your writing to the Privy-Counsaile to have countenanced that shamefast Higons to charge me with treason, whereof God and my traw the delyvered me. Your neighbore I must be. Edward Stafford.' The descendants of Richard Bagot temperate reply: may be proud of his 'Right Honorable,-I perceave by your letters delivered to me by your chaplain Mr. Cope on Monday last, your Lordship is greatly discontented with some my speeches used to Mr. Stanford in pretending your honor's surname to be Bagot: I do confess I spake them; and not offending your lordship (as I hope you will not) with trothe, I do avowe it. Not upon any "Dronken Herehaught's report, by me corrupted to soothe my lieing," but by good records and evidence under ancient seales, the four hundred years past. And if it may please you to send any sufficient man as Mr. Sheriff, or Mr. Samson Eardswick, Gentillmen of good knowledge and experience in these ac'cons, I will shewe them sufficient matter to confirme that I have spoken; being very sorry to heare your Lordship to contemne and deface the Name of Bagot with so bad tirmes and hastie speeches as you do; more dishonourable to yourself than any blemishe or reproche to me: and therefore if your Lordship take it in such disdaine, that I touch you either in credit or honour, you may (if you please), by ordinary proces, bring me before the Rt. Hon. the Earl Marshal of England, Chief Judge in these causes, when I will prove it or take the discredit, with such further punishment as his Honor shall inflict upon me. Thus humbly desireing acceptance of this my answer in good part, till a further triall be had herein, I do comyt your Lordship to the protection of Allmighty, this first of March 1589. 'Your Lordship's at commandment, "RICHARD BAGOT.' These are exceedingly curious illustrations of the time. The 'Stafford Knot' in 'your parlour' is a charming touch for the way in which it brings the magnificence of the old feudal nobles before one, since though probably false of the Bagots, it must have been true of many families that they thus showed their loyalty to the house of Stafford. The tone of Richard Bagot's answer is everything that could be desired from a gentleman. Had this dispute reached the ears of their royal Mistress, she would probably have reminded them, as she did Sir Philip Sidney on his quarrel with the Earl of Oxford, that when the gentleman contends with the nobleman, it only encourages the 'peasaunt' to presume against both! We have nothing so piquant to quote as this, from the memorials of the Shirleys, or the memorials of the Howards by the late Mr. Howard of Corby; but we recommend both these works to such as wish to study this class of literature. Mr. Howard's book gives a clear view of the descent and connexions-connexions almost unrivalled in their greatness-of the Howards, from the the days of the founder (probably of Saxon race) in the time of Edward I. He mentions that the portrait of the Earl of Surrey,'Who has not heard of Surrey's fame? '--- by Houbraken, is extremely like what the late Lord Henry Howard was at the same age.' This hereditary likeness is one of the commonest phenomena in the world; and is an index of the moral resemblance which makes character of a particular class run through a line, and thus, in free countries like ours, produces hereditary politics, and affects the fortunes of the state, as was the case at Rome. A Russell,' says Niebuhr somewhere, could not be an absolutist; the thing would be monstrous.' This conviction is, no doubt, one excellent reason why liberals glorify the race with such constancy. The Russells are a better family from the genealogist's point of view, than is generally supposed. But of Wiffen's Memoirs' of them, which appeared in 1833, we are bound to say that the early part is dubious, and the later part tedious; that a fatiguing, commonplace kind of 'eloquence' is an unhappy characteristic ; and that we defy even a Whig to read it through. Nay, we would almost stake our Dugdale against a copy of it-heavy odds!-that Lord John has not yet read it from cover to cover. At the same time, we applaud both Mr. Wiffen's industry, and the kindness of the Bedford family in encouraging him. The truth is, that a good history of a powerful house is no easy task to get accomplished. A private gentleman-peer or commoner-shrinks from the labour, even if he does not shrink from the expense. If he keeps a tame genealogist on the premises for the purpose, the chances are he obtains a work which nobody can read except Sir Bernard Burke or Mr. Planché, and which his children view with an awe that in this enlightened time they do not feel towards the family ghost. Popular writers have other business. And so, stowed away in massive chests, continue to lie tons of parchments illustrative of the possessions, marriages, offices, and deeds of his ancestors; the love-letters of long dead generations; priceless documents of all kinds illustrative of the history of England. Indeed, it is almost a hopeless task to get a peep into an Evidence Room; the instant suspicion being that you are going to set up a right to the estates. Nor is this wonderful, when we remember the absurd claims to honours, and the fraudulent claims to lands, which are every day made by monomaniacs or swindlers. When Mr. Drummond published the first two parts of his 'Histories of Noble British Families,' we did not fail to give our hearty support to the undertaking.* Since that time, a further portion has been published, and the work has reached to two volumes-comprising Ashburnham, Arden, Compton, * Quarterly Review,' vol. lxxii., p. 165. Cecil, Harley, Bruce; and Perceval, Dunbar, Hume, Dundas, and Neville. This splendid work is understood to have involved a great cost; and we apprehend that it will be continued no further. It was suggested by the sumptuous and luxuriant book on Italian families by Count Litta of Milan, and, like it, displays on its rich folio sheets fac-similes of seals, drawings of monuments, gorgeous heraldry, and-more welcome than all-beautiful portraits. The pedigrees have literary as well as artistic illustration, are enriched with historical anecdotes, and introduced by agreeable disquisitions. The plan, however, is not that of the family history proper, which we take to be a full and connected view of a family with especial reference to its unity and character. Mr. Drummond's sketches are historical, without being strictly histories. They are pedigrees with literary emblazonment; and when we consider the liveliness of the style, and the loveliness of the ornaments, we welcome the book as one which makes a genealogical tree as brilliant as a Christmas one. But still more ought to be effected through separate works in a country full of old families and great fortunes. We must add that Mr. Drummond has his peculiar views of these matters, as of all matters; that he concedes to tradition more, in certain points, than we should do; and that he is at open war with the erudite Dryasdust.' * Having reviewed the Lives of the Lindsays' some yearssince in a separate essay, we are now only called on to point out its special relation to the genus under discussion. To us, then, we may say that it appears to unite, more happily than any other performance, the old sentiment of past days with the knowledge and clearness of the time in which we live-the heart of the fifteenth century with the eyes of the nineteenth. This is the combination to be aimed at by the historian, who should share the loyalty of Godscroft or Lord Somerville, while bidding farewell to the Serpent' or the 'Black-gray man.' Lord Lindsay has an adequate theme-a family that has 'stood against the waves and weathers of time' for many centuries-a line visible, like a streak of light, away to the time when nearly all is dark and shadowy about our Teutonic ancestors-Norman in race, leaders in battle, great in rank, alliances, and possessions, when such were only to be won by the natural lords of mankind. Nor can we forbear to note with satisfaction that a writer so elegant and accomplished should be the historian of a house which early produced an excellent Scottish chronicler in Lindsay of Pitscottie, and a delightful Scottish humourist in Sir David of the Mount, and which in modern times, by producing the ballad of Auld Robin Gray,' and the book before us, contributes no little to our faith in the hereditary transmission of qualities and * Quarterly Review,' vol. lxxvii., p. 465. characteristics. characteristics. We must not fail to remark, either, the honesty with which Lord Lindsay gives every branch of his house, poor and decayed as well as rich and flourishing, its due place in the history. When we take into account all the cadets of a numerous and spreading line, the amount of service done to a country by one stock, in the labours of war and peace, can hardly be overrated. Lord Lindsay tells us that he found a degree of interest about the subject among his gens, as he was pursuing the investigation, much greater than he had expected. We are inclined ourselves to believe that there is a great deal more care for these matters all over the country, than is commonly thought. And we happen to know that the same fact is true of the Americans, few of whom now visit England without making pilgrimages to those parts of the island from which record or tradition declares their ancestors to have come. The sentiment of ancestry, in short, is not only inherent in human nature, and especially visible in the higher races of the world, but contributes in no small degree to the stability of kingdoms in the worst periods-as, assuredly, it is always found to be peculiarly vivid in the best. Having spoken so freely of the family histories which we possess in Great Britain-and admitting that they do not adequately represent the strength of the feeling among ourselves—we cannot conclude without hailing it as a good omen that the latest on our list should be such an admirable specimen of the class as the 'Lives' of Lord Lindsay. ART. II.-An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History. By the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1855. THE early history of Rome has of late years attracted no small portion of the attention of scholars, both in this country and in Germany. The somewhat disproportionate importance thus attached to that portion of the Roman annals which must always remain the most obscure and unsatisfactory is undoubtedly owing to the influence of Niebuhr. The first publication of his great work, somewhat more than forty years ago,* may be considered as opening out a new field of historical inquiry. Rarely, if ever, has any book of a similar character produced so great a sensation in the literary world, or exercised so great an influence over the minds of succeeding investigators. It stands as a great landmark The first edition of Niebuhr's History of Rome' appeared in 1811; but the second edition, which was not only greatly enlarged, but so much modified and altered as to be substantially a new work, was not published till 1827. in in the progress of historical criticism. Almost all subsequent writers upon the same subject have either based their works upon his researches, and enrolled themselves as his disciples, or been engaged in controverting his arguments and assailing his conclusions. But one thing is certain: whatever opinion may ultimately be formed of the results he has arrived at, and however widely future inquirers may find themselves compelled to depart from his views upon particular points, we can never go back to the state in which we were before its publication. We can no more return to the blind and implicit belief in the early history of Rome-such as it was received in the days of our grandfathers, and embodied in such histories as those of Hooke and Rollinthan we can transport ourselves back to the days of our childhood, with its simple creed and uninquiring faith. And yet it was far from being the main purpose or object of Niebuhr, thus to shake our faith in the received history. He was no mere iconoclast, who sought to destroy that which there were no means of restoring. He saw indeed the rottenness of the existing fabric, and that it was necessary to demolish it; but it was only with the view of raising in its stead an edifice of fairer proportions and more elaborate construction, on what he believed to be surer foundations. To reconstruct the early history of Rome was the problem which Niebuhr proposed to himself, and it is on the success or failure of this attempt that his reputation must ultimately depend. To assail the authenticity of the history as transmitted to us by Livy or Dionysius was indeed nothing new. Notwithstanding the spirit of blind reverence and uncritical admiration with which the ancient historians were regarded for more than two centuries after the revival of learning, there were found, even at an early period, some scholars who ventured to raise their voices against the undistinguishing faith, which received all the writers of antiquity as of equal credit, and all historical facts recorded by them as equally accurate. The learned and industrious Cluver, in his elaborate work on the geography of ancient Italy, not only rejects the whole story of Eneas as a fable, but boldly expresses his scepticism as to Romulus himself and the authenticity of the whole regal period of Rome. Similar doubts were suggested by Perizonius in his 'Animadversiones Historicæ,' published in 1685, and at a later period more fully developed by Pouilly and Beaufort. The work of the latter author (Dissertation sur l'Incertitude des Cinq Premiers Siècles de l'Histoire Romaine, first published in 1738)-a little volume now seldom met with, and still more seldom read-claims our notice in this place as the direct precursor of the larger and more elaborate treatise of Sir G. Lewis. Beaufort was a French Protestant refugee, who had |