CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Annual Register for the Year 1896. (Longmans and Co.) —The chief contents of the volume are to be found, as usual, in the chapters headed "English History" and "Foreign History." The principle on which these are written is to give full credit to both sides, and it is carried out with reasonable success. It is a somewhat melancholy reflection, as one reads these annual résumés, to see how hollow the whole business of party government is. Never do the " Outs " concede that the " Ins " are right ; never do they retract their censure, however fully it may have been refuted by results. There is Mr. Balfones new method of Supply, for instance. The Opposition journals could not sufficiently express their contempt for the plan. The man who proposed it, they said, proved his incompetence for the post of Leader. What about it now ? The "Chronicle of Events" is a useful summary with which we have no fault to find. A" Retrospect of Literature" cannot possibly be given in something less than twenty pages, of which scarcely one is appropriated to " Belles-Lettres." Fiction, which, if we regard the amount of published volumes and the
number of readers, stands in the first place, is barely mentioned. Science and art admit of being more satisfactorily treated within the limits of much restricted space. In point of practical utility the customary " Obituary " stands as high as anything in the Annual Register.
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