Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/368

This page needs to be proofread.

358 Reviews of Books eral Council held in Toronto, in September, 1892. This paper which he entitled "The Protestant Reformation: its Spiritual Character and its Fruits in the Individual Life," clearly indicated the standpoint from which by preference he views the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Between the ground there taken and that of his later volume there is pos- sibly a shade of difference. In the former he appears to regard the re- ligious as the only correct interpretation of the great movement in ques- tion. "It is impossible," he there writes, " to state all the various ways in which men have misread the Reformation, but for the sake of showing its intrinsic spiritual character let me refer to three, which may be called the political, the intellectual, and the social." In his book, on the other hand, while retaining in great measure the phraseology of his earlier essay, he admits that other views may in themselves be correct ; that, for example, the movement may be treated as an intellectual move- ment with Erasmus then as its central figure, and "studied but scarcely explained from this point of view." Essentially, however, there is no change ; and the position is assumed, and correctly assumed, in our opinion, that "when Luther is taken as the central figure, one — the religious — must dominate all the other points of view, and the various intricate intermingled movements must be regarded as the environment of this one central impulse. ' ' It is not necessary to say more in this connection than that Dr. Lindsay has carried out his thought consistently, forcibly and in a genu- ine scholarly fashion. The style is fresh and animated. The book is as remote as possible from being heavy reading. It avoids unnecessary minutiae, makes no pretense of being exhaustive, and contains few or no marginal notes. Intended for general readers, it naturally avoids any display of authorities, although it is evidently built upon a firm founda- tion of solid scholarship studiously hidden away from view. The inter- est is the greater from the fact that the author, as he tells us, has striven to show that "although Luther's life has been written scores of times there still is room for another, — for one which will be careful to set Luther in the environment of the common social life of his time." Dr. Lindsay does indeed take the pains to disclaim the pretension that his book is even a sketch of the reformer's life written in this way. But no reader, especially of the chapters treating of Luther's more intimate life, will deny him the credit of having achieved success in this direction. Henry M. Baird. The Silver Map of the World ; A Geographical Essay, including some Critical Remarks on the Zeno Narrative and Chart of 1558 and on the Curious Misconception as to the Position of the Dis- coveries made by Frobisher. By Miller Christy. (London : Henry Stevens, Son and Stiles. 1900. Pp. xii, 71, 10 maps.) The problem of geographical discovery, and of every other kind of discovery, never was and never can be the adjustment of a newly dis-