CURRENT LITERATURE.
Peru and Spain, being a narrative of the events preceding and follow- ing the seizure of the Chincha Islands. By Captain F. E. Cerruti. (Williams and Norgate.)—The author of this pamphlet was employed by Senor Salazar, the Spanish "Special Commissary" to Peru, during the voyage to England as private secretary, and there are indications in the work that Captain Cerruti was not entirely satisfied with his em- ployer. Tho conduct of the Special Commissary was, however, so out- rageous that one has no great difficulty in believing that official to have a very exaggerated sense of his own importance and an excitable tem- perament. We by no moans share Captain Cerruti's faith in Peruvian justice, but whatever may have boon the grievances of Spanish subjects, . an ultimatum should have been delivered before coercion was resorted to ; and it is not possible to doubt that in resorting to coercion Senor Salazar was influenced not by any denial of justice on the part of the Peruvian Government, but by the refusal to receive him under the title of "Commissary." We can also easily believe that a man so touohy and conceited may have had an absurd terror of assassination, and there certainly seems to bo no proof of the complicity in any such dastardly scheme of the Peruvian Government, but in Captain Cerruti's own nar- rative we find evidence that such a plot would not be at all inconsistent with the character of Peruvian patriotism. This part of the subject is, however, treated at quite unnecessary length.
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