Hoping that the vital importance of the subject which I have so
imperfectly considered will induce you to pardon the length of this
communication, I remain, as ever,
Very sincerely yours,
---- ----
* * * * *
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_The History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy._ By JOHN FOSTER
KIRK. Two Volumes. 8vo. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co.
There is probably no period of European history which has been so
thoroughly explored and so richly illustrated as the sixteenth
century,--that century of great men, lofty ideas, and gigantic
enterprise, of intellectual activity, and of tremendous political and
religious struggles. The numerous scholars of Continental Europe who
have made this era the subject of their researches have generally been
content to dig that others might plant and reap, sending forth in
abundance the raw material of history to be woven into forms adapted to
popular appreciation. In England, also, but only within a very recent
period, much solid labor of the same kind has been performed. But the
Anglo-Saxon mind, on some sides comparatively deficient in plastic and
inventive power, as well as in that of abstract thought, seems to
possess in a peculiar degree the faculty of comprehending, representing,
and idealizing the varied phases and incessant motion of human life and
character.
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