CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Fortnightly Review. January, 1872. (Chapman and Hall.)— The Fortnightly is full of good papers this month. Lord Houghton contributes a gossippy article on the House of Lords, and possible or impossible improvements therein ; Mr. Rossetti, a very striking, though somewhat obscure poem on the "Cloud-Confines," the boundaries of theologic and philosophic certainty ; and A. Regnard, a paradoxical defence of the first Communist Chaumette. The gem of the number however, is the conclusion of Mr. Bagehot's papers on "Physics and Politics," by far the moat powerful defence of Parliamentary Govern- ment we ever remember to have read. Mr. Bagehot attributes to that system, or rather to all systems of government by discussion, a quickening influence on human intelligence in every department of thought ; for example, in literature, theology, and science, as well as in secular politics, and believes that the stereotyping of the Asiatic civilizations is due in great part to the absence of this vivifying power. This thesis is worked out with great force and lucidity, and the paper ought to be read by all that numerous' class which half doubts, half despairs of "national palavers" as instru- menta for accelerating as well as recording the progress of the nations.
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