550 Reviezvs of Books of the Thirty Years' War, Professor Walker has not concealed from him- self nor from his readers the difficulty of the task. He has wisely re- stricted himself to the continent of Europe, but, even with this limitation, he has been able only to indicate the salient points in the great transition. In his selection of names and incidents to be treated in some detail he has generally been happy, and the sense of proportion is nowhere offended. In his judgment of leading persons he has not sought to be original in any sense, but follows the best judgment of recent and careful scholarship. The entire absence of all reference to authority leaves one sometimes at a loss to trace his sources, but in the main it is evident that he has not written without a proper use of special studies on many controverted points. While no one could be in doubt as to the author's Protestantism, his fairness in describing Roman Catholic institutions, as far as possible, from their positive side is most praiseworthy. There is a refreshing absence of all partisan abuse, which makes his careful analysis of the real dangers against which the Reformation contended so much the more convincing. The same moderation is evident in the description of sectarian diver- gences within Protestantism itself. The figure of Calvin finds naturally a central place, but full justice is done to all the widely divergent efforts to bring clearness and power into the vague and shifting forces of the anti-Catholic assault. Novel to many readers of the conventional Protestant tradition, though not to any student of more recent literature, will be the accounts of pre- Reformation reform movements within the Catholic church itself. Most noteworthy, perhaps, in this direction is the chapter on the "Spanish Awakening." We have hardly become accustomed to the thought, that in Spain, the country of all others in which the principles of the Refor- mation found their most determined opposition, there was, long before Luther, a vigorous stirring of the religious consciousness against the evils which Luther and his followers tried to remove. Professor Walker brings out these reformatory efforts into the clearest light, but does not fail also to show that they were of necessity insufficient because they did not touch the great central fact of the responsibility of every human soul to its God, without the intervention of any other human authority whatever. So in regard to Italy ; the encouraging signs of a spiritual awakening are given their due proportion, and then we are shown how these first efforts were crushed out by the necessities of maintaining the papal establishment, with all its vast consequences for the Italian communities. On the other hand it is made evident that theoretical declarations of freedom and re- sponsibility, such as the doctrinaires of the early fourteenth century and of the conciliar period produced in abundance, were destined to remain futile until they were given concrete expression in the German revolt against priestly tyranny. And again the extravagant demonstrations of the Radical parties from Miinzer to Servetus are set in their true light as inevitable outgrowths of the liberal spirit, which it was Luther's first care to hold within the leading-strings of his own conservative instinct.
