630 Revieivs of Books tion. It would seem also as if the comparatively slight connections with continental events were more carefully and skilfully presented than is usually the case. France falls to the third editor, Mr. Leathes, who on the whole makes a strikingly good use of the limited seventy pages as- signed; he is more successful in his treatment of detail than most of his associates, and is both clear and suggestive. A striking feature of his statement is his adverse judgment of Richelieu, whose title to greatness is strongly questioned. He is denied " creative and beneficent states- manship ", and is credited with establishing a " lawless despotism " that brings on the Revolution ; he had never comprehended the " true bases of national prosperity ", and " had revealed to the French monarchy the weakness of all those traditional and conventional restraints which had limited the power of earlier Kings for good, and more especially for evil" (p. 157). Interspersed between the sections of these main studies come the chapters dealing with minor fields. First there is the uneven treatment by H. F. Brown of " The Valtelline ". This is absurdly detailed in the first part of the period and scanty in the later; Mr. Brown's ingenious •defense of his detail on the ground of the reflection by the Valtelline factions of the policies and efforts of the great states is decidedly weak- ened by his admission that most of the complexity was caused by the efforts of these factions to sell out to the highest bidder. A similar war of factions seems to be responsible for most of the detail in which Mr. Reddaway luxuriates in the first part of his treatment of Scandinavia; from the accession of Gustavus Adolphus, however, the work is remark- ably good. Mr. Hume's chapter on Spain is of course excellent, not- withstanding its rather naive display of the " inedit " and its neglect of the Spanish contributions to the war in Germany (not dealt with by Ward). The presentation of the Papal policy by Brosch brings out clearly the controlling motives, but is likely to be criticized for a some- what too pronounced Protestant tone, as in the statement that with the success of the Catholic Powers 1627-1629 " the whole of modern civilisa- tion and the continuous development of learning would have been forcibly stopped, and that for no short time" (p. 677). Mr. Edmundson's Hol- land is excellent; he is to be given the credit of being almost the only contributor who gives adequate attention to intellectual conditions, even though we may suspect him of going too far in ascribing to the Dutch in this their Golden Age " a supremacy in the domains of science, of learning, of letters, and of the arts, as indisputable as their supremacy upon the seas" (p. 716). The treatment of colonial development by Egerton is much too detailed and is injured by too rigorous keeping within the prescribed time limits. The closing chapter by Boutroux on Descartes has been already mentioned; it leaves us with an increased regret that the writers did not see fit to sacrifice some of the political and military detail in order to secure room for other things. The bibliography appended to this volume is much more extensive
