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 Minor Notices 837 purpose. The best books leave us often at sea ; why even mention popular accounts for the general reader, written with Gallic lighthearted- ness half a century since? It is certainly a difficult task to give a satisfactory picture of the com- plicated organization of France in a single introductory chapter of sixteen pages. The author might, however, have appropriated for so important a matter some of the many succeeding pages devoted to foreign wars or at least have been more careful in his statements. It makes a bad im- pression to find at the very beginning that "the system of intendants dates from Richelieu" (even if the writer doubtfully takes it back later), that the nobles were exempt from the gabelle, and that "every one in France not belonging to the privileged classes had to buy a certain quantity of salt." Machiavelli is quoted as asserting that France had 146 bishoprics. There were but 121 dioceses in 1789, including the so- called "foreign clergy" and Corsica — and dioceses are strangely per- manent divisions. The annates are defined as "the income of the first year after each new appointment. ' ' Germany is spoken of as "torn by the Lutheran movement " before the election of Charles V., and Hadrian VI. is called a Spaniard, although the unfortunate Utrecht professor was towards sixty before he went south. Yet in spite of these slips the story is well told in the main, although it would seem with a somewhat heavy heart. T H R The Protestant Interest in C)-omweir s Foreign Relations (Heidelberg, 1900, pp. viii, 93) is the title of a Heidelberg thesis prepared by Dr. J. N. Bowman under the supervision of Professor Bernhard Erdmannsdorffer, whose sudden and unexpected death has recently been announced. If the subject is unusually broad for a doctor's thesis, it is also unusually interesting. Dr. Bowman was compelled to examine personally the greater part of the diplomatic papers of the Interregnum in order to sift out the material which had to do with his part of the subject. He very properly gave particular attention to the Protector's relations with the Baltic States, especially with Sweden, and made a journey to Stockholm to examine the Swedish archives. The material of greatest interest which he found there was the dispatches of the Swedish ambassadors in London, which have never been examined before from this point of view. One could wish that he had given us more copious extracts from them, since they have not been printed and are accessible only in the form of summaries in Kalling's valuable but scarce little work on Sonde's embassy and in Pufendorff' s great work on Charles X. Dr. Bowman mentions Kalling but strangely fails to mention Pufendorff. After a concise review of Cromwell's relations with the chief states of Europe, carefully noting in each case the role played by the Protestant interest, the author presents us with a convenient summary of his conclu- sions. It is well known that Cromwell lived in constant fear of the renewal of the religious wars and that he was anxious to unite the Prot- estant states in a general defensive alliance. While it is now known that