Stuart dynasty

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
A favourable reception, quite beyond expectation, has induced
me to publish an edition of this work at a popular price. In
so doing I shall not attempt to cope in detail with the opinions
of some sixty too lenient critics, but content myself with a
justification of that via media which I claim to have taken in
regard to the controversy which continues between the two
schools who respectively laud and execrate the Stuart name.
That I am not so far from the truth in my estimate as some
critics suppose, is, I think, manifest from the strong objection
taken to my conclusions by the White Rose organs on one
hand, and the Daily News and several journals in sj'mpathy
with it on the other; while the fact that a majority of my
critics have expressed themselves in favour of a juste milieu
being observed in estimating the merits and demerits of the
unfortunate Stuart race, leads one to believe that some protest
against the ipse dixit school of historians was needed.
Study of European history has led me to the conclusion that
if the microscope of modern inquiry had been directed against
any other dynasty, regnant or extinct, in the same minute and
unsparing fashion in which it has been held over the Stuarts,
there would have been opportunity for brilliant penmanship
to present a picture quite as dark and repulsive as that which
writers of the last few decades have painted of Mary Queen of
Scots and her descendants.
On the other hand, the excellent writers in the Boyalist seem
to me to favour an ideal conception of monarchy, anti-popular
in its nature, which would, rightly or wrongly, destroy that
estimable institution in all quarters of the globe. At the
same time they utterly ignore the fact that Henry, Cardinal of