18 AUGUST 1883, Page 26

The British Quarterly P.eview, July. (Hodder and Stoughton).— Most readers

will turn at once to the interesting recollections which Mr. E. A. Freeman has here given us of John Richard Green. These recollections go back to an early date, when "Johnny Green" was a clever little boy at Magdalen College School. Mr. Freeman brings out with characteristic force the municipal side of his friend's habits of thought. He was eminently a citizen of Oxford, to whom the University was an upstart and an intruder. And this same way of regarding history he retained more or less throughout life. It is a most able and sympathetic account of Green's character and work that we have in this article. Mr. J. Scott Keltie's Essay on " Some Characteristics of Mr. Green's Histories" is an appropriate pendant to it. The first article in the number is one which, though dealing with a professional subject, "The Relation of Drugs to Medicine," is so written that a non-professional writer can appreciate it. We are not sure that the writer does not exaggerate the decline of the curative use of drugs. The number of now preparations is something enormous, and must tax the business aptitude of the retailers to keep pace with it. The enormous use of bromide of potassium, to take but one instance, is by itself a most important matter. Mr. R. Heath's "Religion of the Paris Ouvrier " is a remarkable instance of the wider views of theology which now find entrance at least, if not acceptance, in orthodox circles. French Protestantism—which, by the way, in its outward form closely resembles English Congregationalism—is pronounced wholly unfit to deal with the difficult problem of the Parisian working-man. The analogy between his republican faith and the dominant ideas of Catholicism is very well drawn out in this essay. The valuable "Discovery of Pithom Succoth" is made the subject of another article ; and we have also the programme of the Liberation Society, which is to attack in succession the Scotch, the Welsh, and the English Establishments. The other contents of this excellent number are "The Classification of Ideas," "The Tao Teh King," and a "Political Survey of the Quarter," with the customary review of contemporary literature.