This assertion of the existence of a Spirit of Mercy and Truth, as the master first of the Law of Life, and then of the methods of knowledge and labour by which it is sustained, and which the ‘Saturday Review’ calls the effeminate sentimentality of Mr. Ruskin’s political economy, is accurately, you will observe, reversed by the assertion of the Predatory and Carnivorous—or, in plainer English, flesh-eating spirit in Man himself, as the regulator of modern civilization, in the paper read by the Secretary at the Social Science meeting in Glasgow, 1860. Out of which the following fundamental passage may stand for sufficient and permanent example of the existent, practical, and unsentimental English mind, being the most vile sentence which I have ever seen in the literature of any country or time:— “As no one will deny that Man possesses carnivorous teeth, or that all animals that possess them are more or less predatory, it is unnecessary to argue, à priori, that a predatory instinct naturally follows from such organization. It is our intention here to show how this inevitable result operates on civilized existence by its being one of the conditions of Man’s nature, and, consequently, of all arrangements of civilized society.” The paper proceeds, and is entirely constructed, on the assumption that the predatory spirit is not only one of the conditions of man’s nature, but the particular condition on which the arrangements of Society are to be founded. For “Reason would immediately suggest to one of superior strength, that however desirable it might be to take possession by violence, of what another had laboured to produce, he might be treated in the same way by one stronger than himself, to which he, of course, would have great objection. In order, therefore, to prevent or put a stop to a practice which each would object to in his own case,” etc., etc. And so the Social Science interpreter proceeds to sing the present non-sentimental Proverbs and Psalms of England,—with trumpets also and shawms—and steam whistles. And there is concert of voices and instruments at the Hospital of the Incurabili, and Progress—indubitably—in Chariots of the Night. NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. CORRIERE DEI BAGNI. M’imbarcai su di un vaporetto; era elegante, era vasto, ma il suo contenuto era enormemente superiore al contenente; il vaporetto rigurgitava di uomini, di donne, e di ragazzi. Il commandante, un fiero giovanotto, gridava: Montate! Montate! e la calca si faceva sempre più fitta, ed appena si poteva respirare. Tutto ad un tratto un sensale di piazza si sentì venir male, e gridò; io soffoco! Il commandante si accorse che si soffocava davvero, ed ordino; basta!