Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/639

Acton: Cambridge Modern History 629 The present volume deals with a period of unusual vigor and com- plexity of entanglements — a period then peculiarly ill-adapted to suc- cessful co-operative treatment. The space assigned is liberal, 799 pages being given to the period 1610-1660. This is nearly double that given in the Histoire Generate ; but as there is considerable divergence in the plans of volume and topic division, it is not easy to compare the two works directly. The Histoire Generale list of topics seems at first glance the more comprehensive, but this is due mainly to the different lines of division. Thus the Cambridge History gives absolutely no space in this volume to Eastern Europe (to which volume V. of the Histoire Generale gives four chapters) ; on the other hand there are here two excellent chapters on Scandinavia, a field that is deferred by the Histoire Generale to the volume on the age of Louis XIV. A disproportionate amount of space we are prepared to find assigned in the Cambridge volume to British conditions (250 pp.) ; we should not complain if it were not for the inclusion of one entirely superfluous chapter (Mr. Clutton-Brock's " The Fantastic School of English Poetry ", dealing with the age of Donne and Herbert). KuUurgcschichte fares rather badly in both works ; but while the general treatment of Art and Science in the His- toire Generate may seem to promise more. Professor Boutroux's chapter in the Cambridge on " Descartes and Cartesianism " is both better in itself and more in line with the plan of treatment. As to method and style, the French work maintains a clear superiority, most of the sections in the English being below its average in clarity, attractiveness, and sense of proportion. The greater bulk of the present volume is due to the almost unrestrained yielding to the tendency to encyclopedic detail that has marked the whole undertaking; whether designed or not, there can be no doubt that the editors secure a painful uniformity in this respect at least. There is evidently no chance of reform on the point; but we need not therefore shut our eyes to the fact that encyclopedic detail is often very useful, and that in almost every case these dry and close-packed pages are marked by a high degree of accuracy and schol- arly grasp. The chief section of the book is constituted by Professor Ward's able treatment of the war as a whole, in its narrower sense; thorough as is the writer's grasp of the field, he has little gift of narration, leaves no vivid impressions of either men or events, and casts no new light on problems. The closing chapter, " The Peace of Westphalia ", is how- ever in all likelihood the best statement to be found in our language of the development and the results of the long negotiations. Next in im- portance (slightly larger in space) comes the section devoted to Great Britain and Ireland, 1625-1660; Dr. Prothero, an acknowledged master in the field, does the most of it, and is ably helped by W. A. Shaw, J. R. Tanner, Hume Brown, R. Dunlop, and C. H. Firth. While we may per- haps be surprised that this part of the broth should have required so many cooks, we cannot cavil much at the carrying on of the collabora-