At a recent sitting of the General Council of the Bordeaux University a resolution was passed calling for the creation of a chair of “Southern languages.” In explanation of this term, the _Gironde_, the leading Bordeaux newspaper, says: “Besides giving instruction in Spanish, one of the labors of the professor would be to teach our South Western dialects in which the most important historical documents of this part of the country were drawn up during several centuries.” The editor then goes on to say: “If the State does not feel able to found this chair, will not some private individual come forward and imitate the example of James E. Clark, who recently established at Worcester, Mass., a university endowed with a capital of $12,500,000?” Speaking of primary schools reminds me of a curious fact which has frequently attracted my attention in Languedoc this winter. In no other part of France perhaps was it so common for a town to grow up around a castle; for this region was terribly harried by the Wars of Religion, and the poor peasants were forced to seek the protection of some lord. In order to render them more impregnable, these castles were generally built on some high hill. So now one sees on every hand decaying hamlets surrounding ruined castles left almost deserted on the very crown of some pyramidal mount, while the busy town of to-day has descended to the more accessible base of the hill. But since the advent of the Third Republic and the grand impetus given to primary instruction, these abandoned castles have taken a new lease of life, and been converted into school buildings. The other day during an hour’s drive in Upper Languedoc I saw two of these old useless feudal piles consecrated to popular nineteenth century education. What a train of reflections is thus suggested! Within the very same walls where some proud ignorant seignior once lorded it over his humble vassals, the descendants of these serfs, still speaking the tongue of their oppressed ancestors, but enjoying all the liberties then usurped by their masters, are now being instructed in branches of knowledge of which the feudal knight had scarcely an inkling. What a revolution was that of ’89! THEODORE STANTON. II. GERMANY.—RECENT PUBLICATIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF PATHOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY. The science of anthropology claims, as we know, to have discovered, that the various epochs of history are marked not only by characteristic religious, political, social, and literary conditions, but not unfrequently also by particular forms of disease; and it is the opinion of eminent medical authorities that nervous and mental diseases constitute the “pathological feature” of modern civilisation. This, of course, is not to be understood as meaning that diseases of this character have not appeared in previous epochs, but simply that they occur with unusual frequency at the present day and in unusually grave forms.