Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics. By Frederic Pollock, M. A., LL. D. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 377. Price, $3.

There may be an apparent inconsistency in the points of view taken in some of the legal essays. I have started sometimes from the pure analysis of the modern English school of jurisprudence, sometimes from history, sometimes from practical expediency. My own opinion is that all these methods are legitimate, and that, if their results fail to agree, it is the fault, not of the instrument, but of the worker; No doubt there exists a tendency to conflict between the historical and the analytical manner of considering legal phenomena. The historical student is tempted to regard analytical jurisprudence as shallow sciolism, while the analytical jurist is apt to charge the historical and comparative method with laxity of thought and antiquarian pedantry. Both methods are, in truth, useful and necessary, and either of them alone is imperfect; the modern developments of legal theory have shown them in their power and in their shortcomings.

The history of law was by no means neglected before the rise of modern critical jurisprudence; but its results were of little value so long as they could not be read in the light of general ideas and principles. Blackstone gives the history of English law from the thirteenth century onward, with sufficient fullness for all ordinary purposes, and, as a rule, with great accuracy; the historical merit of his "Commentaries" has been too much overlooked in the discussion of his faulty arrangement and inadequate theories. Montesquieu not only collects a great quantity of materials for legal history, but has a notion of historical method and comparative research far in advance of other writers of his time. Yet all this work remained unfruitful for the best part of a century. It had to be fertilized by the ideas of the analytical school. Bentham, on the other hand, had no room in his mind for history. He would have liked to make a clean sweep of all the laws and customs of Europe, and start afresh with a code warranted to secure the greatest happiness. Even language had for him no continuity to be respected. He seriously drafted specimens of legislation in a style invented by himself as the most appropriate for the purpose, and defying all the usages of common syntax. A system proceeding from this habit of mind could not easily adapt itself to the facts of different ages and societies. Its general propositions were, in truth, like those of political economy, drawn from the conditions of a particular society at a particular time, or, rather, those conditions as they would be in the absence of disturbing elements. These conditions have still their peculiar value for scientific jurisprudence, insomuch as they are those which more and more tend to be realized in the progress of modern civilized communities. But this value can not be rightly perceived, and set on its true footing, until the extreme claims of abstract analysis have broken down in the presence of unforeseen and refractory elements of fact.

A History of the People of the United States, from the Revolution to the Civil War. By John Bach McMaster. In five volumes. Vol. I. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 622. Price, $2.50.