In this substantial volume M. Charles de Mazade has related in a very interesting manner the history of an extraordinarily interesting career. Cavour's career was a short one—the space of eleven years covers the whole of it, and the shorter space of six years witnessed its most striking achievements—but it was nevertheless one of the most remarkable and most active in the annals of statesmanship. Clearly and harmoniously unfolded as it is in these pages, it reads indeed like a romance or a fairy-tale: there seems almost an element of magic in Cavour's inveterate successes. M. de Mazade is a passionate admirer of his hero, and the story loses in his hands none of its brilliancy of coloring. But it needs no retouching: the naked facts themselves are a drama, with all the necessary requisites—the large and moving argument, the skilful performers, the thickening plot, the moment of suspense, the happy dÉnouement, the attentive auditory. The work accomplished by Cavour had a peculiar completeness and unity: it was a single, consistent task cut out for him by circumstances. It is sometimes said of him that circumstances had more part in the result than the man himself, and that if they had not happened to combine themselves again and again in a peculiarly favorable manner the liberator of Italy would not have been known beyond the limits of the quiet little kingdom of Piedmont. But M. de Mazade points out that Cavour's greatness was precisely in his marvellous talent for making his occasion—for knowing just the way in which to take hold of circumstances. From the day on which, of his own moment and as the first step in a far-seeing plan, he sent, in the face of domestic opposition, a Piedmontese contingent to the Crimean war, he pursued this vigilant culture of opportunity without faltering or going astray. M. de Mazade characterizes him as an extraordinary mixture of prudence and boldness; and these qualities with him always went hand in hand. He knew equally well how to wait and when to act. But it is the element of discretion, the art of sailing with the current of events, that enabled him to effect a great revolution by means that were, after all, in relation to the end in view, not violent—by measures that were never reckless, high-handed or of a character to force from circumstances more than they could naturally yield. For M. de Mazade, Cavour is the model of the moderate and conservative liberal. Liberal he was, as a friend said of him, "as he was fair-complexioned, lively and witty—by birth." But M. de Mazade constantly emphasizes the fact that his liberalism was untinged by the radical leaven, and that if he was a liberator, he had nothing in common with some of the gentry who aspire to this title. All this is very obvious. Cavour was not only the champion of his country: he was also the servant of his king, and his dream was to see Italy not only united, but brought under the sway of the old Piedmontese crown. He often said, according to M. de Mazade, that no republic can give as much liberty, and as real liberty, as a constitutional monarchy that operates regularly. It is noticeable that, keeping in view his hero's conservative side, M. de Mazade relates in considerable detail the story of the liberation of Italy, with no allusion to Mazzini beyond speaking of him two or three times as a vulgar and truculent conspirator, and with a regrettable tendency to stint the mixture of praise to the erratic but certainly, during a most important period, efficient Garibaldi. But Cavour's nature was a wonderfully rich and powerful one; and there is something very striking in such religious devotion to an idea when it is unaccompanied with fanaticism or narrowness of view, and tempered with good sense and wit and the art of taking things easily.

Cavour had had his idea from the first: he cherished it for a long time very quietly: he was awaiting his opportunity. "We will do something," he said one day in 1850, rubbing his hands—his legendary gesture—as he looked across Lago Maggiore to the Austrian shore. It was not till 1855 that the first serious opportunity came, but he attached himself to this with the quiet zeal and obstinacy of a man who feels that he is driving in the narrow end of the wedge. There were all sorts of telling objections to be made to the co-operation of Piedmont in the Crimean war, and Cavour was at the disadvantage, for a man who was rigidly and supremely practical, of having to defend his course on ideal and far-fetched grounds. But his idealism proved to be plain good sense: it brought little Piedmont to the notice of Europe, and gave her the right to call attention to her affairs. The young Italian officer spoke the truth who said to a poor soldier struggling with the mud in the Crimean trenches, "Never mind—make the best of it: with this mud we are making Italy!" As Piedmont had had a hand in the war, so she had a seat at the Congress of Paris which followed it; and here Cavour, finding his auditory ready made to his hand, introduced—a little perhaps by the shoulders—the then comparatively novel "Italian question." This was his second opportunity. The emperor Napoleon had asked him, from an impulse of imperial civility, "If there was any thing he could do for Italy?" and Cavour, taking him at his word, and more than his word, had instantly drawn up a list of desiderata. M. de Mazade gives a detailed and very interesting account of the gradual adoption by the emperor of his Italian policy—of the various phases through which it passed, of its complications and interruptions, and of Napoleon's curiously fitful, illusive and at times evasive attitudes. Cavour's relations with Napoleon III. may serve as the best example of his disposition to use the best instruments and opportunities that offered themselves, and not quarrel with them because they were not ideally perfect. This was what the Italian "patriots" of the mere romantic type could never forgive: that Italy should appeal for liberation to the oppressor of France was to them a displeasing and monstrous anomaly. But Cavour had a lively sense of reality in human affairs, and for him the best thing was the best possible thing. It was enough that—for reasons best known to himself—the "Man of December" had taken a fancy to this idea of lending a hand to the oppressed Peninsula: his own duty was to fan the flame. The emperor's sympathy with Italian independence is certainly the most interesting and honorable feature in his career, and its mingled motives and mysterious fluctuations present a very curious study. The desire to do something for Italy was, however, steadfast, and had been an early dream; and the reader of M. de Mazade's pages can easily believe that Cavour's personal influence and magnetism had something—had even a good deal—to do with bringing it to a climax. Napoleon appreciated the Piedmontese statesman, and felt his superiority. From a certain ideal point of view there is something displeasing in seeing the advocate of so noble a cause dancing attendance upon an unscrupulous adventurer, and hanging as it were upon his lips; but we know not what other ways there may have been: we only know that, in fact, a great deal of generous French blood was shed upon the plains of Lombardy.

After the Congress of Paris, Cavour spent two years of eager, anxious waiting and of the most active private agitation. It was by the aid of England and France combined that he proposed to compass his aim, but he had, in the case of England, to content himself with a strictly Platonic sympathy. His mingled ardor and tact during this period, his tension of purpose, and yet his self-restraint, his inveterate skill in turning events to his advantage, are vividly narrated by M. de Mazade. At last, in the summer of 1858, Napoleon sent for him to PlombiÈres, drove him out in a dog-cart, and during the drive told him that he was now ready to "do something" for Italy. Then and there the outline of the war of 1859 was resolved upon. The abrupt conclusion of the war was, at least momentarily, a profound disappointment to Cavour: the Peace of Villafranca, which left half its fruits ungathered, seemed to the Italian party almost an act of treachery on the part of the French emperor. Napoleon was, in fact, alarmed at his work: he had been almost too successful, and he determined to throw up the game. Cavour, in irritation, disgust and despair, immediately withdrew from the ministry, his place being taken by Urbano Rattazzi. The new minister presided at that great breaking-up throughout the rest of Italy for which the expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy had given the signal, and which took place under the direct patronage of Piedmont. The attitude of the latter state was a very difficult one, and Rattazzi proved but half master of the situation: at the end of six months Cavour was recalled to power. From this point in his work one step succeeds another with a sort of dramatic effectiveness. He was confronted with the constant necessity of presenting an unflinching front to Austria; the necessity, equally imperious, of checking reactionary excesses in Parma and Modena, Bologna and Tuscany; the need of keeping what had been gained, and at the same time reaching forth for more; of keeping on good terms with France, who had drawn back almost as far as she first advanced; of remaining free, especially, from the reproach of meddling with the papacy—an enterprise for which the occasion was not ripe; of stimulating England, who had advanced in proportion as France withdrew; and of being supremely careful, generally, to commit no faults. The cession of Savoy and Nice brought down upon Cavour a storm of denunciation, but he had counted the cost, and the resolution with which he paid the price of Napoleon's assistance was extremely characteristic of him. It was apparently equally characteristic of Garibaldi, born at Nice and her most illustrious son, that he felt it a mortal affront that by this diplomatic bargain he should have been "deprived of a country." M. de Mazade characterizes very happily Cavour's attitude during Garibaldi's invasion of the Two Sicilies—his silent complicity, his skill in giving his terrible associate rope, as it were, and yet keeping him in hand. Cavour did not live to see the last two acts of his great drama—the occupation of Venetia and of Rome—but they were only, as it were, the epilogue: they were implied in what had gone before. He died of overwork—broke down in the midst of his labors. Great innovator as he had been, he was remarkable for the moderation of his attitude toward the Church; and the last words he uttered to the good friar who attended his deathbed were a repetition of his famous formula—"Libera chiesa in libero stato."

During the three quarters of a century which have elapsed since the French invasion a voluminous Egyptian library has been built up, but it is almost wholly scientific, sentimental or "entertaining." Of the antiquities and the natural history of the country, the temples, mummies and crocodiles, and the humors of Fellah-life, we have been told a great deal. An account of the condition and prospects of the country from an economic point of view has remained a desideratum. This seems the less remarkable when we recall the fluctuations through which the industry, commerce and politics of Egypt have passed since Mehemet Ali seized and commenced repolishing the sceptre of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies. He and his four successors stood forth as the absolute lords of the land; but it was subject not only to the accidents of their character and policy, but to the capricious and almost always mischievous interference of their suzerain the Porte, and the often beneficial, but never quite disinterested, control of the great Christian powers.

The progress of the past fourteen years has been more palpable than that of the preceding half century. The khedive Ismaal succeeded the reactionary Abbas, who stopped, and, as far as in him lay, nullified, the work of Mehemet in 1865. Since that year 971 out of 1126 miles of railway have been built; three or four hundred miles of telegraph have grown to fifty-five hundred; 112 miles of canal have been dug, and a great part of the old system deepened or restored; the great Suez Canal, additional to that, has been undertaken and completed at a net cost to Egypt of sixty-seven millions of dollars; the barrage, or damming for irrigation purposes, of the Lower Nile has been pushed at a cost of five millions; ten millions have been spent on the harbor of Alexandria, one upon lighthouses, which make the coast as safe as that of any European power, and half a million on the bridge at Cairo; schools have been multiplied, remodelled and endowed in like proportion; the judiciary has been recast with the best results, so far as time has permitted them to be shown; and the exports, excluding the transit-trade, which the opening of the Isthmus Canal has diverted from Alexandria, raised from twenty-four millions in 1866 to sixty-three millions in 1875. The cotton production, created about the beginning of the present reign by the civil war in the United States, shows a recovery and re-advance since the loss of that stimulus, shipments from Alexandria having grown from 1,288,797 quintals in 1866 to 2,615,120 in 1875. The blow dealt the commerce of that city by the transfer of the Indian trade to Port SaÏd has similarly been "discounted," the mercantile sagacity of Alexander the Great continuing to assert itself in a movement of business and population which cannot fail to be largely aided by the extension of the arable area of Egypt proper and the railway development of Nubia and the Soudan. The population of the first of these three districts has grown to five and a half millions, or 484 to the square mile—a density exceeding that of Belgium. Its multiplication, and the more wonderful advance in the products of its industry, go to support Mr. McCoan's assertions of its general well-being. In this regard he maintains that the Egyptian peasantry compare favorably with those of any Eastern country. Their mode of life, rude enough in the eyes of Western tourists, is, he holds, the same as under the builders of Thebes, and much the same with what the climate and other local conditions will always make it. Their oppression by the old system of tax-collecting and military conscription has been greatly relieved. We cannot see, indeed, why an army nominally of thirty, but actually of less than twenty thousand, and recruited in great measure from Nubia, should be burdensome. The navy has almost disappeared, a veto from Constantinople having made iron-clads a prohibited luxury, so that impressment for the fleet is unfelt.

Mr. McCoan, though generally fair and practical in his statements, tends to the rose-colored side of things Egyptian. Thus it fares with slavery. Slaves, white and black, are very numerous in Egypt, "nearly all the indoor work of every family above the poorest" being done by slaves. In the town of Mansourah in 1873 an English consular agent, "in rank not even a vice-consul," used his power under a then existing privilege to liberate "seventeen hundred in a single month." Mansourah has but sixteen thousand of population, so that the slave-element must be great. But Mr. McCoan says the institution is strictly patriarchal, and no way comparable to the extinct Western form. This does not seem to be borne out by his other statement, that "few black slaves (the most numerous by far) reach middle age, ten or a dozen years generally sufficing to sweep away a generation, at the end of which the whole have to be replaced." And how are they replaced? By Arab raids among the negro tribes, costing the death, in battle or on the march, of four or five for one that reaches the Nile or the Red Sea. The Circassian supply has been brought pretty well to an end by the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, and is kept up only in a feeble way by the continued habit of selling their daughters yet prevalent among the emigrants from that region who have sought refuge among their coreligionists in the interior of Turkey.

The fortunes of Egypt must be affected by the Turko-Russian war; although, as England is quite able, and seemingly quite determined, to cork up the Dardanelles, it is not likely that the ships of the czar can threaten Port SaÏd for generations to come. The interest of the money-changers, too, is to keep her quiet and the hands of her Fellaheen occupied only with the implements of peace—the shovel and the hoe. She is far from warlike, is indisposed in the extreme to quarrelling with Europe or any part of it, and should the Turkish empire go to wreck, will be content to drift out of the wreck as noiselessly as possible. She will, if allowed a chance, be able ere long to set a shining and valuable example of thrift and liberality to the rest of the Moslem world. She has already shown that its crust of bigotry and case-hardened conservatism may be broken, and nobody of any faith be one whit the worse. Her capacity for improvement will not be questioned by any reader of this volume, which is the result of a thorough study of her condition and recent progress.

HOLIDAY BOOKS.

The season for holiday publications has not yet fairly opened, but we notice a few of those which have already reached us, hoping to present a tolerably complete list in our next number.

Californian Pictures in Prose and Verse, by Benjamin Parke Avery (New York: Hurd & Houghton), is not a record of travel, but a description of scenes visited by the author, whose observations extend over a large portion of California, from Mount Shasta to the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is written in a clear and fluent style, but "word-painting" is a form of writing requiring exceptional nicety of execution, and Mr. Avery has not the power or delicacy of language which would be needed to sustain the interest of a volume of this size with little or no aid from incident. There is no sauce piquante to set forth attractively the real merits which the volume possesses. A sincere feeling for Nature appears to have been turned by Mr. Avery into the special channel of enthusiasm for the Sierra scenery, which he has studied with loving and minute care. He explored no new region, but he went beyond the beaten track, and has sought to avoid a repetition of the most worn Californian themes. Yet it is to Californians and to those who have visited the State that the book must chiefly appeal; and to these it may safely be recommended as a memorial volume, agreeably written, handsomely got up, and embellished with illustrations by various artists and engravers, some of Mr. Thomas Moran's familiar light-bathed distances being perhaps the most noticeable.

Three volumes, bearing the imprint of G. P. Putnam's Sons, are suitable for children of almost any age. Of these, Six Sinners; or, School-Days in Bantam Valley, by Campbell Wheaton, is a pleasantly-written story, the warm-hearted, clever, impulsive little heroine being very naturally and sympathetically drawn. There is a good deal of reality in the delineation of the other characters, and the school in which the sensitive Dora was so miserable is no doubt a faithful picture of some boarding-school in New England of twenty years ago. The miseries, though pathetic, are not of long duration: we take leave in the last chapter of a very happy little girl, with friends reconciled and circumstances adjusted in the most delightful way. The story is nicely constructed, and the interest well sustained, but the title seems to have no special fitness beyond that of alliteration.

Patsy (by Leora B. Robinson) goes through all the stages of girlhood, from pinafores and paper dolls to long dresses and young ladyhood, with bewildering celerity. We find her on one page learning the Primer along with the elements of flirtation, and on the next she is finishing her education with all the philosophies and -ologies. There is no lack of funny incidents in the book, but they are too crowded, and the characters are too numerous. This, however, may be no obstacle to children, who have often a faculty for unravelling genealogical problems, and like to have their fun spread thick. They will not even have to skip the moral, which, such as it is, is aimed entirely at parents and guardians.

The Wings of Courage, adapted from the French by Marie E. Field, with illustrations by Lucy G. Morse, contains three rather long stories. But why "adapted"? and why is not George Sand acknowledged as the author? There ought to be an authentic translation of Madame Sand's fairy-tales, which are full of fancy, earnestness and charm. These stories appeal to a more imaginative and cultured audience of boys and girls than that to which the realistic tales of American writers are addressed. The beauty and simplicity of the antique will, we fear, appear dull when compared with the adventures of hoydens and newsboys, and Young America is not partial to the young naturalist unless he justifies the singularity of his pursuit by an abundance of slaughter.