mark of Montesquieu, that that people are
happy whose annals are tiresome, is strictly true; but we do not care to
read those annals, while those periods in which men were unhappy
concentrate the attention of both writers and readers. In Rome's
revolutionary age men were as happy as they are in times of pestilence;
and Cicero was the greatest sufferer of them all, because he was
possessed of a sensitiveness that no other Roman ever knew. It is his
history, quite as much as that of either Pompeius or Caesar, that gives a
biographical character to the history of the Republic's closing days,
and renders its study so fascinating, and this without reference to his
private life, some passages of which have a rather ludicrous air,--his
marrying a young wife, for example, after divorcing an old one.

Mr. Forsyth tells Cicero's public life, without neglecting his promise
in other respects. He, like other English writers on Rome, possesses a
great advantage over Germans, his superiors in mere learning, perhaps,
inasmuch as he is familiar with affairs, and English political life is a
constant commentary on Roman political life. Without subscribing to all
his conclusions, we can commend his volumes to those who would be
assisted to an understanding of that splendid struggle in which the
Roman aristocracy went down, but not without inflicting such wounds on
their foes as rendered despotism an absolute necessity.

_Social Statics; or the Conditions Essential to Human
Happiness specified, and the First of them developed._ By
HERBERT SPENCER. With a Notice of the Author, and a Steel
Portrait New York: D. Appleton & Co.

The American publication of the miscellaneous works of Mr. Spencer
terminates with this volume. We learn from the preface that it is not in
all respects a literal expression of the author's present views. While
he adheres to the leading principles set forth fourteen years ago, he is
not prepared to abide by all the detailed applications of them. We are
heartily glad to chronicle this acknowledgment. Full of immediate and
practical value beyond any other work of Mr. Spencer, "Social Statics"
contains passages which seem shot by a mutinous logic-power towards some
dark aphelion, whither the best instruments at our command fail to
follow them. We hazard the conjecture, that the remarks about the
rights of children and the wrong of property in land must receive
essential modification in order to conv