of the third army, up to the battle of Sedan, are next traced. The battles of Weissenburg and Wörth are included in the operations of the latter. The battle of Sedan follows, and then the operations up to the investment of Paris. The second part of the work is devoted to an account of the investment of Metz; the third to the operations of the first army, after the capitulation of Metz, against the Ardennes fortresses and in the north-west of France. The siege of Paris is not touched in this volume. It is, we assume, left for a separate memcir.

On each of these fields of operation the dispositions and proceedings are described with severe scientific accuracy and brevity. Like its predecessors, the volume is altogether destitute of picturesqueness and completeness of historical presentation. It deals only with engineering operations, and records them after the fashion of an order of the day. It is scarcely a book for general readers, but to military students it is invaluable-one of the most instructive volumes of the series.

Indian Public Works, and Cognate Indian Topics. By W. T. THORNTON, C.B., Secretary for Public Works in the India Office, Author of a Treatise on Labour,' &c. Macmillan and Co.

Mr. Thornton's work on Indian affairs is rather more general than its name would seem to indicate. He discusses with intelligence and ingenuity the great public works which have been necessary to the development of India's resources; and though the careful reader may find occasion to dissent from some of his views, he will always feel that he is rewarded for his trouble. For Mr. Thornton writes with the authority of the knowledge that comes from special inquiry, and, if sometimes inclined to be crotchetty, he is never unable to assign reasons for his conclusions. When, however, a volume deals with Public Works in India and Cognate Topics,' we do not naturally look for a discussion of the intricate, not to say threadbare, subject of Land Tenure in India, of which so much has been already said and written. Still less are we prepared for an essay on National Education, widening out into a discourse regarding England's tenure of her Indian Empire, her relations to the native population, and the best means that may be adopted to fulfil the civilising mission committed to her charge. This characteristic of the volume apart-which gives it the appearance of a book written for the sake of bookmaking, a suspicion which we are sure is unjust to the author-we find in the discussions regarding the railways of India and upon irrigation much that is valuable. Mr. Thornton is more enamoured of Government interference with public works than will suit many; and it may be doubted if he is always successful in proving the theoretical positions he seeks to establish in the first part of his little volume. It is doubtful, also, whether his advice to take the employés in Indian railways under Government control into 'industrial partnership,' however suitable in certain circumstances in other countries, would prove adapted to the state of things in India. His criticism of Lord Dalhousie's railway policy is

Politics, Science, and Art.

541 aoute and effective, and there can be no doubt that if the Indian railway system is to be completed, it must be on a comparatively narrow gauge, and not upon the expensive broad gauge patronised by the late Viceroy. In regard to irrigation, Mr. Thornton maintains that Government would do well to reduce its magnificent programme, or at least sensibly moderate its proposed rate of progress. The volume is well worth perusal, and may help to stimulate that interest in India which is still so languid. We wish Mr. Thornton had not been quite so effusive in the terms of his dedication to the Duke of Argyll.

Protestantism and Catholicism in their Bearing upon the Liberty

and Prosperity of Nations: a Study of Social Economy. By EMILE DE LAVELEYE. With an Introductory Letter by the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. John Murray. M. de Laveleye's brochure is worthy the gravest attention of both statesmen and ecclesiastics. By an induction of social and statistical facts, some of them very striking, he shows that Protestantism and national life, literature, art, education, commercial enterprise, liberty, providence, cleanliness, and virtue always go together; while the reverse is uniformly true with Catholicism. Even on the Exchanges of Europe the same is seen. The English Three per Cents. are above 92; the French Three per Cents. average 60; the Dutch, Prussian, Danish, and Swedish 'funds are at least at par; in Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal they are lower by thirty or fifty per cent.' That this is not caused by race is seen from the facts that the German Catholic cantons of Switzerland are uniformly behind the Latin Protestant cantons. Ireland is behind Scotland, although both of the same race. The English and American Revolutions are contrasted with the French in the religious character of their leaders, and in their religious sentiments. The anomalous position of English elementary education is admitted, and is accounted for 'because the Anglican Church, of all the reformed forms of worship, has 'most in common with the Church of Rome,' and the Church of Rome is the uniform antagonist of popular education and literature. These contrasts of Protestant and Catholic nations are accounted for by a careful analysis of the intellectual and moral elements of each. In a very small compass M. de Laveleye has presented an entire moral and social philosophy, which alone is sufficient to justify the breadth of Mr. Gladstone's views and the statesmanship of his assault upon Vaticanism. Mr. Gladstone has done well to secure the translation of this little work, which is an unanswerable indictment against Rome.

A Primer of the English Constitution and Government: for the Use of Colleges, Schools, and Private Students. By SHELDON AMOS, M.A., Professor of Jurisprudence, University College. Second Edition. Longmans.

There can be no mistake about the march of intellect when we have primers prepared of political science and constitutional history. The

Hallams and De Lolmes of a past age, the Stubbs and Freemans of our day, are now laid under contribution to instil into young minds the elementary knowledge of the British Constitution. In one respect the work falls short of the excellence of Freeman's book on the same subject, that it fails to trace the growth historically of the British Constitution. Some of the statements, such as that for instance on trial by jury, are confused in consequence. It is impossible to understand the rise of trial by jury without reference to ordeals (the German urtheil) which afterwards passed into the oath of compurgation, and hence the term jury and jurymen -the sworn compurgators of the accused drawn from among his peers. It is entirely an afterthought of later writers of the school of De Lolme that this was brought in as a palladium of our popular liberties. Mr. Amos would have done well to follow Mr. Freeman's example, and trace the growth of the British Constitution genetically, and not to leave the impression on a young mind that it was like the image which fell down from Jupiter, or a Pallas fully armed, which started from some Blackstone of the middle ages. Still, with this drawback, this is an excellent summary; and even for persons of riper years this manual may be consulted with advantage. The chapters on the Funds, the Established Church, and some others, are too brief and sketchy, and in later editions may be judiciously expanded; but, on the whole, for those who want such a manual we may safely recommend it.

Parliament and the Church of England. By MONTAGUE BURROWS, M.A., Chichele Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford, Author of 'Constitutional 'Progress,' &c. Seeley.

The author apologises for offering to the public so small a book on so large a subject. No apology seems to us to be necessary for any treatment, however inadequate, of so important a question. It is one which must come up for settlement before long. The great Oyer et Terminer trial of Church Establishments has been put off from year to year, but events show that the time of settlement is rapidly drawing near. We shall welcome therefore contributions from all quarters. The more it is discussed by competent men from a historical point of view, the better for the cause of truth and charity. We freely admit that Professor Burrows is, from a Church and Conservative point of view, a very competent judge of this question. The point which he insists on is that the Church of England never underwent any breach of continuity by passing through the Reformation and Revolution. She is the same Church which accepted the royal supremacy at the Reformation, and a more complete parlia mentary control at the Revolution of 1688. The drift of this book is that a National Church can accept no other position than that of being governed by the supreme authority in the nation, whether that be King or Parliament, or both combined. There is nothing very new in this, but the merit of this little work lies in its pointing out very distinctly that it was

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543

the Laudian party which, by their unreasonable and extravagant claims of authority and divine right in Church and State, drove the Puritan party to resistance, and so created that 'dissent' which ever since has been an increasing menace to the existence of an Establishment at all. This is nothing but that which we as Nonconformists have always held, but it is something new for an Oxford Professor, himself a Conservative and a Churchman, thus to throw the blame of this disruption entirely on his own side. When the late Mr. Binney, in one of the best of his Anti-state Church Essays, pointed out that the schismatics are not those who separate from, but those who create the schism by their intolerant conduct, he was thought to have put the idea of schism in a new light. It was an application of Montesquieu's well-known remark that it is not the side which declares war, but the side which makes it necessary that war should be declared, which is responsible for its horrors and evils. It is the same with schism-but those who cause this rent in the seamless coat of Christ are the last to see that it was their doing.

It is a sign then of the growth of charity and candour when the Chichele Professor of History at Oxford comes forward to throw the blame on his own party. His remarks on Laud are severe, but not too much so. Dissent was a consequence, he says, of the levelling zeal of the High Church party, their desire to steal a march on the nation, and to do the work hastily, while they had for their patron a Sovereign holding down the people by the throat, and governing without Parliaments. It was through their forgetfulness of the very cause of the existence of the Church's reformed system which they as officers administered, viz., the protest against Roman error in all its branches. If Laud distinguished himself in controversy with a Papist, no one was more responsible for obscuring truths, which he had helped to recover, by practices which had in times past proved their corrupting tendencies. If this school saved some English Churchmen from Rome, it also sent over many. But even that might have been forgotten. Its worst achievement was that it precipitated a terrible schism, that it gave for an inheritance to this united England of ours the subsequent generations of avowed Dissenters and exasperated Nonconformists.

If this had been stated by a lecturer at a dissenting academy of the old school, we should have taken it as a matter of course. But students at Oxford are not usually taught such plain truths as these. Professor Burrows' experience as an arbitrator at Washington and Geneva has evidently helped him to see both sides of a question. To see ourselves as others see us, is the first mark of the judicial faculty; and that, it must be admitted, this writer possesses in an eminent degree. But then, with the usual inconsistency of the English Conservative and Churchman, he stops short at the point where the modern Dissenter takes up the question. Admitting the existence of half the nation of Nonconformists outside the National Church, he seems to assume that things can go on as they are, leaving a dignified Church in enjoyment of its exclusive privilege to minister to that class of the nation who are best able to provide themselves with the ministrations of religion. Professor Burrows, like all Conservatives, reminds us of the 'half-reasoning' elephant. He is logical up

to the point of seeing where certain admissions lead to, and then he closes the subject and puts his foot down with elephantine tread on the status quo. If a Rehoboam has precipitated a revolt of ten tribes against two, it is no use harking back on the old arguments for a National Church, which a large section of the nation obstinately reject. The old Tories and Churchmen of the Philpotts and Eldon school were more consistent than this. They denied these Whig and dissenting excuses for schism; to them all separation, no matter how provoked, was a sin; and if their theories of passive obedience landed them in a new class of absurdities, they had at least the courage of their convictions, and stood by their theory for better or worse. Professor Burrows' argument for the present Establishment thus only amounts to a plea that at present the majority in England at least are in its favour, and that when the majority turns the other way it must go.

So be it. Appello Cæsarem, we may say, with another Anglican Bishop -Montagu. The appeal to the hustings will before long be made in the case of the English as it was in that of the Irish Establishment six years ago. Such lectures as these of Professor Burrows are unconsciously educating the rising generation of Oxford to look at the question in the light of popular support, and so far we can claim him as on our side.

Corals and Coral Islands. By JAMES D. DANA, LL.D., Professor of Geology in Yale College, &c. Sampson Low and Co.

Mr.

A popular account of Corals and Coral Islands by so accomplished a naturalist as Professor Dana of Yale College is sure to command a large circle of readers. The publishers have therefore done well to prepare for the English market a second and revised edition of the original work, which appeared in 1872. The edition is enriched by several excellent sketches of coral formation, done in the highest scale of art. Professor Dana, who is another Hugh Miller, made his mark as a writer many years ago, by Two Years before the Mast.' The man who could write that, was clearly marked out for something better than the life of an able-bodied seaman; but few who have risen in life as he has have been able to turn to such use the lessons of seafaring life learned in earlier years. Dana's cruise led him along the course followed by Mr. Charles Darwin in his now celebrated 'Voyage of the Beagle during the years 1831 to 1836.' Mr. Darwin, soon after reaching Sydney in 1839, sent a brief statement to one of the papers there relative to coral formations. This threw a flood of light on the subject, and stimulated Mr. Dana to carry on investigations on the same subject. In this way the torch of science is passed on from hand to hand, and at last light is thrown on some of the recesses of nature which before were dark and unexplored. It is only since the other day that the true nature of coral and coral reefs has been understood. The theory that the coral was a kind of submarine beehive has been the last to yield to later research. We now know that the coral polyp secretes its shell as other mollusks do, and that whatever may be said of the busy bee,