History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France. By HENRY M. BAIRD. 8vo. Vol. I, pp. 577. Vol. II, with Index, pp. 681. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1879. Our readers are familiar with productions in our pages from Professor Baird's classic pen. The present work is, doubtless, a labor of love, portraying the tragic history of his spiritual and personal ancestry, the French Huguenots. The present volume traces their rise, and closes with an epic fitness with the memorable massacre of St. Bartholomew. The author has had access to a large amount of sources shedding new light on the history. A fuller review may be expected in our Quarterly. History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce-1609. By JOHN LоTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., LL.D. In four volumes. (In a box.) With Portraits. 8vo. Vol. I, pp. 532. Vol. II, pp. 563. Vol. III, pp. 599. Vol. IV, with Index, pp. 632. New York: Harper & Broth The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland. With a View of the Primary Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years' War. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., LL.D. In two volumes. With Illustrations. (In a box.) 8vo. Vol. I, pp. 389. Vol. II, with Index, pp. 475. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1879. These new and handsome editions of Motley, neatly boxed up and freshly issued, will be very acceptable to the reading public. Both have been amply reviewed in our Quarterly, and they only need announcement. Educational. A New Latin Dictionary. Founded on the Translation of Freund's Latin-German Lexicon, edited by E. A. ANDREWS, LL.D. Revised, enlarged, and in great part re-written, by CHARLTON T. LEWIS, Ph.D., and CHARLES SHORT, LL.D. 4to, pp. 2019. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1879. The best German and American scholarship is embodied in this work. And the American contributions, by both the late Professor Andrews and Professors Lewis and Short, have brought it with an admirable completeness to the latest dates. For, strange as it may seem to some, "progress" is as rapid and real (though not as flaring) in Latin lexicography as in other departments of thought. The following paragraph will suggest to our readers something of the nature of this progress: Great advances have been made in the sciences on which lexicography depends. Minute research in manuscript authorities has largely restored the texts of the classical writers, and even their orthography. Philology has traced the growth and history of thousands of words, and revealed meanings and shades of meaning which were long unknown. Syntax has been subjected to a profounder analysis. The history of ancient nations, the private life of their citizens, the thoughts and beFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.—13 liefs of their writers, have been closely scrutinized in the light of accumulating information. Thus the student of to-day may justly demand of his lexicon far more than the scholarship of thirty years ago could furnish. The present work is the result of a series of earnest efforts by the publishers to meet this demand. We expect a full review of the work from the hand of an amply competent scholar. Literature and Fiction. Literary Studies. By the late WALTER BAGEHOT. With a Prefatory Memoir. Edited by RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. Two volumes. London: Longmans & Green. 1879. To most American readers Mr. Walter Bagehot, who died some two years since, was known only as a writer on politics and finance. His books on these subjects, "Lombard Street," "Physics and Politics," and "The English Constitution," were reprinted in this country, and the last named is used, we believe, as a text-book in several of our colleges. But these two volumes show that as a literary critic Mr. Bagehot had abilities of the very first order. A part of these essays were first collected into a volume some twenty years ago; and we are inclined to agree with Mr. Hutton, the editor of this edition, that "the literary taste of England never made a greater blunder than when it passed by that remarkable volume of essays with comparatively little notice." The essays are a series of studies upon the lives and work of some of the greatest English writers, including Shakspeare, Milton, Gibbon, Butler, Cowper, Shelley, Scott, Thackeray, and a half dozen others. What is first noticeable in them is their freshness of manner and wholly unconventional tone. Both in matter and in style they are delightfully original. It is a common observation that studious men, even though writers by profession, write dull books. They have knowledge and opinions, but they lack the art to communicate them. As has been wittily said, their hard reading is the cause of their writing what is hard to read. If one is to get the ear of the world, one must have the speech of the world; and this is not to be learned in the closet. In particular, the literary criticism of a professed critic is often tiresome reading; it is over subtle, and sometimes seems to be written in a kind of technical dialect. But Mr. Bagehot was a banker. And he wrote like a banker-which is as much as to say that, in most respects, he wrote exceeding well. The shrewd sense, the varied experi ence of men and things, the racy vigor and curtness of speech, the ready and pungent wit, the homely and striking illustration, these all mark the man of the street rather than of the study. Not that these essays show any lack of wide reading, or of keen critical insight. On the contrary, the range of Mr. Bagehot's reading and the catholicity of his taste are surprising. He wrote almost equally well of Beranger's Songs and of Butler's Analogy; and the pithy criticism upon men of widely different ages which is scattered incidentally through these volumes-upon Homer, Plato, Voltaire, Dante, Goethe, and Dryden, for example-show that he had somehow found time to familiarize himself with what is best in all the great European literatures. But his reading did not warp his originality nor make him bookish. Upon the most wellworn themes-Shakspeare, for instance-he had something new to say, and a fresh and forcible way of saying it. Few collections of essays contain so little second-hand opinion, so much that is new and yet true. As for his acumen we have seen nothing in recent English criticism to equal it. But it never led him into fanciful or laborious analysis. It was constantly held in check by the practical temper of his thought. To use a phrase he was fond of, he could always tell what a thing you << came to;" and that is the office of criticism. By its easy rapidity, its manifold suggestiveness, and its versatility, the writing of Mr. Bagehot reminds one of that rare thing, the talk of a really good talker. It is uncommon to find so much depth and power of thought combined with such vigorous plainness of expression and felicity of illustration. Indeed, Mr. Bagehot seemed sometimes curiously rather afraid of his own penetration. After stating some principle of conduct or opinion discovered in the life or writings of the author under criticism, he had a way of saying, "Now, this may seem to many people like nonsense, but in reality it isn't. For,"-and then would follow some homely but conclusive examples of the principle in common life. It is largely to this union of the speculative and the practical temper that we ascribe the humor which constantly played about Mr. Bagehot's pen. For humor, if any thing more than easy goodfellowship or the gush of animal spirits, depends upon the quick perception of contrasted relations. And this perception Mr. Bagehot had in a remarkable degree. The philosopher and the banker in him were always laughing at each other. Very suggestive of the nature and the source of his humor is such a passage as this: There seems an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the fall of butter, the tare on tallow, or the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit "petty expenses "and charge for "car. riage paid?" All the world's a stage;-"the satchel and the shining morning face," the "strange oaths,"-the "bubble reputation,"-the Eves severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances. Can these things be real? Surely they are acting. What relation have they to the truth as we see it in theory? What connection with our certain hopes, our deep desires, our craving and infinite thought? "In respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect it is a shepherd's life, it is naught." The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous. The essays are remarkably even. If we mistake not, however, those which deal largely with the relations of philosophy and religion to practical life are written with greater zest than the others. Those on Huxley, Coleridge, Arthur Hugh Clough, and Milton are excellent, but the best of the series is the essay on Butler. We do not remember to have seen in so brief compass such a clear and satisfactory statement of the character and limitations of Butler's work. C. T. W. Periodicals. The Popular Science Monthly. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1879. First, it maintains the absolute settlement of the question in favor of the reality of quaternary man. And the remains of this epoch are found as truly in the East, in Assyria, in Egypt, both lower and upper, as in America. It notices with peremptory contradiction the claim made by Mr. Southall that no traces of paleolithic man are found in Egypt and the Orient; maintaining that they have been discovered in positions decisive of their genuine geological antiquity. And of the vastness of the quaternary age he thus speaks: "All geologists are agreed that the duration of the period in which we live is as nothing compared with that of the quaternary period. It is as a day compared to ages, as a drop of water in a stream. All paleontologists understand what a length of time is requisite for the rise and decline of animal species-species which, while they have been upon the earth, have been lavishly distributed over an enormous area."-Page 795. On this we remark that, positive as paleontologists are of this stupendous length of time, the physicists as positively maintain that no such time can be allowed. As yet the physicists possess the field. But Mortillet is also sure not only of the tertiary man anterior to the stupendous quaternary, but even of the miocene. We do not quote his proofs, our main object being the certain discriminations above hinted. Was the fossil man the complete man of our present humanity? Or was he, in fact, a lower species; an anthropoid, and not a man. If so, the Adamic man may have no genetic connection with the pre-Adamite, and our race may have begun with Adam. On this point we adduce the following pas sages: But first let us understand what is meant by the terms quaternary man and tertiary man. The fauna of the mammals serves clearly to determine the limits of these later geological periods. The tertiary is characterized by terrestrial mammals entirely different from extant species; the quaternary by the mingling of extant with extinct species; the present period by the extant fauna. The man of the early quaternary, he who made the St. Acheul hatchets and used them, is the man of Neanderthal, of Canstatt, of Enggisheim, of La Naulette, of Denise. He is indubitably a man, but differing more widely from the Australian and the Hottentot than the Australian and Hottentot differ from the European. Hence unquestionably he formed another human species, the word species being taken in the sense given to it by naturalists who do not accept the transformation doctrine. Tertiary man, therefore, must have been still more distinct-of a species still less like the present human species-indeed, so different as to entitle it to be regarded as of distinct genus. For this reason I have given to this being the name of man's precursor. Or he might be called anthropopithecus-the man-moukey. The question of tertiary man should therefore be expressed thus: Did there exist in the tertiary age beings sufficiently intelligent to perform a part of the acts which are characteristic of man? So stated, the question is settled most completely by the various series of objects sent to the Anthropological Exposition. It results, therefore, from the Abbé Bourgeois' researches, that during the middle tertiary there existed a creature, precursor of man, an anthropopithecus, which was acquainted with fire and could make use of it for splitting flints. It also knew how to trim the flint-flakes thus produced, and to convert them into tools.-Pp. 797, 798. "man 99 But if even quaternary was not of the same species with our present man, then there properly is no quaternary man. And inasmuch as even "the man of Neanderthal, of Canstatt, of Enggisheim, of La Naulette, of Denise," is of very questionable character, how do we know that the being intelligent enough to split flints by fire or by tapping had a human form at all, even rudimentally? Quantitatively, the beaver and the bee have as great an amount of intelligence, although qualitatively in different direction. We are, therefore, unable to be sure that the flint-splitter was "the precursor of man." But even admitting his precursorship, he was still an animal, with animal body and intellect. The higher nature, the spirit, was wanting. The being may have possessed an animal body, and an animal soul, but have lacked the TVεйμa, the transcendant humanity. For man was not only made |