Contrary to its wont, the Revue des Deux Mendes for September addresses itself mostly to French readers. We are unfortunately too familiar with the tale of Irish miseries to care much for a history of their origin from a French pen, however skilfully wielded by M. Edouard Herve, The great name of Gaston Boissier hardly tempts us to skim his discussion of the changes which the advancing claims of science have brought about in the educational curriculum laid down by the Government. Few of us have s0 much as hoard of Pierre Lanfrey, so that fifty octavo pages devoted to the first chapter of his biography act rather as a warning than as an invitation, although the story of difficulties overcome and success conquered by mere force of genius, unaided by external support, except that never-failing one of mother's devotion, is always fresh and ought always to be attractive. Nor may we stay to analyse Admiral Jurien de la Gravibre's paper on Les Phalanges Pawores, or, more correctly speaking, the paper which bears this title. For the Admiral whirls his readers with vertiginous rapidity from one end of the world's history to the other.
Cyrus and Mohammed Ah, Alexander the Great and the First Napoleon, Aristotle, Quintns Curtius and Jenkinson all find their Flaces in, or are shaken into, one chapter, which treats, moreover, among other things, of the Anglo-French expedition to Peking and' of a possible Chinese invasion of Russia.—Those who are fortunate enough to contemplate a visit to Europe within a reasonable time would do well to carry with them M. Gabriel Charme's account of the Boulak Museum, The least interested in the advance of anthropological science have yet some gleams of curiosity about the solution of the ever-recurring question of man's antiquity. It is true that the light thrown on this matter by the study of Egyptian remains renders the darkness but more visible, But this at least is certain, that at a period far anterior tothe beginning of written history, Egyptian sculptors and painters had reached perfection in the delineation of living forms—human, animal and vegetable. Unchanged specimens of art, dating from unfathomed depths of time, are now treasured in the Boulak Museum as silent witnesses of the vast series of centuries which witnessed the origin, growth and development of arts destined at the dawn of history to sink into conventional insignificance.—Inviting, too, as are MIN. Valbert and Brunetidre's sparkling articles, the one on the figure cut by European diplomacy in the Greek dispute, the other on Lo Mal clu Sidcle, the sickly sentimentalism which pervades contemporary literature, and which is but an outcome of the nervous strain maintained by our fashion of life, we pass them both by witha bare mention as refusing to be analysed or condensed.—English people will hardly be tempted to read a French translation of George Eliot's Lifted Veil, although the version is a gem in its way while fresh additions to the memoirs of Madame de Lafayette lack charm for those to whom the love affairs of Madame Royale, and the intrigues and family squabbles whick filled the daily Court life st Turin, during the early days of Victor Amadeus the Second, are matters of indifference. Everybody knows. that Madame de Lafayette was the mistress of the Duc de Jo Rochefoucauld, and that, in the time and place which she adorned, manners and customs were so delightfully free and easy that she was thought all the more of on that account, And this is really all that we need care to know about her.—M.
Edmond Plauchut urges the French government to annex Tonquin as the gateway to western China, and desirable moreover for the symmetrical rounding off of the territory actually in French. possession. If the French do not "convey" it, the Germans will, an argument which. we conceive is unanswerable, The advanced civilisation accompanied by all the graces of cultivation which the Nonnans enjoyed and which they spread by their conquests, notably in England, is incomprehensible when set alongside of the common belief that just a century and a half before, they were mere savage sea-rovers driven by the poverty of their Scandinavian homes to encounter all sorts of perils in search of subsistence. Within the last few years, archeoological research in the Scandinavian continent has brought to light abundant evidence of a very advanced condition of civilisation existing among the ancestors of the Danish invaders of England and the Norman invaders of Nenstria and of the Mediterranean provinces of France and Italy. Seamanship had, as everybody knows, been early brought to perfection, and with it shipbuilding had reached a marvellous development, as is testified by the Bayeux tapestry, The art of war in all its branches had been pushed so far as to confer a never-questioned superiority on the Northmen over those western nations who had inherited the Roman military system, and it is to be supposed, some of the Roman military virtues, Commerce and the arts of peace were, moreover, sedulously cultivated. Ancient tombs have given up rich garments of silk and gold embroidery, while hiding-places undisturbed for eleven centuries have boon found filled with coins struck in the mints of the Abbasside Caliphs of Bagdad, in those of the Sassanides of Khorassan, and of the Greek Emperors of Constantinople. Masses of brooches, clasps and rings in gold, but chiefly in silver, testify by their patterns to a wide intercourse with the East, while the presence of Anglo-Saxon coins among these hoards seems to indicate the existence of a regular trade with England. About the year 1,000, a Scandinavian settlement was made on the Hudson, which was reached by way of Greenland and Newfound-Jand, and there is even ground for suspicion that the Scandinavian outposts were pushed as far as the James River and Potomac.
The remains of arms, armour, clothing, jewels, harness, and domestic vessels supply' ample materials for a history of early Scandinavian skill and refinement, and these are seconded by relics of painting and sculpture of rare excellence and beauty in wood. The Norsemen of twelve hundred years ago were skilful locksmiths, for although locks have not been discovered, a large collection of keys has been made which attest the ingenuity of the corresponding locks, and suggest an otherwise incredible degree of elegance in the cabinets and boxes for which they were required. Thus another illusion is removed from us. We are no longer to regard the Danes and their fellow-adventurers as blood-thirsty pirates, but rather as apostles of civilisation, Where
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.