varied description. We may roughly divide them into popular tales, popular songs, customs, usages, and superstitions, and nurserygames, including riddles, etc.

The department of popular tales is represented by some forty stories from various parts of France-Brittany, Picardy, and the territory of Metz, contributing the largest number. Some of these are followed by valuable references from the pen of Reinhold Köhler, of Weimar. These stories are, of course, interesting variants of those common to the rest of Europe. Besides these French tales, there are some creole ones, and translations of English, Russian, Arabic, and Japanese stories.

There are fifty-eight chansons, over half accompanied by the music, thus adding greatly to their value. In the same manner as the popular tales of the Aryan peoples have been compared and found so similar as to render their common origin beyond doubt, so the popular songs of the south of Europe have been compared, and a large number have been found common to the south of Spain, the south of France, and the north of Italy. Many of these have also spread to the north of France, and the same subject is sung in Piedmont and Normandy, while striking resemblances may be found between the ballads of the south and those of the north of Europe. A few are supposed to have an historical foundation, as the celebrated Chanson de Clothilde, which is thought to depict the adventures of the daughter of Clovis and the wife of Amalaric, king of the Visogoths, who was murdered in the sixth century by his wife's brother, Childebert, for his cruel treatment of her. More likely this chanson (which is found also in Italy) is only a poetical version of the story of Blue-beard. A somewhat similar story is found in the chanson of "The Cruel Husband" (Le Mari cruel), Mélusine, p. 415.

The department of customs, usages, and superstitions, is well represented; three articles are devoted to those peculiar to the Vosges, four to the medical superstitions of the Franche-Comté, etc. The student of primitive culture will find many examples to add to those already collected by Tylor. Some of the examples of survival are very interesting. One will suffice. In Normandy it was, until lately, the custom on the eve of All-souls-day (November 2d) to prepare a supper, putting soup in the plates and cider in the glasses, and then, after opening the windows, to withdraw and allow the souls of deceased relatives to come and partake of the banquet. This custom of "Feasts of the Dead" is common to VOL. CXXVII.-NO. 265.

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many savage tribes, and was observed in the classic world. The only difference between the Roman Feralia and Lemuralia and the Christian All-souls-day is the date. In Normandy it is the custom to kill a cock, and sprinkle some drops of its blood on the sill of a new house before inhabiting it. This is a survival of the custom of immuring a victim in the foundation of a building (see Tylor's "Primitive Culture," vol. i., p. 94, etc.).

A curious department is that of formulettes, or formulas, used in games, etc. One of the most common objects is that of elimination, or, as the children say, to show who shall be "it."

Games, proverbs, spells, etc., are not wanting, Among the miscellaneous articles, the most valuable is a dictionary of names given to the inhabitants of different localities in France. It has been compiled by Lucien Merlet, and runs through many numbers.

It is greatly to be regretted that the Mélusine was not able to continue its career as a periodical, but it will always be a valuable mine for the student of folk-lore.

5.-The Troubadours: a History of Provençal Life and Literature in the Middle Ages. By FRANCIS HUEFFER. London: Chatto & Windus. 1878. 8vo, pp. xviii.-367.

WHILE the interest in Provençal literature has been steadily increasing among scholars during the last ten years, very little has been done to bring it to the notice of the general reader. Although the subject is especially adapted to close scientific study, it still has a popular attractive side, and only needs to be presented in the right way to find a host of appreciative readers. The period during which the troubadours flourished is one of the most brilliant in modern history, and is full of romantic episodes. Provençal literature was not restricted to the south of France, but the troubadour was welcomed from the court of Aragon to the court of Frederick II., at Palermo. Nor was the period of its splendor a restricted one; it flourished three centuries, and then fell with the liberty of the country that had given it birth.

Until recently the general reader has had at his disposal only Sismondi's meagre account of Provençal literature, who, like most later writers, drew heavily on Millot's imperfect "Histoire des Troubadours." The only other general histories are those of Fauriel ("Histoire de la Poésie Provençale," 3 vols., Paris, 1847) and Diez ("Poesie der Troubadours" and "Leben und Werke der Troubadours," Zwickau, 1826, 1829). The former is largely occupied with

the now exploded theory of an extensive Provençal epical poetry, while the latter are more works of reference than readable histories. In English there are before Hueffer's work only two books on the subject: Rutherford's "The Troubadours," London, 1873; and Miss Preston's "Troubadours and Trouvères," Boston, 1876.* The former is an utterly unreliable production, revealing on every page the gross ignorance and coarseness of the writer; the latter is much better, but is too limited in its plan, and the author is not thoroughly at home in her subject.

It will be seen, from this brief review, that there was room for a good popular history of Provençal literature, and, although Dr. Hueffer's work is far from perfect, it is immeasurably superior to the works last mentioned.

Dr. Hueffer's object, as stated in the preface, is “rather to attract learners than to teach more or less proficient students. In plain language I wished, in the first instance, to write a readable book, and according to general prejudice such an achievement is impossible on the scientific principle." In pursuance of this object, the author divides his work into three parts: In the first, "General," he gives a rather meagre sketch of the language, and then examines more or less thoroughly the various forms of Provençal poetry and prose. The second part, "Biographical," contains sketches of some of the most interesting troubadours, although we miss such famous poets as Bernard de Ventadour, Marcabrun, etc. The third part, "Technical," added, as the author states, "for scholarly purposes," consists of chapters on rhyme, rhythm, the stanza, and some interlinear versions, "addressed to those easy-going amateur philologists who believe themselves able to master a language by simply plunging into its literature, without any previous study of grammar or dictionary."

While the author has succeeded, we think, in producing a readable work, his book shows unmistakable signs of haste and lack of study of the sources. The first is shown in the unmethodical arrangement of the matter, and the frequent violation of chronological order; the latter is curiously shown on page 138, where the author cites a French version of a German translation of a Provençal poem, instead of giving an English version direct from the Provençal. In spite of these blemishes, which we trust will be corrected in another edition, Dr. Hueffer has produced an interesting and valuable book that will attract readers whom a more learned and methodical work would have repelled.

*See NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, March, 1877.

6.-Lectures upon the Assyrian Language and Syllabary; delivered to the Students of the Archaic Classes. By Rev. A. H.

SAYCE, M. A., Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford. London Samuel Bagster & Sons. 1877. 4to, pp. viii.-157.

THE classes in ancient Egyptian-Assyrian carried on in London for two years by the Society of Biblical Archæology are not likely to make either study popular, but they have given origin to several valuable elementary books, of which the last and least elementary is A. H. Sayce's "Lectures upon the Assyrian Language and Syllabary," published by Samuel Bagster & Sons. Mr. Sayce, though a venturesome scholar, who is apt to see a plausible conjecture as a probable if not certain fact, has confined himself in most of these nine lectures to the region of the better known in Assyrian studies, as was proper in addressing immature students. The character and origin of the syllabary and the laws of Assyrian phonology with the elements of Assyrian grammar are developed, and made as plain and interesting as is well possible with such a subject. He insists wisely that the first thing the student has to do is to commit to memory the characters in common use. The best preliminary, he says, to the study of Assyrian is "to learn as perfectly as possible the different characters and ideographs, with all their varying powers, which are prefixed to the first volume of Mr. Norris's dictionary." When it is remembered that there are three hundred and sixty of these given by Mr. Norris, and that many of them have from three to eight or ten different values assigned to them, the task of learning the syllabary, assigned as the mere beginning, is seen to be not a light one. Mr. Sayce also shows himself a wise adviser in insisting that his pupils shall understand that there is its special meaning to each inflectional form in Assyrian as well as in the classical languages. There has been too much of a hap-hazard translation, as if it did not make much difference what form a verb might have. This nice discrimination may, however, be carried too far, and our author appears to be guilty of this fault in the very illustration which he draws from the Hebrew of the first two verses of Genesis. It may be that their sense is, "In the beginning God hewed out the heaven and the earth: now the earth had been waste and desolate, and darkness on the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was ever brooding on the face of the waters;" but it is a grammatical hardihood to assure us that it is now known that the tense form of the verbs and the order of the words require just this

new and very seductive translation. As we have suggested, the reader of these lectures needs to be on his guard not on the principles illustrated in these lectures, for they are well and accurately stated, but on the illustrations in which Mr. Sayce's natural desire to bring forward what is original leads him at times to present as a fact, or, at least as very probable, what may not bear investigation. Thus the derivation of the Hebrew bamah, a high place, from the root of bố, to come, in the method described is extremely problematical. We might say as much for the source and force of what he calls the case endings of verbs, page 86; and there are many such cases in the last lecture in which the relation between Assyrian and Accadian is discussed. Thus from Accadian ma-da he supposes the Assyrian matu, a country, to be borrowed. The Aramæans also, he says (page 144), have the form mata, "from which we must infer that the borrowing had taken place before the separation of the northern Semitic tribes." It is a very heavy deduction to rest upon such a correspondence that before the Shemitic languages had broken up, indeed, before there was a separate Assyrian, and for aught we know before there was any Accadian, the Shemitic northern tongue borrowed this word from the Accadian, and that without evidence that it exists in other Shemitic languages. The Aramaic might very easily have borrowed the word at a comparatively late period from its next neighbor the Assyrian, as Aramaic was a language of trade in Assyria, and indeed Mr. Sayce suggests this very explanation in a note only five pages earlier. We have to thank the author for a very valuable and important contribution under this modest form to philology. Mr. Sayce has become one of our best students in a department which attracted his juvenile essays twenty years ago in the Journal of Sacred Literature, in unequal debate with the veterans Dr. Hincks and Mr. Norris.

7.-Elements of Political Economy. By ARTHUR LATHAM PERRY, LL. D., Orrin Sage Professor of History and Political Economy in Williams College. New edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1878. 8vo, pp. xiv.-607.

THE air of Western Massachusetts has been very friendly to clear and strong thinking. Williamstown has had its full share of the gift, and the dialectic ability which Presidents Griffin and Mark Hopkins put forth in their theology is now held good by professors in the new sciences of Nature and Society. Prof. Perry's book, which is quite a new one in this present form, calls out his powers