Viscount Wolseley essays to do for John Churchill what Mr. Froude tried to do for the lecherous Tudor. To those who have been accustomed to re gard Marlborough in the view of Macaulay and Thack eray, the present attempt will seem arduous. We cannot say that the noble author has changed our own opinion, nor does it seem to us probable that he will change that of others. He has to concede a great many unpleasant facts about his hero. That his sister was a king's mistress and that he himself was the " fancy man " of a king's mistress; that his brother was a public peculator; that his wife was an ignoble and selfish favorite of a stupid queen, whom she ruled in the interest of herself and her husband; that Marlborough heaped up a great fortune at court by some means; that he was a shameless hypocrite; that he was a traitor to his king and deserted him and went over to the enemy almost on the field of battle, for which he should have been shot had his king prevailed; that after the new king came in he was in correspondence with the French court for the purpose of selling him out and bringing back the old king; — these are charges which the biographer frankly admits, but which he palliates on the ground that he was no worse than many other public men of his time, and that by the standard of morality of his time he must be judged. Even on this argu ment it seems to us that the noble biographer is lame, for there were comparatively few such scoun drels as Marlborough even in his own time; many, perhaps most of the public men, even then refrained from treason and double treason. The apology seems as unsatisfactory as that offered by Mr. Dixon for Bacon's bribe-taking — many judges took bribes or presents. The answer is, that even then it was deemed immoral, and he was punished for it. Gen. Wolseley also proffers another excuse, which ap parently is much like washing a dirty man with dirty water. He says that Marlborough was insincere in his letters to the French court proposing the return of the Pretender; he was only hedging. Very likely he was. He seems to have been a most adroit trimmer, utterly selfish and completely unscrupulous. But the biographer insists strongly that he was patriotic — that all these shifts and turns and mean actions were because of his love for his country. His proofs seem quite inconclusive. If Marlborough loved his country it was only that he might prosper, and be great and rich. He viewed his country only as a means to his own ignoble ends. Imagine Churchill going to prison or the block for country's sake! The biographer also finds another virtue in his hero — he was pious; he prayed all night before Blenheim. If he did, it was only because he had the belief that it would help him succeed next day. He always prayed the Lord to help Jack Churchill —

never to prosper the right independent of him and his fortunes. The two volumes now presented bring the subject only down to Anne's accession, and the military career of the great soldier is reserved for future consideration. In the additional volumes doubtless the biographer will essay to vindicate his hero against the charge that he prolonged the war and so conducted it as to advance his own fortunes irrespective of patriotism or piety. Those persons who believe that Shakespeare did not write his plays because he was uneducated, will derive little cor roboration of their theory in the contemplation of Jack's spelling and rhetoric. The former is gro tesquely illiterate, the latter that of a peasant.

The Jury System. — Under this somewhat mis leading title, Mr. George M. Curtis, of New York City, has an article in the June number of the " Yale Law Journal." This gentleman is known, we be lieve, as an able criminal lawyer and a remarkable verdict-getter. He sets out with several recom mendations to the constitutional convention now sit ting in that State, which would be more appropriately and just as effectively addressed to the legislature, such as allowing the prisoner's counsel the last ad dress to the jury, providing for the payment by the public of stenographers' fees and the expenses of printing appeal papers for poor prisoners, and the setting aside of jurors who have formed any opinion in the case although removable by evidence. Mr. Curtis is the gentlemen who succeeded in clearing Buford of the charge of murdering Judge Elliott of Kentucky. This gentleman, in an unfortunate access of whiskey, rushed out and shot down the illadvised judge because he had lately decided a case against him. Mr. Curtis got him off on the ground of emotional alcoholism, if we recollect right. He tells us here, however, that he "shall always be lieve that he saved his life by an earnest appeal to the religious sentiments of the jury." We had not given Mr. Curtis credit for so much humor. He tells us also of several other notable triumphs of his forensic skill. Among his clients was a kingly Irish adventurer named McCarthy, charged with thieving. He was guilty enough, but our narrator rescued him from a jury of Irish Roman Catholics by rehearsing Macaulay on the battle of Landen, " where the Sarsfields and McCarthys broke forever the British boast of invincibility with the bayonet." He says "the effect of this allusion was electrical." It must have been, for " the jury retired and acquitted Mc Carthy with nine cheers." We should call the effect cheering. If one of Mr. Curtis's tales, attributed to James W. Gerard, is authentic, he cught to ask the constitutional convention to piohibit sheriffs from con-