Les Ecrivains Militaires de la France. Par Theodore Karcher. (Triibner
and Co.)—M. Karcher is one of those distinguished Frenchmen who have been thrown upon our shores by the high tides of the reaction, and who have found here a home. Professor at the Royal Military Col- lege, he has already become known in the world of schools and letters by his excellent and unpretending Biographies Militaires, and he has now followed up that book by one equally good in point of workmanship and wider in scope and usefulness. The volume before us is intended to provide students at once with a text-book in pure French, and at the same time to impart information of a kind extremely important to young soldiers. M. Karcher has compressed for them into comparatively few pages a history of the military literature of France, a literature very rich in materials of the greatest interest to the profession, and indeed to those who are not soldiers, and he has besides composed special biogra- phies of the military writers since the Revolution, appending to each a specimen of his style, said specimens being in themselves valuable bits of history. Thus from Carnet is drawn an " Eloge de Vauban," from Napoleon, " Memorial de St. Helene," the "Campaign of 1796;" from Soult, his admirable account of Marengo; from Gauvion St. Cyr, the battle of Leipsic; from Bugeaud, an episode in the campaign of 1815; and so on. If the first part be more valuable as a summary of the military literature of France, the second part will be held by the reader the more interesting. As a book for the use of soldier-students of French in schools and colleges, we cordially recommend M. Karcher's Ecrivains Militaires de la France.
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