C URRENT LITERAT URE.
. FACTS AND IDEAS. in the columns of various local weekly newspapers, where, as we are not surprised to learn, they have " found favour with a large circle of readers." We wish that all readers could find matter so full of information and good sense. We think that occasionally, in his desire to point a moral, Mr. Gibbs exaggerates. There was much muddling, doubtless, in the Transvaal War, yet there were things well done even in tho department of administration. There was the safe transport, for instance, of more than a quarter of a million of men over some seven thousand miles of sea. Now and then there is a careless expression. Horace's Sabine farm was hardly a "rich" one, as Italian estates had come to be at that time. Who, wo would ask, was the friend who was told by a "very distinguished' scholar " to " verify his quotations " ? It is a well-known anecdote related of Dr. Routh, President of Magdalen (obiit 1854), and, we think, John Koble. The brief narrative of the French Revolution does not add to the value of the book. The writer does not go to the heart of his subject. Tho account of Napoleon's action in Milan in May, 1796, seems hardly correct. " On the 15th he entered Milan, hailed by a people filled with Republican ideals. The surrender of Milan was the signal for a free pillage by the French army, led and organised by Napoleon himself." What really happened was this. When Napoleon's back was turned revolts broke out both in Milan and in Pavia. He went back, crushed the revolts, executed the ringleaders at Milan, and at Pavia, where the offence had been worst, gave over the city to pillage, a milder punishment to which he commuted the original sentence of burning the whole town. We are not concerned to defend Napoleon, who could be cruel and unscrupulous on occa- sion; but it is not true that he gave over a city which he had entered amidst popular acclamations to immediate pillage. Mr. Gibbs writes about many subjects, and the danger of inaccuracy is serious.
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