1921 SHORT NOTICES 311 which makes the mass of miscellaneous material dealt with easy of access. Some indication of its value was given when the first volume was noticed in these pages. We can now probe, if only a little way, further into the contents of the whole work. Fourteen columns of the index refer to the subject of libraries alone. We hear of collections which passed to the Bibliotheque Nationale, such as the manuscripts saved from the fire at St. Germain-des-Pres ; of the search for the original correspondence of Abelard and Heloise in the district of Nogent-sur-Seine, of Chinese manuscripts supposed to be at Metz, of the burning of books, church accounts, and statues on the place at Verdun, of a library to be sold at Dijon, in which were many precious things including ' magna charta avec 274 gravures superieurement peintes ', truly, as the editor adds, 1 un ouvrage unique '. Works of art of every description were, of course, the main business of the commission. Pictures, statues, medals, engrav- ings, furniture, monuments, architecture, are all sedulously inquired into. The restoration of paintings occupied the commission at several sittings and the conclusions reached fill an interesting appendix. Scientific collec- tions and equipments are reported upon, and a set of surveying instruments are ordered to be sent to Constantinople. Inventories were made of the property of emigres, and even the wardrobes full of dresses belonging to the ci-devant owners, as at Ambres, were not overlooked. Sometimes the reports are tantalizingly slight, but M. Tuetey is often able to supply details from other sources. He gives, for example, a list of the pictures by Rubens and other masters carried off from Antwerp and Brussels by an order of the representants du peuple, 17 August 1784, and is able to show us how amply the Comte d'Artois had decorated his prison rooms in the Temple with paintings, china, and Boule furniture. M. Tuetey is much to be congratulated upon the achievement of a laborious and patriotic task. R. E. P. The first volume of Dr. Eduard His's Geschichte des neuern Schwei- zerischen Staatsrechts (Basel : Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1920) covers the period 1798 to 1813. Its constitutional landmarks are the formation of the Helvetic Republic in April 1798 and the Act of Mediation of April 1803, but Dr. His deals exhaustively with every aspect of Swiss life under French domination — law, trade, taxation, religion, emigration, con- scription, education. The experiences of Switzerland were typical. The cantons were first invited to welcome the rights of man, and men like Ochs and Laharpe were fervent propagandists of abstract ' natural ' theories. The constitution of 1798, for instance, laid down that ' freedom of the press is the natural corollary of every man's right to obtain knowledge '. Bureaucracy and French militarism slowly dispelled the glamour of government on first principles. In 1813 Switzerland was relatively nationalist in sentiment and liberal in politics. Dr. His writes with much learning on the political philosophy of the time, and his work will carry great authority on Swiss history. G. B. H. Under the title of Un Turc a Paris : 1806-11 (Paris : Bossard, 1920) M. Bertrand Bareilles has published an amusing report, which he picked
