in others, it was concentrated on a few great works. M. Müntz gives us a picture of its splendid activity over the whole field. Moreover, by connecting Italy with France he indicates the nature of the impulse which the Italian Renaissance gave to European culture. In a time when so much has been written about the Renaissance M. Müntz must have the credit of being the first to give a large and comprehensive sketch of its importance as a whole.

The third volume of M. Taine's "History of the French Revolution "* is likely to awaken great attention. It is written with consummate skill, and is full of interesting details which give a striking picture of the facts of contemporary life. It is a merciless attack upon the government of the Jacobins, enforced with stern logic at every point. It reads like the slashing attack of a contemporary writer smarting under a sense of wrong, rather than the cool judgment of a historian who looks back upon events after an interval of nearly a hundred years. Other writers have shown that the Jacobins were mistaken; M. Tainé shows that they were mean, base, and villanous. In his eyes a knot of ruffians seized on the government of France, and, from selfish motives, carried out a system which rested only on brutal violence. Apparently M. Taine's object is to make it impossible that the Jacobins should ever again be spoken of except in terms of abhorrence. This may be a useful object in view of the present state of political feeling in France. But it lacks that large grasp of the principles of human society on which history ought always to be founded. There is a want of background to M. Taine's picture. Things were bad enough, but we need to be reminded how they came to be so bad. As we read M. Taine's pages, we ask ourselves how the French people submitted to these horrors. Our pity for their sufferings is checked by the sense that, if they had known it, they had the power to resist. The monarchy had destroyed all political capacity in France. Attempts at government failed one after another, till a dim feeling grew up that a strong and thoroughgoing assertion of first principles could alone restore order. The results of the experiment were pitiable enough. We are thankful to M. Taine for showing us to the full how pitiable they were. But his exposure would have been all the more forcible if it had been less severe, and more sympathetic with the difficulties of the time.

M. CREIGHTON.

"La Hachette.

Révolution." Tome III.-"Le Gouvernement révolutionnaire."
1885.

Paris:

III-GENERAL LITERATURE.

BIOGRAPHY.-Mr. Mark Pattison judges aright when he says in the beginning of his "Memoirs," just published by Macmillan, that the main interest of his story is "as a story of mental development." His development was unusual, and in some respects puzzling. He gives a curious picture of his intellectual feebleness at starting, his helpless shyness, his bondage to inherited prejudices; as a student he was, he thinks, ten years in the rear of his contemporaries. Then he came under the influence of Newman and the Tractarian movement, and got some mental motion from it, but only within narrow lines. Some of the best parts of his book, however, are about that movement, of which he writes from the fresh standpoint of one who has believed and outgrown it; and he says that Dean Stanley once put the whole matter in a nutshell to him by the remark, "How different the fortunes of the Church of England might have been if Newman had been able to read German." After Newman's apostasy, Pattison ran much risk of sinking into an ordinary don, and, in fact, the curious thing in his career is that he never shows the least sign of healthy intellectual growth till after the great disappointment of the defeat of his candidature for the headship of his college in 1851, which he makes so much work about in this volume, but which was really the making of him. He shook clear of Oxford for some years, went to Germany, Scotland, France, widened his ideas, his reading, his interests, and stood for the first time on his own legs. His book is from first to last a condemnation of Oxford life in all the successive phases of it through which he lived. Even yet, after all the reforms that have taken place, he declares that real study is not "creditable" there, and the time is mostly taken up with committeeing and dining and small activities "like those of a municipal borough." The Memoir is full of interest, though the impression the writer leaves of himself is not altogether a pleasant one.-Mr. Barnes's reminiscences of General Gordon* will find many readers. They bear mainly on the religious side of Gordon's character, which the General opened freely to Mr. Barnes both in conversation and correspondence. Among other things described is a visit paid by Gordon to Sir Samuel Baker before leaving England for Khartoum, when Sir Samuel pressed on him the expediency of going again to the Soudan as Governor-General if the Government should require it. "Gordon was silent," says Mr. Barnes, "but his eyes flashed, and an eager expression passed over his face as he looked at his host. Late at night, when we had retired, he came to my room, and said in a soft voice, 'You saw me to-day?' 'You mean in the carriage?' 'Yes; you saw me that was myself-the self I want to get rid of."-Many Lives of President Lincoln have been written, but most of them were hurriedly put together-first, for electioneering purposes before his death, and then to catch the popular demand after it. The first work

* "Charles George Gordon: a Sketch." By Reginald H. Barnes, Vicar of Heavitree, and Charles E. Brown, Major R. A. London: Macmillan & Co.

of a more thorough and permanent kind is the new "Life of Abraham Lincoln," by the Hon. Isaac N. Arnold, which has just been published in Chicago.* Mr. Arnold was for a quarter of a century an intimate friend, as well as political ally, of Lincoln; he had practised with him in the same courts of Illinois and supported him in the Congress at Washington, and had thus enjoyed the best opportunities of understanding the character and purposes of the man, and the moving wheels of his policy from hour to hour. His book is decidedly the best and most complete Life of Lincoln that has yet appeared. It contains a good deal of new information about the less public sides of Lincoln's life, though much less than we seem entitled to have expected; and the history of the great struggle with which Lincoln's name will ever be associated is unfolded with fulness and lucidity, and yet with such succinctness that the whole work is only a fair-sized octavo volume.-In this last respect, Mr. Arnold's example may be commended to the serious attention of Dr. Thomas Smith, who has just published the first volume of a Life of Dr. Begg † which is manifestly going to be excessively long. That volume only brings the story down to the year 1842, and, as there are forty years of the very multifarious activity of that bustling divine yet to be described, who can tell how many more volumes are to follow? Surely the part taken by a minor figure in the Non-intrusion controversy, instead of needing a volume to itself, might have been compressed into a chapter. The book would then be more readable, but, as it now is, Dr. Smith is simply burying his Cæsar under his own speeches. The most interesting section of the book is Dr. Begg's autobiography of his early life, which contains some good stories of the older ministers. Incidentally, too, we come upon reminiscences that will interest a wider circle. Dr. Begg, for example, knew Jean Armour, Burns's widow, personally in her old age, and says that her conversation was extremely interesting," ," and that when young she must have been "very engaging to an intellectual man."

TRAVEL.-Mr. A. B. Colquhoun's "Amongst the Shans" is at once an entertaining record of travels and an important contribution to our authentic knowledge of a country and people of which we have hitherto had but very imperfect information, but which, in the opinion of the author, may play an important part even in European politics if French annexation continues to progress. The territory described is occupied by tribes of different calibre and culture, the feeblest of whom are the Siamese, who are described as being in a corrupt and declining condition, ready to fall an easy prey to France if France cares to take them. The slave trade is rampant in all the territoryand Madras girls and daughters of the poorer Burmese are sold, it seems, even in British Burmah-but the slavery is of so mitigated a type that, though the Shan slaves who come to Burmah with ponies and cattle might escape from their servitude by breaking their trust, Mr. Colquhoun has never heard of a case of one doing so. The

* Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co.

Gemmell.

"Memoirs of James Begg, D.D." By Thomas Smith, D.D. Edinburgh: James London: Field & Tuer.

value of the book is greatly increased by an introductory chapter on the cradle of the Shan race from the pen of M. de Lacouperie, by a historical sketch of the Shans by Mr. Holt Hallett, and by many excellent illustrations.-Major Ellis,* in a very attractive volume, gives his experience of wanderings among the islands of St. Helena, Fernando Po, and the Cape Verde and Canary groups. Whether neglected by civilization and allowed to remain in naked nobility, like the dwellers on the Isles de Los, or taught by the pioneers of culture to become self-conscious and absurd, like the demoiselles of Goree, the natives of these parts would appear to have some very entertaining habits. The author is equally conversant with the social position of the Grand Canary pulex, the geological formations of Ascension, and the ethnological proclivities of the Niam-Niams. Appreciative of all that is worth appreciating, he is yet honest enough to admit that facts have to yield now and again to the superior merits of fiction; that the luscious tropical fruit is in point of fact insipid and odious, and that the arts of the Spanish improvisatore live only in the pages of garbled romance. Major Ellis's views on the trader and missionary considered as pioneers of civilization are very far from orthodox; spiritual reform, indeed, does not appear to have had a satisfactory advocate at St. Vincent. The illustrations of naval precedent and precision on Ascension (technically known in the Admiralty as "the tender of H.M.S. Flora"), the hotel difficulties on St. Vincent, and the exposure of the hypocritical missionary at San Antonio are exceptionally well told; the author, however, becomes serious on the subject of the gradual encroachment of the French on Sierra Leone and the Gambia, about which he entertains grave suspicions.-"A Fly on the Wheel" is the title that Colonel Lewin (late of the Bengal Staff Corps) gives to his narrative of Indian frontier life. Going out as a cadet to India, he came in for the finish of the Mutiny fighting, after which he joined the 31st Bengal Native Infantry and subsequently exchanged for her Majesty's 104th. Tiring of the monotony of military routine, he obtained an appointment in the Police force, and was soon raised to the District Superintendency of Hazaribagh, and afterwards to that of Noacolly, in Bengal, a position entailing patrol work on the River Mengha for the suppression of smuggling; thence to Chittagong, and, finally, to the Hill tracts of the district in the capacity of criminal magistrate. As the history of years of solitude spent in the conscientious execution of duty not too well appreciated or rewarded, the book has a peculiar interest of its own, but it is also a narrative of stirring incidents and unique experiences, told withal in a free manly style that wins the sympathy of the reader. The writer is neither too egotistic, as his Introduction seems to forebode, nor too self-depreciatory, but tells his story with graphic directness and sharp insight into nature which finds its illustration in a quiet undertone of local philosophy. The terrors of the Indian Mutiny, the attempted exploration of the Shendu territory, and the punitive expedition against the

* "West African Islands." By A. B. Ellis, Major 1st West India Regiment. London: Chapman & Hall.

"A Fly on the Wheel; or, How I helped to Govern India." By Lieut.-Col. Lewin. London: W. H. Allen & Co.

Lushais, to which he was attached as Political Officer, winning the highest commendation of General Brownlow, his ideal hero, furnish scenes of fine adventure. In reviewing his share in the government of India, the writer is generously content to go without reward, and owns that Talleyrand's "surtout point de zèle" comes near to being the best answer to the private enthusiasm of a public servant.—Mr Augustus Hare has turned his steps from Southern to Northern Europe, and issues a little volume of descriptive sketches of Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.* These sketches are slighter and less laden with matter than Mr. Hare's works usually are. They are the result of ordinary tours, and not of prolonged residence, and consist merely of a single article on each of the countries described. They will be read, however, with interest, and are illustrated with some very good woodcuts.

MISCELLANEOUS.-Mr. J. Allanson Picton, M.P., gives us a series of short lectures on "The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy,"t marked as much by their high tone as by their practical understanding of the time and their clear and vigorous exposition. His aim is to give "some help towards a better and more definite direction of the vague socialistic aspirations" that are now current, and which need nothing so much as to be guided into sound lines. It is not necessary to agree with all Mr. Picton's views in detail to recognize that his lectures are calculated to render that service effectively, and to prove very stimulating in the formation of political opinions. The concluding chapter is especially striking, in which the author urges that popular character is the basis of popular happiness, and expresses profound confidence not only in the material improvement but the moral elevation of the future democracy. The anonymous author of a timely and instructive little work on "The Armies of the Native States of India" strongly advocates the intervention of our Government for the purpose of reducing the armaments maintained by the Native States in the heart of India, which, he argues, only impoverish the people of those States themselves, and compel us to keep larger forces on their frontiers than would be otherwise necessary. The recent offer by the native rulers of troops for service in the Soudan and Afghanistan may perhaps create some hesitation in regard to some of this writer's proposals, but at any rate he has brought before us an important question, and given us much material for understanding and solving it aright. The armies of the Native States, it seems, amount altogether to some 350,000 men, of whom none are either necessary for the defence of their own country or formidable in battle against another, except the 100,000 Ghoorkas of Nepaul.— Mr. Henry Stevens, of Vermont, feeling that we have lost that art of printing and binding which once made "a handsome book and a new English book synonymous terms," seeks, in his little work "Who Spoils our New English Books?"§ to distribute the blame among author, publisher, printer, paper-maker, ink-maker, bookbinder,

* "Sketches in Holland and Scandinavia." By Augustus J. C. Hare. London : Smith, Elder & Co. London: Chapman & Hall.

+ London: Alexander & Shepheard.

London: H. N. Stevens.