Guillotine the Great, and her Successors. By Graham Everitt. (Ward
and Downey.)—This book is, in some respects, an excellent one ; certainly Mr. Everitt can treat a most gruesome subject lightly and almost pleasantly. But there is more than a sus- picion of book-making about it. Much interest is no doubt taken —and not in France only—in the connection which really existed between the French Republican instrument of execution and the celebrated Joseph Ignace Guillotin, doctor of medicine, who at the age of about seventy-six, died—in hie bed—on March 26th, 1814, It is satisfactory to find it established, on what seems reliable evidence—although the fact was not unknown before— that Dr. Guillotin was not a bloodthirsty monster, but that he merely suggested the idea which was given such appalling effect 1,o in the Revolutionary period, and more particularly in 1793 and 1794. But Mr. Everitt must surely himself see that rather rambling accounts of such events as tho upsetting of the French Directory, and the putting to death of the Due d'Enghion, would be more in place in a general history of France than in a work which is specially concerned with the guillotine. Even "The Arcadia of St. Just" is justifiable here only on the assumption that St. Just, even more than Robespierre, is responsible for the wholesale use of the guillotine. This chapter is, in itself, more readable than any other portion of the book.
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