CURRENT LITERATURE.
Social Reform in England. By Lucien Davesies de Pontes. Trans- lated by the widow of the author. With appendixes. (Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.)—M. de Pontes was an honest inquirer, who came amongst us in a more painstakings spirit than is common in the case of his country- men, and with the single-hearted desire of promoting social progress in the two countries. He collected a mass of information on such subjects as prison discipline, pauperism, and the position of women ; and any one who wishes for useful summaries of facts connected with these questions, will find them in this volume, in as small a compass as possible. We have not found anything strikingly novel in his remarks or suggestions ; like everybody who is not under the spell of the traditional feeling that the severity of our old penal laws has left, he is surprised at the tender- mess of our treatment of convicts, and like most Frenchmen, he wants more of the partnership principle, in the matrimonial relation ; but he does not indicate any measures that are not already familiar to the frequenters of congresses, and for the extinction of pauperism he has only the well approved specifics of temperance societies and reformatories. He has taken great pains, however, in the collection of statistics, and the views that he expresses, if not novel, are sensible. The papers, which -originally appeared in the Rime des Deux Mondes, deserved republication, if only for the purpose of presenting to those who have not paid much attention to these interesting subjects an opportunity of acquiring a great deal of information with very little trouble.
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