The very skilful way in which Miss Yonge selects the chief incidents of her episodes, and groups around them such subordinate matters as may be necessary for a complete historic picture, has given to the first series of her 'Cameos' a popularity which the second will not fall short of. Miss Yonge is executing a gallery of historic compositions that have individual completeness enough to make them interesting, and connection enough to make them instructive. Without any affectation of originality in the sources or methods of her narrative, she skilfully uses the materials and conclusions of the best historical authorities, and thus provides for young people and for general readers a historical manual, the ability and interest of which will convey a vast amount of information to readers whom more pretentious works would fail to attract. This second series is almost entirely occupied with the French wars. Beginning in 1330 with the romantic conquests of Edward III. and the Black Prince, it narrates the strange solecism of English rule in France, and ends in 1435 with the still more romantic mission of the Maid of Orleans, and the Congress of Arras, and the extinction of the English cause in France. We cannot speak too highly of the care, good sense, and literary skill with which these historic cameos are cut. The most romantic incidents—battles such as those of Crecy and Poitiers, achievements such as those of Joan of Arc—lose nothing in the artistic setting of the author, while the least interesting are made attractive by it. A more fascinating and instructive book, as we can testify from our own well-thumbed copy of the first series, and from the eagerness with which the second has been seized, could not be put into the hands of young people.
Life of William Cunningham, D.D., Principal and Professor of Theology and Church History, New College, Edinburgh. By Robert Rainy, D.D., and the late Rev. James Mackenzie. 8vo. Nelson and Sons. 1871.
As long as the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 is remembered, the name of Dr. Cunningham will be indissolubly associated with it. The Free Church party, to which he belonged, was rich in eminent men at the great crisis. Chalmers, of course, towered over all the rest as its man of many-sided genius. Candlish was its popular champion; Hugh Miller was its journalist; Buchanan its ecclesiastical statesman; Guthrie its orator and wit; Murray Dunlop its jurist. Dr. Cunningham, however, as a dogmatic theologian and master of Church principles, long occupied a place by himself in the councils and the inner life of his Church, and we cordially welcome his memoir.
The volume is the work of two successive biographers. Rather more than one-third of it had been prepared by the late Rev. James Mackenzie, when, his untimely death interrupted his labours; the rest of the book is written by Dr. Rainy, who, once a pupil of Cunningham's, was afterwards his pastor and most intimate friend, and is now his successor in the Chair of Historical Theology. Mr. Mackenzie's portion is picturesque and lively. The story of the disruption conflict, which it embraces, has already been told, by Dr. Hanna in his life of Chalmers, in a way that can hardly be equalled, but the version here given is at once elaborate and fresh. Dr. Rainy, who continues the life from 1843 till its close in 1861, has executed his task with judgment and loving fidelity, and with so entire a mastery of all the bearings of his subject that his chapters will have a permanent value for the members of the Free Church as a contribution to her history.
The outward incidents of Cunningham's life are soon told. Born at Hamilton in 1805, he lost his father in early childhood, and was brought up by an admirable mother. At the age of fifteen he entered the university of Edinburgh, where he remained eight years. At twenty-five he was ordained to one of the largest churches in Greenock. Thence, four years afterwards, in 1834, he was translated to Trinity College Church, in Edinburgh. Quitting the Establishment in 1843, he visited America on a public mission, and on his return was appointed to the Chair of Apologetical Theology in the Free Church College. In 1845, he succeeded Dr. Welsh as Professor of Church History, and on the death of Dr. Chalmers, in 1847, he became Principal of the College, retaining, however, his Professorship.
From his very boyhood, Cunningham was wont 'to scorn delights and live laborious days.' In one long vacation, before he was seventeen, he read eighty volumes, among them the whole of the Iliad in Greek, Barrow on the 'Pope's Supremacy,' Taylor's 'Ductor Dubitantium,' and the like. Such studious habits adhered to him through life. 'He reads Greek and Latin,' says his biographer, 'in immense quantities, and French in great abundance.' It was only a strong judgment and a wonderful memory that prevented his enormous reading from overloading his powers of mental digestion. At first, metaphysics attracted him, but soon theology became his favourite field. Up to the age of eighteen his sympathies were with the 'moderate' or high-and-dry party in the Scottish Church; but about that time his mind underwent a great and blessed spiritual change, which, as it was brought about by the influence of evangelical truth, naturally led him to join the evangelical party.
As a preacher, he was decidedly successful during the four years of his ministry at Greenock. In Edinburgh his gifts were buried in an almost inaccessible and gloomy church, and his sermons became dry. The ten years' conflict, however, called forth all his powers. The annual general assemblies of those days furnished an arena for high debate unequalled in the history of Scotland. Judges of the supreme courts, eminent lawyers, physicians, merchants, and landowners, sat on their benches as elders, along with the flower of the Scottish clergy. The audience was only limited by the breadth to which galleries could be carried. The questions at issue, first, the spiritual rights of the people in the formation of the pastoral tie, and, growing out of that, the spiritual independence of the Church itself, affected all classes of society, and interested Dissenters as well as members of the Establishment. Amidst these scenes Cunningham proved himself—
'No carpet knight so trim,
But in close fights a champion grim,
In camps a leader, sage.'