I select three points. First, an examination of what may be called the wind-up of the Reformation in England; to wit, the destruction of the English Monarchy in the seventeenth century and its replacing by an oligarchy of the well-to-do; for by the way in which a man treats that development, his general culture in the field of modern European history may very well be tested. Secondly, the corresponding Continental modern movement, ending with the French Revolution. Thirdly, what he has to say (and he says it very badly) about the effects upon the European mind, and particularly upon religion, of our physiological and biological discoveries, theories and blunders in the nineteenth century. First, then, to the victory of the governing classes in England over the Crown, which was the final effect of the Reformation here. Mr. Wells repeats upon the origins of Parliament what may be called the elementary-school-textbook legend. It is, of course, erroneous, and it is a type of those errors which, though apparently unconnected with error in religion, are really dependent upon such error. For it proceeds from a lack of comprehension of that united Catholic Europe of Middle Ages from which we all spring. He tells us, to begin with, that monarchy in England was surrounded, after the breakdown of the Roman Empire, by Magnates who watched the common interests and modified the power of the monarch, but he adds that this was due to the presence of northern and Germanic blood. This is, of course, mere repetition of what is still written in a great many of our popular textbooks. It is, therefore, natural that Mr. Wells should repeat it. None the less it shows ignorance of essentials. It contains, like so many popular myths, a truth and a falsehood combined. Local governments, after the breakdown of central rule from Rome, were invariably a combination of the local general and a group of Magnates round him. That is true. But the second statement—that one of the two which is important—is quite false. So little had this grouping of Magnates round the king to do with Germanic blood, that you find it everywhere the same throughout Europe, and actually weaker in the Germanies than anywhere else. Moreover, the group of Magnates is hardly apparent at the beginning of the business when many of the local Roman generals, such as Theodoric, were of still unmixed Germanic blood. The Magnates only become strong much later in the centuries, and by that time the Germanic blood in the West had disappeared. People of Northern Germanic blood have never shown any particular dislike to being governed absolutely by one man. Indeed they have been rather more docile under such a political condition than Southern people and Western people during and since the Dark Ages.