without troubling their heads with the facts that
conflict with them. A glaring instance of his tendency to exaggeration
and wild speculation will be found in his estimate of Rabelais, whom he
first vaunts as "a great moral teacher," "a teacher the like of whom
Europe had not yet seen," and then denounces as having "destroyed
effectually, perhaps for centuries yet to come, earnestness in France,"
declaring that "no writer who ever lived has inflicted such lasting
injury on his country," and that "it would have been better for France
if his book, tied to a millstone, had been hurled into the sea." These
opinions are contradictory of each other, since it is impossible that a
writer who so perverted men's minds should also have been, in any proper
sense of the term, a great moral teacher; they are inconsistent with Mr.
Besant's account of the "unbroken lines of writers," of whom Rabelais
was one, but not the first, all having the same characteristics, all
"irreverent," having "no strong convictions," "like children for
mockery, mischief and lightness of heart;" and finally, they are so
improbable in themselves, and so unsusceptible of proof, that, uttered
as they are with the solemnity of communications from an unseen world,
they produce much the same impression on us as the disclosures with
which Mr. Robert Dale Owen is favored by his "materialized" visitants.

We might cite other examples to prove that Mr. Besant is not a safe
guide either in his general speculations or in his critical judgments.
He is an agreeable narrator, showing a close familiarity with the topics
he handles, and an enthusiasm which, if it sometimes degenerates into
mere fume, adds on the whole to the liveliness of his writing. His
translations in verse are remarkable for their ease and finish. The book
may be read with pleasure, but not, we fear, with equal profit. The
chapters that deal with the least known works and writers are the most
satisfactory. On Montaigne and Moliere Mr. Besant has nothing to say
which is likely to incite the reader to a fresh study of their works,
which ought to be the effect of every fresh discourse on a great author.

* * * * *

Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland A.D. 1803.
By Dorothy Wordsworth.
Edited by J.C. Shairp, LL.D.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The special charm of this book lies in the fact that it is not a
book--that there was no thought in the writer's mind