The December number of the Universal Review is full of
bright and lively, though often rather thin papers. It begins with a. curious article on "The Progress of Man," which we should be half-inclined to attribute to some follower of Lord Rosebery, from. which we gather that humanitarianism has superseded Christianity, that the Empire needs an Imperial Senate, that Ireland must be conciliated by Home-rule, that Europe must be federated, and that we must never fight Russia,—rather a dreamy programme. Mr. Britten sends a strange account, fortified with evidence, of a con- viction entertained by General Gordon that the Garden of Eden was in the Seychelles—whither converge four ocean depressions which may have been rivers—and that the forbidden fruit is the double cocoanut, or coco-de-mer. The beliefs of heroes would make a curious study in psychology. Alexander honestly thought himself a. son of Jupiter Ammon, Napoleon believed himself a child of destiny, and Garibaldi doubted openly, not whether St. Peter was inspired, but whether he had ever existed. Mr. T. Hardy's "Tragedy of Two Ambitions" is really tragic, and Mr. Train's "Doom of the Muses" is the most delightful bit of highly intellectual fooling that we have read for a long time. M. Daudet's "One of the Forty" strikes us still as both dull and detestable ; but the editor's "Sketch of the Year" has suggestiveness in it, rather marred by an out-of-place attack on the management of the Liverpool Art Congress. The illustrations are, as usual, unequal, and we confess ourselves unable to see either charm or interest iii those intended to illustrate the genius of Willetto.
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