Between anarchy and anarchy the history of unhappy Mexico is spanned for the space of a generation by the colossal figure of the soldier-president, _Diaz_ (CONSTABLE). Mr. DAVID HANNAY, writing with exquisite literary workmanship in the series of biographies entitled collectively _Makers of the Nineteenth Century_, presents this typically "strong" man as neither hero nor villain, but as a human being with human limitations, even more as a Mexican with the characteristics of a Mexican. Amongst a populace hopelessly divided by race, untrained in self-government and cursed with a natural twist for lawlessness only equalled by its hatred of work, _Diaz_ stands for a tyranny certainly, but for a unified orderly tyranny, preferable, one might think, to a myriad petty outlawries. If little of the country's wealth found its way beyond the narrowest of circles during his long control, and if certain Indian tribes were shamefully enslaved--a fact which is neither denied nor condoned--still railways and harbours did get themselves built and the dictator himself lived a life of uncorrupt simplicity. He has been blamed for failure to establish enduringly the civilisation that Europe thought bad been attained, but on this the author's verdict is an unhesitating acquittal. Only a god could have done better, he thinks, and, in a series of illuminating analyses of the material to be moulded he shows how anything more than a superficial improvement was humanly impossible. Until that day of absorption in the United States which Mr. HANNAY considers fortunately inevitable, Mexico has no chance, he maintains, of even a moderately good government except under a firm dictatorship; and so he renders no small homage to the man who, all his failures notwithstanding, did for a time lift his country from the anarchy to which in his old age it reverted. Sober reading in all conscience, but for the manner of the writing one can have nothing but joyous praise. * * * * *