The wrongs that we had done left behind them a legacy of evil, but not the confession of those wrongs. And so it is now. The frontier policy of Lord Lytton has ruined our reputation for justice, truthfulness, and generosity, and the stain of that policy must cling to us for ever. We shall not conceal or efface it by laying a crushing burden upon our native subjects and upon future generations of Englishmen, in order to evade the humiliation of a confession. On the contrary, we make what reparation is still in our power when, in the interests of both, we refuse to annex Afghanistan. ROBERT D. OSBORN, _Lieutenant-Colonel_. CRITICAL IDEALISM IN FRANCE. _La Science positive et la Métaphysique._ Par LOUIS LIARD, Professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux. (Ouvrage couronné par l'Institut de France.) Paris, 1879. For some years past there has been observable in France, outside of and in opposition to Positivism, a growing movement in favour of idealism in general, and of the critical idealism of Kant in particular. This philosophy, which had previously found very few adherents in our country, has now begun to make its way into our teaching and our Universities. Berkeley and Kant have been the subjects of special works, and an attempt has been made to translate and reproduce their ideas by harmonizing them with the principal doctrines of spiritualism. We have here a movement full of promise and well deserving of attention.[1] Among the different productions affording some notion of this philosophical tendency, we make choice--as being both the most recent and the most complete--of a remarkable work, distinguished and crowned by the French Institute, _Positive Science and Metaphysic_, by a young and learned professor of Bordeaux, M. Louis Liard. To begin with, M. Liard's work is well composed, its plan being simple, severe, and lucid. It divides itself into three parts. The first is devoted to determining the nature and limits of positive sciences--that is, of the sciences properly so called--and to showing that they cannot pretend to abolish or replace metaphysics. In this portion of his book the author discusses the three forms of the experimental philosophy of our day, namely--Positivism, the philosophy of association, and that of evolution.