Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/107

 ii s. vii. Feb. i, wis.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 99 various agony. The line of complaint he follows is one that has been taken before, and it has found, it must be confessed, no logical refutation. But Mr. McCormick ignores altogether that view of suffering which belongs to the convictions of heroes, martyrs, and ascetics—a view which lias, at any rate, been acted upon by thousands of human beings, and proved sufficient to sustain them through incredible tortures. Mr. Lytton Strachey's ' Madame du Deffand ' is a deft piece of portraiture and criticism — a black-and-white study, so to speak, with nothing but wit to serve for the high lights and give a hint of form to the preponder- ance of black. Madame du Deffand. as "we know, was obsessed by the futility of life. In her attitude Mr. Strachey finds, with justice, "something at once pitiable and magnificent." "But there is something alarming, too,"he gives us ns wind-up: "was she perhaps right after all?" Who shall say? And now we have Switzerland infected, threatened even with dissolution, by the all- devouring restlessness, greed, vulgarity, and thirst for cheap sensation which possess the great states. Her sober and healthful "provincial'' ideal is shrinking and growing weak in the increase of her towns and the stealthy diminishing of her agricul- ture. Every lover of Switzerland has known this— perhaps tried to forget it—for years; but here conies Mr. Gribble and makes all the process evident beyond doubt or hope. Mr. Walter de la Mare's paper on 'Current Literature' is slight, but so gracefully written that the thinness of the matter may be forgiven for the sake of the pleasantness of the manner. Mr. Victor Plan' gives the remainder of the lettersof Scott to Joanna Baillie—characteristic examples of Scott's genial and manly habit of mind, of which the most interesting is perhaps the last, which, in a few unaffected words, tells of the dinner at Edinburgh in 1827, when he avowed himself the author of the Waverley Novels. Mr. Heathcote Statham's ' New Light on Beethoven' is a thorough and learned piece of work, largely corrective in scope, but none the less suggestive and illuminating. In ' De Gustibus' Mrs. Alfred Earl gives us a really delight- ful summary of the history—the literary history—of cooking. We were, however, rather surprised to find her giving that name to the preparations for a meal made by Milton's Eve. We had always supposed that cookery had ex hypothesi to do with a fire, and the elegant repast in the Garden of Eden was entirely " unfired." Mrs. Earl dissipates some of our most cherished illusions in deciding that mediaeval and the next subsequent cookery was rough and indigestible. We are glad she thinks Qnentin Durward's breakfast at Plessis-les-Tours may have been good to eat as well as to read about. The number begins with a weighty article on the Divorce Commission, which, from many stand- points, deserves serious consideration, and nowhere more than where it urges the need-^far more imperative than the need for divorce reform—for a thorough revision of our marriage laws. Dr. Vaughan Cornish's 'Panama Canal and the Philosophy of Landslides' is one of the best, as it is also one of the most important, of these papers. The services to be rendered by the Canal to com- merce and to national defence seem almost a trivial matter compared with the soientific interest of the works and the behaviour of the strata through which they are carried ; and we do not know of a manageable account of them better than this. Two I other articles deserve mention: Miss March Phillipps's 'Rise of the Condottiere in Italy,' and! Mr. F. H. Brown's 'Indian Students in Great Britain.' The first Quarterly Review of the year is one of exceptional interest. It begins with Mr. Cloriston's naper on Leopardi, which offers versions of five of nis poems, that of the ' Canto Notturno' being the- most satisfactory. Another biographical study, good, though almost necessarily halting in its sympathy, has been inspired by recent works on Cotton Mather. Prof. Barrett Wendell brings forward the spiritual experiences of Cotton Mather in a way which remind one of Port Royal. He notes how curiously, in ' The Angel of Bethesda' Mather, ex- {lounding his theory of disease, anticipated modern >acteriology, imputing the disturbance to an in- vasion of minute "insects." Dr. Stanley Lane- Poole's 'Swift's Correspondence' is a delightful essay on an inexhaustibly fascinating subject, occasioned by Dr. Elrington Ball's recent work. Mr. Fawkes is one who has a right to be heard on the subject of Tyrrell's life. Moreover, he adds in this account of him a pungent saying here and there which brings the very man before our eyes more- vividly even than do the pages of the Life that he is discussing. His view of the struggle which followed the ' Letter to a Professor' is unfavour- able to Rome. Mr. Francis Bickley in ' New Facts about Matthew Prior ' makes excellent use of the Longleat MSS. These MSS., as Mr. Bickley points out, should have received more general attention than has fallen to them. We must confess that wo found Sir Thomas Clouston's article on' Mind-Cures r anything but illuminating. After an introduction pages long on the nature of the brain, which, at least in this generalized form, is already part of the common stock of knowledge of every educated person, he proceeds to expose the fallacies of Christian Science," as seen from the medical point of view, in a rambling manner which, again, is the vehicle of nothing new. One of the best pajiers of the whole number is Dr. Schiller's brilliant and judicious discussion of the philosophy of Nietzsche. He sees in Nietzsche's contribution towards theories of knowledge his most permanent and1 important service to modern thought. In this regard Nietzsche is part of the transition—which has gone furthest in pragmatism—from the view of truth as an absolute to the view of truth as a valuation. We welcome Dr. Schiller's admirably clear and temperate criticism of Nietzsche's theory of conduct. Lady Robert Cecil's ' Training of a Queen' is written in a more than usually attrac- tive style. The writer of' The Majority Report of the Divorce Commission' puts with pungency and clearness the case against the extension of facilities for divorce. He argues that the measures proposed, while in themselves full of peril, will prove no practical remedy for present evils ; and he has some severe reflections on the evidence offered to the Com- mission. The English Historical Sevitw for January is a good number. Prof. Haverfield in ' Ancient Rome and Ireland' refutes the theory promulgated by Dr. Zinimer three or four years ago that there was an active commerce during the early centuries of our era between Ireland and Gaul. Dr. Rose gives us Part II. of his study of Burke, Windham, and Pitt. The other main articles are ' England and