liberty with order, the one great need is the destruction or suppression of the revolutionary spirit, to which end a strong government of whatever kind is the first requisite, and some form of Napoleonism the most available, it being improbable that the nation would accept permanently anything better.  Such is the view of Professor Adams, one with which all readers have long been familiar, but which most independent thinkers have come to reject as shallow and false.  However obscure the issue, however doubtful the solution, it cannot but be apparent to all who, casting aside prejudices, have studied the history of France in its entirety and recognized its special character, that its course during the period in question exhibits no mere series of lawless oscillations, but a process of development, often checked and retarded, often prematurely hastened, but passing from stage to stage without suffering itself to be stifled by factitious aid or crushed by arbitrary repression.  What underlies the history of these events, what distinguishes it from the galvanic agitations of the torpid Spanish populations in Europe and America, is the constant presence and activity of ideas, shaping and shaped by events, hardened or fused by conflict, and preserving through all vicissitudes and convulsions the incomparable vitality of the nation.  France, more than any other country, is to be studied as a living spirit, not as an inert mass, and in a study of this kind the mechanico-philosophical method will not carry us far.  It does not appear to strike Professor Adams as singular that a nation “abandoned for the last eighty years to the domination of Siva, the fierce god of destruction,” should have all this while been cutting a somewhat respectable figure in literature, science and the arts, and during most of that period paid its way in the solid and shining metal considered by our rulers to have merely a mythical significance.  Or rather he seems to contend that civilization has in fact perished in France, that as “such a tendency to turbulence is destructive of all healthy national growth,” the inevitable result has ensued.  He admits that there are still some good scholars in France, but he proves—­need we add, by statistics?—­that the illiteracy of the masses is greater than it was under the ancien regime, if not in the reign of Clovis.  The controlling influence of Paris is shown, of course, to have been a prime source of mischief, and we are asked to “imagine the United States withdrawing from all interest in political affairs, and saying to New York City, ‘Govern us as you please:  we do not care to interfere.’” The fact, as most people are aware, is not at all as here assumed; but that aside, is it possible that Professor Adams knows so little of the difference in the origin and structure of the two nations as not to perceive that the comparison is ridiculous?

Books Received.

Social Life in Greece, from Homer to Menander. 
  By Rev. J.P.  Mahaffy, M.A. 
  London:  MacMillan & Co.