CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Universal Review opens with a series of opinions, eight in number, upon General Boulanger's chances of attaining the Presidency of the French Republic. Most of them are favourable, but we do not see that any one of them gives an original one, un- less it be the "Russian Diplomatist," who makes a great point of the fact that, while the situation in France has used up everybody else, it has not used up General Boulanger, and who, upon this ground, believes that he is a man of capacity. The most inter- esting of the eight is General Boulanger's own. He is confident to fanaticism, and says that the American Government seems to him to supply a model ; but he refuses to explain how he reconciles his devotion to the Republic with his denunciation of Parlia- mentarism. " C'est mon secret 1 moi," he replied.—Mr. P. Hordern sends a really admirable article on English life in India, in the form of a catalogue of the things one misses. He writes lightly and good-temperedly, but brings out the dreariness and want of settled comfort which characterise life in India, with great fore. The Anglo-Indian is camped, not housed, that is the truth, and a truth which, while the European hopes to return home, can never be altered.—The sensation article of the number is the editor's, in which Mr. Quilter discusses, among other things, the French views of nakedness in Art, illustrating them from the Salon with some profusion. His main idea is that many representations which strike the English as brutal or indecent, do not so strike the French, who are more governed by the idea that Art has recommendations of its own, which are irrespective of morality. Every race has its own standard of decency, and especially its own idea as to what is and is not decent, but we doubt whether appreciation of Art modifies it much. French Huguenots appreciate Art as much as French agnostics, but have very different ideas as to the limits of the becoming.
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