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318 3l8 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. own story in a connected and intelligible manner, as Professor Thayer has made his authorities tell the story of the development of the jury in England, — "its strange and wholly pecuhar course for some six or eight centuries." For the present writer to criticise Professor Thayer's learn- ing would be absurd. But there is something more than learning to be remarked in the book. The fact that an author is learned in his subject is hardly any guaranty, to say the least, that his book will not be dry bones and dust for the general reader, and a terror to the struggling student ; for both of which classes of persons Professor Thayer has partly intended at least this portion of his book. Certainly they have to thank him for making his work not only thorough and accurate, but also lucid and interesting. Of the four chapters composing this first part, the first gives some account of the older modes of trial, things hard to understand properly at the end of the nineteenth century, but here explained graphically, yet concisely. The three following chapters give an account of the trial by jury and its development, a subject practically of the greatest use in appreciating the true nature of our present law of evidence, and yet full of curious and interesting legal antiquities. The second chapter deals with the origin and establishment in England of the jury system ; the third chiefly with the ways taken to inform the jury ; and the fourth chiefly of the means of controlling the jury and correcting their errors. All of these chapters, in a less finished form, have appeared in the pages of the Harvard Law Review (Vol. V., pp. 45, 249, 295, 357). R. G. Governments and Parties in Continental Europe. By A. Law- rence Lowell. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1896. 2 vols. pp. xiv, 377, and viii. 455. This book deals with the practical workings of Continental govern- ments in which party divisions necessarily play an important part. The author limits himself to those countries where for various reasons the system of two parties does not exist. He gives an outline of the struc- ture and recent history of government in France, Italy, Germany, Austria- Hungary, and Switzerland ; and prints in an appendix the constitution of each country. Of matters distinctively legal, mention may be made of the account of the relations between the administrative and the ordinary courts in France and Italy. Mr. Lowell, however, views the institutions from a governmental and political, rather than a legal standpoint. He shows how in France the subdivision of parties has rendered the ministers, who are responsible to the deputies, practically helpless, and subject to frequent changes as party coalitions shift; while in Italy the same cause has made politics rather a contest of personal cliques than of principles. In Germany the central figure is the Chancellor, whose independence of the legislative assembly reduces the parties to a position comparatively unimportant. In Austria and Hungary the bitter race feeling presents the most serious problem, a difficulty which the latter country has solved by concentrating the power in the hands of the Magyars. The unique relations of these two nations, which, though unlike in race and naturally rivals, are forced by pressure from without to stand united, form the subject of an inter- esting chapter. In Switzerland, the " referendum " and the " initiative " naturally attract our attention, as furnishing a basis for possible changes