same time to try a flank movement against Weismann. He maintains that the true miracle is not so much the reproduction of the individual by the ordinary processes of generation, as the reproduction of the individual by the ordinary process of nutrition. He says:

There is not the shadow of a doubt that the action of the British Government in this matter, and in other matters of a similar character, has done serious damage to the reputation of our country. William Evans makes himself daily out of meal and mutton. There is the mystery. I venture then to suggest that assimilation in this wider sense-the making of the NotMe into the Me, which takes place every day in the tissues of every plant on earth-lies at the root of the supposed mystery of genesis and heredity. I venture to suggest that when the Not-Me thus becomes the Me, the real miracle is wrought; and that, compared with this vast and deep-reaching miracle, the miracle of reproduction is but a minor detail. The Not-Me which, assimilated, becomes the Me, is actually so capable of rebuilding the body, generic, specific, individual, identical, with all its original and all its acquired peculiarities. Why then invent a continuous germ-plasm to do partially and badly for the offspring what the assimilated protoplasm does better and more fully for the original body?

In short, the question I wish to raise is this-Is there any real and essential difference between the transmission of functionally-acquired modifications to offspring, and their registration or persistence in the individual organism?

OTHER PAPERS.

Mr. E. R. Pennell writes on the pictures of the year in the French salons. Mr. B. Molden writes an article which is translated from the French of the present relations between Hungary and the Vatican; and Mr. H. D. Trail! embodies in the shape of a Boswellian fragment entitled, "The Revolution in Grub Street," the questions which have recently been discussed in the press between authors, publishers, and booksellers. Mr. Mallock's story, "The Heart of Life" has ended at last. There is a short study by Esmé Stuart of Leconte de Lisle.

THE NATIONAL REVIEW.

IN the National Review there is one paper of noteMr. Shadwell's account of a model public - house at Hampton Lucy which belongs to a clergyman. I give some account of this paper elsewhere. Capt. Lugard discusses the rival pretentions of France and England in the Nile Valley, in a paper which is excellently illustrated by a map. Lord Houghton, for this occasion only, unites the functions of Lord Lieutenant and Cook, the tourist, and in his paper "Ireland Unvisited," he sets forth the great attractions which the island offers to tourists and sportsmen. In the chronique, Admiral Maxse, discussing the proposals of the Archbishops that the denominational teachers should be quartered on the taxes, makes the following cynical observation :

It may be irritating to point out that if good Churchmen devoted a tithe of what they spend on horse-racing (which is probably quite as injurious to the nation as religious training is elevating) to the support of their schools, the situation would be saved-but it is none the less true.

We have another paper by the irrepressible Bishop of St. Asaph's on the Welsh Church. Hon. N. G. Lyttelton writes on "Former Eton and Harrow Matches;" Mr. Spielmann describes the Rivals of Punch; and an exPrivate Secretary explains the duties of an Australian governor. Mr. W. Chance replies to Mr. Hunter defending the principle of indoor as against outdoor relief. His paper is valuable, and very statistical. He is a strong advocate of indoor relief. Earl Percy sets forth some considerations for small holders, and Mr. Austin Dobson writes upon George Colman's "Polly Honeycombe."

THE NEW REVIEW.

THE New Review contains only one article of much importance, and that is Mr. Arnold Forster's paper on "The Navy and the Colonies." Mr. Forster is much perturbed in spirit over the fact that the colonies, while profiting by our naval and military expenditure, refuse to contribute any sum worth speaking of towards the expense of policing the seas. He says:

The commerce of the Empire protected by the Royal Navy amounts to no less than £970,000,000; and of this total the commerce of the self-governing colonies alone represents no less than £143,000,000, or one-seventh of the whole. For the protection of this commerce, a sum of £20,000,000 sterling is to be spent this year. Towards this the self-governing colonies contribute £268,000, or one one-seventy-fifth part of the whole! The balance, of seventy-four seventy-fifths, is paid by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom! The revenue of the United Kingdom amounts to £91,000,000 contributed by a population of 38,000,000; the self governing colonies, with a population of 11,000,000, raise an annual revenue of £11,000,000.

Mr. E. E. Williams, in a paper entitled " Nationalisation by Inches," declares that the State is gradually taking over the railways by a process of perpetually interfering in the rates, management, etc. Mr. Eugene Bevan describes the origin of Romeo and Juliet, and an anony mous writer, signing himself" Diplomaticus," endeavours to set forth the reasons which lead him to think that the present Orleanist Pretender to the throne of France is a fraud. Mr. Reuben Butler discusses the chances of the Scotch Church at the coming elections under the title of "The Kirk's Alarm." Vernon Blackburn praises Eleonora Duse to the skies; Mr. Justin McCarthy writes an essay on Barras; there is a literary article upon the Picaresque Novel, and we have of course the usual quantity of fiction.

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

WHENCE Comes the religiosity of the Scotch? is the question argued by James Leatham in the Westminster Review. "Their contact with the sublime and beautiful in Nature will explain why the Scotch should be religious;" but, he goes on to show, it does not explain why they should be more religious than the Welsh, Swiss, Norwegians, and German, Italian, or Greek mountaineers. The difference can, he thinks, only be accounted for by the excellent parish schools Scotland has so long possessed. He observes, by the way, that the Scotch can keep money better than the English, but are not nearly so anxious to make it. An unfamiliar fact is pushed into notice by H. A. Hinkson, "an Irish Protestant," writing on the education problem of Ireland. Contrary to the sedulously-circulated impression of Protestant intellectual superiority, this Protestant declares and adduces statistics to show that "whenever Catholic and Protestant compete on anything like equal terms, the Protestant is almost invariably worsted by the Catholic competitor." He adds, "By Catholic I mean Celtic, for the two races are still almost as distinct as their religions." The results he cites "establish conclusively the superiority of the intellectual training given in Irish Catholic schools." Of the problem of higher education he finds only one solution-" the establishment of a college under the University of Dublin, as Catholic as Trinity College is Protestant, with a Catholic chapel and divinity school, but conceding the right of dissent." Mr. James Copner discusses the sacraments and rites of the Church, with a plea for reform. Mr. J. W. Breslin, writing on " Democracy + Home," denounces unsparingly the present-day w he origins of article.

jury trial in England are

THE FORUM. THE Forum for June is by no means a first-class number, at least, not for the English reader. About the best paper in the Forum is the inset advertisement describing the Adirondacks as a summer resort. The first five papers are all devoted to the discussion of purely American subjects. General F. A. Walker writes on the" Growth of American Nationality," Mr. Harvey states the argument for free silver, and Mr. Warner exposes its fallacies. Dr. J. M. Rice pleads for a "Rational Correlation of School Studies," and President Thwing eulogises colleges as the best method of investing

money.

CO-EDUCATION IN UNIVERSITIES.

Mr. E. P. Powell, writing on "An American Educational System in Fact," describes the University of Michigan, and pleads for the adoption of co-education in universities. He says:

Co-education has never been a question to create discord in our common-school system: but while in our high-schools boys and girls may work together up to any age, in our collegiate system they have been most monastically separated. A completed State system would wipe out the line of distinction between schools that "co-educate" and schools that will not. In other words, we find that we have our common schools by general Aryan inheritance, while our colleges and female seminaries come down by another descent from the monasteries and nunneries of the Middle Ages. The two systems must be harmonised. It is getting high time for mediævalism, in all its phases, to be discarded from our educational institutions. A thoroughly modern college system will fit into our times. It will have the full spirit not only of modern thought, but of modern manhood. In fact, our chief concern at present is to harmonise the lower and upper forms, and the spirit of school life; and to bring into harmony, and a single system, all the schools of the State.

Finally, it will be possible to create a national university in its most perfect sense only as we have our State systems completely graded and unified.

MR. KIPLING'S INDIA.

Mr. W. H. Bishop, writing on "Mr. Kipling's Work, So Far," says:—

Mr. Kipling has not yet introduced India to us as thoroughly as was to be expected. If he be intending more, it must be in future books, for there is less than ever of India in Many Inventions." He has devoted himself thus far to a somewhat superficial India, to people found in the military garrisons and at the health-resort of Simla, those who were his first audience. He looks from within the European lines, and the belt of fusion he considers is chiefly that where the Europeans employ the natives as their domestics and distribute to them impartial kicks and halfpence. Or, when he departs from this, it is, by preference, for an India of signs and wonders, an Orient still pretty closely allied with that of the Arabian Nights and of Moore's "Lalla Rookh." To mingle some strong unhackneyed melodramatic episode in an environment of horses, dogs, guns, drinks, tobacco, profanity, Chauvinistic devotion to the British Empire, satire of the Indian government, and other such-like "man's man's" diversions, would seem to be his chief ideal. But there is another and essential India inside this external one, and it may be that a good part of the rich field still remains to be worked.

A HINT TO THE BRITISH INVESTOR.

The writer of the article on the "Improving the Condition of Business" sets forth a remark which can be commended to those who are disposed to invest in American railway stock.

Our London friends since 1892 in a panic of fear have been sending back to us large amounts of bonds of whose security and safety there could be no reasonable doubt. It was foolish, but the tide was running that way and nothing could stop it.

Now that British sentiment is changing, these same English friends who would not hold "gilt-edged" bonds are buying millions of shares of American railways, a good part of which, in the slang of Wall Street, are "cats and dogs," shares considered by us as almost worthless intrinsically and selling at nominal prices, whose purchase no responsible American banker has recommended.

THE GREAT ARID WEST.

Mr. E. V. Smalley gives us some account of a great tract of territory which lies in California and the Dakotas. This is a quarter of a continent in which the rainfall is insufficient for farming without irrigation. If irrigation is carried to the uttermost extent, not more than one-twentieth of this land will ever be cultivated :

The single furrow run across a twenty-acre field represents all the area that can ever, by the largest enterprise and the most liberal expenditure, be reclaimed for cultivation in the arid region, and the remainder of the field represents the area that will always remain in its present condition of pastoral plains, mountains, and deserts. Hence there will always be a wild phase to Far Western life. Our realm of adventure and hardihood,-of the cowboy, with his spurs and sombero; of the big freight-waggon, with its six or eight mules guided by a single jerk-rein; of hunting expeditions for deer, elk, and mountain-sheep; of the prospector with his led horse, loaded with grub-stake, blankets, pick and pan: of the pack-train winding up the mountain gorge; of camps beneath the stars on lonely plains, or on sage-brush wastes where the dismal howl of the coyote breaks the silence of the night-this realm of romance, of courage, and of a rude physical life, is not going to disappear.

SLUMS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

Mr. E. R. L. Gould writes on the "Only Cure for Slums," the point of which is that America would do well to adopt the provisions of the English Housing of the Poor Act of 1890.

Lord Shaftesbury, after sixty years of fruitful philanthropic effort, wrote these significant words: "I am certain that I speak the truth, and a truth which can be confirmed by the testimony of all experienced persons, clergy, medical men, and all who are conversant with the working class, that until their domiciliary conditions are Christianized (I can use no less forcible term) all hope of moral or social improvement is utterly in vain."

The laws of continental countries and of American States permit expropriation for works of public utility, but not for purely sanitary reasons. Yet it is evident to all careful observers that no authority is more urgently needed if cities are to be made healthy, and kept healthy, than the power conferred by the English Act of 1890.

If authority were given to the New York Board of Health to expropriate insanitary buildings and areas upon conditions fairly similar to the English method, what should be done with the land? It seems to me that the very first thing would be to provide breathing spaces and playgrounds in congested districts.

THE LIBRARIES OF THE UNITED STATES.

The Librarian of the Boston Public Library describes the great libraries of America, and incidentally refers to the district library scheme adopted by the State, which closely resembles the circulating boxes which we are now lending in connection with the REVIEW OF REVIEWS:

The district libraries which were inaugurated in New York State in 1831, after an expenditure of several millions of dollars and an accumulation of over a million volumes, lost power because the collection of books in each became stagnant. The device of the Regents is a series of travelling libraries. These bring freshly tó each community in turn a fresh set of books, and therefore a new set of influences.

THE ARENA. THE Arena for June begins a new volume. It is a magazine which no person can afford to ignore if they would keep track of the struggle of the progressive party in America, and the current number contains two articles which might be quoted with advantage in the English press. One is the story of the Brooklyn trolley strike, which is written by Emile Richter, and is entitled Monopoly, Militia, and Man." It is a very interesting story of the way in which labour disputes are managed in America. The other article is by Prof. F. Parsons, and is entitled "The People's Lamps." It gives a mass of information as to the introduction of electric light into cities, and dwells upon the advantage of placing the supply of electricity in the hands of the municipality.

WOMEN IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES.

The other branch of the subject which the Arena has made its own, contains this month Mr. Flower's paper upon the abuse of marriage, which is noticed elsewhere, and a brief paper upon the laws governing the age of consent in Canada, which describes the Criminal Law Amendment Act passed in that country as one of the corollaries of the agitation of 1885 in England. After saying how enormously superior the Canadian law is in many respects to that which is in force in the United States, the writer says:

I could give further and more lengthy examples of protection afforded women by the Canadian laws, but what I have already written should be sufficient to show that in this all-important question the great republic in nearly every respect ranks far below its modest northern neighbour. And not only in the laws is this the case, but unfortunately in that which is of much greater importance-results.

ART STUDENTS IN PARIS.

A paper on a related subject is written by an American girl, entitled "Shall Our Young Men Study in Paris?" She argues very strongly that it is not to the advantage of American morality that American art students should go to Paris. An American girl, it will be seen, does not hesitate to regard the interests of morality as superior to those of art:

What has come to me without any undue investigation I feel bound, for the welfare of my countrymen, to divulge. I make no insinuations; I say openly that I know the majority of the leading studios for men in Paris to be hotbeds of immorality. That this Old World has much to battle against in overthrowing the effects of climate, of inheritance, and of established custom we must not forget; but do we dare imperil our future by too close an intimacy with this frightful quality of Parisian life?

THE AMERICAN IDOL.

The Arena also represents a third department of activity, and that is the protest against the hide-bound traditions which fossilise the American constitution and American parties. Here, for instance, is Solomon Schindler's "First Steps in Nationalism," which amounts to a vigorous plea which many well-constituted Americans will read with a shudder, for the recasting of the constitution:—

We must establish a new system of ascertaining the public will, viz., a new system of voting. This is a first step to nationalism, which, however, is preceded by still another one. We must stop teaching in school and from the platform the infallibility of the constitution. Is it high treason to write that? Our constitution was a glorious and excellent instrument at its time; it has ceased to be that now. Instead of grandiloquently praising the wisdom of the framers of the constitution and presenting it as the ne plus ultra of political foresight, as the safeguard of all our economic conditions, we should teach the people, young and old, that a measure may

be wise and good at one age, and cease to be so at another; that they may revere and respect this instrument which, indeed, broke the fetters of medieval thraldom, but that they must neither idolise nor deify it; that they should look at it as they look upon any other political measure, and be not afraid to change or recast it when new times and new conditions call for new measures.

THE IDOLATRY OF DEAD ISSUES.

An ex-Democrat of Missouri writes almost as sacrilegiously for the need for reconstituting the Democratic Party. The following passages will apply to parties outside the United States :There is a Norse saga of a warrior who loved a good and beautiful woman. One day she fell sick. He sat by her side and watched her, but she died. She changed so little in looks, however, that he sat by her still and would not allow any one to move her for burial. Days passed, but her looks changed not. There was the same calm, beautiful face, the same abundant blonde hair; but the bosom did not heave. He grew emaciated, and his friends said, "We must cure his hallucination or he will sit there till he dies." So another man came in and taking the woman's body by the shoulders raised it, and it was nothing but the skin and skeleton of the woman; and all sorts of ugly worms and bugs ran out from it. Then the one who loved the woman was cured of his hallucination. That is the corpse of democracy infested with goldbugs and local ringsters and railroad hirelings posing as judges. Whether or not there is the miracle of resurrection for a dead woman need not be here discussed. There is not for a dead and maggot-eaten party.

OTHER ARTICLES.

Yet a fourth speciality of the Arena is the discussion of psychical questions. In this month's number Margaret B. Peeke discourses upon "The Psychic and the Spiritual." The worst of her paper is that you have to be very psychic and spiritual before it is possible to make either head or tail of it. She makes a very strong statement that whenever we see a genuine psychic, that person is diseased. It would not be possible to find more than ten in a hundred who are sound in body and in mind. The fruits of the psychic therefore are the reverse of admirable. Among the other papers in this number are Mr Ridpath's review of Helen Gardener's new book, "An Unofficial Patriot." Marcus Wright describes the British House of Commons as he saw it some years ago, and Mr. J. K. Miller defends the Westerners for their revolt against what they believe to be an effort on the part of the leading bankers of the world to force the American people into the European system. The rest of the Review is as usual very full of ideas and aggressively progressive.

The North American Review.

THE June number of the North American is one of the best there has been for a long time. I notice elsewhere no fewer than half-a-dozen of the articles. Of the remaining papers there is but little to be said. Count von Mirbach sets forth Germany's attitude towards the Bi-metallic Union, and the Mexican Minister writes on the Silver Standard in Mexico. General Gibbon discusses whether the United States' Military Academy at West Point can be made more useful; and a painter, a musician, and a man of letters, discuss from their own standpoint Nordau's theory of degeneration.

Temple Bar, which appears this month in mourning for its editor, contains a long sketch of Maria Edgeworth. "Fitzgerald's Letters to Fanny Kemble" will be finished next month. There is a gossipy paper about "Wills," and one of topographical interest to Londoners entitled "Thackeray's London."

THE REVUE DES DEUX MONDES. WE have noticed elsewhere Vicomte d'Avenel's article in the number of June 1st, on the alimentation of Paris.

MEHEMET ALI.

The first number contains an article upon the last years of Mehemet Ali by Comte Benedetti, who at the beginning of his career, so long ago as 1840, was sent to Egypt on a diplomatic mission. The famous Viceroy was born at La Cavalla, on the Gulf of Salonica, of a Turkish family of modest origin, and in his earliest youth had joined an irregular troop raised by the Sultan to oppose Bonaparte's famous expedition to Egypt. It was Mehemet Ali who, in later years, opened up the valley of the Nile to Western ideas, who founded schools and published newspapers in many languages, and who, by his reforms, which were not always mercifully carried out, earned for himself a great historical name. The rough soldier who had survived many a bloody struggle became in mature life something of a dandy. He wore no gloves, these appendages not being considered necessary to a refined Oriental toilette; but his delicate hands showed no trace of the labours of his early life. Dressed in a large caftan lined with light fur, with a turban bound round his head, he recalled the image of an early Caliph. To do him justice, he resembled Haroun-Al-Raschid in more ways than one. He was a great ruler. He gave the cotton culture to Egypt, he broke down the barriers between that country and the Western world, and Comte Benedetti says that his memory acquires daily fresh veneration, although he died in silence and retreat.

In his fifth paper upon Spain, M. René Bazin draws a lamentable picture of the cigar manufactory at Seville, which employs a multitude of women, sometimes, at moments of pressure, increasing the number to four thousand hands.

M. Albert Sorel writes of Bonaparte in Italy, and of the treaty known as that of Campo-Formio. When this treaty was presented to the French Directoire, Talleyrand made a panegyric of Bonaparte, and Larevallière, who was the President, so far forgot his official dignity as to enfold the envoys in an embrace. "Happy France," said he, "enjoy the fruit of thy conquest; nevertheless, before reposing finally upon your laurels, look towards England."

The extermination of England was considered a necessary condition of peace. Bonaparte knew this so well that in 1797 he wrote to Talleyrand these words, which summed up his future destiny: "That which you desire that I should do is to accomplish miracles, and I do not know how to perform them."

An article on the Salons of 1895 is followed by one on the finances of Italy. M. Adrien Dubief fiddles on the old string when he winds up by saying that military expenses are a continuous source of danger. Italy can borrow for five or six more years, and pay the interest by increased taxation; but this will only, in the long run, increase the difficulties of the Treasury.

The first article in the second June number of the Revue des Deux Mondes is on naval matters. The anonymous author says that cruisers are coming into favour after having long been sacrificed to ironclads. He discusses elaborately the best methods of harassing the British commercial fleet, not so much in the Channel as upon the high seas, and he discusses the question with a vivid appreciation of the necessity of starving out England in case of a war.

A paper upon the contemporary English drama by M. Augustin Filon starts retrospectively from the year

1820 till 1865, and appears to be written with a full knowledge of London dramatic men and things. It is amusing to see Macready and Bulwer Lytton discussed from a French point of view. Helen Faucit is said to have preserved the pure classic diction of John and Charles Kemble. Keeley is described as a fat man full of finesse; probably his wife, who is still alive, will be amused at seeing herself spoken of as having been incisive, penetrating, serious, and with a touch of bitterness. Robson, whom many consider the greatest genius that in the middle of the century adorned the English stage, is aptly described in very few words. Dion Boucicault is noted as having for the first time presented Ireland upon the stage in a noble and pathetic light.

The theories of heat are treated by M. P. Duhem; and his travels in Central Asia are recorded by M. Edouard Blanc.

THE NOUVELLE REVUE.

The

THE two June numbers of Madame Adam's review, though not lacking in interesting matter, contain no article calling for very special notice. Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian Shakespeare, as he has been sometimes styled, contributes three strange essays, dealing severally with the Soul, Mystic Morality, and Womanhood. writer is evidently a believer in L'Eternel Féminin." "Be she good, be she evil, be she tender, be she cruel, be she loving, be she unfaithful, woman is always the same." He is evidently a fatalist, and at the same time a believer in the power of true love. "Let us approach with respect the smallest, and the haughtiest, those who are thoughtless and those who think, those who laugh and those who weep, for they are familiar with much we know not-they belong to the Inevitable."

M. Hamelle sums up, under the title of "A Tory Democrat," the life and career of Lord Randolph Churchill, and he recalls the significant fact that his hero was the great-nephew of carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh.

Those who care for modern French art will value M. Le Comte's short account of Corot, the great landscape painter, whose centenary has just been celebrated by an exhibition of his works in Paris. In the same order of thought is Saint-Saens' analysis of the life and work of Anton Rubinstein. The French composer knew his German comrade intimately, and describes him as having been "a fine athletic-looking man, with a stature as colossal as his talent."

Victor Hugo's grandson continues his "Recollections of a Sailor." He writes with ease and eloquence, and it will be interesting to see if he gives to the world what were his impressions of England during his short visit to M. Daudet when the latter was in London.

Sir Henry Parkes's "Fifty Years of Australian History" is reviewed at some length. The colonial expansion of Great Britain has always possessed a strange fascination for our lively neighbours. Sir Henry's critic, M. Quesnel, declares that the true wealth of Australasia is to be found in the soil, both below and above ground.

As is natural, Madame Adam is among the first to welcome Paul Bourget's election to the French Academy. He published some of his most remarkable novels and studies in psychology in the Nouvelle Revue, as did, it will be remembered, another of Madame Adam's literary children, Pierre Loti. The article dealing with the new Academician is analytical rather than personal, but we are told in it that Bourget's favourite among French works of fiction is the little known " Dominique," written by Fromentin.

THE REVUE DE PARIS. THE youngest of French reviews is doing its best to keep up a superiority to its older established contemporaries. The June 1st number begins with an instalment of Charles Gounod's memoirs, where the great composer starts by paying an eloquent tribute to his mother. "If I have achieved anything good during my life, I owe it to my mother, and it is to her I desire to render homage. She it is who nursed me, who brought me up, and who formed me, not, alas, in her own image, for to this I could not aspire; what was lacking in me is not her fault but mine. The following pages are my tribute of veneration and love to the creature who loved me most, my mother."

Charles Gounod seems to have inherited his musical genius from the woman to whom he pays so noble a tribute. She belonged to a well known Norman family, and was born in the year 1780, becoming a pupil of Hullmandel, the contemporary and friend of Beethoven. She married, at the age of twenty-six, a distinguished painter many years older than herself, and became a widow some sixteen years later, when her younger son Charles was only five years old. It was then that Mme. Gounod mère, as they in France so touchingly style dowagers, began teaching both music and drawing with a success that enabled her to educate her two sons, the one as an artist, the other as a musician. Charles Gounod's posthumous memoirs are good reading, and give a high idea of the writer's nobility and single-heartedness, and they further offer, all unconsciously, a charming picture of the love and confidence so often seen existing between a French mother and her sons.

M. Masson is making for himself quite a Napoleonic speciality, and his account of the Empress Josephine's early life will certainly prove of interest to those who care for what may be called the feminine side of history. The story of the lovely Creole's first marriage to Beauharnais is told at great length, and proves, if the historian's assertions be relied upon, how entirely the life led by his heroine fitted her for the great position which she was so soon to occupy. M. Masson deals but briefly with Josephine's incarceration in the Prison des Carmes, where it will be remembered the terrible September massacres took place. But he states clearly that had it not been for an accident, Mme. Beauharnais would have shared the fate of so many and been guillotined. What this accident was nobody seems to know. By some it has been asserted that she was forgotten, by others that her name was crossed out of one of the fatal lists by a Republican friend. Be that as it may, she lived to become the great love of Napoleon the First's life, and one of the causes of his ultimate undoing.

In the same number two ardent French Wagnerians, Catulle Mendès, and Alfred Ernst, contribute their impressions of " Tannhäuser" as performed in Paris and at Bayreuth, and their few pages will be found to be of great value to those interested in the German composer's works and method.

The present mania for the posthumous publication of diaries, memoirs and so on, has its drawbacks; and it is to be doubted if Taine's friends have done wisely in publishing extracts from a diary kept by him during a journey in Belgium and Holland. The worthy citizens of Brussels will not be pleased with the unflattering portrait the famous historian has left of them. "As a whole they are sensual," he notes lightly, "the wealthier merchants each boasts of at least two households, and of course two families the women are sedentary, and make good wives the husbands spend their evenings at the club,

and the ladies pass their evenings in contented solitude." On the other hand, Taine's art criticisms are worthy of study to those who regard the Continent from a picturegallery point of view.

A naval authority, who prefers to remain anonymous, discusses with shrewdness and impartiality the strategic import of the Kiel Canal. He evidently considers that Germany's latest achievement will enable her ultimately to compete with other naval powers.

M. Lucien Perey, most admirable of chroniclers and modern historians, adds in the second number of the Revue his quota to the revival of French interest in Russia and things Russian, by publishing a selection of the Prince de Ligne's correspondence with Catherine the Great. The originals of these letters, which have not hitherto been published, are to be found in the Russian Imperial archives, and they show that the redoubtable Empress had, when writing even to unknown friends, a pretty wit, and that the Russian Court, even in those far off days, took a keen interest in the Chinese and China.

Many of those familiar with Miss Mary F. Robinson's (Madame James Darmesteter) charming writings, will read with interest the touching pages in which she attempts to give some idea of what her husband was both as historian and as the high-minded, single-hearted man, universally beloved and respected by a multitude of known and unknown friends, who all hailed in him, as did Gabriel Monod, "the soul of an apostle and the heart of a hero."

THE ITALIAN MAGAZINES.

THERE is very little of interest in the Italian magazines this month. The Civiltà Cattolica (June 1st), with unquenchable hopefulness professes itself much gratified at the reception granted to the Pope's letter to the English people by the Protestant press. It is particularly elated that the REVIEW OF REVIEWS, "in spite of its prejudices against the Pope and the Church," should have received the papal pronouncement with so much cordiality. At the same time, the Jesuit organ, while admitting that Leo XIII. makes no pronouncement concerning Anglican orders, gives its own opinion very definitely against any formal recognition of the ecclesiastical status of the English clergy, founding its position on a Bull of Pope Paul IV., dated June 20th, 1555, in which the Pope declared invalid all the ordinations performed according to the Ordinal of Edward VI., the same by which Archbishop Parker was himself ordained. The bringing to light of this important document from amongst the secret archives of the Vatican seems to be due to Fr. Aidan Gasquet, the indefatigable historian of the English Reformation.

In the Nuova Antologia (June 1st) a lengthy article on "The Science of the Point of Honour" enters with much detail into the true inwardness of duelling, and sketches its developments in the various countries of Europe. It is satisfactory to learn that the disrepute into which duelling has fallen in this country is mainly due to the superior quality of our administrative justice. For any one interested in the private history of the always fascinating Medici family there is an instructive article by E. Saltini on the private amours of Cosimo di Medici, which clears him, however, from some of the grossest accusations that have been brought against him.

The Rivista per le Signorine, a little magazine for girls edited by Signora Albini, is doing its best to cultivate a taste for English literature in its young readers, and has a series of excellent articles in progress on Charlotte Brontë, and another on Dickens.