has he succeeded in creating characters recognizable as life-like and as veritable originals. Single features are well drawn, certain temperaments are keenly analyzed, but the whole conception is never firm, consistent and complete. The simplest, like old Lanze and his daughter Lina, are intrinsically commonplace; the most elaborated, like Madame Tonska and the duke Jean-Theodore, waver between familiar types and questionable shadows; and those that, like Laudon and the Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred little essays in it, compact with thought and bristling with epigram, that have an eighteenth-century flavor, and suffuse with a _sauce piquante_ what would otherwise have been a flavorless dish. Whether the theory from which the title of the book is derived, and which is expounded at length in the opening chapters, would bear a rigid examination, or was even meant to be taken seriously, may be doubted. It is, at all events, very poorly illustrated by the characters and events selected to exemplify it. _Books Received._ Africa: The History of Exploration and Adventure from Herodotus to Livingstone. By Charles H. Jones. With illustrations. New York: Henry Holt & Co. The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminister. New York: Catholic Publication Society. Six Months under the Red Cross with the French Army. By George H. Boyland. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. The Tower of Babel: A Poetical Drama. By Alfred Austin. Edinburgh and London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons. Young Folks' History of the United States. By T. W. Higginson. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Baby Died To-day, and Other Poems. By the late William Leighton. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea. Vol. I. of German Classics. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Types and Emblems: A Collection of Sermons. By C. H. Spurgeon. New York: Sheldon & Co. The Maintenance of Health. By J. M. Fothergill, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. Christian Belief and Life. By A. P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Ezra Stiles Gannet: A Memoir. By his son, W. C. Gannet. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Recollections and Suggestions. By John, Earl Russell. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Birds of the North-west. By Elliot Coues. Washington: Government Printing-office. Morality of Prohibitory Liquor Laws. By W. B. Weeden. Boston: Roberts Bros. Victor La Tourette: A Novel. By a Broad Churchman. Boston: Roberts Brothers.