York, 1863). From these works must not be separated, of course, Jomini's Précis de l'art de la guerre (Paris, 2 vols. 8vo; Brussels, 2 vols. 8vo); which again is accessible in an English translation by two American officers: Summary of the Art of War (New York, 1854). It is difficult to make any selection of the other interesting historical and didactic works of the period, all having the special value of being exponents of a system of war at this moment in actual practice.

We have already mentioned (in our March number) the most important works on the life and character of Napoleon. We add a few titles of such as are more especially addressed to the military student. Such are General Mathieu Dumas' Préces des évènements militaires depuis le 1er mai, 1799, jusqu'en 1814, in nineteen volumes, with maps and plans. This work enjoys the very highest reputation. Of much the same rank are the Mémoires of Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr. Paris, 1821-29, 9 vols. 8vo. Napoleonists think the author rather too much disposed to find fault with the Emperor. Jomini ranks very high. General Pelet's Mémoires sur la guerre de 1809 en Allemagne, &c., 1824, 4 vols. 8vo. Marshal Suchet proved himself in Spain to be second to none of Napoleon's generals, and his Mémoires in 2 vols. 8vo are esteemed in proportion. The Memoirs of others of Napoleon's marshals, as they have been published, at intervals, necessarily possess peculiar value-especially those of Soult and Marmont. The Russian campaign has been written by a legion: Labaume's Relation circonstanciée (Paris, 1820, 6th ed.) was approved by Napoleon at St. Helena; Chambrai's Histoire, in 3 vols. 8vo, is called the best by Rocquancourt; while Marshal Marmont gave the highest credit to the work of a civilian, the Histoire de Napoléon et de la Grande Armée en 1812, by the Comte de Ségur, of which (as well as of Labaume's) an English translation is a current book. There is an English translation of General Clausewitz's critical view of the same campaign (London, 1843, 8vo). Baron Odeleben's Campaign in Saxony (Eng. trans., London, 1820, 2 vols. 8vo.), is the source of the best account of Napoleon's behavior while in the field; and the Commentaries of the Cathcart who fell at Inkerman, on the war in Russia and Germany in 1812 and '13 (London, 1850), have uncommon military value.

The part which Great Britain took in these wars has led to the production of many excellent works, in reference to them, in the English language. Napier's War in the Peninsulawith all its outrageous faults, the best military history of the day--is too well known to need further mention. Larpont's Private Journal in the Peninsula from 1812 (London, 1853, 3 vols. 12mo), brings us as near the person of Wellington as Odelebon's does to that of Napoleon. English literature is so

overrun with really admirable books on the Peninsular War, that we must pass the most of them by-such as Gleig's Subaltern, Sherer's Recollections of the Peninsula, Hamilton's Annals, &c., &c.-to particularize, the important scientific works of Colonel Jones: Journal of the Sieges undertaken by the Allies in Spain, in the years 1811 and 1812, with Notes (London, 1814, 8vo), which the French have translated, although they possess Belmar's Journaux des siéges faits ou soutenus par les Français dans le Péninsule de 1807 à 1814 (Paris, 1837, 4 vols. 8vo, with atlas in folio).

Men are not yet tired of making and reading books on the great historical battle of Waterloo. It is well, therefore, to name a few of them here. Napoleon's papers (the Mémoires by Montholon, &c.). contain three different accounts, all valuable in their way; none of them written with any very strict regard for truth. Grouchy, Gourgaud, Gérard, and other French officers, published their controversial pamphlets. Quinet, Thiers (in his detached chapter), and Charras (lately died in exile), have published volumes. Of these, Thiers's gives the clearest and liveliest view of the plan and progress of the fight, and is as fair and accurate as the Emperor's own; Charras' is controversial and minutely exact, while the style has the piquancy of Tacitus. It has appeared in three editions, the last of which is a 12mo, with a sufficient atlas. Charras is said to have published a most trenchant eritique on Thiers' chapter, but we have not yet seen it; and Marshal Grouchy's son has vindicated the memory of his father from this renewed attack. The Prussian history of the battle is given in Plotho's War of the Allied Powers, &c. (the German title has escaped us), Berlin, 1818. Damitz's German work, based on the papers of General Grollmann: Geschichte des Feldzugs von 1815 in den Niederlanden und Frankreich (Berlin, 1838), can be had in French also: Histoire de la campagne de 1815 (Paris, 1842, 2 vols. in 8vo, with plans). The English books are in themselves a legion; but the one exhaustive record is that of Captain Siborne: History of the War in France and Belgium, &c. London, 1844, 2 vols. 8vo, with a very remarkable atlas of plans engraved in medallion style. With this should be read the articles in the Quarterly (No. cxi., for June, 1842, and No. cli., for June, 1845), ascribed to Lord Ellesmere, written in evident communication with the Duke of Wellington, and that in the Edinburgh Review, for June, 1863 (No. ccxxxix.), which has especial reference to Thiers, Quinet, and Charras. Of course, the Dispatches of the Duke of Wellington (London, 1834, &c., 12 vols. 8vo), with the supplementary volumes, now in course of publication, must always recommend themselves to the serious attention of such as would trace the workings of a great captain's mind in all its details and under every difficulty. Brialmont's

Life of the Duke of Wellington, as translated and supplemented by Gleig (London, 3 vols. 8vo), may also be recommended.

The theoretical works of this period, complete in number and value, with its memoirs and histories-Jomini's take the lead-as the recognized exponents of Napoleonic strategy, and need no further mention. Side by side with these-and, in the opinion of some military men, even superior to them-must be placed the works of the truly illustrious Archduke Charles. Captain De La Barre Duparcq has presented in a superb folio volume (Paris, 1851, Tanéra), the Archduke's Principes de la grande guerre, suivis d'exemples tactiques raisonnés de leur application" the most curious work (says the translator) of the worthy adversary of Napoleon." A complete edition of the Archduke Charles's military works, in the original German, is now passing through the press at Vienna. Napoleon's own supreme position as a military author need be mentioned only for the purpose of observing, that his various notes, dictations, &c., are now to be had collected together as his works (Euvres, Paris, 5 vols. 8vo). The Military Maxims of Napoleon are, of course, known to everybody. The Marquis de Ternay's Traité de Tactique, edited by Koch (Paris, 1832, 2 vols. 8vo, or Brus sels, 1 vol., with atlas); Lallemand's Traité théorique et pratique des opérations secondaires de la guerre (Paris, 1825, 2 vols. 8vo, with atlas); La Roche-Aymon's Mémoires sur l'art de la guerre (Paris, 1857, 5 vols. 8vo, with atlas), as well as his work Des troupes légères (1857, 1 vol.), and his great De la Cavalerie. (1828-9, 2 vols. 8vo); and General Rogniat's Considérations, already mentioned, are mere specimens from a field unrivalled in the richness of its production.* The high authority of General Sigel induces us to add certain little essays of Marshal Bugeaud, as of the very highest value, viz.: his Instructions pratiques: Avant-poste-reconnoissances stratégie — tactique, &c., &c. Paris, 1855, 1 vol.

Our own generation has had its interesting military events, and its share of productiveness in excellent military books. The wars of the Hungarian insurrection, in 1848 and 1849, gave specimens of extraordinary strategic talent, especially on the part of Görgei, whose work (known in the English translation by the title of My Life and Acts in Hungary (New York and London, 1852, 12mo) enabled Sir Archibald Alison to produce an unusually good military history in the chapters

*This work of Rogniat is so particularly mentioned because of the important discussions to which it gave .rise. General Marbot attacked some of its positions in his Remarques critiques sur l'ouvrage du Général Rogniat (Paris, 1821, 8vo); and Napoleon himself showed his sense of the damage which Rogniat's severe criticism of some of his operations might do him, by dictating certain very copious "Notes" on the Considérations at St. Helena; to which Rogniat-nowise abashed at the eminence of his adversary—replied at considerablo length in his Réponse aux notes critiques de Napoléon, &c. (Paris, 1823, 8vo.)

devoted to that struggle, in his later History of Europe. But this war has been treated with the greatest ability and equal dryness by one whom we have already mentioned as taking the lead among our contemporary military authors, in the Geschichte des ungarischen Insurrectionskrieges in den Jahren 1848 und 1849, von W. Rüstow, Zürich, 1860-1, 2 vols. 8vo. The same author closes his most readable production, Die Feldherrnkunst des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Zurich, 1857, 8vo, p. 795), with a succinct military history of all these wars, including that of Baden, in 1849, in which some of our own able officers of foreign birth bore an honorable part. If, from this circumstance, any of our readers should be interested in that brief struggle (and it was not without its military lessons) we can reccommend as an excellent work, on the republican side, Becker and Essellen's Geschichte der süddeutschen MaiRevolution. (With maps and plans.) Schaffhausen, 1849, 8vo.

The Invasion of the Crimea has found its English historian in Kinglake. The French have General Niel's Siége de Sébastopol, published by authority of the War Department, Paris, 1858, 4to, with atlas; while the recent work of General Todleben (made familiar to the English reader by our friend Russell) speaks ably for Russia. An official account of the recent French campaign in Italy has been published under the title of Campagne de l'Empereur Napoléon III. en Italie, publiée par ordre de Sa Majesté (Paris, Dumaine, 1863, 4to, with atlas). Baron de Bazancourt has treated the same campaign in Chronique of 2 vols. 8vo (Paris, Amyot, 1860). Garibaldi's feats a year later have been treated by Rüstow (who was on the spot), in German: his work has been translated into French (La Guerre Italienne en 1860. Paris, Charbulier, 1862, 8vo) And, finally, hardly has the Schleswig-Holstein war been closed, when Rüstow has appeared as its historian.

And here we close our list of such books as we could recommend a well-educated officer to choose from, in forming a general military library. It would take the space of a regular military bibliography to name the works appropriate to the several special libraries, which officers of different services might be disposed respectively to form. What we have said is so obviously imperfect, to ourselves as well as to others, that we are forcibly reminded of the pressing demand there is for a reasonably full and accurate Military Bibliography, so far and so conscientiously raisonné as to be a safe guide to the purchaser of military books in every department and of every period. The close of the war is not to be the extinction of all the interest now felt in military science and military literature; and the booksellers, who hope to import largely for military readers, would find their account in encouraging the preparation of such a "Soldier's Brunet" as we have recommended.

A WORD ABOUT SLANG.

THE French use the same word, argot, to represent both "slang" and "dead-wood." The connection is natural and plain, the first operating as an impediment to the healthy progress of a language, as the second does to the progress of a vehicle.

Slang is to a language what any gross perversion of a usage of society is to the etiquette of refinement.

It is an excrescence, the visible effect of a disease- -a plaguespot, which, striking the eye at every turn, is too common to excite terror, yet is none the less a sign of pestilence, spreading daily and hourly, threatening its victims with corruption and decay. To guard against the growth of the evil is the duty not only of the physician, but of every one who values the health and strength of vigorous manhood, and desires to see no taint transmitted to posterity.

The settlement of the question, "How much slang should be allowed to obtain in a given language?" has never been reached. In this the sages of the world are far behind the driver of the Dutch trek-schuyt, who calculates to a nicety the pounds and ounces his conveyance can bear without foundering, before he will consent to bargain for your freight-careful that a ton too much, which pays him certain thalers, does not, in the end, entail upon him an expense of many more broad pieces in the matter of repairs.

More than one philosopher has observed that the degeneration of a people's language marks the degeneration of the people. The history of Greece and that of ancient Italia bear testimony to the truth of the assertion. Purity of thought requires the language of purity; and where the speech is coarse, or brutal, or obscene, the fair inference is that the thoughts of which it is the messenger are fittingly represented. Too little heed is paid to the experience of the past, and it is but rational to suppose that we, as a people, are now suffering, to a certain extent, for this sin of indifference or carelessness.

The corruption of our language for that impurity is fast becoming the characteristic of ordinary conversation, no one can deny is the result of many causes, chief among which is the prevalence of a slang style among those who cater for the public amusement in the columns of our papers, and even our more dignified magazines. As these form the circulating libraries of the masses, and as their great aim is originality, the people, glad to greet novelty in whatever form it appears, readily fall into the easy habit of slovenly specch, and adopt it