1860. pp. xvi., 663.
We do not think that Dr. Vaughan has been happy in his choice of a title
for his book. It is more properly an introduction to the study of English
history, than the limitation of the title would seem to import. The Saxon
occupation of England is, perhaps, the only event which may fitly be called
a revolution of race. The volume, however, is a solid and sensible one. Dr.
Vaughan is not a brilliant writer; but brilliancy is not always the best
quality in an historian, for it as often leaves readers dazzled as
taught. A decidedly matter-of-fact turn of mind prevents his being a
theorist, so that he does not formulate characters and events in accordance
with some fixed preconception. His learning seems sometimes limited by what
was accessible to him at the least expense of study,--as, for example, in
his account of the religion of the Teutonic races, where he depends almost
altogether on Mallet. His style is generally clear and unpretending, never
remarkable for any rhetorical merit, sometimes disfigured by inaccuracies,
which, had they occurred in an American book, would have been attributed by
English critics to the low grade of our culture and civilization. In one
instance he is guilty of the barbarous cockneyism of using the word _party_
as an equivalent for _person_. He speaks of the Roman Wall as having been
kept _perpetually_ guarded when he means _constantly_, of border land as
"separating between" two races, and of ornaments made "from jet.
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