themselves so comfortably and handsomely in the territory of our ancient ally. Looking apart from matters of national interest to the literary nature of M. Michel’s volumes, we find in them specialties which we know will be deemed signally meritorious; but of the merits to be found in them we have some difficulty in speaking, since they are literary virtues of a kind rather out of the way of our appreciation—beyond it, if the reader prefers that way of expressing what is meant. There is throughout these two volumes the testimony to an extent of dreary reading and searching which would stimulate compassion, were it not that he who would be the victim, were that the proper feeling in which he should be approached, evidently exults and glories, and is really happy, in the conditions which those who know no better would set down as his hardships. There are some who, when they run the eye over arrêts and other formal documents, over pedigrees, local chronicles telling trifles, title-deeds, and such-like documents, carry with them a general impression of the political or social lesson taught by them, and discard from recollection all the details from which any such impression has been derived. M. Michel is of another kind; he has that sort of fondness for his work which induces him to show you it in all stages, from the rude block to the finished piece of art, so far as it is finished. You are entered in all the secrets of his workshop—you participate in all his disappointments and difficulties as well as his successes. The research which has had no available result is still reported, in order that you may see how useless it has been. We repeat that we have not much sympathy with this kind of literature, yet would not desire to speak profanely of it, since we know that some consider it the only perfect method of writing books on subjects connected with history or archæology. The “citation of authorities,” in fact, is deemed, in this department of intellectual labour, something equivalent to records of experiments in natural science, and to demonstrations in geometrical science. Our own sympathy being with the exhibition rather of results than of the means of reaching them, we have not, unfortunately, that high respect for footnotes filled with accurate transcripts of book-titles, which is due to the high authorities by whom the practice has been long sanctioned. We can afford it, however, the sort of distant unsympathising admiration which people bestow on accomplishments for which they have no turn or sympathy—as for those of the juggler, the acrobat, and the accountant. M. Michel’s way of citing the books he refers to is indeed, to all appearance, a miracle of perfection in this kind of work. Sometimes he is at the trouble of denoting where the passage stands in more than one, or even in every, edition of the work. He gives chapter or section as well as page and volume. In old books