rather than wait until those States have had time to recuperate.

The position of England at the present moment is one of extreme delicacy. An influential section of the British public is avowedly antagonistic to Russia, and always ready to assert, not without reason, that the interests of Great Britain and Russia in the Middle East, if not elsewhere, are in reality irreconcilable. Simultaneously there appears a growing tendency to dislike the obligations which may be forced upon us owing to our position in what is known as the Triple Entente. It is also possible to trace a marked improvement in the relations between Great Britain and Germany-an improvement which has been cordially welcomed on all sides. Everything, so far, points to an understanding between London and Berlin regarding the difficulties caused by the Balkan crisis; and the pacific tendency of British policy during this crisis should convince the most Anglophobe of German publicists, even General von Bernhardi, that their suspicions of British intentions are groundless. On the other hand, it is not to be forgotten that Germany has announced in the most explicit fashion her intention to support her allies; and, though the 'Concert of Europe' has apparently been revived, and an agreement upon one, and that perhaps the most knotty, point has been reached, we are still by no means out of the wood. If at this crisis we occupied our old position of 'splendid isolation,' the balance of power, and with it the peace of Europe, might be more easily maintained. In some measure

it may almost be said that Britain, at least temporarily, has re-occupied that position. That her hands, so far as possible, should be free is much to be desired. We look for no radical alteration in the map of Europe, no fundamental dislocation of its component parts. A crushing defeat of Germany and Austria on the one hand or of France and Russia on the other would be equally opposed to our interests and, we may add, to those of the world at large. Either result would necessarily entail the complete domination of Europe by the victors, and would constitute an appalling menace to the British Empire. The interests of that Empire are based on peace; and by the prosecution of a definite and independent policy the Government may be able to Vol. 218.-No. 434.

Χ

exercise a weighty and beneficent influence in that direction on the councils of Europe.

The next few weeks will indeed be full of anxiety; and, although the Balkan Allies are to be congratulated on the determination which they have shown and on the results they have achieved through their ungrudging sacrifices on behalf of their Christian co-nationalists in European Turkey, they will have accomplished an even greater feat if they can manage to moderate some of their respective demands and lay the foundations of a lasting peace. Unfortunately past experience has given them little reason to show much gratitude to Europe, whose unceasing jealousies have delayed the Macedonian reforms promised more than thirty years ago. So far as the Macedonian question is concerned, it is true, they have cleaned the slate; but, in the place of that which has been wiped away, new and ominous signs are visible on its surface.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

IN regard to certain remarks made on p. 301 of the previous number of the Quarterly Review,' in an article on the Panama Canal, touching the often alleged intervention of the United States Government in the affairs of Panama, it is only fair to say that such intervention has been distinctly repudiated by no less an authority than Mr John Hay, who, writing as Secretary of State to General Reyes, January 5, 1904, speaks as follows:

Any charge that this Government, or any responsible member of it, held intercourse, whether official or unofficial, with agents of revolution in Colombia, is utterly without justification. Equally so is the insinuation that any action of this Government prior to the revolution in Panama was the result of complicity with the plans of the revolutionists. The Depart ment sees fit to make these denials, and it makes them finally.' (Moore, Digest, iii, 91.)

The words but little foreign competition,' in the first line of p. 305 (same number), should read 'no foreign competition."

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 435.-APRIL, 1913.

Art. 1.-ANDREW LANG.

6

ANDREW LANG's first historical work was a sketch of the history of St Andrews (1893). It made no pretence to original research, and it differs from all of its author's subsequent writings in being based on printed books and not on Ms. sources. In a characteristically frank preface, he explained that he understood that a much more elaborate history of the town was in preparation, and that he gladly left the department of manuscript to a far better qualified student.' His modest attempt to present some pictures of the half-obliterated past' remains the only modern history of St Andrews, and it offers a sympathetic sketch of his dear city of youth and dream.' Lang, in its pages, took an obvious and, at times, a mischievous pleasure in indicating his own views on questions much controverted in Scotland. His remark— 'Here, among the fruits of the Reformation, we have, thank God, a Christian at last, and one who, we may say, would not have been consenting to any deed of murder'— though a fair description of James Melville, was a challenge to the admirers of other sixteenth-century heroes; and his comment on the executions at St Andrews in 1646 -'Others might have forgiven; these flowers of the kirk never forgave-could not fail to rouse the defenders of 'a theocracy modelled on the wildest passions of ancient Israel.' His critics had their revenge, for the book contained both slips of the pen and more serious errors. Its author used to speak of it as his apprenticeship to the historian's task; 'it showed me that I did not know the rules of the game.' While he was at work on his first historical essay, his friend R. L. Stevenson applied to him for information about the Jacobites. Lang had been Vol. 218.-No. 435.

Y

a Jacobite from childhood; on his copy of the 'Lays of Ancient Rome,' where Titus stabbed Valerius a span deep in the breast,' the boy had scribbled, 'Well done, the Jacobites'; his sympathies were always with dethroned kings. Among the books he sent to Stevenson was James Browne's History of the Highlands and of the Highland Clans,' which contains extracts from the Stuart Papers in Windsor Castle. Lang's curiosity was aroused by the problem of identifying the spy referred to by Scott in the introduction to Redgauntlet' as 'the channel of communication which, it is now well known, they [the ministers of George II] possessed to all the plots of Charles Edward.' He undertook an examination of the Pelham Papers in the Additional Mss of the British Museum, and sent the transcripts to his friend in Samoa. On December 3, 1894, Stevenson died; and the return of the transcripts made Lang an historian.

Resisting the temptation to use Pickle as the villain of fiction, I have tried to tell his story with fidelity, he says in the preface to Pickle the Spy' (1897). It can have required but a small effort to overcome that temptation, for he was already fascinated by the spirit of the chase, the desire to satisfy the passion of curiosity. 'However unimportant a secret may be, it is pleasant to know what all Europe was once vainly anxious to discover. The discovery of the secret brought its pangs of regret: he thought that Sir Walter may have known this woful history, but it was no story for Scott to tell.' This aspect was more than sufficiently emphasised by Scottish critics; if St Andrews' had annoyed the Covenanters, Pickle the Spy' was not less offensive to the Cavaliers But the task itself, and the unjust and ungenerous criti eism which its completion evoked, proved a singularly good method of learning the rules of the game. The identification of Pickle with Young Glengarry was placed beyond reasonable doubt; but, in answer to unreasonable doubts, Lang was led to make an examination of fresh material, and in a chapter of his later work, The Companions of Pickle` (1898), he summed up his whole case, laying stress on the discovery of fresh evidence. Highland erities described his industry as an attempt to avoid leaving unraked a dunghill in search for a cudgel wherewith to maltreat the Highlanders Teis particular

dunghill produced a charming sketch of the last Earl Marischal and a defence of Cluny and of Dr Archibald Cameron; but the book owed its existence to an intellectual curiosity which discovered new problems and I could not rest content until they were solved.

If Lang had written nothing except the two 'Pickle volumes, he would have left behind him a valuable contribution to an obscure, though not unimportant, discussion; but the appearance of so distinguished a recruit to the thin ranks of Scottish historians could not be permitted to result merely in the solution of some Jacobite problems. He was asked to contribute a biography of Prince Charles to the Goupil Series and to write a short History of Scotland. He accepted both nvitations, and, with the help of Miss Violet Simpson, for whose services he never failed to express as well as o feel his gratitude, he set to work systematically on resh Ms. sources and on the vast quantity of printed naterial bearing on the history of the exiled Stuarts. Prince Charles Edward' (1900) is, from the literary tandpoint, his best historical work. He had learned is method and had not yet begun to exaggerate it, as le sometimes did in his later books. If it contains Comparatively little that was startling either in the esults of his investigations or in his point of view, t is written throughout with the imaginative power vhich was one of his greatest gifts, and its style shows 10 trace of the weariness that sometimes beset him in he twelve years of continuous labour that followed its ublication. About the Prince himself he was never inder any illusion. In 'Pickle the Spy' he had already old the worst; and it was in a spirit of 'pardoning pity' hat he accomplished his task.

He failed utterly, failed before God and man and his own soul, but, if he failed greatly, he had greatly endeavoured. Charles is loved for his forlorn hope; for his desperate resolve; for the reckless daring, the winning charm that once were his; for bright hair and brown eyes; above all, as the centre and inspirer of old chivalrous loyalty, as one who would have brought back a lost age, an impossible realm of dreams.' (Prince Charles Edward,' ed. 1900, p. 3.)

He loved the patient Old Pretender' better than the