country; what fruitful and illuminating work lies before the student who analyses their contents! For instance, how can slavery ever be understood by the historian who confines himself to the Supreme Court decisions or the debates of Congress. Behind and beyond these lay the aspirations and convictions of multitudes of people which never found expression there.

It can easily be seen that what Mr. Thorpe has done is a stimulus to further work along the same lines, and should deserve especial recognition for its value in this respect alone. But the volumes have additional merits. As an interpreter of some of the most interesting episodes in our national life their author shows not only patient research but the capacity for wise selection of material and for direct, clear expression in the summary he has made. While he is in no way brilliant in a stylistic sense Mr. Thorpe is to be congratulated for his success in offering to the public a piece of work which is both solid and original. W. L. B.

"THE STORY OF THE CIVIL WAR."

THE STORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, a concise account of the war in the United States of America between 1860 and 1865, by John Codman Ropes, LL. D., with maps and plans. Part 2. The Campaigns of 1862. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1898.

This volume in Mr. Ropes' monumental work is characterized in even higher degree than the first by a critical impartiality that makes it one of the most valuable books yet written on the subject. It does not endeavor to give a complete account of all military movements, but examines selected campaigns in detail, and deduces from this examination judgments that are often new, and almost always convincing on the character and ability of the political and military leaders of the opposing forces and peoples, with an array of references that attests on every page the completeness of his mastery of the sources of official information.

Dr. Ropes' judgments of events are likely to find general acceptance. His judgments of character will inevitably provoke more differences of opinion, for here a personal equa

tion becomes immediately involved, prejudices already formed color one's explanation of admitted facts, and the final judgment is based on so many factors that it is well-nigh impossible for the author to justify it, save by the general weight of his judicial ability. For our own part we are disposed to agree with Dr. Ropes throughout, but we can quite understand that zealous friends of Grant or of Lincoln might take exception to his strictures and to the scanty meed of praise that he finds due to actions that have been widely extolled. Irritation, too, is likely to be roused by his reluctance to make a scapegoat of McClellan, though Dr. Ropes accords him no heroic part.

The general impression that we get from this account of the second year of the civil war is of the same selfish and petty intrigues at the capital, the same exploiting of the government's necessities by the contractors, the same bungling wastefulness of effort in the field that characterized our last essay at war and is still fresh in the minds and the nostrils of all Americans. It is impossible here to show this in detail for all the campaigns, or even for any one of them, though we have found every chapter full of edification in the light of recent events. On the whole the Southern generals are found to have exceeded in ability their Northern opponents, and on their own ground the soldiers of the Confederacy were doubtless, man for man, superior to the Northern troops, though had the local conditions been reversed this superiority could hardly have been maintained, and inferiority of equipment told more and more against them as the war proceeded and the blockade grew more efficient. The North in 1862 had none to match Lee or Stonewall Jackson in military ability or in the power to inspire a confident devotion. But even Lee does not wholly escape Dr. Ropes' strictures, while Grant in his Donelson campaign seems to him to have accomplished creditably an easy task only to fail sadly in a more difficult one at Shiloh. For the rest it is hardly so much a contest of ability as of incompetence between the various generals, much as it was at Santiago. The volume is fully provided with maps for the cam

paigns and battles that it analyzes. We shall await with interest the succeeding volume on the crucial year of the great war.

P. DE JULLEVILLE, HISTOIRE DE La Langue et de la Litterature FRANÇAISE. Vol. VII., Nineteenth Century, Romantic Period. Paris, 1899.

This monument of the catholic-spirited collaboration of French scholars grows in interest, if not in value, as it draws steadily toward its close. Since its inception four years ago the publication has proceeded without check, and already the parts of the final volume are beginning to appear. The present one covers, speaking roughly, the first half of the century from the literary beginnings of Chateaubriand to the death of Balzac. The editor in chief has chosen Lamartine for his own peculiar field, and represents in his treatment of him that wave of enthusiasm that after a considerable period of neglect followed the subsidence of the "naturalistic" tide, and will, in our opinion, subside in its turn, Lamartine's sentiment being altogether too false and histrionic to please any but a morbid generation. Romanticism in general is soberly handled by David Sauvageot, and the rather jejune literature of the first empire by Burgoin, special treatment being accorded to Joseph de Maistre, as is natural in a decade of ultramontane reaction, to Madame de Staël and to Chateaubriand, of whom Des Essarts writes with an enthusiasm that we find it impossible to share.

On the other hand, Gaston Deschamps' treatment of Victor Hugo is singularly discriminating, and carries the story of this fatuous national hero to his death in 1885, a generation too late for his good report. Deschamps rates Hugo's fiction higher than we should be disposed to do, but his chapter is to our mind the best in the volume. It is followed by a rather unsympathetic treatment of Romantic poetry by Chantavoine, and a carping one on the Romantic theater by Doumic, that "Me Too" of Brunetière, who fails to dignify with genius and learning the all too obvious faults of his master.

Eminently satisfactory to us is the treatment of the novel

by George Pellissier, whose only fault seems to be its enforced brevity. For a few more pages like those on Dumas, Mérimée, and Gautier we could well have spared Doumic's thirteen on the dramatic trifles of Musset. The evolution of history during this period affords scope for an interesting essay by Crozals, and in connection with the religious and philosophic writers we have a good appreciation of Lamennais and of Lacordaire by Cahen. Then Michel takes up the politicians till their muzzling after the coup d'état of 1852, a rather dreary waste of voluble folly, especially during the close of the period he is considering. A critique of criticism is confided to Emile Faguet, who certainly makes the best of a dry topic, and hands the pen to Joseph Texte, who writes with his usual mastery on his specialty, the literary relations of France with foreign countries, giving thus a sort of supplementary chapter to his "J. J. Rousseau and Literary Cosmopolitanism," of which we shall note later the just issued English translation. The obligatory chapters on French art and language follow, and seem to us rather more out of place than usual.

To our mind the best thing in the volume, after all, is the introduction to it, in which Faguet undertakes to show how the nineteenth century is intellectually the product of the French Revolution and of the Empire, which created a public taste wholly different from that before 1789. This reacted on literature, just as the audience does on the orator. Before 1789 literature was social. In becoming general it has become, not more comprehensive, but more personal, more individual as well as more serious and purposeful, and thus has rejuvenated history and philosophy.

Then, too, according to Faguet, the Revolution and the Empire mingled races and classes, and from this resulted the disappearance of standards of taste. Modern literature has ceased to have rules, or at least retains only those of general human nature. Liberalism and romanticism are in this sense synonymous. And from this it results that, while the earlier literature was dominated by reason, the modern is ruled by sentiment and feeling and imagination. Its

virtues will be candor, sincerity, boldness, naïveté. Its faults, eccentricity, impudence, impropriety, egoistic display, cynicism, and even while highly individualistic it will be often curiously cosmopolitan. This introduction is well worth reading, and we commend it to those whom the size of the whole work might repel from attempting its perusal.

B. W. W.