at first sight, but we had a little of everything.”  It was in an elevated plain about fifteen miles in diameter and nearly circular, girt by a circus of hills rising fifteen hundred feet above the general level.  A trout stream ran through the property.  There were pretty estates around of about two hundred acres each, with houses in general of modest dimensions and architecture, though occasionally aspiring to the dignity of chateaux.  Roman and mediaeval remains, with architecture of different periods, were to be found in the city, as well as a public library and art-gallery, cafes and the inevitable cercle.  The flora, owing to the diversities of elevation, was varied, and while vineyards clothed the foot of the slopes and gigantic old chestnuts looked down on them from above, the vegetation of the hill-tops was that of Lancashire or Scotland.  It follows, of course, that the pursuits and habits of the population were correspondingly various, and there was ample opportunity for studying the different classes of society, from the noblesse to the peasants.  The results of this study are presented, not in the form of labored analyses, but in easy and flowing sketches, sometimes in the form of narrative, always full of illustrative details, and winning without much discussion or argument a ready assent to the author’s conclusions.  Many statements in the book will, of course, not be new to generally well-informed readers, but it is not often that they come with the same force and freshness from direct observation, and still more rarely is their relation to each other or their bearing on the subject to which they relate so clearly and correctly indicated.  Among the points on which Mr. Hamerton has thus thrown a stronger light are the characteristics and position of French ladies, divided, “in this part of the world,” he writes, “into two distinct classes:  the home women and the visiting women—­les femmes d’interieur, and les femmes du monde; the exact theory of the mariage de convenance, which is popularly but wrongly considered as based on mere mercenary motives; and the mental condition of the peasant, with his natural quickness of intellect and his stupendous ignorance, his adherence to tradition and ingrained superstitiousness, and his suspicion of the nobles and tendency to emancipate himself from clerical influence.  It is France in a state of transition that Mr. Hamerton paints, and his anticipations have already to some extent been justified by events.  “My hope for France is,” he says, “that a system of regularly-working representative government may be the final result of the long and eventful revolution, and that this form of government may give the country certain measures which it very greatly needs.  A thorough system of national education is one of them, a real religious equality is another.  These would never be conceded by a French monarchy of any type with which past experience has made the country familiar....  The only chance of real representation lies in the Republic.”