reads how a young woman could have reached so perfect a comprehension of the springs of human action. The penetration displayed is unerring, and only equalled by the masculine vigor of touch. A good example is the following: “Truly great men are such as have rendered a greatness like their own less necessary to successive generations.” And here is another striking passage: “A revolution suspends every action but that of force. Social order establishes the ascendancy of esteem and virtue, but a revolution limits men’s choice to their physical capacities. The only sort of moral influence that it does not exclude is the fanaticism of such ideas as, not being susceptible of any restraint, are weapons of war and not exercises of the mind. To aspire to distinction in times of revolution one must always outstrip the actual momentum of events, and the consequence of this is a rapid descent which one has no power of staying. In vain one perceives the abyss in front. To throw oneself from the chariot is to be killed by the fall, so that to avoid the danger is more perilous than to face it. One must of one’s own accord tread the path that leads to ruin, since the least step backwards overturns the individual but does not hinder the event.” This is a very good example both of the clearness of Madame de Staël’s thought and the careless confusion of her style. She introduced metaphors just as they occurred to her, without any preparatory gradations of thought. The second section of the work is devoted to the examination of natural affections such as family love, friendship, and pity. Here, again, the analysis is delicate and true, but the mind, fatigued by the futility of the theme, recoils from such minute dissection of emotion. Passion, being comparatively rare, is always interesting, but sentiment does not bear prolonged contemplation. Finally come the remedies to be applied to the evils worked by passion. They consist in philosophy, in study, and the practice of benevolence, joined, if possible, to a child-like faculty of extracting from each hour just the amount of happiness that it contains. With this lame and impotent conclusion the book practically ends, for all the remaining reflections do not avail to place in any clearer light the uncertain and colorless thought of the writer. Her next work was that on _Literature Considered in Relation to Social Institutions_. Its object was to establish the continuous progress and ultimate perfectibility of the human mind, and the happy influence exercised by liberty upon literature. The theory of the authoress was that the progress of philosophy, _i. e._ thought, had been gradual, while that of poetry had been spasmodic.