300
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time. We do not believe he would willingly have
molested any one for the temperate expression of
any opinion whatever which he did not regard as
dangerous to the State, but it would be futile to
claim for him the reasoned conclusions which
Roger Williams and Archbishop Leighton have
formulated.
Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, 1735-1806. By Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. (Long- mans & Co.)
AT the advice of Lord Rosebery and Sir George Trevelyan, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice has reissued in book form two articles on the famous arid unfor- tunate Duke of Brunswick contributed in 1897-8 to the Edinburgh Review. The work thus con- stituted forms the best record we possess concern- ing one of the most enlightened of potentates and one of the bravest and most unfortunate of commanders. Rarely, indeed, has a contrast been more striking than that between the outset and the close of the life of the Duke of Brunswick been furnished to the world. Nephew and favourite pupil of Frederick the Great, he won military dis- tinction while still little more than a boy in the Seven Years' War, and was regarded as a spoilt child of fortune. Commanding, after the French Revolution, the allied Austrian and Prussian armies, he fought with some success against the French Republican commanders, only to lose his reputation and his life when in 1806, in command of the Prussian forces, he confronted Napoleon at Jena. Of this career Lord Edmond gives an interesting and fairly stimulating account, laying the blame of failure partly upon want of capacity on the part of the duke to make up his mind, partly upon the mutual jealousies of Prussia and Austria, and partly again upon the interference with his plans from Berlin, due in a great measure to the misrepresentations of the emigres. These causes were all contributory to the breakdown of his schemes in 1792-3. When, how- ever, under a sense of duty, he took the command in 1806 of the Prussian troops, and opposed his star to that, then at its zenith, of Napoleon, he was too old. Lamartine, and after him M. Louis Blanc, exaggerate into an offer, by the constitutional party in France, of the throne of that country the advances made to the duke by Custine. That the Duke of Brunswick won the warm admiration of many of the philosophical French Radicals is true. To zeal for reform, however, the duke, like his uncle and Voltaire, added, as is shown, " a profound contempt for the vile multitude and for the ignor- ance of the mob." This opuscule is serviceable and welcome. It is illustrated by two portraits of its hero, one showing him in 1777 and the other near the close of his life, and by a coloured map of Central Europe in 1786.
IT is with the deepest regret we record the death of Mr. George Murray Smith. We had received such cheering accounts of his improvement in health that we had hoped that all danger was past indeed, he had sufficiently recovered to be removec from Park Lane but he sank rapidly, and died a1 Weybridge on Saturday last at the age of seventy seven. The h'rin of Smith & Elder was founded by his father. It was chiefly an East Indian agency with a small publishing business attached. On his father's death the whole devolved upon him, and he set to work at once to develope the publishing portion
or which he had a natural taste. Mr. Smith, in his
nteresting reminiscences which have just been
>ublished in the Cornhill, and recently noticed in
N. & Q.,' gives a sketch of the rise and progress
f his firm and of the founding of that magazine.
!t will be also remembered that in 1865 he
ounded the Pall Mall Gazette, written "by
entlemen for gentlemen." It was in 1882
e conceived the patriotic idea of publishing a
Dictionary of National Biography.' With this
stupendous undertaking his name must be for
ever identified, and to him the British nation
owes a debt of gratitude which now, alas ! can
never be repaid. Mr. Smith's death will be keenly
- elt by his friends and all who had business trans-
actions with him. He was generosity itself and "ull of kindliness. With him has passed away the ast of the founders of the large publishing houses of the Victorian era.
W. C. B. writes : " On 1 April died at Doncaster John Sykes, M.D.Edin., aged eighty-four, probably the oldest contributor to ' N. & Q.' (see 9 th S. v. 89). He was a pioneer in the work of copying parish registers, and of searching in will offices and jhe like. His knowledge of Yorkshire families was extensive and minute, and out of his stores of notes tie gave freely to all applicants. The number of Local historians and antiquaries who profited by his help, material and pecuniary, is past knowing. He delighted to aid promising young men in obtaining better education, but he was of a retiring dis- position, and his many acts of generosity were unostentatious. He belonged to a yeoman family in the neighbourhood of Barnsley, but the bulk of his life was spent in Doncaster, where he practised for many years as a physician. He was F.R.C.P. of London, and for some time F.S.A., and a magis- trate for the borough of Doncaster. He was un- married. The writer of these lines, who knew him intimately for nearly thirty-two years, has a melan- choly satisfaction in making this memorial of him in the pages of ' N. & Q.,' which he read with interest to the last."
to
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PALAMEDES. The mistake you mention is in your manuscript.
CORRIGENDA. P. 253, col. 2, 11. 15, 16, for "comedores" read comedones ; p. 273, col. 1, 1. 8, for "Castilian " read Portuguese.
NOTICE.
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