IN a recent number of _Deutsche Rundschau_ Herr Herzog gives a vivid sketch of modern progress in an article on “Die Einwirkungen der modernen Verkehrsmittel auf die Culturentwicklung.” His general conclusion is that the discovery of railways and the electric telegraph has tended to democratise society and substitute practical materialism for any moral ideal of life. Only when commerce has become truly world-wide, and national interests have ceased to jar and conflict, must we look for a world-state in which ideal ends again will meet with due recognition. Freiherr von Lilicronen, in a paper on “Die Kunst der Conversation,” undertakes the defence of German “Ernst” against French “esprit” as a basis for social life. An English bystander is probably inclined to suggest a happy blending of the two. Dr. H. Hüffer publishes some hitherto unprinted letters of Heine to his friend Johann Hermann Detmold. They are the scanty records of a friendship of thirty years, and are of great importance for Heine’s biography, especially as regards his life in Paris and his relations to his wife. IN an exhaustive paper recently read before the Académie des Inscriptions (_La Donation de Hugues, Marquis de Toscane, au Saint Sépulcre, et les etablissements latins de Jérusalem au Xe siècle_), M. Riant reminds us how little is known of the history of Palestine previous to the time of the Crusades from the Latin side, although much has been done of late years to elucidate its history in connection with the Greek Church. He makes the re-examination of an important grant of property by the Duke of Tuscany, in A.D. 993, to the Holy Sepulchre and St. Maria Latina the occasion for a sketch of the Latin occupation from the end of the sixth to the end of the eleventh centuries, showing especially the nature of Charlemagne’s protectorate of the holy places. The document itself he subjects to a searching criticism, calling up, while so doing, a most striking figure in the Abbé Guarin, of Cuxa (one of the grantees), an eloquent ecclesiastic of great influence in both France and Italy, and a wide traveller. MISCELLANY.