being allowed to slip by, remained in the ante-room. At that hour, he was informed that he was to accompany the Emperor to the field of battle. The inspection of the scene of the recent combat was long, and it was not till 1 P.M. that Napoleon ordered Grouchy to pursue the Prussians, and complete their defeat, never losing sight of them, winding up with these words, "You will correspond with me by a paved road." In order to make his meaning quite clear, the Emperor indicated with his hand the road from Namur to Quatre Bras. Grouchy pointed out that the Prussians were already from fifteen to sixteen hours ahead; that the French troops, being much scattered on the plain, could not quickly be set in motion; that some of them had dismounted their muskets in order to clean them; that others had gone out foraging; that he, Grouchy, was not strong enough with only 32,000 men, to oblige Blucher to change the direction of his march, considering that the latter had from 80,000 to 100,000 men, who evidently were not disorganized; and, finally, that it would be imprudent to remove the right wing from the circle of impending operations. Napoleon would, however, listen to no objections, and enforced his first orders in these words:"Marshal, proceed towards Namur, for, according to all probabilities, it is on the Meuse that the Prussians are retiring. It is then in this direction that you will find them, and that you ought to march." It is evident, therefore, that Grouchy was not responsible for the delay in pursuing the beaten Prussians, or for the vicious direction given to the right wing, and that he did all that in him lay to prevent these two mistakes. As to his responsibility for subsequent events, a mass of evidence given in this book clearly shows that Grouchy honestly carried out the positive orders of the Emperor, and that he did all he could to accelerate the march of the right wing. Between 11 and 12 a cannonade, gradually increasing in intensity, began to be heard. It soon became apparent that Napoleon, as had been expected, was giving battle to the English, and several of his generals, especially Gérard, urged the Marshal to proceed at once to the Emperor's assistance. Grouchy objected-firstly, that Napoleon had warned him that he was about to attack Wellington; secondly, that the cannonade seemed to come from a spot six or seven leagues from Sart à Wallain, that there were no practicable roads, especially for artillery, and that, consequently, he would not arrive in time to take part in the action; thirdly, that he had received positive instructions not to lose sight of the Prussians, should he have come up with them. In addition to these convincing arguments, we may add that his advanced guard was already committed to a combat which it would be difficult to break off; that a flank march in the presence of equal, if not superior, Prussian forces would have been a rash undertaking; and, finally, that a large number of Grouchy's troops were still some distance in rear. Under these circumstances, we maintain that no blame can possibly be attached to Grouchy for his conduct on the 18th of June. M. Thiers thinks otherwise; but M. Thiers, in spite of his pretensions, is incapable of forming a judgment on military operations, and, besides, is so thoroughly dishonest, when writing on matters with which the glory of the French nation is concerned, that he is completely untrustworthy. Col. Chesney's Waterloo lectures establish this fact, and in the book before us M. Thiers' imaginative powers and practice of suppressing and garbling are exposed in the most merciless but convincing manner. M. Thiers is an eloquent and attractive author; but he has no higher sense of the obligations of truth than his idol, the first Napoleon, and his Consulat et l'Empire' is no more history than the novels of Walter Scott. We blush to think that at any time his volumes should have been read for instruction or looked upon as an authority. remarkable personages who are recalled by them to our memory, the length of the period over which the coinage extends, or the exquisite beauty of the specimens of the period of its finest art. Syracuse alone presents us with a perfect epitome of Greek art; indeed, we have before us all but its incunabula, together with each successive stage of its development, till all individual expression is obliterated by Roman centralization. Two or three wellselected specimens of each period of Syracusan art, as exhibited on its coins, would give any student a clear insight into the progress of Greek art from its birth to its death. It is, indeed, a happy accident of the position of the Sicilian city, or of the skill of its rulers (for be it remembered, that the great Carthaginian invasion was nearly coincident with that of Xerxes of Eastern Greece, and was by many suspected of having been connected with it), that the Punic influences so long prevalent in other parts of the island seem to have affected her but slightly, if at all. Anyhow, they did not avail to destroy, scarcely even to modify, the purity of the Greek style repre The importance of the subject has caused us already to extend our review beyond the already to extend our review beyond the limits which we had marked out for ourselves, yet we have necessarily left untouched much that is of the highest interest, and we must now hurry to a conclusion. We would, how ever, draw attention to the fact that Grouchy displayed in the retreat from Wavre, by which he saved the whole of the right wing of the army, the highest qualities of a general, and in the subsequent events a loyalty to a falling dynasty which does him great honour.sented on her coins. Too few of his brother Marshals imitated his example. Yet these were men who had been overwhelmed with rewards by Napoleon, while Grouchy had certainly rather his usefulness and his services to thank for his gradual advancement than the favour of the Emperor. Soult, as soon as he knew of the abdication of his master, made a pretext of ill health to withdraw from the army, leaving to Grouchy the charge of rallying it; while Davoust, the Minister of War, purposely threw obstacles in the Marshal's way, and at length openly urged him to declare for the Bourbons. Certainly the officers of France have little reason to pique themselves on their loyalty to any dynasty. The Chronological Sequence of the Coins of Syracuse. By Barclay V. Head. (J. R. Smith.) A MONOGRAPH on the coins of any ancient city of high repute, if successfully executed, is sure to have its interest, the more so as its story can be much more readily followed than is the case where the monuments of a whole dynasty are comprehended in one volume, for this generally involves the introduction of much extraneous matter, which cannot be wholly neglected, yet often has but a slender bearing on the main subject of the work. To describe the memorials of one city, as Müller has done of one monarch, Alexander the Great, is to perform a service that is likely to be more acceptable to the general reader than a prolonged essay (for instance) on the coinage of Macedonia, in which the prominent figure of Alexander would be necessarily mixed up with much of very secondary interest. We think, therefore, that Mr. Head has done wisely in selecting as the subject of his researches the illustration of the coinage of a city with which so much of our early reading makes us all more or less familiar. Moreover, as every numismatist well knows, it would be impossible to find any ancient town whose monumental remains appeal to us more directly than do those of Syracuse, whether we look at the antiquity of the earliest specimens that have come down to us, the How completely the coinage of Syracuse forms a cyclopædia of Greek art, may be seen by the barest reference to Mr. Head's work, in which the coins of that city are arranged under no less than fifteen distinct heads, from the time of the Geomoroi or Gamoroi (the land-apportioned), who had resisted Hippocrates of Gela towards the close of the sixth century B.C., down to the Roman conquest, about B.C. 212. In this catalogue all Greek numismatic art is represented, excepting the Ionian coinage attributed dubiously to Croesus, and certainly as old, if not older than he. Of these fifteen periods, we may, perhaps, indicate those of the tyrants Gelon and Hieron, among the earlier ones, and those of Hieron the Second and Queen Philistis, among the later, as the most interesting. At the same time, it is but right to say, that the brightest efforts of Greek art unquestionably coincide with the periods when the people were free, during the democratic government that intervened between B. C. 466 and B. C. 406. This period is memorable as that of the highest efforts of sculpture at Athens, under Pericles and Pheidias; and Syracuse, we may well believe, although Dorian in origin and feeling, appreciated, perhaps more than any other city, the greatness of the works achieved by her Athenian rivals. With Mr. Head's treatment of his subject we have every reason to be satisfied. He had an extended range to occupy, and he has done this succinctly and clearly; moreover, we believe the attributions he has proposed, and the relative dates he has suggested, will be generally accepted. On one point, however, we differ from him, in that we hold the female head on the pentecontalitra of Gelon the First to be that of Artemis (see Pind. Pyth. 2. 7), not that of Nike. The idea of Victory is sufficiently supported by the winged figure flying above the Triga; and besides, we readily accept the view first enounced by the Duc de Luynes, that the lion on the reverse refers to the crowning incident of the life of Gelon, his great victory over the Carthaginians at Himera. We ought to add that Mr. Head's work is illustrated and adorned by fifteen beautiful plates of Syracusan coins, executed by the new autotype process, which alone is competent to give the un-numismatic reader an adequate idea of the excellence of these small but lovely relics of antiquity. We have here nature represented to us by nature's means, without the intervention of well-intended but too often spiritless drawings, ruined, as the best of these are sure to be, by lithographers, who have no practical acquaintance with the objects they are called upon to engrave. The Plays and Poems of Henry Glapthorne, now first Collected. With Illustrative Notes and a Memoir of the Author. 2 vols. (Pearson.) as tion; mirth. Courage, the honour of man, virtue, Glapthorne, however, was not merely a year. In the 'Poëms,' Glapthorne by no means dazzles us. He airs his learning, shows how extensively he must have read, and loads contemporary folk beneath classical allusions, as if Propertius and Tibullus were fashionable poets, and their echoes were to be imitated on the Mall. His ultra-Royalism is ever to the fore. "Upon the Duke of York his Birthnight at Richmond," the poet says, among other wild things, this night has hurld In stead of darknesse, gladnesse ore the world, The chief personage of the 'Poëms,' however, is Lucinda, whom the editor is inclined to take for a real personage, without other warrant than a bard's imaginings. In the lines "Upon the first sight of her Beautie," he tells -the wild Indian that with prostrate brest Adores the Sun-rise in the gorgeous East, His labour's lost! Lucinda is described as audacious and amorous poets of the time loved to describe or fancy the whole anatomy of their nymphs. Imagination runs riot in describing the visible; it rushes far more riotously into descriptions of the unseen. Glapthorne has all this insane wildness, and even can pluck a simile out of Scripture, and show, in a new revelation, that Lucinda is "the tree of Life," by which a ready way may be found to "the long-lost Paradise." In other respects the exaggeration of the use of epithets plunges into the ri diculous, and we find modern burlesquewriters out-burlesqued by Glapthorne, when he says, on Lucinda asleep, and expressly on her exquisite breath, that THESE two volumes will be welcome to the admirers of the old English drama, as curiosities rather than for their merits. In the introductory Memoir, Glapthorne is described one of the least known of the great school of Elizabethan dramatists "; but the wisely cautious writer of the Memoir immediately adds, "strictly speaking, he can scarcely be said to belong to that company at all"; which is still short of the truth, for Glapthorne was a writer in the latter half of Charles the First, and was born in the reign of James. He is, in manner and style, said to resemble Shirley, from whom Glapthorne is as distinct as Tupper "Dedications" belong to a history of litefrom Tennyson. Respecting the life of rature. The subject, indeed, has not been Glapthorne," we are told, "nothing is known altogether neglected; but we recommend those with certainty." More certainly, nothing is who are working in that groove not to neglect known at all. Glapthorne's works, here and Glapthorne's. He was bold enough at first, there, give evidence of an educated and a but he grew even in boldness. His Holgenerally well-read man. Because Alexander lander' is presented "to the great hope of Gill, one of the masters of St. Paul's School, growing noblenesse ". knight, Sir Thomas -dull Sleep, like to the Nightman, must prefixed some commendatory Latin verses to Fuller; "the knowledge of whose still inBy stealth enjoy it. Glapthorne's rhymed tragedy of 'Albertus creasing virtue has begot in all men love, in Perhaps the lady, if she really existed, was Wallenstein,' an inference is too readily drawn me admiration." The play is "an Ambassaill pleased with his more audaciously expressed that the dramatist was a pupil in that institu- dour from the rest of my faculties, to informe homage. In the lines "To Lucinda, revolted and because there was a "George Glap- you how much devotion the whole province from him," he, in return, descends to taunts thorne, of Wittlesey, in the Isle of Ely, of my Soule payes to your worth and goodnes." that her beauty would never have been Esquire," it is suggested that Henry Glap- A hawk or a horse might have better pleased known but for his proclamation of it, and to thorne was of the same family! The editor of this knightly paragon; but Glapthorne observes boasting of favours that should have brought these volumes prints "A brief Relation of the that "a Booke (as it is my best inheritance) is upon him all the canes and horsewhips that Proceedings before his Highness Councel con- the most magnificent sacrifice my zeale can manly arms could lay on him about Whitehall cerning the Petitioners of the Isle of Ely, offer." The dedication of Wit in a Con- and St. James's. against George Glapthorne, Esquire, to take stable,' to Thomas, Lord Wentworth, 1639, a away the false report that is made touching year before that man of "Heroicke Nature" was the same, and that the truth may plainly advanced to the Earldom of Stafford, is higher appear." The editor styles this document pitched than the homage to the knight. The "interesting and curious in itself," which it Lord's noble attributes are so multitudinous undoubtedly is. The truth which plainly that the poet is bewildered, and the Lord's appears in it is, that the Isle of Ely 'squire "humblest honourer" dedicates his play to his was an irreclaimable profligate, and that the lordship's general-rather than any particular Isle of Ely "wenches," married and single,-goodness! Worthy Will Murrey, "of his were made to match him. This unblushing pot-tosser and libertine, the editor thinks he may "fairly conjecture" to be the dramatist's brother. He says, 66 we have abundant internal evidence that Henry Glapthorne was a man of the most exquisite refinement "; but, to be sure, on the other hand, "of oaths, of drinking, and of wenching there is certainly a fair proportion in Glapthorne's plays." A fair proportion? The plays consist of little else, where they are intelligible. Of plot in the comedies there is little or none; the gentlemen are all of the George Glapthorne typeultra-blackguards; and the ladies are as knowing and accommodating as the hussies to whom the 'squire made love in the Isle of Ely. Everywhere the worst side of human nature is put forward, not as censurable, but as a matter for "to Majesties Bed-chamber," has his "noble name The poems and the plays have a certain especial value in the way they illustrate the general manners and customs of the times. In a Prologue To a reviv'd Vacation Play,' we are told why country families came up to town: The Countrey Gentlemen come but to Town The thronging stars striving to make him place Under Eliza's rule, Whitehall -did groan under the unvalued weight Of spoils cast on me in that Eighty Eight! * * The Lords then in their native habit went, Nor did they their owne red and white attaint And so the picture of Whitehall is portrayed -death now inhabits here, And a continued dulnesse, now instead The plays abound with similar descriptive touches. Lady Yellow, in 'The Hollander,' assures Sir Martin I doe not weare (though its common among Ladies) Of male fashions, Sconce asks, "Doe they walk in Coat gilt, or all a mode in Dunkirke cloaks?" And a servant remarks to an awkward gallant, "You should have kiss'd her, as the Court fashion is, upon the cheeke." A capacious wine-cup is praised Enter HOLDFAST, TRISTRAM. TRIST. Yes sir, I spent two days in sorting Poets As many nights in placing the divines On their own chayres, I meane their shelves, and then HOLD. I hope my bookes are all in health. EDUCATION IN PRUSSIA AND ENGLAND. Lectures on the History of Education in Prussia THIS volume, containing less than 200 TRIST. In the same case the Mothes have left them, science of education" exists. The fourth who have eaten more Authenticke learning then would richly furnish A hundred country pedants; yet the wormes Are not one letter wiser. HOLD. I have beene idle How he retaines these Authors names, of which I bought the Authenticke Legend of Sir Beris, There is so far a touch of Congreve in the lecture has for its theme 'The Relation of Universities to the Working Classes.' Dr. Donaldson ascribes Prussian success in the education of the people to two main causes, of which the first is the supremacy of the State. The other cause is not so easily made clear to an English reader; for if we call it "a suppression or a subordination of dissent," these words, though in one sense In 1864 true, may suggest false notions. Prussia contained about 3 millions of children of the ages from five to fourteen, and of this number 2,938,679 were receiving instruction in public schools belonging to the two confessions, Evangelical (or Protestant) and Roman Catholic. It is obvious that this recognition by the State of only two confessions lessens the difficulty of national education in relation for being "as deepe as Fleet Street Conduit"; cleverly paints the Englishman of the author's to religious belief. There is, indeed, a serious and a (and now veyance is alluded to in the words: "The Dutch younker tooke her up into a, what doe you call it, a Sedan." The inn, "Pindar of Wakefield," near "Pancridge," as St. Pancras was called, is denounced for its poor liquor; girls are spoken of, "such as are at Cambridge, handsome as Peg Larkin"; and a young fellow is warned lest he be taken for " some Itinerant scholler," liable to be "whipt by th' Statute." People then went to see 66 Lincolnes Inne fieldes built"; and some city wives eat custards and "perpetuall White broth, sent from the Lord Mayors or Shriefes feast." Fried plum-pudding was a dish for breakfast. A new word in use then is thus indicated in 'Wit in a Constable' :-"He's a wit, a very wit, or as the modernes term it, a sparke." It was a city fashion to have " a woman butler," and a general one for the waiting woman of the family to be "in love with the spruce chaplaine." In illustrations similar to those above quoted Glapthorne's comedies abound. In comedy and tragedy alike he is apt to run into the most absurd heroics. When he is sentimental, his sentiment, or rather sentimentality, expands into a compound of sermon on divinity and lecture on natural history, in which it is quite natural to him to drag in history universal, and to preach on the "some other things" which prolix and prosy expounders usually add to the "all things" with which their sermon is stuffed. Glapthorne is most amusing when he ventures on an imitation of Shakspeare: he is, of course, as unlike the original as possible. Few dramatic authors afford such small opportunity for quotation; yet we will not part from this playwright of the Stuart era without giving some specimens. We must premise, however, that the editor of Mr. Pearson's reprint has not always taken the trouble to correct misprints. Here is a pretty passage on books, from Wit in a Constable' : period: ADORNI. Your English Deserves as large applause, who to say truth, Of his dishonour, which excites him to Till one be slaine, and the survivour sure FRANGIPAN. Excellent, I love a man that cares not for hanging. ADOR. Then to their further glory, which takes off All the disgrace of halter, they are sure In excellent new Ballads, which being sung Ere they be scarce cold, to be Chronicled Ith' streets 'mong boyes and girles, Colliers, and Carmen, Are bought as great memorialls of their fames, With as great triumph in the tipling houses, Which to perpetuate, they are commonly stuck up As they were scutchions. FRAN. Better yet I'de give A hundred Ducats to be chronicled stuffe Upon their Doublets by their Cloakes, which to save We must add that in the above extracts religious difficulty in Prussia; but it is not like our own here in England. Here, differences of belief are, to a great extent, represented by external separations of sect from sect; there, great diversities of opinion are still included within the pale of one church, the Evangelical, which (as defined by the State) includes both the Lutheran and the Reformed. Excepting some special provisions made for Jews, all public schools are recognized by the Government as belonging either to the Protestant or to the Roman Catholic Church, and it is the general aim of the State to make religious differences subordinate to the development of a national education. In fact, this national education is regarded, in itself, as a religious duty belonging to the State. A long series of events must be noticed to explain how the State in Prussia has gained and maintained the supreme control of popular education. Of all those events the first and the most important was the Lutheran Reformation. Whatever he might have said at an earlier date, Luther, after the Peasants' War, asserted boldly the supremacy of the State, and his teaching aided the Princes, who subsequently made themselves absolute in their several territories. They were de facto, even where they were not formally installed, rectors of universities, and here and there they founded schools (for example, " the Princes' Schools" in Saxony), and endowed them with the funds of suppressed convents. In these and other public schools the clergy, as represented by their consistory and acting in subjection to the State, held control over educational measures. The work thus undertaken by the Church was naturally treated with neglect at a time when theological controversy was almost the only form in which intellectual life had any existNext followed the Thirty Years' War, and of the work done by the Church a great ence. part was destroyed. Then poor weavers, tailors, and wheelwrights were elected as schoolmasters, but with an understanding that they might still carry on their several trades. In some places a schoolmaster might increase his income by keeping a wine-shop. At a later time, soldiers, worn out by service in the Seven Years' War, were glad to accept the pittance granted to the teacher of poor children. His circumstances were (as Jean Paul says) "suited to his obscure profession!" "When Moses was preparing himself for his work, as the teacher of Israel, he fasted forty days. From that sublime example our Government de rives this conclusion: a man who would be the teacher of the rising generation must prove his capabilities by his endurance of starvation. starving schoolmaster is, therefore, one of the starving schoolmaster is, therefore, one of the normal features of our civilization." A Jean Paul's bitter words may be fairly applied to the nineteenth as well as to the eighteenth century, to England as well as to Prussia. The pay of schoolmasters, even in Prussia, is mean. For her first reformatory movement in popular education, Prussia was indebted to the Pietists, of whom high Lutherans and hard Rationalists have spoken so contemptuously. Spener was called "the founder of the Pietists,' though there was nothing that was either original or heterodox in any of his doctrines. His follower, Francke, founded (1698) an Orphan Home at Glaucha, near Halle. That institution has flourished and expanded, so that Glaucha may now be described as a town full of schools. A few years ago the schools there contained more than three thousand boys and girls, and about one hundred and thirty teachers. Francke received some aid from the rough despot, Frederick William the First, who despised learning, but gave a few thousands of pounds to found and support schools for the people. To estimate his gift fairly, it should be compared with his private expenditure. One of his chief luxuries was tobacco, smoked in a clay-pipe, and with a pot of strong beer as an accompaniment. The educational grant was far more than the king would have given for the services of all the poets, painters, fiddlers, dancers, and opera singers in Europe. It may seem strange that a Pietist (Hecker) should act as Minister of Education under Frederick the Second; but the king was guided by his own maxim-"In Prussia every man must be saved after his own fashion." A good work was to be done, and Hecker was the man to do it. A good and faithful servant must not be treated as a slave. Pietism was Hecker's source of power, and therefore the king allowed him to introduce his piety into an act for making popular education compulsory and more efficient. Accordingly, Frederick the Second, a sceptic of the extreme class, who would not hear one word "of any divine revelation," actually signed a decree prescribing "heartful prayer" as the first duty of a teacher. The Act to which we refer was published soon after the close of the Seven Years' War. The general aim of educational legislation in the reign of Frederick the Second was to claim for the State a supreme authority. This purpose was made manifest in the laws included in the Landrecht, published in the reign of Frederick William the Second. During the long reign of his successor, the tunes to be used in schools were also defined. lowed can hardly be understood by an English reader. Teachers who were zealous in their described as amusing. There is humour in a sketch of Mr. Lowe's philosophy of education, and the description of muddle in "the Educa tion Department" is concise and effective:— "The department consisted of a president, a vice-president, and a few Privy Councillors, members of the Committee of Council. The question was raised, What were the functions of the president, the vice-president, and the committee? And disagreed with each other. Mr. Lowe stated that on all these points presidents and vice-presidents the committee was invoked only for purely legislative purposes; Mr. Bruce, that in his experience it had been useful on two occasions; Mr. Adderley, that it was useless, and worse than useless; Lord Russell, that it had responsibility; Earl Granville, that it had absolutely no responsibility.. Mr. Lowe thought that the vice-president was not a responsible minister. . Mr. Bruce took a ..... different view; and Lord Granville held that the led, by a review of our English educational The general results to which the author is obedience to "the Regulatives" added long In his historical sketch of education in England, the author tells us little respecting fourth lecture-'The Relation of Universities to the Working Classes.' [!] This might call existence," or "a history of venomous snakes to mind some dim, scholastic treatise "on nonin Ireland." But the author is speaking of ideal institutions, and not of Oxford and Camdeal with Universities as they now exist, nor bridge. "We have no desire," he says, "to they at present exert. We shall rather suppose to treat historically the actual influence which our Universities such as they ought to be or might be." The boldest and most important of all the author's doctrines still remains to be noticed. He asserts that, while vast numbers of the poor are left without instruction, our middle educated, and that here we find the true cause classes, and even our highest classes, are badly of our long neglect of public instruction. The tion"including that given in our endowed greater part of all our so-called "higher educaschools and our Universities-is here called pretentious and shallow. To show the fairness of this estimate, the author refers to our prevalent low and mean notions of national education:- quired to organize education, and no attempt is "We find nowhere a wide grasp of what is remade to connect the development of the individual members of the State with the work of the State. On the contrary, the argument most commonly put forward is an argument from fear and from greed. The lower classes are becoming more and more powerful. They are likely to overwhelm us; and therefore, to prevent this calamity, we must get them instructed. Or the numbers of the vicious are increasing. Ignorance is one of the causes of this; and so we must educate the young. Or it is the special work of Government to protect life and property. The police is as yet the only instrument we have employed for this purpose. But prevention is better than cure. Let us train up the children aright, and then we shall effect a great saving in the police-rates, and be altogether much more comfortable. Yes, fear and selfishness have again and again been held forth as the motives for establishing a system of popular education. And, accordingly, the form which Government has to a large extent adopted in its interference is that of charity. It has helped the charitable to do the work; it has guided the charitable in doing the work. Let me for a moment contrast with it the Prussian idea. God has given to each man capacities. These capacities it is his own duty to develope to the utmost of his power. It is his neighbour's duty to help him to develope them. The neighbour can best effect this as a member of the State. The State, therefore, as the union of all, undertakes to provide the best means for the full development of all the powers of its members. It therefore establishes a complete system of education, from the most elementary to the highest stages; and this system renders the lowest education imperative on all, and the highest accessible to all." To carry into execution such a system as Dr. Donaldson would have, we should want, in the first place, a schoolmaster of the highest class as our Minister of Public Instruction; we should want able, practical schoolmasters of great experience as Professors of Didactics in our Universities; and we should want a people wise enough to respect and to support well every faithful and efficient teacher. OUR LIBRARY TABLE. THOSE who have never read the Report of the Transportation Committee of 1838 will hardly believe on trust the nameless horrors it contains. A book called His Natural Life, lately published by George Robertson, of Melbourne, and written by Mr. Marcus Clarke, gloats over many of them in a powerful but brutal style. The strangest fact about the book is that the scenes it describes did really happen, and that only thirty years ago. The Railway Fortress, by Arthur Lillie, a pamphlet which Messrs. Mitchell & Co. send us, is an ingenious but thoroughly theoretical and unpractical essay on national defence. Mr. Lillie maintains that the present system of fortification is useless against the method of attack now employed, and would, therefore, substitute for it railways, which would afford not only cover but also means of rapid concentration. In the first place, we would observe that no one, except perhaps a few ultra-conservative engineers, advocates the construction of works of the profile hitherto in Vogue. In the second place, when we come to details, we find that Mr. Lillie's calculations of concentration are utterly fallacious. For instance, he says that, given 60,000 men in advanced trenches along a line of 80 miles of railway, 40,000 more distributed along the line itself, 50,000 on radiating lines, 1,500 guns on the main line, and 500 more on a branch line running perpendicularly to one flank of the main line, 30,000 men and 1,088 guns could be concentrated on 9 miles of the main line in one hour. Any practical quartermaster-general, artilleryman, or traffic manager could tell Mr. Lillie that what he proposes to do is not feasible. THE only fault of Mr. Simpson's clever and instructive book upon the Unities is that it comes a day too late for the fair. In England, and indeed throughout the Continent, the unities, those of place and time, by which alone the DR. STABLES'S book on Cats does not possess vorwaltenden Einflusses der Wittelsbacher, and a volume of similar papers referring to the sixteenth century. They are a portion of the enterprise undertaken by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy, at the instigation of the late King Maximilian II. The latter volume, edited by M. A. von Druffel, contains 'Beiträge zur Reichsgeschichte 1546-1551.' It is edited with true German industry, its arrangement is singularly clear, and it contains materials of the utmost value to the historian. The other, compiled by Prof. Moritz Ritter, under the general superintendence of Prof. Cornelius, contains contributions to the history of the Union and Henri IV., 1607 and 1609. Like its predecessor, which Prof. Ritter brought out in 1870, it throws much light on the designs of the French monarch, and all who wish to be acquainted with the events immediately preceding the great struggle should study it. The busy brain of Christian of Anhalt is here to be seen full at work. LIST OF NEW BOOKS. Birks's (T. R.) Modern Utilitarianism, cr. 8vo. 6/6 cl. Delamotte's (P. H.) Progressive Drawing-Book, 2nd edit. 3/6 cl. Poetry and the Drama. Geography. Roby's (H. J.) Grammar of the Latin Language, Part 2, 10/6 cl. THOSE who have read the first volume of M. Louis Blanc's Questions d'Aujourd'hui et de Demain, will peruse with interest a second instalment, which M. Dentu has just brought out. It may be remembered that M. Louis Blanc has undertaken to classify a large number of essays, political or social, written and published at different periods of his career as a writer and a public Shakespeare's Works, Life, Glossary, &c., Chandos Poets, 7/6 man. The present volume seems to bring to a close the collected series of political papers. Their scope is, therefore, of a nature which prevents us from touching upon more than their literary merits. M. Louis Blanc, it need scarcely be said, is one of the clearest and most dignified writers in the the Questions d'Aujourd'hui et de Demain' is, French language, and what especially strikes us in that although the different chapters were written at intervals of twenty and thirty years, the style is uniformly remarkable for its unfailing simplicity and brightness, the style of 1840 being exactly similar to that of 1873. Most of the subjects M. Louis Blanc considers are questions of momentous importance in his country. Beckett's (Sir E.) Clocks, Watches, &c., 6th edit. 12mo. 5/6 cl. Comets, and the New Comet of 1874, by Author of 'Astronomy De Breuil's Fruit-Trees, 3rd edit. 12mo. 4/6 cl. (Weale's Series.) Aunt Louisa's Zoological Gardens, 4to. 5/ cl. Edgeworth's Moral Tales; Popular Tales, 12mo. 1/ each, swd. Homes, Homely and Happy, 12mo. 1/4 cl. Kingston's (W. H. G.) Last Look; Merchant of Haarlem ; cr. 8vo. 2/6 cl. Maid of Orleans, 12mo. 2/bds. (Railway Library.) NOTES FROM PARIS. IN Souvenirs du 4 Septembre: Origine et Chute du Second Empire, by M. Jules Simon, published at Paris by Michel Lévy, we have a valuable work on the origin of the Empire, and on the political aspects of the war of 1870. We call it Lyttleton and Spencer's Sins of Business and Morals of Trade, "valuable," because it presents to the ordinary reader in an available form a mass of information for which he would probably not trouble himself to make search; but there is not much in the book which is not to be found for himself by the student in the "Report on the War," and "Report on the 4th of September." The facts are made to bear an appearance very destructive of the late Emperor's reputation for sagacity. M. Jules Simon contends that the Emperor having stood by and allowed first Denmark and then Austria to be crushed, and having then tried to obtain concessions of territory from the victorious power, learned too late that he had "created a monster." That looking about for a chance to revive his prestige, he obtained a great diplomatic success in the matter of the selection of a Prussian Prince to rule Spain and the dropping of the project. That instead of resting content with his triumph, the Emperor offered the King of Prussia impossible terms, and on his foreseen and hoped-for refusal, declared war without allies, and against the opinion of the vast majority of Frenchmen. That he began the war with a paper force nearly equal to that of Germany, but with a real force of not half the German strength, which force he weakened by division, and of which he, being notoriously incapable, took chief command. That the natural result was Sedan and the 4th of September. FROM Mr. August Siegle we have received a volume of the Briefe und Acten zur Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges in den Zeiten des IF you will permit me, we shall leave literature to-day to speak of a work of art, the coming exhibition of which will be the event of the month, of the year, and even, it is not impossible, of the century. On the 20th of August artists and amateurs will be admitted to see the pictures executed by Paul Baudry for the decoration of the foyer of our new Opera-house. The work is immense in extent, as it covers a surface of 500 square mètres. I believe it will be yet more remarkable from the scale of the compositions, the elevation of the style, the purity of the design, and the sweetness of the colour. At Venice, last year, I visited the Palace of the Doges in company with a friend. In the middle of the Hall of the Grand Council he touched my arm, and said to me wit legitimate pride, "Do you know a nation in Europe which either at present can, or formerly could, boast of a work equal to that we see before us? "No," I replied; "but I hope to show you at Paris, before eighteen months are over, a modern decorative work which would not be out of place in this splendid palace." He smiled, and I blushed; but I expect to see him in three weeks' time, and |