His sister Eugénie de Guérin has the same characteristic quality--distinction. Of this quality the world is impatient; it chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, hates it, but ends by receiving its influence and by undergoing its law. This quality at last inexorably corrects the world's blunders, and fixes the world's ideals. Heine claimed that he was "a brave soldier in the war of the liberation of humanity." That was his significance. He was, if not pre-eminently a brave, yet a brilliant soldier in the war of liberation of humanity. He was not an adequate interpreter of the modern world, but only a brilliant soldier. Born in 1754, and dying in 1824, Joseph Joubert chose to hide his life; but he was a man of extraordinary ardour in the search for truth and of extraordinary fineness in the perception of it. He was one of those wonderful lovers of light who, when they have an idea to put forth, brood long over it first, and wait patiently till it shines. GEORGE BRANDES Main Currents of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century George Brandes was born in Copenhagen on February 4, 1842, and was educated at the University of Copenhagen. The appearance of his "Æsthetic Studies" in 1868 established his reputation among men of letters of all lands. His criticism received a philosophic bent from his study of John Stuart Mill, Comte, and Renan. Complaint is often made of the bias exhibited by Brandes in his works, which is somewhat of a blemish on the breadth of his judgment. This bias finds its chief expression in his anti-clericalism. His publications number thirty-three volumes, and include works on history, literature, and criticism. He has written studies of Shakespeare, of Lord Beaconsfield, of Ibsen, and of Ferdinand Lassalle. His greatest work is the "Main Currents of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century." The field covered is so vast that any attempted synopsis of the volume is impossible here, so in this place we merely indicate the scope of Brandes's monumental work, and state his general conclusions. _The Man and the Book_ This remarkable essay in literary criticism is limited to the first half of the nineteenth century; it concludes with the historical turning-point of 1848. Within this period the author discovers, first, a reaction against the literature of the eighteenth century; and then, the vanquishment of that reaction. Or, in other words, there is first a fading away and disappearance of the ideas and feelings of the preceding century, and then a return of the ideas of progress in new and higher waves.