* * * *

A book worthy of all commendation is the _Histoire des Protestants de
France_, from the Reformation to the present time, by M. G. de Felice,
published at Paris. The author treats his subject with all that peculiar
talent which renders French historians always interesting and
instructive. He is clear, forcible, judicious, and profound, without
pedantry or sectarian zeal. The action of his story is dramatic, the
delineation of his characters as glowing as it is just, and his
sympathies so true and generous, and at the same time so tolerant, that
the reader follows him attentively from the beginning to the end. The
Huguenots were worthy of such a historian, for though persecuted for
their opinions, they never ceased to love their country, or to wish to
live at peace with their enemies and serve her. Rarely has a body of men
produced nobler characters. This book fills a vacuum in French history.

* * * * *

Modern Greek Literature is by no means so wild and imperfect as might be
expected from a nation in such a chaotic and uncultivated condition. The
people of Greece are hardly more civilized than the Servians, the
Dalmatians, or any other of the half-savage tribes that inhabit the
south-eastern corner of Europe, but the influence exercised by the
antique glory of the land still remains to develop among them a degree
of artistic power and beauty unknown to their neighbors. And little as
Greece has gained generally from the introduction of German royalty and
German office-holders, it has no doubt profited by the greater attention
thus excited toward the works of the mighty poets who stand alone and
unharmed after all else that their times produced has fallen into ruin.
Thus, since the incoming of the Bavarians there has been growing up a
disposition in favor of the early literature, and against the newer and
less elegant forms of the modern language. The purification of the
latter, and its restoration to something like the old classical
perfection, the abandonment of rhyme, which is the universal form of the
proper new Greek verse, and even the employment of the ancient
mythological expressions, are the characteristic aims of some of the
most gifted of living Hellene writers. In this way there are two
distinct classes of cotemporaneous literature to be found in the
Peninsula; the one consists of these somewhat reactionary and romantic
lovers of the past, the o