nterest the judgments of the
professors. It makes a handsome octavo of some 200 pages.

* * * * *

M. FLANDIN, an eminent dilettante and designer attached to the French
embassy in Persia, has published in the last number of the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_ an interesting memoir of the ruins of Persepolis, under
the title of "An Archaiological Journey in Persia." On his route
to the ruins he witnessed melancholy evidence, in the condition of
the surface and population, of the improvidence and noxiousness of
Oriental despotism. He tells us that the remains of the magnificent
palace of Darius are dispersed over an immense _plateau_, which looks
down on the plain of Merdacht. "Assuredly, they are not much, compared
with what they must have been in the time of the last Prince who
sheltered himself under the royal roof. Nevertheless, what is now
found of them still excites astonishment, and inspires a sentiment of
religious admiration for a civilization that could create monuments so
stupendous; impress on them a character of so much grandeur; and give
them a solidity which has prereserved the most important parts until
our days, through twenty-two centuries, and all the revolutions
by which Persia has been devastated. The pillars are covered with
European names deeply cut in the stone. English are far the most
numerous. Very few, however, are of celebrated travelers. We observed,
with satisfaction, those of Sir John Malcolm and Mr. Morier, both of
whom have so successfully treated Persian subjects."

* * * * *

EMILE GIRARDIN states in his journal that he paid for the eleven
volumes of Chateaubriand's Posthumous Memoirs as they appeared,
piecemeal, in his _feuilleton_, the sum of ninety-seven thousand
one hundred and eight francs. They occupied a hundred and ninety-two
_feuilletons_, and cost him thus more than a franc a line. Alfred de
Broglie has made these memoirs the test of a paper entitled "Memoirs
de Chateaubriand, a Moral and Political Study," in the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_. It is a severe analysis of the book and the man. He concludes
that Chateaubriand was one of the most vainglorious, selfish and
malignant of his tribe. He, indeed, betrayed himself broadly, but
surviving writers, who knew intimately his private life--such as St.
Beuve--have disclosed more of his habitual libertinism. The Radical
journals, and some of the Legitimists, turn to account the