Seippel : Les Deux Fi-anccs i 3 3 task M. Lavisse has undertaken. That it is admirably done goes without saying. Certainly no other person in France except perhaps M. fimile Bourgeois, the brilliant editor of Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. and of Spanheim's Relation, could have done so well. The author has chosen to devote the first volume to a study of the institutions of the reigfn, reserving political history for the one to follow. This method preserves the unity of the theme and is in harmony with the prac- tice of the preceding volumes. But there are disadvantages in so doing in the present case. Europe was not only intensely interested in the internal affairs of France at this epoch (as M. Lavisse says, on p. 357), but the external politics of France profoundly affected the ways of things within. This is notably true in the case of the relation of the clergy to the king, during the war with Holland; Colbert's commercial policy at home, and independent of his protective tariffs, reacted upon Holland and Venice. In the present volume we see these things in half-face only. James 'estfall Thompson. Les Deux Frances ct leurs Origines Historiques. Par Paul Seip- pel. (Lausanne: Payot ; and Paris: Alcan. 1905. Pp. xxxvi, 409.) I RECOMMENDED this book lately to an American friend who was in search of French reading at the same time serious and attractive. He followed my advice and wrote expressly to say that he had seldom found so exactly what he desired. In a few months the work, — the conclusion of which is dated : Ziirich, June, 1905, — has made its way through the mass of contemporary publi- cations and one can say, without exaggerating, that it is one of the events of the French literary year. The best proof is that, being from a Swiss pen and not written in Paris, it had nevertheless the honor of a special article in the Revue dcs Deux Mondes. Professor Seippel's study was suggested by the Dreyfus affair, but it does not belong to the literature of that eventful case. It is a clear- sighted, impressively written chapter of the psychological history of na- tions, or as Germans would say, " Volkerpsychologie ". The two Frances in question are " la France noire et la France rouge ", the France of the Kings and the Church and the France of the Revolution. The author shows with striking evidence how these irreducible adversaries are daughters of the same mother, how the mentality of both is at the bottom Roman and how they fought their fiery battles, from the times of the Renaissance and the Reformation down to the Revolution and the nine- teenth century, with exactly the same swords. " Following the example of the American states, France draws up a " ' Declaration of Rights '. It is intended for all nations and for all " times. As in the Crusades, France feels a divine mission, the mis- " sion of converting the world to her new ideals. Thus liberty, which in
