1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 275 preaching this very system, had found his posthumous converts. The church had undersold the Jews. An article on horse-racing in Italy collects a number of instances to show the universality of the sport in medieval cities. These are drawn chiefly from Bologna, Verona, Ferrara, and Florence. The list might be extended to the very outskirts of North Italy. The following lines dated by Luigi da Porto on 7 March 1509 at the opening of the great war of Venice might well have been written in England in August 1914 : ' If I don't send the Barbary, as I promised, to run the polio in Udine this St. George's day, it will be because I fancy that throughout all the Venetian state there is bound to be something else to do than to run the usual races this year.' Though inherited from ancient Rome, the regular races there were instituted later than in most towns. The far-famed races down the Corso from the Piazza del Popolo were due to Paul II in 1467, after he had moved from the Lateran to the Palazzo Venezia at the lower end of the Via Lata, afterwards named the Corso. More information on the origin of riderless races would be welcome. In the only early illustrations known to me, such as the fresco in the Schifanoia Palace at Ferrara and the pictures in Sercambi's Chronicle, the horses are mounted. The races held outside a city by its besiegers were no doubt often intended as an insult to the occupants, as the author states, but they also corresponded to the inevit- able football of our soldiers, whether in the field, or, as at Ladysmith, besieged. They relieved the ennui and heightened the morale of a citizen force deprived of its municipal festival. Such were the races held on San Giovanni's day by the Florentine auxiliaries in Rome when resisting Henry VII's attempt to be crowned in St. Peter's. The last three articles will be more familiar as being drawn mainly from English sources. La jm d^une race is the tragedy of the Young Pretender ; the Grandeur et decadence d'un Mros. is that of the duke of Brunswick, the hero of Minden, and the victim of Valmy and Auerstadt. M. Rodocanachi does justice to the real talent of the old soldier, who redeemed the fiasco of Valmy by a skilful retreat, and all but turned the for- tunes of Auerstadt, which was fought against his orders. Mr. Vere Foster's Family Correspondence of the two Duchesses is the text from which the author draws his concluding article. Whether he is utilizing his own stores of know- ledge or reviewing the work of others M. Rodocanachi is never dull, for he has the gift of selection and a pretty wit. E. Armstrong. De Opvattingen over onze Oudere Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis bijde Hollandsche Historici der XV le en XV lie Eeuw. Door Dr. H. Kampinga. (The Hague : Nijhoff, 1917.) This very interesting book, originally a thesis for the doctor's degree at Leyden University, deals with the conceptions of Holland's earlier history entertained by the historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although there is no lack of shrewd comments, and although the book as a whole is very readable, the author has chosen an unfortunate arrangement. He divides his material according to the historical problems treated by the old historians, with the result that the continuity of the development of T 2
