CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Contemporary Review.—May. (Strahan and Co.)—The Con- temporary is a trifle over-solid this month, though it has some good papers. Mr. Freeman replies to Mr. Fronde in a very temperate and convincing paper, in which incidentally he denies entirely the charge of making personal imputations on his opponent, but repeats and emphasises his accusations of habitual inaccuracy. There can be little doubt that this is Mr. Froude's favourite literary sin, whether he be led into it by mere carelessness or the desire to be picturesque; but Mr. Freeman has a sin, too. He likes hitting hard, and does not always quite see how hard he hits. Mr. J. E. Thorold Rogers gives us a valuable, though rather viewy, paper on "English Agriculture," in which he fully admits the present depression, and looks for relief to a compulsory and strong Agricultural Holdings Act, under which the tenant would receive, on eviction, full compensation for unes- hausted improvements. That is, of course, a practical suggestion, but Mr. Rogers should have expanded a little more his point, about the raising of rent at the end of the lease. Is the rent to be raised because the farmer has spent money, or is that to be forbidden ?
Canon Westcott gives us a brilliant, though over-brief sketch of Origen, the first Christian philosopher, which wants expansion in the direction of an account of Origen's works ; and Professor Bonamy Price a suggestive though not convincing essay on the "Commercial Depression." His notion is that the cause has not been over-production, but the over-consumption of wealth, through bad harvests, famines, wars, military preparations, and extravagant expenditure on "fixed capital," like the American Railway system. He utterly scorns a reduction of production. The best papers in the number, however, are M. Gabriel Monod's admirably written sketch of events in France, a nearly perfect motive index to the history of the country ; and Herr von Schulte's inferior but most instructive account of German politics. The only defect of the latter—which is, we may remark, very Con- servative—is want of detail, as if Messrs. Strahan had discovered a German who disliked intellectual labour. Herr von Schulte is a singularly painstaking author,—but that is the effect.
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