The mocking legends of the Wolf and the Fox were wielded without mercy by many mediæval satirists, against the human animals of those species, then prevailing in courts and cloisters. But the jokes took their most permanent form in the fable of "Reyneke de Vos," first published in the year 1498. Written in Low-German by Nicholas Bauman, under the pseudonym of Hinrek van Alkmer, the satire did a similar work to that done by Rabelais, and Boccaccio, and Piers Plowman. It has since been translated into many languages, and as Goethe at last thought it worth putting into German hexameters, one may still find it worth reading in English Hudibrastic rhymes. The present attractive edition is a reprint of the paraphrase of Von Soltau, published at Hamburg in 1826,--though, for some reason, this fact is not stated in the present issue. New or old, the version is executed with much spirit, and is, to say the least, easier reading than Goethe's hexameters. _The Cradle of Rebellions: A History of the Secret Societies of France._ By LUCIEN DE LA HODDE. New York: John Bradburn. The translator of this sharp and pungent sketch of the later French revolutionists is understood to be General John W. Phelps of Vermont,--a man whose personal services, despite some eccentric traits, will give him an honorable place in the history of these times. It is possible that readers may not agree with him in his estimate of the dangers to be incurred by American institutions from secret societies. They are a thing essentially alien to our temperament. The Southern plotters of treason were certainly open enough; it was we who were blind. The "Know-Nothing" movement was a sort of political carnival, half jest, half earnest, and good for that trip only. If anything could have created secret societies, it would have been the Fugitive-Slave-Law excitement: that, indeed, produced them by dozens, but they almost always died still-born, and whatever was really done in the revolutionary line was effected by very informal coöperation. Indeed, even the French nation is, by its temperament, less inclined to deep plotting than any nation of Southern Europe, and as De la Hodde himself admits, "not one of our revolutions during the last sixty years has been the work of conspirators." "There is but one maker of revolutions in France, and that is Paris,--idle, sophistical, disappointed, restless, evil-minded Paris. We all know her." "Of one thing we may rest assured: the greater part of our revolutions signify nothing." And this has been notoriously true since the days of the Fronde.