n of Froschweiler: "we drink to _la
Revanche_."

In fact, the whole party drank the toast heartily, each interpreting
it to his liking.

In the hands of a Swift even so trivial an incident might be made
to point a moral on the facility with which alike in theology
and politics--from Athanasian Creed to Cincinnati or Philadelphia
Platform--men comfortably interpret to their own diverse likings some
doctrine that "begins with an _R_ and ends with an _e_," and swallow
it with great unanimity and enthusiasm.

Possibly the death of Mr. Greeley, after a prolonged delirium induced
in part by political excitement, may add for Americans some fresh
interest to the theory of a paper which just previous to that pathetic
event M. Lunier had read before the Paris Academy of Medicine. The
author confessed his statistics to be incomplete, but regarded them
as ample for the decisive formulation of the proposition that great
political crises tend to increase the number of cases of mental
alienation. The leading point of his elaborate argument appears to
be the classification of fresh cases of insanity developed since the
beginning of the late French war. The strongest comparison is one
indicating an excess of seven per cent, in the number of such cases,
proportioned to the population in the departments conquered and
occupied by the Germans, over those which they did not invade.
Finally, M. Lunier reckons the cases of mental alienation induced
by the late political and military events in France at from
twelve hundred to fifteen hundred. Politics without war may, it is
considered, produce the same results--results not at all surprising,
of course, except as to their extent. As to this last, if M. Lunier's
figures and deductions be correct, the mental strain of exciting
politics is even more destructive than has been generally supposed.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Gareth and Lynette. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-Laureate. Boston:
J.R. Osgood & Co.

"With this poem the author concludes the Idyls of the King." The
occasion is a tempting one to review the long series of Arthurian lays
written by Tennyson, from the _Mort d' Arthur_, and the pretty song
about Lancelot and Guinevere, and the first casting of "Elaine's"
legend in the form of _The Lady of Shallot_, down to the present tale,
flung like a capricious field flower into a wreath complete enough
without it. The poet's first adventure into the subject--the
mysterious, sh