I fancy, too, that when we read our modern notions into that old controversy we efface other highly characteristic notions which really influenced the men of that time. That theory of divine right which seems to us so superstitious, expressed, I take it, for many Tories a perfectly practical and rational conviction. I confess I do not find the Tories of William and Anne's time to have been the friends or tools of arbitrary power that Macaulay describes them. He seems to me to suppress the positive side of their creed, which nevertheless was highly important. It was, I take it, in one word, opposition to military imperialism. I have already dwelt upon the constant zeal with which they opposed a spirited foreign policy as being likely to lead to a large standing army. Now this is precisely of a piece with all the rest of their action, and it is not difficult to penetrate to the fundamental thought which actuates them. The Whigs are rightly considered as the successors of the party that opposed Charles I. Now, in like manner, the Tories oppose the system of Cromwell. Both parties alike are the opponents of arbitrary power, but to the Tories it presents itself under the image of the Lord Protector. They are afraid of a military Emperor-for Cromwell was an Emperor. While the other party fears to see another Charles I., supported by his bishops and his judges, they are haunted by the dread of a new Oliver, propped firmly upon a standing army and religious toleration. It is to meet this danger that the whole Tory creed is framed. They see the new Oliver rising first in William III., then in Marlborough. They see him fomenting wars on the Continent in order to maintain his army, and leaning on the Dissenters at home in order to revive the old Cromwellian connexion. Their policy, therefore, is one of peace and intolerance-in one word, anti-Cromwellianism. This is why the Tories applauded Addison's Cato as much as the Whigs, and this is the point of the Tory Bolingbroke's celebrated bon mot, when in the name of the Tory party he presented the actor with fifty guineas for having so well defended the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator. This, too, is the practical meaning of the theory of divine right. It means that you must cling to legitimism at all costs, because English experience has shown that there is no alternative but the rule of force, that is, the military dictator.

My space is exhausted before I have been able to do more than barely state my case. But I shall be content if I have made it conceivable how the serious study of history may modify those party preconceptions in which most of us have been bred-if I have only made out a prima facie case for the opinion, which I cannot pretend here to establish, that the politics of this age are divided by a much greater gulf than is imagined from those of the old régime of Europe. Our modern politics took their rise in the French Revolution. It is easy, no doubt, to trace analogies between modern political controversies and the controversies of that old régime. But when we infer from such analogies that the change has only been apparent, and

that the party-war is substantially the same that it always was, then, I say, we are radically mistaken. No, the resemblances are superficial, the differences are substantial. And still more is this remark applicable to older and remoter party controversies. It is an unhistorical confusion, a false and shallow theory of history, concealing the true course of development, which imagines mankind as eternally debating the same question. And if this is so, you will see the consequence which follows from it. You will see that this truth throws open history to schools and universities, takes the interdict off it, and restores to it the place in education and culture to which it has a right. From the higher schools of education-where assuredly the hindrance is already little felt, for there the serious student soon sees these redoubtable party-disputes fade away and almost lose their meaning a new tolerance, the result of wider views, may spread slowly downwards into popular education, until at last it may become possible for English people to draw some useful instruction from the history of their country. J. R. SEELEY, in Macmillan's Magazine.

IN NORWAY.

THE weather changed to a cloudless sunshine which hatched all the mosquitoes, as we entered Norway in the second week in July, and the heat was so intense that, in the long railway journey from Stock holm, we were very thankful for the little tank of iced water with which each railway carriage is provided. We were disappointed in Kristiania, which is a very dull place. The town was built by Christian IV. of Denmark, and has a good central church of his time, but it is utterly unpicturesque. In the picture gallery are several noble works of Tidemann, the special painter of expression and pathos. As a companion for life is the memory of a picture which represents the administration of the last sacrament to an old peasant, whose wife's grief is turned to resignation, which ceases even to have a wish for his retention, as she beholds the heaven-born comfort with which he is looking into an unknown future. Another of the finest works of the artist represents the reception of the sacrament by a convict, young and deeply repentant, before his execution.

There is no striking scenery in the environs of Kristiania, but they are wonderfully pretty. From the avenues upon the ramparts you look down over the broad expanse of the fyord, with low blue mountain distances. Little steamers dart backwards and forwards, and

convey visitors in a few minutes across the bay to Oscars Halle, a tower and small country villa of the king, on a wooded knoll.

We went by the railway which winds high amongst the hills to Kongsberg, a mining village in a lofty situation. Here, in a garden of white roses, there is a most comfortable small hotel kept by a Dane, which is a capital starting-point for all expeditions in Telemarken. We engaged a carriage at Kongsberg for the excursion to Tinoset, whence we arranged to go on to the Ryukan Foss, said to be the highest waterfall in Europe. We do not advise future travellers without unlimited time to follow us in the latter part of the expedition by the lake, but the carriage excursion is quite enchanting. What an exquisite drive it is through the forest-the deep ever-varying woods of noble pines and firs springing from luxuriant thickets of junipers, bilberries, and cranberries! The loveliest mountain

flowers grow in these woods-huge larkspurs of rank luxuriant foliage and flowers of faint dead blue; pinks and blue lungworts and orchids; stagmoss wreathing itself round the grey rocks, and delicate, lovely soldanella drooping in the still recesses.

Our mid-day halt was at Bolkesjö, where the forest opens to green lawns, hill-set, with a charming view down the smooth declivities to a many-bayed lake, with mountain distances. Here, amid a group of old brown farm-buildings, covered with rude paintings and sculpture, is a farm-house, inhabited by the same family through many generations. It is one of the "stations" where it is part of the duty of the farmer or "bonder" who is owner of the soil to find horses for the use of travellers. These horses are supplied at a very trifling charge, and are brought back by a boy who sits behind the carriole or carriage, upon the portmanteau; but as the horses, when not called for, are turned loose or used by the bonder in his own farm or field work, travellers generally have to wait a long time while they are caught or sent for. They order their horses “strax”—directly— one of the first words an Englishman learns to use on entering Norway, yet they scarcely ever appear before half an hour, so that Norwegians repeat with amusement the story of an Englishman who, when he wished to spend an hour at a station, ordered his horses "after two strax's." These halts are not always congenial to English impatience, yet they give opportunities of becoming acquainted with Norwegian life and people which can be obtained in no other way, and recollection will oftener go back to the quiet time spent in waiting for horses amid the grey rocks above some foaming streamlet, in the green oases surrounded by forest, or in clean-boarded rooms strewn with fresh fir foliage, than to the more established sights of Norway. Most delicious indeed were the two hours which we passed at Bolkesjö, in the high pastures where the peasants were mowing the tall grass ablaze with flowers, and the mountains were throwing long purple shadows over the forest, and the wind blowing freshly from the gleaming lake-and then, most delicious was the well-earned

meal of eggs and bacon, strawberries and cream, and other homely dainties in the farm-house, where the beams and furniture were all painted and carved with mottoes and texts, and the primitive box beds had crimson satin quilts. Portraits sent by well-pleased royal visitors hung on the walls, side by side with common-coloured Scripture prints, like those which are found in English cottages. The cellar is under a bed, beneath which it was funny to see the old farmeress disappear as she went down to fetch up for us her home-brewed ale.

But what roads, or rather what want of roads, lead to Tinoset!— there were banks of glassy rock, up which our horses scrambled like cats; there were awful moments when everything seemed to come to an end, and when they gathered up their legs, and seemed to fling themselves down headlong with the carriage on the top of them, and yet we reached the bottom of the abyss buried in dust, to rise gasping and gulping and wondering we were alive, to begin the same pantomime over again,

Late in the evening, long after the sunlight had faded, and when the forests seemed to have gone to sleep and all sounds were silent, we reached Tinoset. The inn is a wooden châlet on the banks of a lake, with a single great pine-tree close to the door. It was terribly crowded, and the little wooden cells were the smallest apology for bedrooms, where all through the night we heard the winds howling amongst the mountains, and the waves lashing the shore under the windows. In the morning the lake was covered with huge blue waves crested with foam, and we were almost sorry when the steamer came and we felt obliged to embark, because, as it was not the regular day for its passage, we had summoned it at some expense from the other end of the lake. We were thoroughly wet with the spray before we reached the little inn at Strand, with a pier where we disembarked, and occupied the rest of the afternoon in drawing the purple hills and the road winding towards them through the old birch-trees. An excursion to the Ryukan Foss occupied the next day; a dull drive through the plain, and then an exciting skirting of horrible precipices, followed by a clamber up a mountain pathlet to a châlet, where we were thankful for our well-earned dinner of trout and ale before proceeding to the Foss, the 560 feet high fall of a mountain torrent into a black rift in the hills-a boiling, roaring abyss of water, with drifts of spray which are visible for miles before it can be seen itself.

In returning from Tinoset we took the way by Hitterdal, the dateforgotten old wooden church so familiar from picture-books. It had been our principal object in coming to Norway, yet the long drive had made us so ravenous in search of food, that we could only endure to stay there half an hour. The church, however, is most intensely picturesque, rising with an infinity of quaintest domes and spires, all built of timber, out of a rude cloister painted red, the whole hav

ing the appearance of a very tall Chinese pagoda, yet only measuring altogether 84 feet by 57. The belfry, Norwegian-wise, stands alone on the other side of the churchyard, which is overgrown with pink willow-herb. When we reached the inn, as famished as wolves in winter, we were told by our landlady that she could not give us any dinner, ،، Nei, nei," nothing would induce her-she had too much work on her hands already-perhaps, however, the woman at the house with the flag would give us some. So, hungry and faint, we walked forth again to a house which had a flag flying in front of it, where all was silent and deserted, except for a dog, who received us furiously. Having pacified him, and finding the front door locked, we made good our entrance at the back, examined the kitchen, peeped into all the cupboards, lifted up the lids of all the saucepans, and not till we had searched every corner for food ineffectually, were met by the pretty, pleasant-looking young lady of the house, who informed us in excellent English, and with no small surprise at our conduct, that we had been committing a raid upon her private residence. Afterwards we discovered a lonely farm-house, where there had once been a flag, and where they gave us a very good dinner, ending in a great bowl of cloudberries, in which we were joined by two pleasant young ladies and their father, an old gentleman smoking an enormously long pipe, who turned out to be the Bishop of Christiansand. The house of the landamann of Hitterdal contains a relic connected with a picturesque story quaintly illustrative of ancient Scandinavian life. It is an axe, with a handle projecting beyond the blade, and curved, so that it can be used as a walking-stick. Formerly it belonged to an ancient descendant of the Kongen, or chieftains of the district, who insisted upon carrying it to church with him, in accordance with an old privilege. The priest forbade the bearing of the warlike weapon into church, which so much affected the old man that he died. His son, who thought it necessary to avenge his father's death, went to the priest with the axe in his hands, and demanded the most precious thing he possessed, when the priest brought his Bible and gave it to him, open upon a passage exhorting to forgiveness of injuries.

On July 25 we lef. Kristiania for Throndtjem-the whole journey of three hundred and sixty miles being very comfortable, and only costing thirty francs. The route has no great beauty, but endless pleasant variety-rail to Eidswold, with bilberries and strawberries in pretty birch-bark baskets for sale at all the railway stations; a vibrating steamer for several hours on the long, dull Miosen lake; railway again, with some of the carriages open at the sides; then an obligatory night at Koppang, a large station, where accommodation is provided for every one, but where, if there are many passengers, several people, strangers to each other, are expected to share the same room. On the second day the scenery improves, the railway sometimes running along and sometimes over the river