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belonged. We add a few historical details from Mr. Barrett's summary. In 1490 the castle was repaired by Bishop Langton, whose arms appear over the existing gateway. Six years later it was stormed by the Cornish insurgents, and a few months afterwards was in the possession of Perkin Warbeck. There, as Lord Bacon tells us, he stood like a squinting man, with one eye on the crown and the other looking for some means of escape; and after getting his forces ready for immediate battle, the poor impostor made his way to a monastery in the New Forest. The Outer

Bailey has been destroyed, with the exception of part of the archway now leading into the Castle Green. Here stands the old grammar school, now used for municipal purposes; it is a late-Perpendicular building, with a good open roof, built in 1522 by Bishop Fox of Winchester. The tower and arch of the Inner Bailey is the subject of an interesting illustration. This gatehouse was built about the end of the thirteenth century, and was repaired and ornamented in the reign of Henry VII.; it has portcullis grooves, like those at Clevedon Court, and holes for the chains of a drawbridge; but the bridge was replaced by a permanent structure when the moat was filled up in 1758. The best account of the architecture is contained in an essay by Mr. G. T. Clark, F.S.A., who also supplied a very full account of Dunster Castle to the Archæological Journal. On each side of the gatehouse is a curtain wall, ending on the left side in a drumtower, from which another wall leads to the keep. The hall in front of the gate is modern, as respects the interior; but it evidently occupies the site of the twelfthcentury building. The keep is a rectangular tower, once fifty feet high, with walls about thirteen feet thick. It is singular that it should have been built on the lowest part of the enclosure; but we must remember that the first stockade was only a few feet above the water, set on a hummock of gravel' in the fen, and depending for its safety on a network of streams. The whole area formed a sort of quadrant, the river and brook being each a radius, ' and a curved ditch the arc.' The chief interest about the castle lies in the continuity of its history; and Mr. Clark points out that its earthworks were constructed at least two centuries before any other fortress named in the Chronicle, and that though mutilated they still remain 'beyond question original.'

Dunster Castle, after all its alterations, is admitted to be fairly representative of the Norman stronghold. It holds

the same unrivalled position, towering magnificently above the town and the coast, a landmark for all the wide tract ' of which it was sometimes the terror, but more often the protection.' The keep was dismantled in 1646, its site being afterwards converted into a bowling-green. With the exception of a few bases and substructures, the oldest part of the existing buildings is the gateway of the time of Henry III. The adjoining gatehouse, built in three stages, dates from about the year 1420; it seems to have been used instead of the older gateway, which has only lately been restored to its original use. We learn from Mr. Maxwell Lyte's history of Dunster and its Lords' that a great part of the existing house was built between the years 1589 and 1620; other alterations have been made at different times, especially in 1869, when the Elizabethan house was greatly 'enlarged.' Dunster Castle was held by Colonel Wyndham during the Civil War till he was forced to yield it up after a tedious siege of five months. An extract from a newsletter of that time will show the importance attached to its possession. It was announced in Mercurius Aulicus' for June 17, 1643, that Dunster Castle, belonging to Mr. Luttrell, a place by reason of the strength and situation conceived to be almost impregnable,' was yielded up to Lord Hertford for his Majesty's use, as soon as he had settled his affairs in Bridgwater.'

Mr. Barrett does not undertake to describe the villages of the wild moorlands or the towns along the Severn coast. Our readers will refer for these to the history of Porlock by the Rev. Walter Hook, and Mr. Warden Page's delightful Exploration of Exmoor.' We have, indeed, a brief account of Minehead Church, where the turret of the rood-stair is carried up to a great height and lit with a window like a large oriel. The reason, no doubt, as Mr. Barrett suggests, lies in the old use of the turret as a beacon for ships at sea. A wooden arch in the south aisle is noticed as a rarity seldom seen outside the eastern counties; but Mr. Luttrell once showed in an address at Minehead that oak was frequently used instead of stone throughout the district, the older masonry having been of inferior quality, excepting the work at Cleeve Abbey, and perhaps at Porlock Church. Our author's views of the Dunster gateway and the roof of the refectory at Old Cleeve are among his best illustra tions,

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V.1. Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen. Berlin: 1879-94. Bd. I.-XXI. (In course of publication.)

2. Die Kriege Friedrichs des Grossen. Theil I. Bd. I.-III. Berlin 1890-93. (In course of publication.)

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3. König Friedrich der Grosse. Von REINHOLD KOSER. Bd. I. Stuttgart: 1893. (In course of publication.)

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IT T was a defeat hardly less crushing than Kolin or Kunersdorf that Hugh Elliot, most brilliant of British diplomatists, inflicted on Frederick the Great one evening at Potsdam during a pause in the royal whist. Tell me about this Haidar Ali,' the king had maliciously said, who is giving you so much trouble in India.' Sire,' replied the envoy, in loud and measured tones, Haidar Ali was once the greatest warrior of his time, and he 'pillaged all his neighbours. But now, Sire, he is merely 'an old king in his dotage.' The Naib of Mysore's latest biographer calls him singularly straightforward in politics and faithful to his engagements. If so, there was the usual injustice of epigram in the parallel between the honest Asiatic and a prince who laid down, and followed, the doctrine that in public affairs rascality is sometimes the best policy, and that the premier domestique' of the State must never hesitate to cheat cheats.'

The discussion of Frederician problems is now facilitated by the existence of such an encyclopædia of knowledge as is available for no other historic notability, Napoleon excepted. In the front of the modern materials stands the king's political and military correspondence, official and private scrip'tus et in tergo necdum finitus Orestes' the twenty volumes of which hitherto published cover about half his reign. Without underrating the labours of Preuss, Ranke, and, above all, of Carlyle, it may be said that Frederick 'intime,' before this source of information became available, was almost like Troy or Tiryns before Schliemann. Complementary are new collections of State papers from archives, an endless catena of reports and dissertations on points of detail, besides an array of original histories in various languages, a mere bibliography of all which would fill a considerable book.

For the king's military career there is a work by the Berlin General Staff, which has reached the battle of Chotusitz in the second Silesian campaign. The scholars of Moltke have

inherited something of their master's clearness and brevity of style, and their publications are provided with ample tables of contents, side-notes, dates, indexes, and the other mechanical adjuncts to history, on which, though beneath the dignity of the German Dryasdust, men like Gibbon and Carlyle condescended to bestow such infinite pains. Strictures on the strategy and tactics of the great-great-greatgreat-uncle of the War Lord' might be a cause of unpleasant surprises to their authors. Their venturesome task has, however, been creditably accomplished by the Berlin Staff, whose comparative freedom of attitude contrasts favourably with the crawling servility of some of the civilian reptiles who have concerned themselves with Frederick 'the only.' Koser's book, as well as a previous work by him on Frederick's early life, is good literature as well as sound history, the narrative and the reflections being kept apart, and not muddled up, shot rubbish fashion,' in a chaotic heap. On certain half-explored phases of the king's life Koser is almost dumb. As if muzzled par ordre du mufti,' the more modern annalists of the house of Brandenburg either boycott Bathsheba and Jane Shore, or bowdlerise such personages into Platonic propriety. A breach of this rule, still more a hint on topics like those raised by Carlyle's 'demon 'letter-writer,' might seriously bar professional advancement or the acquisition of a Court title. And it might give umbrage to the public prosecutor, a functionary of whom Koser has had a certain experience. A few years ago some strictures from his pen on the public acts of one of the earlier Hohenzollerns, written, not in the trenchant manner of Macaulay or Lanfrey, but in a measured, scientific tone, were incriminated before a court of justice as libelling the reigning dynasty of Prussia. Il y a des juges à Berlin,' or, at least, at Cassel, and their verdict was non liquet.' Still, a Germau professor, when dealing with certain aspects of the national history, does well to keep, as the Watcher in the Agamemnon' puts it, a large ox on his tongue. He may also encounter a padlock of another species. The literary use of public German documents of the date of the Crusades or the Reformation, or even the Thirty Years' War, is unrestricted. Not so the records of very recent events, such as the occurrences of only a century and a half ago. For instance, under the restrictions imposed by this obvious principle, official wisdom has placed the portions of Frederick's Political Will' of A.D. 1752, entitled Rêveries Politiques.' Quite lately a distinguished

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author who had been studying the antecedents of the Seven Years' War in the Berlin archives was required to surrender his copy of the Dreams' in question to the departmental censor, by whom three-fourths of the manuscript were ruthlessly cut out.

Characters and careers of the first magnitude are no subjects for debate in the new abbreviated 'epoch' fashion. Like Napoleon, Frederick is only intelligible on condition of being 'writ large'—that is, in full length and with finished portraiture. We shall here chiefly illustrate a single side of his activity, recording, by help of the new lights, some of the opening incidents of his reign, as well as certain circumstances of the European and British policy of the period hitherto imperfectly understood. The great king's life did not include such marvellous stage effects as the battle of the Pyramids, the march to Moscow, or the Hundred Days. But no sooner had he mounted the throne than he troubled the diplomatic repose of the Continent by a theatrical stroke, which descended suddenly on the Bishop of Liège, a potentate of the empire who was charged with encouraging acts of rebellion in the outlying Prussian dependency of Herstal on the Meuse. A force of grenadiers and dragoons having been stealthily placed on the frontier, a manifesto was launched at the astonished prelate, to whom two days were given for consideration of Frederick's categorical demands that he should desist from his intrigues. The news of the bishop's instant submission was brought to the castle of Moyland, near the Rhine, where, during the preparation of this hardy performance, Frederick had been residing, seemingly abandoned to intellectual pleasures in the company of his visitor Voltaire, who was reading to his royal host his new tragedy of Mahomet,' while Algarotti, the Swan of Padua,' demonstrated that the art of Raphael was inferior to the eclecticism of Domenichino, and Maupertuis proved by his northern measurements that the earth's polar regions were flat. In the principal European Courts the affair caused much disquietude. From Berlin the head of the ministry of foreign affairs, Podewils, reported that the imperious language of the missive to the Belgian bishop had produced an evil impression on the local diplomatic body. This is 'strong,' one of their number had said; it is the style of Louis XIV.’

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The 'little Marquis of Brandenburg's' first exploit proved to be the prologue to the omen coming on.' Within a month the Emperor Charles VI. was in his grave, and the

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