In square crown 8vo. with numerous Illustrations, price 21s. THE THREE CATHEDRALS DEDICATED TO ST. PAUL, IN LONDON. By WILLIAM LONGMAN, F.A.S. Chairman of the Finance Committee for the Completion of St. Paul's. From THE TIMES, November 15, 1873 : 'Mr. LONGMAN tells us in his preface that this volume owes its origin to the increased interest which he took in the Cathedral, under the shadow of which he had spent a considerable portion of his life, when he became a member of the Committee for its completion. A great stimulus was given to the praiseworthy movement for appropriately adorning the majestic pile which crowns the highest hill in the City between Ludgate and the Tower by the National Thanksgiving for the recovery of the Prince of Wales celebrated within its walls in the spring of 1872; and with a view to aid in that movement, Mr. LONGMAN began to write on St. Paul's, with little intention of entering so deeply into architectural details; but writing is not unlike letting out water-a man takes up his goose-quill and cannot tell when he will lay it down. So it is that St. Paul's expanded under the pen of our author into a goodly volume illustrated with six engravings on steel and nearly 50 woodcuts. Some people might say-but they are of the hypercritical kind-Why write on St. Paul's with Dean MILMAN'S Annals of St. Paul's staring you in the face? For a very good reason. As Mr. LONGMAN well says, he had no intention of attempting any rivalry with that important volume. The aim of the two works is entirely different. It was the cost and construction of Old and New St. Paul's that Mr. LONGMAN had in view, out of which naturally grew a more minute account of their respective styles of architecture. These details were beyond the scope of the Dean's book. In a word, the two works are complementary the one to the other. There is room for both, and both should be studied by those who are anxious to know what Old and New St. Paul's really were. Nor was it to be expected that Mr. LONGMAN should have written this volume unassisted. It is full of special knowledge which, to use the north-country expression, he could not have sucked out of his own breast. There have been men whose mental digestion is so robust that they think nothing of appropriating the labours of others; they swallow them up and assimilate them, and feel none the worse for the process. Not such a man is Mr. LONGMAN. His Preface, and indeed his book, is full of acknowledgments to those who have aided him in his work; and whether it is Mr. FERREY, of whom he says that his restorations of Old St. Paul's give a value to his book to which it could not otherwise pretend, or the Rev. JOHN HUNTER, who calculated the exact number of acres and poles covered by Old St. Paul's, all come in for their meed of praise and acknowledgment. These acknowledgments, and the declara, tion that, though Chairman of the Finance Committee for the restoration of the Cathedral, Mr. LONGMAN'S work has no official character, and that he alone is responsible for the facts and opinions expressed in it complete the Litany of modest disclaimers chanted by Mr, LONGMAN in his Preface, and leave us at liberty to proceed to discuss the merits of the work itself.'.... London: LONGMANS and CO. Paternoster Row. In Two Volumes, 8vo. with 9 Coloured Maps and Plans, 8 Plates and 16 Woodcut Illustrations, price 28s. HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EDWARD By WILLIAM LONGMAN, F.A.S. "The Three Cathedrals dedicated to St. Paul, in London.' 'A reign more full of interest and importance and yet more strangely neglected by the student-could scarcely be better reduced to history than in the work to which we now would draw attention. It was a difficult task to create a living pic ture of an age so remote in time and character from our own; so dependent for its adequate manifestation on a thorough knowledge of the collateral history of all the continental kingdoms of the day; and requiring, at almost every turn, the happiest admixture of the social elements with the political and the religious. Mr. LONGMAN has carefully reflected the spirit of the times of which he writes, while exhibiting always the research of the historian, and the justness and discrimination of the critic.' EXAMINER. "In Mr. LONGMAN's work, which combines the requisite characteristics of history and biography to an extent and with an amount of skill rare among the writers of the period, we acknowledge with much gratitude a solid boon to English literature, a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the past and its illus trious dead. The Author's endeavour to make his readers feel personally acquainted with the King, to realize him as a man, to remove him from the category of phantoms to which the far-distant actors in history belong, into the rank of those concerning whom we have distinct views and impressions, is singularly successful.....It is not too much to say of Mr. LONGMAN's work that it stands alone in its treatment of this subject (Ireland); that the student of history who would know how the case of Ireland really stood in those old times will resort to this book. The warlike episodes of EDWARD'S reign are selected with striking effect, and with a sympathetic spirit which lends them a strong attraction; and the concluding chapters in which the Author sums up the incidents of the King's reign, which rose in splendour, attained supreme glory, and declined in shame and failure-a reign which may be compared with that of SOLOMON for its promise, its performance, and its melancholy decadence-are remarkable for their power, their conciseness, and their judicial calmness of tone.' DUBLIN REVIEW. By the same Author, in 8vo. with Maps &c. price 15s. LECTURES on the HISTORY of ENGLAND, from the Earliest Times to the Death of Edward II. London: LONGMANS and CO. Paternoster Row. |