REVIEWS.
The Growth of British Policy, an Historical Essay. By J. R. SEELEY. 2 vols. Cambridge University Press.
As THE title modestly indicates, The Growth of British Policy, does not pretend to be a history but an essay. The author has simply pondered deeply commonly accepted facts connected with a certain period of European history, and has attempted to show the relation of these facts to the contemporary development of England. He deals "not in narrative but in discussion." Represents " a book of large surveys and distant prospects" a sort of round-arm sketch, the details of which are left for others to work out.
The period treated is, roughly, that included between the accession of Elizabeth and the death of William III., when " the three king- doms were drawing together and acquiring stable mutual relations, while the complex whole was taking up a secure position with respect to continental powers."
Here we have the only hint which the author thinks worth while to give the reader as to what he means by British policy. It is British policy, in distinction from a merely English policy on the one hand ; and on the other national, that is, a policy which takes in the interests of the people, in distinction from a policy which is merely dynastic, which has for its object simply the advancement of the interests of the royal family.
At the beginning of the modern period, the international policy of Europe was dominated entirely by the dynastic interests of the great rival Houses of Hapsburg and Valois. The part of England in the struggle, though not unimportant, was subordinate and secondary. The traditional alliance of England with Burgundy, renewed by the more recent Hapsburg marriage of Henry VIII, the tradi- tional hostility of England to France had seemed to point out England as the natural ally of Spain. But the wanton insult which Henry had given his ally in the divorce of Catharine, his subsequent attitude to the papal supremacy and the consequent acces-
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