The Fortnightly Beview.—May. (Chapman and Hall.)—By far the best paper
in the number is Mr. F. Pollock's monograph on Professor Clifford, a most charming sketch, which will enable all readers to under- stand the deep impression this mathematician, of thirty-three, made on his contemporaries, the unusual power of his mind, and the deep tender- ness and simplicity of his nature. Could not Mr. Pollock give us a little more of his friend's theory as to the gradual development in man of new or more perfect intellectual insight, akin to the development of the senses as we know them from imperfect or confused powers of perception ? That idea, if it could be shown to be well founded, would add perceptibly to the reasonable hopefulness of man. Mr. Morley's account of the Republican measures against the Catholic Church is very good too, and will, we think, convince many who hold that toleration is for everybody but priests. There is a curious persuasive- ness in the proof that M. Jules Ferry is throwing away a vast amount of legislative energy. Mr. Pearson gives a full account of the con- stitutional contest in Victoria, very convincing, but a trifle drier than he usually is,—or at least was in his historic studies and his Russian book ; and Lord Ducie gives us, for the first time, a picture which enables us to understand accurately Philip IL's unpopularity in England, from original narratives. We wish he had added a few sentences on a point Englishmen forget,—the immense status or, so to speak, rank of Philip in Europe, which, though it did not im- press Englishmen as a body, impressed the upper classes exceedingly, and alone made the marriage possible. Mr. Tyler's "History of Games" is charming to read, but overchoked with knowledge, and leaves on the reader an impression that Mr. Tyler is sometimes a little arbitrary in rejecting the possibility of the separate invention of a game in many places. Hockey, he says, is dismounted polo. Why ? Schoolboys might have invented hockey. Why does he trans- late the Sanscrit word for chess," chaturanga," "four-bodied ?" Surely it means "four-cornered," " anga " being the root-word from which we get, through Latin, "angle." Mr. McCulloch's defence of Protection in Canada should be carefully studied. It is the beet the Protectionists have yet offered for themselves, and contains some curious facts as to the American habit, under Free-trade, of treating Canada as a sort of clearing-shop for their goods, and selling there without profit. The true argument, however, so far as any argument is true
is the central one that Canada has no natural trade but farming, that half mankind will not farm, hating the work, and that Canada, therefore incessantly loses her most enterprising sons. Canadian employes are distinctly sought in the States. There is a paper by Sir H. Maine on the ancient ideas respecting the arrangement of Codes, too technical for us ; an effort by Mr. Grant Allen to explain why, on the evolution theory, the skin of men become hairless,--which does not satisfy us, and an argument by Sir George Campbell, rather superfluous, in the face of events, that we had better leave Egypt alone.
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