Glances at Great and Little Men. By" Paladin." (Sampson Low.)
—An irritating prefatory note goes far towards destroying the value of a book that is clever and entertaining. We are told that the volume is written in the first person as a matter of con- venience, and that "the 'I' may be regarded as a fictitious entity." Therefore, when "Paladin" describes his interviews with the late Emperor of Brazil, with Napoleon III. at Wilhelms- hohe, with Dr. Dbllinger, and other notable persons, we know not how much is fiction and how much fact in his story. That he is a man who has seen the world and is familiar with books and men, is evident. No tyro could have written these sketches, and the incisive sayings with which the pages abound show, we think, ft, practised hand. Whether we read in faith or not, the " Glances " contain a great deal that is suggestive, and many remarks that could not have been made by a stay-at-home writer. Who can doubt, for instance, that the author did at one time study medicine in Paris, as he relates in chap. ix., or that he heard Dr.. Maisonneuve say at one of his lectures, "If you ask who is the first surgeon in France at the present moment, I suppose,' (very dubiously) you would expect me to answer, "M. Nelaton ; mais apres lui votre tres humble serviteur " ' (raising his skull-cap as he spoke)"? The author was struck by the great decorum of the female students in the medical schools, but observes, with sly humour, that "Nature had rendered this course of action easier for most of them by limiting her endowments to their intellectual equipment." Of vivisection, as practised on the Continent, " Paladin" writes as a horrible thing which no results can justify. Merely to look on such a thing, he says, is to undergo a. degradation ; and he asserts that if it is ever largely adopted, "the physical benefits that may accrue from it will be more than counterbalanced by a general deterioration in man's moral nature." He discovered no sign of pleasure in inflicting torture, but the most absolute callousness, due to a consuming lust of knowledge ; and he never saw an antesthetic administered, either in France or Germany. "Paladin" does not do justice to Anthony Trollope as a novelist, though there is truth in what he says of him, and the description of Mr. George MacDonald is so slight as to be almost insignificant; but the writer's shrewdness of com- ment is as evident here as in the more elaborate papers. The chapters on German life in Bonn, Jena, Leipzig, and Munich are well written, and throughout the volume good anecdotes. abound.
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