The January numbers of the Revue des deux Mendes are filled with articles of interest which promise well for the opening year, Stories are promised from the pens of Octave Feuillet, Victor Cherbuliez and Andre Theuriet, names with which the readers of the Revwe are already affectionately familiar. The last-named author contributes, asa sort of specimen, a Indierous account of a miracle in which, at the age of ten, he was, by force of citeumstances, compelled to take a leading part. The series of falsehoods through which love and vanity led him, the enthusiasm of a coterie of devout women whose suggestions spared him the trouble of any elaborate effort at invention, the dismay of a sceptical old grand-aunt, who considered a miracle performed on behalf of a member of her housohold as a mere impertinence, and finally the horror of the public when full confession was made, are all described in an irresistibly funny way. The fact was, that the child accidentally tumbled into a hemp-soaking pit where he would have been drowned, but fora stump which he chanced to catch. Catechised a day or two after, he was persuaded to say that he had offered up a prayer to the Virsin, who in reality was the last personage in the universe that ho was thinking of; and he was at once elevated on a pedestal as one specially protected by divine grace. Bon-bons showered on him, and his juvenile amour progressed at a rapid rate, until the truth was extorted from him by his aunt and made public, when he suddenly found himself regarded as an impostor and a pariah. The sketch is slight, but very diverting—The first of a series of papers dealing with the personages whom chance grouped round Mme. Necker, introduces us to the early maiden life of Suzanne Curchod, and casts a new and very unfavourable light on Gibbon's relations with her. The great historian made little in after days of what he then chose to consider his flirtation with the pastor's daughter of Lausanne, but the letters here for the first time published prove that having deeply engaged hor affections, which she displayed with innocent and touching frankness in her communications with him and with devoted friends, he coldly threw hor off on one frivolous protext or another. Incidentally, we get curious glimpses of the manners of those days, removed from us by not much more than a century, which permitted amorous stains to address virtuous girls in terms fit to set our modern hair on end. Some of the verses addressed to Molle.
Curchod by her admirers are simply, in the language of divorce trial reports, "unfit for publication." A few sentimental verses of Gibbon's (in French) are very amusing. The queerest part of the story lies in the renewal, in Platonic shape, of the attachment, many Years afterwards, when the simple village maid had become a lender of French society, and the obscure English student had become famous as well as fat.—Another instalment of the papers on Russia which for the last four years M. Leroy-Beauliou has been contributing, deals with the Russian Press, especially in its relations to the Government. The effect of the rigorous censorship exerted in diverting the energies of journalists from the innocent and useful collection and publication of facts, towards the framing of theories to the dangers of which the Government appears to be strangely blind, is graphically set forth and abundantly illustrated. The growth of a healthy native literature is rendered impossible, and readers are therefore compelled to supply their wants with French and German publications, generally of a low class, which are smuggled by myriads into the Empire. Occasionally, it is true, the Press appears to burst into independence, as for example when recently it teemed with violent tirades against the corruption of the officials during the Bulgarian campaign, But here the phenomcuon was due merely to the personal animosity of men sufficiently highly placed to protect the papers they inspired from the vengeance which otherwise would have overtaken them. To the jealous timidity of the censorship is largely attributable the success of those revolutionary sheets printed in secret which the Government is hunting out with so much eagerness and with so little fruit. The more they are for-hidden and denounced, the more widely their influence spreads. They find their way into the Imperial bed-chamber, into the offices of Blinisters; they are slipped into the enveloped of despatches, and tumble out of the Police Minister's napkin along with his roll as he sits down to breakfast, Their production and distribution are perpetual enigmas defying solution, and full of a ghastly interest for the powers that be. To us, or to any one living under free institutions, the condition in Russia is unimaginable, Yet cultivated Russian society is as pleasant as any in the world, and its members tacitly agree to ignore the voleano which is grumbling and fizzing under their feet.—To those who follow with interest the struggle between intolerance and freedom in the matter of teaching in Franco, we recommend M. Albert Durny's exhaustive article, La Liberté @' Enseignement. It enters into technical and statistical details which cannot be summarised, but which prove to demonstration that if the senate rejects the Ferry bill, or at least its seventh article, it will have a majority in the country on its side—whatever may be the immediate effect on the position of Ministers.—We will not attempt to do justice to M. Klacsko's charming Causerie on Dante and Michel Angelo, and we will not run the risk of doing injustice to it. It is one of the most delightful papers that has appeared for a long while in periodical literature.—M, Alfred Fouillée continues his investigations into the foundations of social life, in an article entitled, La Fraternité et la Justice reparative. It is only in this century that the rights of man have been fully acknowledged, that is to say, the rights accruing to every human being simply on the ground of his humanity, And in proportion as those rights are becoming better understood, the notions of grace, favour, and pity are gradually fading out, 'Thus the vague idea of fraternity is becoming' absorbed in the precise idea of justice, and exhibitions of benevolence become acts of reparation or of equilibration, means of discharging debta incurred either personally or collectively. The tendency of Christianity and of Buddhism is to value the reciprocal rights of men only in relation to the universal benevolence of God, and it is obvious that this view can be made very attractive by enriching it with the sentimentalism of personal abnegation. Even grave philosophers have believed that social existence can be explained on the basis of love and self-effacement, and that the precept, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, clu ye even so to them" is an all-sufficient practical guide in life. But the world and human nature are not constructed on so simple a plan as this would demand. An illustration makes this clear, Certain men are perfectly happy in a state of servitude; their chief wish is to lay upon some master the burden of legislation which they find too heavy for their shoulders, Does this desire of theirs justify them in imposing servitude on others? The answer is obviously in the negative. Hence the maxim has to be turned into "Do unto others as you ought to wish them todo to you," which, is of no practical value, as it leaves the question of duty unsolved. But if it be assumed that what we ought to wish to be done to us is the fulfilment of our ideas of truth and goodness, we open the door to all sorts of fantastic motives to persecution, As Pascal said, "The worst wrong is that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.