1. Le Panlatinisme, Confederation Gallo-Latine et Celto-Gauloise, Contre-Testament de Pierre le Grand et Contre-Panslavisme.  Paris:  Passard, Libraire-Editeur. 1860. 8vo. pp. 260.

2. Testament de Pierre le Grand, ou Plan de Domination Europeenne laisse par lui a ses Descendants et Successeurs au Trone de la Russie.  Edition suivie de Notes et de Pieces Justificatives.  Paris:  Passard. 1860. 8vo.

We seem to be living in an age of pamphleteers.  More than ever, both in France and Germany, are pamphlets the order of the day.  In Paris alone, the year 1860 has given birth to hundreds of these writings of circumstance,—­political squibs, visionary remodellings of European states,—­vying with each other for ephemeral celebrity.  They fill the windows of the book-shops, and are spread by scores along the stands in the numerous galleries which the Parisian population throngs of evenings.  Those issued in the early part of the year have gradually descended from the rank of new publications, and may be found on every quay, spread out, for a few centimes, side by side with old weather-beaten books, odd volumes, refuse of libraries, which book-lovers daily finger through in the hope of finding some pearl, some rarity, in the worthless mass.

Thus we have seen the interminable Rhine question discussed in its every possible phase,—­still more that of Italy.  Between come the Druses, the Orient, the Turks.  Then Italy again, Garibaldi, Naples, the Pope.

To state in general terms the tendency of these rockets of literature, or to arrive at the spirit which seems to pervade them, is not quite so easy as it would seem.  They are written by authors of all party-colors, within certain impassable limits prescribed by the parental restrictions of Government.  Still it seems to be the old story of soothing; and many a conclusion—­as where England is smoothed down by a few flatteries and told that her most natural ally is France, or where Germany is heartily assured that she has nothing to fear, that all the changes proposed are for the good of the Teutonic race—­reminds us very strongly of that widely known verse in child-literature,—­

  “Will you walk into my parlor,” etc.

We have before us, however, a work which, from its size and from the labor bestowed upon it, deserves to be ranked above the various productions that have scarcely called forth more than a passing notice in the daily press.

The pamphlet named at the head of this article, and which is but a complement to the volume, is one of the numerous reconstructions and rearrangements of European limits made in the quiet of the study.  Were it this alone, it would deserve but little attention.  It is more.  The author bases his theories upon other than political reasons, having labored hard to establish many debatable points of Ethnography in the interesting notes appended to the work, and which form by far the most remarkable part of it.  So we have the question of Races discussed at full length.  There is certainly some philological legerdemain, as may be seen from some of the convenient conclusions of the author concerning the Celts and the Gauls.  He is full of such paragraphs as this in his argumentation:—­