York: John Bradburn.

The translator of this sharp and pungent sketch of the later French
revolutionists is understood to be General John W. Phelps of Vermont,--a
man whose personal services, despite some eccentric traits, will give
him an honorable place in the history of these times. It is possible
that readers may not agree with him in his estimate of the dangers to be
incurred by American institutions from secret societies. They are a
thing essentially alien to our temperament. The Southern plotters of
treason were certainly open enough; it was we who were blind. The
"Know-Nothing" movement was a sort of political carnival, half jest,
half earnest, and good for that trip only. If anything could have
created secret societies, it would have been the Fugitive-Slave-Law
excitement: that, indeed, produced them by dozens, but they almost
always died still-born, and whatever was really done in the
revolutionary line was effected by very informal cooperation.

Indeed, even the French nation is, by its temperament, less inclined to
deep plotting than any nation of Southern Europe, and as De la Hodde
himself admits, "not one of our revolutions during the last sixty years
has been the work of conspirators." "There is but one maker of
revolutions in France, and that is Paris,--idle, sophistical,
disappointed, restless, evil-minded Paris. We all know her." "Of one
thing we may rest assured: the greater part of our revolutions signify
nothing." And this has been notoriously true since the days of the
Fronde.

Yet the moral of the book is not without value, and its historic
interest is considerable, taken in connection with the other memoirs of
the same epoch. The style is rather piquant, and the translation good,
though a little stiff. The writer is an Orleanist, and thinks the
Revolution of 1848 a mere whim of the populace, favored by a "vertigo"
on the part of Louis Philippe. It was "an incomprehensible
contingency,--sovereign power giving way to a revolt, without the test
of a combat."

The book was first published under the Republic, to which the author
professes due loyalty. He suggests, however, that, as no one is required
by duty to fall in love with a very ugly woman who may have been imposed
on him in marriage, so he is not yet very much smitten with the
Republic. But he is ready to respect the dame, if she proves to deserve
it, as a legitimate connection.

_Cape Cod._ By HENRY D. THOREAU. Boston: Ticknor a