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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and the applications thereof of any system of 

 law have, to the general student, the forbid- 

 ding quaUties ascribed to them, he maintains 

 that that which is valuable as wheat or gold 

 is to be got out of it. " While the decision 

 of special law cases, petty or otherwise, that 

 arise in daily life may embrace complicated 

 deductions to be made from technical rules, 

 and end in inductions of interest only to the 

 professional man, and which to the unlearned 

 mind appear to have no reason for their ex- 

 istence, yet other special cases may require in 

 their decision the assertion and application 

 of most important general principles — prin- 

 ciples of interest to every one, and whose 

 assertion either way reacts upon the future 

 well-bemg of all." He tries, therefore, to 

 vaite an introduction to law which shall en- 

 lighten the intelligent lay reader as to the 

 beauty and interest of its problems ; to re- 

 duce the discussion of the code question to a 

 practical, concrete form ; to elaborate the 

 idea of the fundamental and intrinsic differ- 

 ence between the two forms of statute and 

 " case " law ; and to draw the proper con- 

 clusions and apply those principles to actual 

 legislation, judicial or legislative, and to de- 

 termine by a practical test the province of 

 each and the best way to conserve them. 



The late Professor Jowett is credited with 



having pronounced Italian literature the 



greatest in the world after Greek, Latin, and 



English. It is more intimately affiliated to 



antiquity, Mr. Garnett says in the preface to 



his History of it,* than any other European 



literature, and may indeed be regarded as a 



continuation or revival of the Latin. Yet it 



was long in appearing. This fact is perhaps 



partly due to the earlier Italian writers of 



mark having continued to express themselves 



in Latin, and the vernacular writings having 



had to fight their way slowly up. This fact, 



further, worked greatly to the disadvantage 



of the appreciation of Italian literature, for 



much that should have belonged to it and 



which might have helped us estimate the 



capacity of the Italian mind was in another 



language. Dante and Petrarch and others, 



masters and classics in Italian, wrote also 



much in Latin, and their native language is 



robbed thereby of much that would other- 

 wise have been its best work. It is another 

 disadvantage to the reputation of the Italian 

 mind that many of its greatest geniuses did 

 not express themselves at all, or at most 

 comparatively little, in writing, but in other 

 fields, especially art and music. So it was 

 with Michelangelo — greatest of all— Leo- 

 nardo da Vinci, and half a dozen others 

 whom Mr. Garnett names, including Gahleo, 

 Columbus, and Napoleon; while Michelan- 

 gelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Benvenuto Cel- 

 hni have written enough to show that they 

 might have been among the greatest masters 

 of literature if they had not had other things 

 to do. Italian literature has been continu- 

 ous, abundantly productive in every century, 

 of unequal merit perhaps, but always afford- 

 ing enough of mark to give it standmg, and 

 presenting one name at least the peer of the 

 greatest, and it is of this continuous succes- 

 sion of writings that the present history fur- 

 nishes a view. 



Broivn Men and Women* is the title 

 given by Mr. Edward Reeves to a lively, pic- 

 turesque account of his voyages through the 

 South Sea Islands and of life as he found it 

 there in 1895 and 1896. Mr. Reeves is a 

 New-Zealander, and living, according to dis- 

 tant American perspective, almost among the 

 South Sea Islands, he goes into them in his 

 book without preliminary ceremony, landing 

 the reader, almost at the first leap, among 

 the cannibals of old, whose customs are con- 

 trasted with those which prevail in the same 

 regions now. The spirit with which he passes 

 through his adventures and describes them 

 is revealed in his opening sentence: "The 

 South Sea Islands ! To us New-Zealanders, 

 when we were young in the sixties, what a 

 charm they were of mystery, barratry, pi- 

 racy, kidnapping ; of tales of innocent, gen- 

 tle southern natives torn from the paradises 

 and sold into slavery by English-speaking 

 devils ; of more northern fierce cannibals, 

 Fijians, New Hebrideans, and Solomon Is- 

 landers, down whose throats disappeared, 

 in most satisfactory retribution, some of 

 our compatriots." In a series of running 



* A History of Italian Literature. By Richard 

 Garnett. Kew York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 

 431. Price, $1.50. 



* Brown Men and Women ; or, The South Sea 

 Islands in 1895 and 1896. By Edward Peeves. 

 London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. New York: 

 The Macmillau Company. Pp.294. Price, $3..50. 



