124 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
lish history were so completely absorbed in their own domestic affairs that they had little, or no thought to give to the nations across the Channel.
Thus a history of the foreign relations of England during the Stuart period must necessarily be a history of Europe, rather than a history of England, and the chief task of the author is to explain why England does not cut more of a figure in the seventeenth century, when her r61e is so important in the eighteenth.
In the main, Mr. Seeley's view of men and things does not depart much from the accepted view. Elizabeth suffers nothing at his hands. Poor old James I is as priggish and ridiculous as ever. Charles I appears stripped of the martyr's crown and suffering the penalty of his own folly. Cromwell is a hero, right in his instincts, true to the great principle which he represents, but, unfortunately, does not live long enough after he has once entered upon the larger arena of inter- national politics, to cause England to be felt, as he and she deserve. Charles II if not the best, is the brightest of his house. In him Mr. Seeley finds a possible Machiavelli, a shrewd and farsighted politician, and unscrupulous in dealing with friend or foe. His love of ease and lack of nerve alone prevent him from becoming a really great prince. Mr. Seeley's view of James II is at least worthy of further examination. The cause of his fall was not so much his infatuation with the Pope, as his infatuation with Louis XIV and the House of Bourbon, of which he through his mother was a member. The fall of James was the final breakdown of the dynastic policy. It was the repudiation on the part of the English people, not so much of the Papacy and the Catholic church, as of the dynastic policy in general and of the French alliance of the Stuarts in particular. Here, as in other parts of the book, the author lays himself open to the remark, that in centering his attention upon the dynastic and foreign relations of England, he has, perhaps not intentionally, allowed the great religious struggle which penetrated all phases of national and international life during this period, not only to drop into the background, but at times almost to be lost sight of altogether. If he has not written the history of the period of the Reformation, with the Reformation left out, he has at least thrust the Reformation into a subordinate place, and exalted to the first place what ought to be treated only as a subordinate part.
It may seem ungracious to call attention to that feature of Mr. Seeley's style, which in earlier works has been so often criticised
