering and terrible drawbacks won at last . But the Leaders of the Long Parliament 3 iave had tneir reward in the remembrance and gratitude of their descendants ; and it will bode ill to the free institutions of England when honour ceases to be paid to the men whom . Bishop Warburton truly characterized as the band of greatest geniuses for government that the world ever saw leagued together for one common cause . " In a similar tone , and with a similar intention , he has composed his brilliant "Sketch of Constitutional History" on the Plantagenets and the Tudors , including the reigns of the Henrys , L , II , III ., IV ., V ., YI ., VII ., and YIII ., and Edward I ., II ., and III , —the race that left the terrible legacy of prerogative and tyranny to the Stuarts . We need only add , that th . admirable paper on the Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell , suggested by M . Guizot ' s work , and originally published in the Edinburgh Review , has been enriched with additions , and improved by valuable references and revisions .
The Art Of War. Elementary History °F *L...
THE ART OF WAR . Elementary History ° f * l Progress of the Art of War . By Lieut .-Col . J . J . Graham . Bentley . The attention which the public has of late years devoted to the army , and the impetus arising therefrom , to the cause of careful military education , has had some effect in producing the beginning of a military literature . General history deals with military operations in the mass , and presents them to the reader as pictures in outline or simple records of results . The historian cannot find space for those details , nor has he often the capacity or knowledge requisite to enable him to narrate them with that method which alone render such narratives useful to the soldier . Nor does he give maps and plans without which even good descriptions are of little avail . To test this , let any one read one of the accepted histories of the campaign of 1815 , without other assistance than an ordinary map , and then let him read
Siborne or Charras with special maps and plans . Or to take another instance , read the account of Frederick ' s campaigns written by himself and then read ! N ~ iipier ' s Peninsular War . The reader will then see that one will give him clear and distinct conceptions and enable him to understand the reason ' s--of the movements made , the other will give him general and confused conceptions , unless he be a student of extraordinary capacity and military tastes . For the military student , indeed , it may be laid down as an axiom that no historical work on , his profession is of any value unless it be illustrated with diagrams and plans . It is for this and other reasons equally cogent that a separate military literature becomes necessary . But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the general reader will not find military literature interesting to him . Indeed , there is hardly any book more popular among educated men of all kinds than Napier ' s Peninsular War , and it may be said that wherever the style and ability of the writer is equal to the nreatness of the subject the same result will follow .
Civilians , however , will always read inilitai-y works for pleasure and the enlargement of their minds . The soldier should read them as a duty , just as the lawyer masters the statutes , the principles of jurisprudence , and the technical rules of his profession . All soldiers should know something of the history of the art of war , something of the campaigns of the great captains from Hannibal to Napoleon . It is not necessary that all soldiers should understand minutely either the history of war or the higher branches of their profession . The ordinary regimental oflicer may be the first of his kind , and yet far from a proficient m military science and military art . No greater error could be made by an administrator than would be made by him who should seek to over-educate regimental orticers . There are certain
duties to be performed which do not require any great capacity , which require a clear head , indeed , but not u high intellect ; a quick eye , moral and physical courage , a manly character , but not either any extensive knowledge of the history or the principles of war . It is not necessary that every regimental oflicer should be capable of commanding armies or performing stall" duties of any kind . If it were it would be unattainable ; and the effort to obtain it would deprive the army of the services of very valuable men . But far different is the case with regard to the scientific branches , the statl " , and in most cases the commanders of regiments . These should be as learned in their profession as the elite of the bar who become judges and chancellors ; the elite of our academies who become professors . In
order to bring young men of groat capacity out from the ranks of their brother ollicers , at least in the Line and the Guards , we must oiler them tho inducements of stall' promotion and regimental command . While- the ordinary ollicer need only have a general knowledge of war and . its history , and a minute and special knowledge of all that concerns tho management of liis company , the extraordinary ollicer , seeing that advancement would be the fruit of labour and the development of his faculties , would go beyond the knowledge of regimental details , nnd starting from them us from a base would wake conquests in the higher branches of his profession . It is for him that we need a good military literature which , while it would improve all who were tempted to study it , would bo tho armoury of tho man of a
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 8, 1858, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08051858/page/17/
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