Stray Studies from England and Italy Part 10

"To say that Mr. Green's book is better than those which have preceded it, would be to convey a very inadequate impression of its merits. It stands alone as the one general history of the country, for the sake of which all others, if young and old are wise, will be speedily and surely set aside. It is perhaps the highest praise that can be given to it, that it is impossible to discover whether it was intended for the young or for the old. The size and general look of the book, its vividness of narration, and its avoidance of abstruse argument would place it among school-books; but its fresh and original views, and its general historical power, are only to be appreciated by those who have tried their own hand at writing history, and who know the enormous difficulties of the task."--MR. SAMUEL R. GARDINER _in the Academy._

"We know of no record of the whole drama of English history to be compared with it. We know of none that is so distinctly a work of genius.... Mr. Green's volume is a really wonderful production. There is a freshness and originality breathing from one end to the other, a charm of style, and a power, both narrative and descriptive, which lifts it altogether out of the cla.s.s of books to which at first sight it might seem to belong. The range too of subject, and the capacity which the writer shows of dealing with so many different sides of English history, witness to powers of no common order.... The Early History is admirably done; the clear and full narrative which Mr. Green is able to put together of the earliest days of the English people is a wonderful contrast to the confused and proe-scientific talk so common in most of the books which it is to be hoped that Mr. Green's volume will displace."--_Pall Mall Gazette._