while the choir, a little scared and overawed-perhaps the bolder spirits feeling a little indignant-keep together on the other. It is only the rector who may do this. Indeed, if he be a late-comer the innovation will not be well received, and he will suffer all the same as if he were a mere unconsecrated layman. But if a layman and a new-comer were to try the experiment-he would have time and opportunity to reflect on the dangers besetting a reformer's path, for he would be boycotted to a dead certainty.

That is one of the things a new-comer has to be most careful to avoid any appearance of “reforming" customs, usages, conditions, his very house itself. Why! if he were to build a lean-to or throw out a bow-window he would find the whole neighbourhood more or less in arms at the change. His own affair, say you? Bless your innocence! It is the affair of the whole parish; and everyone in the parish has the right to give his opinion and cry down the change as a something which concerns them all far more than it concerns the temporary owner of the property. So with all customs and usages held sacred by the place. If they dine at seven you have no business to say half-past; if they go in for teas and garden-parties, you, only a sojourner, are presumptuous to substitute luncheons or dinners; where they give one pound you must not give two; and a higher rate of wages than the autochthones afford is as a crime against the community, coupled with the spoiling of the worker and the ruining of the market.

With all this strict surveillance over the new-comer and the rigid conformity that is demanded, the old inhabitants may be as eccentric as they like, and not a lip smiles, not to speak of a hand throwing stones. And these local oddities are always to be found in old, long-established country societies in remote places. There is sure to be a maiden lady of the epicene gender, bold, bluff, kind-hearted, rasping an old bachelor who wears a wig and perhaps a spencer-a strong-willed widow or two of seventy or thereabouts, who treat their fifty-year-old daughters as giddy young things of irresponsible character and immature instincts-a Darby and Joan, who quarrel before folk with not even the most elementary perception of conventional proprieties-the low-bred, low-living heir to a fine estate, throwing back to some vulgar ancestor smuggled unknown into the family-the masterful daughter of a weak-willed squire, who lives in the stable and eventually marries the groom. And almost always there is a beautiful little homestead where two maiden sisters go down the hill of life together, clinging hand to hand as closely as in

their nursery days-whereof the elder is still the protector, and the younger is still the Beauty.

In the country, too, you find how curiously relative a thing is moral value, and how universally adaptable the dramatic instinct. You, accustomed to big questions, are at first disposed to slight the smaller issues. You find your mistake. The appointment of a magistrate takes Ministerial dimensions, and an Empire falls with less stir than the dismissal of the postman or the superannuation of the sexton. You, sated with living dramas to which Ibsen's are commonplaces, at first turn up your nose at the interest excited by the accident which befell Joe Smith in the hayfield—at the dark shadows gathering round the fair fame of Polly Jones-at the suspicions of dishonesty besetting the last transaction of the county architect. In time you fall into the narrow groove with the rest, and your dramatic instinct feeds as eagerly on this Lenten fare as it used to feed on the rich abundance of Metropolitan events. Also, you find that things creep out in the country more than in town. Told everywhere under the strictest promises of secrecy, the whole details of that shady episode in young Highflier's life become in process of time common property. They filter through society, accumulating like a glacier lake, till suddenly one day the pressure proves too great, and the whole thing overflows. Whereon the poor Highfliers have to leave Sleepy Hollow for a time, and the place is not like itself without them. Indeed, the place is never like itself again, for in all probability, the society being its own counsel, witnesses, judge, and jury in all that happens, sides are taken with more or less acrimony-some standing by the parents and their repudiation of their undesirable daughter-in-law, some going in for the logic of accomplished facts and the wisdom of making the best of a bad job. Wherefore they countenance the young prodigal, and call on the Undesirable; and so alienate from them the partisans of the parents, and divide their little world in two.

And then you find that human nature is very much the same kind of thing, whatever its environment, and that the grand difference lies in relative values and local standards of measurement-always excepting respect for the Seventh Commandment, which, without a shadow of doubt, obtains more in the country than in town.

Well! how stands it? In the world, as it is called, you have wit that stings but sharpens too; insincerity that pleases and amuses you even while you detect and discount it; brilliant immorality whereof the bold daring wins so much of your admiration as shame and disgust leave

alive; the restless unsettlement of all faith, all certainty, but unsettled with what a superb sweep of thought-what almost godlike grasp of mind! You have emphatically what we call Life-the swirl, the strain, the passion of the whole human race concentrated and sublimated there within the area of half-a-dozen miles. You stand by the death-bed of the old, you are at the cradle-head of the new. The electric currents of thought all seem to converge in yourself, eager recipient as you are of the last news, the latest discovery. In the Metropolis you are as if in the heart of all those grand movements which the unknown historic law impels, but which you feel that you yourself have set afoot or are helping forward. In London you live; in the country you breathe. In the one your soul is as if a-fire, restless, "dilated," beating upwards and onwards, with every inch of power you possess used to the ultimate. In the country it rests like some "sweet slug-abed" between the lavenderscented sheets, softly dreaming away the uneventful hours, content only to be and not to do. Here we have the energising principle, creating now good and now evil; there the mild-eyed peace of passivity, wondering faintly how such things may be, and ignorant of the rest-pure, unstained, and undeveloped. Between these two we have to make our

choice. Life, with all its evil, all its good, its activities and aspirations, its crimes, its heroisms, its nobility and misdemeanours; Repose, with its limitations, untouched by crime and heroism alike, sweet, innocent, and tranquil a green hill torn by no volcano-a rusty sword outwearing not even a velvet scabbard.

E. LYNN LINTON.

SOME DECISIVE MARRIAGES OF ENGLISH

FOR

HISTORY.

ORTY years ago a capable writer wrote a well-known book which he called The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. Some of the battles which he there enumerated have undoubtedly exerted a powerful influence on the course of history. The defeat of the Persians by the Greeks, the defeat of the Mahometans by Charles Martel, and our own defeat in our struggle with the revolted colonies in America permanently affected the face of the world. But many of the battles which are called decisive by historians have in reality decided nothing; and if Sir E. Creasy had looked a little below the surface he possibly might have been attracted by a series of events which have proved more decisive than warfare. For, though the marriages of Kings usually engage only a secondary attention, it may be safely stated that the decisive marriages of the world have had more influence on its fortunes. than the decisive battles.

The Empire of Charles V. is, perhaps, the best example of the effect of such unions. Charles, on his paternal side, was the grandson of Maximilian of Austria and Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold. From these grandparents he inherited Austria, Burgundy, and Flanders.* On the maternal side he was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, whose marriage had consolidated the houses of Aragon and Castile, and indirectly led to the union of all Spain in one monarchy. Thus the power of this great monarch had been built up by a series of marriages. It was the fate of Charles V. to strike down the power of France at Pavia, but no battle that he ever fought had effects so enduring as the marriages either of his paternal or his maternal grandparents.

But we are concerned at the present moment not with the marriages which built up the power of Spain and Austria, but with the marriages

Burgundy and Flanders had been united a century before by the marriage of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, with the heiress of Louis, Count of Flanders.

which have affected the destinies of England. They will be found. recorded in every history. But their significance has been insufficiently emphasised by almost every historian. Yet they either directly occasioned or indirectly influenced many of the great events in our annals. The marriage of Bertha with Ethelbert of Kent prepared the way for the conversion of England to Christianity; the marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn was one of the chief factors which determined the Reformation; the marriage of Emma of Normandy with Ethelred the Unready gave the Conqueror an excuse for asserting his claim to the throne of England; the marriage of Henry I. with Matilda of Scotland reconciled the people to the Conquest by restoring the line of Cerdic; the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine made England the first Continental Power in Western Europe, and thus produced the long struggle with France; the marriage of Henry VII. with Elizabeth of York closed the Wars of the Roses; the marriage of Henry VII.'s daughter Margaret with James I. led to the union between England and Scotland; the marriage of Mary, James II.'s daughter, with William of Orange gave direction to the Revolution of 1688; and finally, the marriage of Sophia with the Elector of Hanover gave us Kings with German interests, and consequently again involved us in Continental struggles.

I. When Bertha, the daughter of Charibert, married Ethelbert of Kent, Christianity had been driven out of England by the victories of the Saxons. Ethelbert himself was busily raising his little kingdom into a formidable Power. In the course of a few years he succeeded in extending his supremacy over eastern England from the Humber to the Channel. He became thenceforward the most powerful monarch in Britain. Possibly his growing power suggested his ambitious marriage. His alliance with the Frankish kingdom must have increased his consideration both at home and on the Continent. But the chief consequences of the marriage were not political, but religious. Charibert naturally stipulated that his daughter, in her new home, should be allowed to profess her own religion; her chaplain was admitted to her husband's Court; a ruined church was allotted to him for Christian worship. Thus, in the heart of the little. kingdom in which the Saxons had first settled, amidst the barbarous worship of the Teutonic gods, Christianity found its representative in a Queen, her chaplain, and her church. The little grain of mustard-seed was sown whose branches were to cover the whole land.

While Bertha was sharing her husband's throne in Kent, Gregory the VOL. IX.-No. 53.

2 C