On the whole the ten are versatile men, although no one of them could come near in diversity of performance to the great Thomas Young, who was not only a physicist of the first rank but also a physician, a classical scholar, and one of the first successful decipherers of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Rankine and Whewell were fair poets, and Clark Maxwell deserves higher praise for his verses. His description of Kelvin's reflecting galvanometer, in the form of a parody of Tennyson's "Blow, bugle, blow," illustrates the ease and finish of his light verse: O love! you fail to read the scale, Correct to tenths of a division. To mirror heaven those eyes were given, And not for methods of precision-- Break, contact, break, set the free light-spot flying, Break contact, rest thee magnet, swinging, creeping, dying. The poem is quoted in the life of Kelvin, and two of Rankine's songs are given. We hope that physicists can still show the same accomplishment. The lives are well written, and, while not a very profound contribution to the history of the science, make very pleasant reading for scientist and layman. There is, however, occasionally a lack of proportion, as when Clark Maxwell's work on electro-magnetic waves receives little attention compared to his other far less important achievements. A LETTER FROM FRANCE THE PRESENT STATE OF THE FRENCH NOVEL _Paris, October, 1919._ In France as much as, and perhaps more than, in England the novel has been since the eighteenth century the central massif of literature. While in England the poets and the novelists formed two quite distinct groups, while the poets Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Burns, Tennyson, Swinburne remained pure poets, in France there have been few poets who have not wished to write novels. Lamartine, Hugo, Musset, Vigny, Gautier have done so. A pure critic like Sainte-Beuve wished, with _Volupté_, to try his hand at the novel. Taine left in manuscript the novel _Etienne Maylan_ and Renan the novel _Patrice_; they did not publish these books because they recognised them to be mediocre, but both wished to obtain the glory of the novelist. The novel is in France the highest object of literary ambition. It alone assures a position of material and social importance. Thus it is that a novelist who is read by the upper and middle classes is necessarily admitted to the Academy while a historian or a philosopher is admitted only in exceptional circumstances, and great poets like Baudelaire, Gautier, Banville, Paul Fort remain outside unless they have certain connections and certain sources of support. The prosperity of the novel at a given moment may then be considered, in France, as the most obvious mark of a powerful literary activity. No form of literature addresses a larger public, provokes more discussion, or gives more of its own colour to a generation or to an epoch. I will endeavour to indicate here in a few