furthered by the fact that these famous essays are, in many parts of the present volume, absolutely unreadable. GEORGE SAINTSBURY. The History of Japan. Vol. II. (1865 to 1871) completing the Work. By Francis Ottiwell Adams, F.R.G.S., H.B.M.'s Secretary of Embassy at Berlin, formerly Chargé d'Affaires and Secretary of Legation at Yedo. (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1874.) IF Sir Stafford Northcote be right, in the opinion he recently expressed to the Conservative working men in the city of Exeter, that "the true progress of a nation is gradual and uniform, and not by jumps and starts "the History of Japan, which Mr. Adams in the present volume brings down to the year 1871, must fill the reader with melancholy forebodings. It is the history of a nation long isolated from the rest of the world, which has by a rapid succession of jumps and starts traversed in a single decade as wide a circle of political and social changes as the French from the date of the Merovingian dynasty-when they too had their Mayors of the Palace, the analogue to the Japanese Shogun-or the English from the Norman Conquest to the present day. In a word, they have sought to compass in ten years that which has taken other nations as many centuries to accomplish. The magnitude of the issues-involving the destiny of a nation numbering more than thirty millions -and the novel conditions under which an experiment on this scale is being made, equally tend to invest the narrative with no ordinary interest. It opens a new chapter to the student of history, and suggests many problems not easy of solution, as to the diversity of conditions under which nations develop new forms of existence; and more or less suddenly adopt a new ideal to be striven for, as the highest good. If history has a tendency to repeat itself, the rule is one which has apparently many exceptions, and this book furnishes one of a very striking kind to add to the number. The first part of Mr. Adams's work, already noticed in these columns,* brought the history of Japan down to the close of a wellmarked period, embracing within its limits all the preliminary combinations and struggles between the confederate Daimios of the West, and the Shogun with his allied chiefs and clans. The volume now before us covers the five years which followed the downfall of the Shogun, and a marvellous succession of events constituting the actual revolution. The deposition of the reigning Shogun, the extinction of his office, and the restoration of the Mikado to power, long usurped by successive dynasties of Shoguns, formed only the first step. The abolition of the Shogun's office was indeed the necessary prelude to measures which had for their primary object a new distribution of governing powers. But the extent to which the innovations on all established forms and institutions would be carried, and the radical character of the changes to be effected in every department, were probably * ACADEMY of May 30, 1874. not foreseen at the time by the most revolutionary promoters of the movement which led to the Shogun's removal from the scene. Certainly nothing could be less Japanese, or more manifestly foreign, than the various moulds into which everything was ultimately cast-from the convocation of a deliberative assembly, to the redistribution and tenure of land. Nor was there any attempt to conceal or disguise the fact, however rash or hazardous it must à priori be assumed to have been to remodel all the social and political framework of a nation on a foreign pattern. The French Revolution of 1789 would seem to supply a parallel in modern history. But even it fails, in some essential particulars, to furnish an exact counterpart. For the French, while making a clean sweep of all existing institutions and forms of government, included the monarchy among the things to be destroyed-and they did not set to work to reconstruct on any avowedly foreign pattern. This outward semblance therefore, with underlying differences, in a great national transformation, would furnish interesting matter for study under any cirBut, considered in connexion with the Eastern origin of one race, and the thoroughly Oriental type of their civilisation -so unlike in almost every respect anything existing in the Western world-the narrative becomes additionally interesting as a new experience in the progress of nations. It is in this light we are disposed to regard Mr. Adams's work, with its record of quickly succeeding events, each destined to effect deemed by the Japanese themselves to be a fundamental change of elements-long among the most permanent and vital conditions of their national existence. cumstances. The mere removal of a usurper, and the restoration of a king claiming to reign by divine right, is no novelty in history, whether ancient or modern. Such changes need not involve anything more than a palace revolution, affecting only the chief actors. But the distinguishing feature of the Japanese movement seems to have been the combination of two conflicting ideasa restoration of sovereign power to the heir, according to ancient custom and hereditary descent, and the introduction, at the same time, of an entirely new political system of exotic origin. This, too, as if to complete the antithesis, was effected by agents whose chief influence had previously been due to an intense hatred of foreigners, and all their innovations. The Sako, or anti-foreign party, who raised the standard of revolt against the Shogun, took as their war-cry the expulsion of the barbarian. foreigner" had long been inscribed on their flag. The restoration of the Mikado and downfall of the Shogunate were avowedly brought about as a means to this end. "Death to the Other objects, of course, were in view, but this was placed in the fore-front of the battle as one which united all Japanese, except the Shogun and his dependents. What new influence came into existence so suddenly and completely to reverse all the aims and principles of action; and make of the most conservative and prejudiced of the Japanese nation the chief movers in a revolution that bids fair wholly to denationalise them? From what motives, and by what agency has this strange and unprecedented revolution been effected? An Eastern nation, obstinately attached to what was most distinctive in their nationality and customs, and inveterately hostile to whatever savoured of innovation or foreign influence-jealous, indeed, beyond all other Orientals, of European intrusion or encroachment, to be suddenly converted into ardent advocates and admirers of all Western forms and institutions, is unlike anything on record, in any other country. How is it to be explained that a revolution which had its origin in hatred of the foreigner, and for one of its principal objects his expulsion from the Japanese soil which he desecrated, became the immediate cause of friendly intercourse, the subversion of all opposing customs and institutions, and the introduction of all things foreign in their place? The fanatic patriotism of the two-sworded Samurai, ever prompting them to slay the intruder, by some unforeseen influence was suddenly turned with equal vehemence to advance the cause Blind inthey had banded together to ruin. struments of destiny, they went forth to curse, and only found tongues to bless. The Daimios, under the influence of their Karos and Samurai, after complicating and endangering their immediate object by plotting at the same time for the expulsion of the Shogun and the foreigner, apparently changed their front in the midst of the conflict to make overtures of peace and amity to the Foreign Representatives. That they should have done so, and ever since thrown thenword-Simonoseki! Or perhaps it should be selves into their arms, is explained by one said, in two words-Kagoshima and Simonoseki; but the lesson conveyed by both was the same, only the last was decisive. When Chosiu, the Prince of Nagato, and chief of the most turbulent and self-reliant of the Samurai, was attacked in his own territories at the straits of Simonoseki, they never doubted their triumph. But in a few hours they saw all his batteries destroyed and guns carried away, after a signal defeat inflicted by a British squadron and a battalion of marines, assisted by five vessels carrying the French and Dutch flags. The Prince and all his fighting clan then for the first time perceived their helpless inferiority in the field, and the hopelessness of success in any hostile action against the Western Powers. From that day they abandoned their former policy, and have had but one desire-to learn the secret of the European superiority and power- in peace and in war-to acquire it for their own use-to emulate them in all that gives such strength and dominion-and so in the end assert and maintain their independence. As the Mikado plainly expressed it in his letters of credence to the first ambassador he sent to Europe and America: "It is our purpose to select from the various institutions prevailing among enlightened nations, such as are best suited to our present position, and adopt them in gradual reforms and improvements of our policy and customs-so as to be upon an equality with them." In this last sentence which we have italicised, Mr. Adams says we have the keynote of the sudden change in their policy, from rancorous hostility to friendly relations. Few will now be disposed, I think, to question the fact, that we have to thank the blow struck opportunely and decisively at Simonoseki, and the lesson it conveyed, for this welcome result. The author remarks with much justice, in conclusion, that the present leaders of the nation had need beware in their future progress of two terrible enemies in the shape of vanity | and conceit. They have unfortunately been accustomed to much flattery and adulation from the Americans; but their best friends are those who, while they give them full credit for their patriotism, and the courage they have shown in adopting every innovation which they believed would advance them in the path of progress, refuse to lavish indiscriminate praise. These would wish them not to be misled either by such flatteries, or their own self-conceit. They have taken a great stride in an incredibly short time-but they have not achieved "a position in the civilised world that the foremost nations of Europe took centuries to accomplish." To claim this, and, on the strength of an assumption so fallacious, the total abolition of exterritoriality, is merely to invite failure. Before they can enter upon such a discussion with any chance of success, they have much to do, which will tax all their powers for a long time to come. What they have so far attempted under a patriotic inspiration, and with what promise of ultimate success, Mr. Adams has told us very succinctly, and with great clearness. In a notice necessarily so brief, it is difficult to do justice either to the subject or the author. We can only further observe that this second volume is in many respects an improvement on the first. Fewer despatches are quoted, and it is consequently less bulky, while the narrative gains in clearness and interest. But the same care has been taken to avoid the errors so common in superficial accounts of Japan by travellers, and to ensure perfect accuracy in dates, names, and topography, in both volumes. It will consequently form a valuable record of the stirring events which have marked the annals of this strange country during the last twenty years, long after the immediate interest now attaching to its transformation has ceased. RUTHERFORD ALCOCK. The Book of the Axe. A Piscatorial Description of that Stream, and Historical Sketches of all the Parishes and Remarkable Places on its Banks. With Illustrations and a Map. Fourth Edition. Re-written and Enlarged. By George P. R. Pulman. (London: Longmans & Co., 1875.) THOUGH scarcely the book for a knapsack or carpet-bag, sketcher, angler, or tourist might do worse than digest at home The Book of the Axe, and then essay the actual river. Indeed, this course might be preferable to taking Mr. Pulman as an oral guide, for well-nigh 900 octavo pages descriptive of twenty miles are suggestive of a companion too gossiping to be compatible with much sport, and too inquisitive to overlook holes and corners, and grasp only the striking features of his route. Yet for a book truly "foursquare," it were hard to find one so faithful as this monument of years of loving research, into the very notes of which Mr. Pulman has transcribed quotations and authorities for hundreds of such terms, in connexion with land and its holding and privileges, as soccage, pannage, liberty, franchise, surnames, &c. &c. Against this may indeed be set a certain heedlessness of bit or bridle, which, à propos of the hidings of the fugitive Charles II. in Somerset, Dorset, or Devon, cannot resist going off at a tangent to Boscobel and the Penderell brothers, and not returning to the prescribed course till it has given the patient reader an exhaustive breather; nevertheless, the author's enthusiasm is always a warranty for readable matter; and given leisure and a readingeasel-for The Book of the Axe is one not to be stowed quickly in the head or "held readily in the hand"-it would be hard to find so companionable a book. The author's plan is to trace the Axe, flyrod in hand, from source to mouth- -a matter of twenty miles in a straight line, but of some forty or fifty in its détours. The reader joins him, after a delightful introductory chapter, at the stream-heads of Cheddington Copse and Axeknoller, near Beaminster, at no great distance from the sources of the Yeo, the Brit, and the Parret ; and, starting thence, is carried mentally along four fivemile reaches (allowing for digressions) the first terminating at Clapton Bridge; the second at the mouth of Perry Street Brook, near Chard Road station; the third at Abbey Bridge and the mouth of the Yarty, a mile from Axminster; and the fourth at Haven Cliff, below Axmouth. For the first half of its course the river does little more than streak a verdant landscape with a threadlike "vein of virgin silver," here and there waxing imperceptibly as a tributary pours into it from the recess of some local "combe; "but at Winsham Bridge, about a mile from the end of the second quarter of the score, the Axe ceases to be brooklike, and-after several long and deep ranges in the Ford Abbey meadows, at Westford, near Chard Junction, or Perry Street Brook -assumes its true Axe character, "takes final leave of alder-fringed banks; and thenceforth to the sea is almost without a single encumbering bush, and flows on in a succession of alternate stickles and ranges" (h.e., rough shallows or scours and deep smooth pools), "with high banks and shelving beaches in successive alternation also" (p. 526). As the ostensible title of the author to act the cicerone of this interesting stream-bank consists in his piscatorial prowess and achievements, it is only fair to state that he does something more than occasionally check himself in collateral gossip with a "What ho, Piscator" to an imaginary" son-of-Zebedee," as he is fond of calling his brother of the gentle craft. No angler will deny his discipleship to Isaak Walton after perusing the casual pages in which he cheers Piscator on to landing his "pounder," or sniffs, as by instinct, the neat and clean angler's inn-parlour. But he further exhibits a familiar knowledge of the ichthyology of the Axe in a score of pages in his introductory chapter, which enumerate and describe the salmon, salmon-trout, and varieties of trout and eel to be taken in its waters; the trout, it seems, not so good or red to cut as those of the tributary Yarty, though of good culinary quality; and the salmon less abundant than would be the case were not the best part of the Axe, and the salmon's true spawning ground, shut out to the ascending fish by the weir at Axminster, and the Coly barred by a weir built across it half a mile from its mouth. In number, if not in goodness, they are below those of the Exe, whereof the young barrister is reported to have said to the judge who remarked that "nothing was good in extremes," " Yes, my lord, in the Exe-streams there are the best of salmon." Mr. Pulman has strong opinions respecting the alteration of the fence-days, knows a fingerling from a graveling, believes from observation that the sharp-nosed or silver eel is migratory, and really has adduced very fair Devonshire evidence in favour of Oppian's theory that eels are born of the slime with which their scales are covered (30-1). As to the voracity of eels he has a somewhat cannibal anecdote which may not surprise those who are aware of the greediness of the pike, and have recently read in Frank Buckland's letter to Land and Water of the snake-eating snakes : "In the summer of 1871 persons using a treading net in the Axe near Woodhayne Bridge caught an eel weighing 24 lb. In killing it another eel weighing quite a quarter of a pound was ejected from its stomach; and, strange to say, out of the stomach came a third eel weighing a ounce. The three seemed to fit little over an something after the manner of the balls which the Chinese carve out of solid ivory size after size within each other." It is but natural that so assiduous a haunter of the river-bank should know something of its flora, but it might be shown by divers references to the matter of the introductory chapter that its author is a naturalist all round, and that, from the acquaintance he manifests with the redmarls from Axminster to Seaton, the red sandstone in the Coly and Yarty valleys, the Lias cliffs at Lyme Regis and the chalk cliffs at Seaton Bay, he might claim to be a brother of the "hammer" no less than of the special craft of the Axe; but we must not forget that his profession is to describe all the parishes and places within the 66 limits of deviation" of his favourite stream; no light task in so memory. haunted a district. For traces of the Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon crop up in every direction. Within twenty-five miles of Axminster are traceable no fewer than thirty cases of British and Belgic-British earthworks; and it seems abundantly clear that on the basis of the British trackways from one hill-entrenchment to another the Romans were well content to found the magnificent road system, of which in Devon and the Axe valley Icknield Street and the Fosse-way are still extant memorials. Perhaps, too, in few of their haunts of old are there so many indications of their willing. ness not only "stare super vias antiquas," but also to adopt and adapt British fortresses as hereabouts. Pillesdon Pen, the twin of Lewesdon Hill, near Broadwinsor, is a strong triple-ditched British fortress, with a rectangular earthwork, betokening Roman occupation, in its centre. It is remarkably adapted for its purpose, as having within its limits a pool fed by perennial springs; and it is an ingenious theory of Mr. Pulman that the Char, which is made up of springs rising from Pillesdon Pen and Lewesdon, may take its name from caer, or fortified place. Membury Castle, in shape clearly of British origin, is proved to have been adopted by the Romans by the coins of the Roman Empire which were found there, in addition to British remains, and it has a very fair claim (p. 604) to have formed Athelstan's head-quarters in the famous battle with Anlaf the Dane at Brunenburgh. Axminster itself-the claims of which to be identical with the last-named military position, and to represent ecclesiastically the military fortress on the river (burn or brone, bury Brunenburg, see p. 598), are weighty and well-supported-was probably at first a British settlement, and, like all such of a desirable character, became in due course the basis of a Roman town. That it was not such at the first is seen in the absence of those straight broad streets which are features of Dorchester, Honiton, Bridport, and, notably among towns on the Axe, of Chard, which was doubtless Roman. Crewkerne, which has Roman features, seems to have been originally British. Axminster must have been a smaller and less important Roman settlement, which grew to greater eminence in Saxon times, and was destined in its latter day again to assert a name amid the towns of Devon, this time for peaceful prowess, and for the manufacture of carpets as famous in their way and value as the lace of Honiton. A curious account of their origin is given in p. 690. It may not be amiss to note one or two of Mr. Pulman's statistics respecting post-Roman quiescence in road-making, as far as Somerset and Devon are concerned. A Tuscan grand duke travelling from Exeter to Axminster in 1669 found the road "full of water and muddy, but not deep." A relative of Mr. Pulman recollected the first waggon which at Colyton superseded the carriage of corn on horseback. The first post-chaise astonished Taunton in 1767; and when at the end of that century the first flying coach took its three days' jog to London from Colyton or Axminster, Mr. Pulman's relative aforesaid patriotically used to book a place, but " carry his gun, walk on ahead, shoot by the roadside, and manage to have the game cooked by the time the Flyer' arrived at its halting-place for the night-the passengers sharing the feast and spending the evening in accordance with the custom of the time" (p. 79). When the coaching system at length came to perfection, the 170 miles were regularly accomplished in sixteen hours. It would be impossible in the limits of an article to glance at a tithe of the historical associations of this portion of the West of England. In the reign of Elizabeth, in the wars between Charles and his Parliament, in the escape of Charles II. in Monmouth's rebellion, and in the bringing in of William III., the Axe valley had a hand, and took a part not always to its liking. Beaminster village, near the Axe-head, was well-nigh burned to the ground through a quarrel betwixt Prince Maurice's troopers and the inhabitants on Palm Sunday, 1644. At Whitelackington, near Crewkerne, still stands a chestnut-tree under which the Duke of Monmouth and his party (among whom were the owners of Barrington Court, Ford Abbey, Colyton, Hinton St. George, all in the Axe country) were entertained during one of those progresses which were within five years exchanged for defeat and disgrace. At an old farm-house, called Cuckold's Hole, near Beer Chapel, on the border of Dorset and Devon, is a traditional hiding-place of Mr. Bragge of Sadborough, one of the fugitives after Monmouth's rebellion. "The broad old-fashioned fireplace opened just above the clavel (or beam supporting the chimney at the entrance to the fireplace) into a still broader space, with a ledge just large enough to afford foothold for a man, and there, it is said, the fugitive, when Jeffreys's lambs were after him, found temporary safety, although a roaring fire was lighted and the house was diligently searched " (p. 357). Few of the towns in this district failed to contribute their quota to the victim list, and gibbets and gallows attested for a considerable time the steadfast Protestantism of the adherents of the son of Lucy Waters. Passing from history to ecclesiology, there is much to arrest the explorer of the Axe in the beautiful Perpendicular church of Crewkerne, with its wonderful height of nave, its curious sacristy, wrongly supposed to have been a confessional, its porch and parvise, and "the finest west front of any parish church in England;" in the Cistercian abbeys of Ford and Newenham, the first a chapter of romance in its foundation, and of history in its sometime Abbot and Devonshire worthy, Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, the preacher of the Crusade, which he accompanied with Coeur de Lion. It is curious what a number of distinguished names connect themselves with Ford Abbey, ending with Jeremy Bentham, who, according to the housekeeper in charge while he rented it from 1815 to 1818, "did nothing, dear old man, but write, write, write from day's end to week's end." How many a self-flattering recluse, that has found out a tranquil undisturbed nook, is establishing like grounds for being thus slanderously reported! Of the most perfect Elizabethan houses on the Axe, Leigh House is said to be the chief, and of it we have a good account and engraving. At Ash Manor-house was born the great Duke of Marlborough, the son of a Churchill of so little account that the parish register of baptisms seems to oscillate between writing him down "Winston Churchill" or "Weston Church well." Ash is in Musbury parish, near Seaton and Axminster, and belonged early to the Devon family of Drake, into which the needy sire of the hero of Blenheim intermarried. And there are not a few other old manor-houses on the Axe banks which have given their contribution, here of more and there of less importance, to something more than county biography. We fail of space to say a word for Seaton, the watering-place of the Axe-mouth, and the growingly fashionable resort of anglers and health-seekers. But how can it be otherwise than that much should be unnoticed, when not a legend, or a proverb, or an epitaph escapes the author as he chronicles the memorabilia "Once on a " on of parish after parish? Nothing is omitted, even to the local adage anent Windwhistle Hill out of which rises the Cricket Brook, and from which the English Channel on the south and the British on the north may be descried with the naked eye. time,' says the proverb, "the Devil lost his way upon Windwhistle," but it is some consolation to know that he is no longer the loose," being immured in a cellar at the Windwhistle Inn, into which he was trapped by a local "white witch." Such stories smack of a trading on the fears of the superstitious, very convenient in the smuggling districts of Devon and Cornwall. Smugglers are said to have used this house. We have only to add that we have scarce skimmed the cream off The Book of the Axe. JAMES DAVIES. Jules Michelet. Par Gabriel Monod. (Paris: Sandoz et Fischbacher, 1875.) M. GABRIEL MONOD has given us, in spite of his modest disclaimer in the preface, the best of criticisms on Michelet's productions by constantly reminding the reader of the circumstances under which a writer so impressionable worked. Accuracy of detail we do not expect to find in Michelet. That which distinguishes him is the power of seizing on the important point amidst a crowd of unimportant ones, of fixing his attention upon that, and grouping everything else, real and imaginary, around it. Take, for instance, the different treatment of French Royalty in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by Guizot and Michelet. Guizot is always falling back upon the StatesGeneral, trying to make the most of them, and deploring their failure to turn France into a Constitutional Monarchy. Michelet knows that this could not be; that there was no France united and harmonious be hind the States-General; and that, for good and for evil, the Monarchy was the voice of France. The divergence between the two men was radical. One day, as M. Monod tells us, Guizot was criticising the exuberance of the poetry of India. Michelet, who was present, burst in with "Vous ne pouvez le comprendre, vous avez toujours haï la vie." To seek life wherever it was to be found was Michelet's principle of working. No writer has, as M. Monod points out, so haattributes of living creatures. bitually assigned to inanimate objects the It is this search for life which gives its high value to his best work, the History of France in the Middle Ages. In those early years he laid down a canon of historical impartiality which, if it were rigorously followed out, would more than compensate for the loss of vividparty style of writing. ness caused by the abandonment of the old Someone had reproached him with being partial in favour of Luther: "On pourrait me reprocher également, répli qua-t-il, d'être partial en faveur des Vaudois, comme plus tard en faveur de Sainte Thérèse et de Saint Ignace de Loyola. C'est cependant pour l'histoire une condition indispensable que d'entrer dans toutes les doctrines, que de comprendre toutes les causes, que de se passionner pour toutes les affections. Une idée ne se produit qu'à la condition d'être dans l'esprit humain, et d'aider au développement général de l'humanité. Aussi est-elle toujours bonne, toujours utile, toujours nécessaire. L'histoire déroule une vaste psychologie qui embrasse dans un ordre successif toutes les notions, toutes les facultés qui constituent l'intelligence de l'homme; chaque notion, chaque faculté se révèle tour à tour sous la forme d'un parti, d'une nation, d'une doctrine, et fait à travers les événements sa fortune dans le monde." Michelet would have been less of a man than he was if he had carried out his ideas in his later works. When he published the sixth volume of his history in 1843, M. Guizot was firmly established in power. Repression was the order of the day. With short intervals a leaden weight pressed down the energies of France to the day of his death. The governments of Guizot, Napoleon, Broglie "facies non omnibus una, nec diversa tamen "different in many things, agreed in this: that they had no confidence in France. To Michelet, full of trust and confidence, full of tender pity, the weight was intolerable, and except when in a moment of utter despair he took refuge in poetic science, he made his history the receptacle of outpourings of his heart. Undoubtedly, as M. Monod says, his history was the worse for it. His recantation of impartiality in the preface to his History of the Renaissance is sad enough. "L'homme d'action, le poëte, le philosophe, l'emportent désormais sur l'historien et le critique. Au lieu d'une sympathie équitable pour toutes les grandeurs du passé, Michelet attaque avec violence tout ce qui n'est pas conforme à son idéal moderne de justice et de bonté, le moyen âge, le Catholicisme, la monarchie. Au lieu de donner à chaque événement, à chaque personnage la place proportionnée qui lui est due, il se laisse guider par les caprices de son imagination, se répand à chaque instant en des digressions poétiques." If the history of the past loses, it may be that the France of the future will gain by it. If Michelet is often unjust, at least he is only unjust to those persons and parties from the imitators of which France has most to dread. The idolatry of Louis XIV. and the idolatry of Napoleon find no favour at his hands. Nor does he fail to see into the mischief which made Louis XIV. and Napoleon alike possible. His tragic history of the Revolution all gathers to a head in those few words with which Danton turned gloomily away from his last effort to conciliate the Girondins, "Ils n'ont pas de confiance." France is once more attempting to establish a form of government which rests upon mutual confidence, which is far more English, if an Englishman may be allowed to use the expression, than those literal copies of the English Constitution which were such an abomination to Michelet. If France is to overcome her own faults instead of placing her glory in that military success which has been deservedly snatched away from her, it will be because the lesson of union and devotion which breathes in every page of Michelet's writings has sunk into her heart. M. Monod has not merely given us a sketch of the life of an historian. He has written a page of contemporary history. SAMUEL R. GARDINER. NEW NOVELS. Harry Heathcote of Gangoil; a Tale of Australian Bush-life. By Anthony Trollope. (London: Sampson Low & Co., 1875.) Lady Hetty; a Story of Scottish and Australian The Village Surgeon; a Fragment of Auto- tic interest. We trouble ourselves comparatively little with the politics, the social progress, or the intellectual development of our colonial possessions. But so many English families have overflowed into those possessions, so much family feeling is now centred in them, that English people care to know details of every-day life and of every-day experience which may be familiar to some of the sous and brothers who have left them. It is this which makes Mr. Trollope's short and vivid sketch called Harry Heathcote of Gangoil so much more acceptable than many volumes of travels in Australia would be. We care to know not only how things look, but how people feel about them out there; how those whom we have known live and act in that far-off home. As Charles Lamb says: "The weary world of waters between us oppresses the imagination," and when a spirited and characteristic sketch is drawn for us of that which we are unable to picture for ourselves we cannot help being grateful. Mr. Trollope has such a happy faculty for sketching domestic life, and of giving reality both to his characters and scenery, that he is fitted above most writers for conveying to us impressions of an unknown land; we only wish that his work had been longer and fuller, or that he would introduce a great deal of Australian life into some future book. Harry Heathcote is a young squatter who has fought his way into a tolerably secure position in Queensland. "He owned 30,000 sheep of his own, was a magistrate in those parts, and able to hold his own among his neighbours, whether rough or gentle, and some neighbours he had very rough, who able to be rough also on occasions if he desired to made it almost necessary that a man should be live among them without injury. Heathcote of Gangoil could do all that." There is not much elaboration in the story; it is a simple record of the difficulties this man had to contend with from un pleasant neighbours and discharged servants. To English ears it sounds strange that a man should be living in terror of his fences being burned down and his property being ruined, but the excitement and anxiety of the settler are evidently drawn from the life, and are sufficiently well depicted for us to be thoroughly interested in them. The little romance of the story is a very slight thread indeed, and is nothing but a concession to the popular taste, which would not think a Christmas story complete without it; but the character of the hero, Harry Heathcote, and the interest of his simple unconventional life, require none of the usual adjuncts of fiction. The book does not take long to read, and will well repay the reader. It gives much more practical information about Australia than Lady Hetty, which calls itself A Story of Scottish and Australian Life, but tells us little more of Australia than that "it's a Paradise as big as Europe and it's tae let.' The book is confused and somewhat wordy in style, though it contains some writing which is superior in many respects to the ordinary run of three-volume novels. The story we are told was originally published in Good Words, under the title of "Novantia." It is full of Scotch talk, which no longer has the charm of novelty, and requires to be very well done to make it endurable. Most of the sayings of David Groats, the old gate-keeper, are characterised by grim humour or pathos; indeed, it is difficult to say why the book is dull as a whole, because there is a good deal that is amusing scattered up and down through its pages-the sketch of Mr. Garsegreen, the preacher, for instance, who roared "his sermons and his prayers like an easterly gale into the four corners of the church; the woman Rachel, who was so "sorry for her mother's death, that she wished her mother could just be alive to see how sorry she was;" Mrs. Corrypeel's views of Provi dence: "How wonderfully kind the Lord has been to me! There were seven of us in my father's family, four brothers and three sisters, and only ten years ago they were alive and well, and Í being the youngest of them, and the most delicate too, had the least chance of being my uncle's heir; but they have all been removed one by one, and here am I this day in possession of the estate." All these passages show that humour is not wanting. Neither is the plot a feeble one; the young Scotch clergyman and his sister, who discover at the most critical period of their lives that they are the children of a convict, are characters of whom a great deal more might have been made; but the situations of the story are rendered ineffective by a want of power over them, and the book leaves a dreary and unfinished impression on the mind of MINOR HISTORICAL BOOKS. Dr. Morris's English Grammar. But we are not MR. GREEN's series of primers led off well with sure that Mr. Fyffe's Greece (Macmillan and Co.) is not worthy of equal commendation. Examples more or less recent are not wanting to teach us that learned men can write histories which are supremely dull, and if any body had proposed to tell the whole story of Greece down to Mummius and the siege of Corinth in 127 small pages should have been inclined to admire his boldness without being much inclined to augur well of his success. Mr. Fyffe, however, has succeeded where so many have failed. All the main points of the history are well brought out, we while the secondary points are judiciously dropped, and the whole is written in a plain easy style which the boys and girls who read the book will probably take for a sign that the writer has had no difficulties whatever to overcome, but which their more knowing elders will perceive to be the result of much study and of the exercise of a ripe and independent judgment. In such a case, however, it is better to give a specimen than a lengthened comment. Take, for instance, the sketch of Perikles :: "He did not place himself above the laws, like a tyrant, and make the people obey him by force; but, remaining a simple citizen, he was able to rule the people through his eloquence and his wisdom, and, above all, through the perfect nobleness of his character. In making Athens treat her allies like subjects, and in giving the citizens pay for attending to public business, he was no doubt wrong; and he was mistaken in thinking that the people might be trusted to follow a wise leader in preference to a foolish one. But no man ever devoted his life mere high-mindedly, and with less thought of self, to the service of his country; and for this, and for the great wisdom and success of his management generally, and still more for the noble idea which he had of raising all Athenian citizens to intelligence and good taste, Perikles is often considered the finest of Greek statesmen. One part of the work of Perikles will never be out of date. The best men in England and other free countries in our own day have the same feeling as Perikles had towards the people. Like Perikles, they wish to see the whole people, poor as well as rich, taking their fair share in the government, and interested in what goes on in the State; and they believe that the happiness of a country will depend more than anything else upon the education and improvement of the people. More than any man, Perikles gave to the Athenians that love of knowledge, of poetry, and of art, which remained to them when their military greatness was gone, and which more than its military greatness has made Athens of service to mankind. He did not give the people book-learning, for little book-learning existed in those days; but he tried to wake up all their faculties by making their daily life bright and active instead of dull and listless, and by giving as much interest and nobleness as possle to the things in which the whole people joined, such as the worship of the gods and the public amusements." We are COLONEL MALLESON'S Studies from Genoese History (Longmans) is a well-meaning attempt to give some information about Genoa to the ordinary reader. The book has been written in India, and does not contain much that could not be found in the pages of Sismondi. afraid that we cannot agree with Colonel Malleson in thinking that his book will "give a more vivid sketch to the public mind than could be derived from the perusal of a more methodical narrative." His treatment is hopelessly confusing. He begins abruptly at the transfer of the suzerainty of Genoa from France to Spain in 1528, and then gives an account of the conspiracy of Fiesco. After giving a few of the leading incidents in Genoese history from that time up to 1628, he suddenly begins a biographical account of the Doria family, from the year 1191. So rigidly biographical is he, that he breaks off the account of the great campaign of Chioggia at the death of Pietro Doria, and tells us in a note that the continuation will be found in a later chapter, where he is engaged in a similar account of the family of the Grimaldi. We grant that it is difficult to group the details of Italian history; but certainly Colonel Malleson has not succeeded in overcoming it in a way that will increase the interest felt by the general public for whose good he writes. In other points, too, A Sketch of the German Constitution and of the Events in Germany from 1815 to 1871. By A. Nicolson, Third Secretary in Her Majesty's Embassy at Berlin. (Longmans.) It is happily not unfrequent of late for members of the British diplomatic service to pursue literary labours. Who, indeed, is better able to report on the economical, social and political condition of the foreign country in which he resides, than an accomplished secretary of legation? The communication of his researches and observations will be the more welcome and valuable if he treats the public very much as he would treat his chief or the Foreign Office, viz., if he reports with as little passion and bias as possible. We are glad to say that this is the case with the first book published in English on the German Constitution, which, doubtless, will meet with due acknowledgment in Germany. The author wishes to explain to his readers the present form of government in Germany, and judiciously prefixes a succinct, unassuming, and fair sketch of the events which since the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire have been leading towards the re-establishment of national unity. After his preliminary narrative of the events down to 1871, the author sketches the Constitution of 1867, which was to a great extent identical with that adopted by the new Empire in 1871. It would have been a great help to the eye if he had printed as an appendix the text of the two Constitutions in parallel columns. In the preface readers are referred to some of the more important German works on the subject, from which the author himself evidently derives much of his knowledge. In the text he quotes occasionally as his authorities for the series of events in Germany the histories of our time by W. Menzel and E. Arnd. In both respects his references are incomplete, and the author gives no opinion on the relative value of the different books which he quotes. It is curious that two most useful publications by L. Hahn on the period since 1866, containing every document on the wars with Austria and France, as well as on the rise and growth of the new constitutional Moreover, every German critic will point out the order, seem to have entirely escaped his notice. omission of a very important dissertation on the Constitution of the Empire by R. v. Mohl, and a Treitschke to the Preussische Jahrbücher, ranging number of excellent articles contributed by H. v. over almost the whole period, and examining the same constitutional results which are the subject of Mr. Nicolson's studies. the more detailed list of corrections which a In spite, however, of these objections, and of German reader could easily furnish, the work is generally well done, and will doubtless soon reach another edition. Caspar Bruschius, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Humanismus und der Reformation. Von Adalbert Horawitz. (Leipzig: Brockhaus.) The history of German Humanism," i.e. of the revival of classical antiquity, falls naturally into two periods, separated in time from one another, one extending from about the date of the invention of printing to that of the Reformation, the other coinciding with the second half of the sixteenth century. There is an inherent and essential, not merely a chronological, distinction between these periods. While during the first the foundation was laid of an entirely new culture, and mankind was stimulated to fresh productiveness in the political and religious life, no less than in literature; the last presents us only with an increase in the productions of learned men; the former is an important epoch in the history of the culture of the entire nation, the latter is merely the harvest time of the learned classes Caspar Brusch deserves mention among the leading men of the second period, as one of its most prolific, many-sided and comprehensive writers; yet, at the same time, one of the least known. It was accordingly an arduous undertaking to construct a biography out of the scattered materials relating to this subject. Herr Horawitz has honourably acquitted himself of this task with the diligence and care which are conspicuous in his other works upon the history of "Humanism." Brusch was born at Schlackenwald, in Bohemia, August 19, 1518, and was found murdered in the neighbourhood of Rothenburg, on the Tauber, November 21, 1557. Although the career of this indefatigable man scarcely reached the term of forty years, it was one of the most varied activity. He was educated at the school of Eger and the University of Tübingen; subsequently, animated partly by the desire of furthering his studies, and partly by his restless love of travel, he visited and South Germany, occupying himself by turns in many of the larger and smaller towns of Middle teaching, writing, and preaching. His works were, in accordance with a custom which prevailed among German Humanists until the last century, for the most part written in Latin. But Brusch so far differs from many of his contemporaries that he never despised the mother-tongue (p. 131). German language, which he proudly called his In this language he lated many Latin books, as the short "Postils" wrote many letters and short pieces, and transof Philip Melanchthon (p. 99), and the "Spiel von den sieben Weisen" of Joachim Camerarius (p. 189). Among his Latin writings we chiefly find poetical and historical compositions. The former were composed chiefly for special occasions. They are often prolix, displaying little feeling, and letting the reader only too easily discover that their real object is money or favour. It is otherwise with his historical works. Brusch, who was a Protestant and finally a Lutheran pastor, although in the course ties, and even sang the praises of zealous Catholics of his life he displayed occasional Catholic procliviwhen he had enjoyed their bounty, devoted himself especially to German Church history, for he was a true German, alike in his private views and his literary undertakings. In his history of the and in his history of German monasteries of 189 German bishoprics he treats of fourteen bishoprics, foundations, giving a complete enumeration of times until his own days. In both these works those who presided over them from the earliest the critical element is more conspicuous than his works these alone, from the wealth of material attention to strict chronological sequence; of all which they offer, have been much used. Herr Horawitz has devoted much toil to this most useful undertaking. His narrative, which is as lively as could possibly have been expected considering the dry materials with which he deals, is enriched with twenty-four letters, documents, and writings not previously printed or even known, the communication of which is very welcome; he has displayed much diligence in collecting information from the most diverse sources, and he has been guilty of a very few oversights, readily pardonable in so lengthy a work. Needful as it really was to revive the memory |