A Political and Social History of Modern Europe.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes.

PREFACE

This book represents an attempt on the part of the author to satisfy a very real need of a textbook which will reach far enough back to afford secure foundations for a college course in modern European history.

The book is a long one, and purposely so. Not only does it undertake to deal with a period at once the most complicated and the most inherently interesting of any in the whole recorded history of mankind, but it aims to impart sufficiently detailed information about the various topics discussed to make the college student feel that he is advanced a grade beyond the student in secondary school. There is too often a tendency to underestimate the intellectual capabilities of the collegian and to feed him so simple and scanty a mental pabulum that he becomes as a child and thinks as a child. Of course the author appreciates the fact that most college instructors of history piece out the elementary textbooks by means of a.s.signments of collateral reading in large standard treatises. All too frequently, however, such a.s.signments, excellent in themselves, leave woeful gaps which a slender elementary manual is inadequate to fill. And the student becomes too painfully aware, for his own educational good, of a chasmal separation between his textbook and his collateral reading. The present manual is designed to supply a narrative of such proportions that the need of additional reading will be somewhat lessened, and at the same time it is provided with critical bibliographies and so arranged as to enable the judicious instructor more easily to make subst.i.tutions here and there from other works or to pa.s.s over this or that section entirely.

Perhaps these considerations will commend to others the judgment of the author in writing a long book.

Nowadays prefaces to textbooks of modern history almost invariably proclaim their writers" intention to stress recent happenings or at least those events of the past which have had a direct bearing upon the present. An examination of the following pages will show that in the case of this book there is no discrepancy between such an intention on the part of the present writer and its achievement. Beginning with the sixteenth century, the story of the civilization of modern Europe is carried down the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries with constant _crescendo_. Of the total s.p.a.ce devoted to the four hundred years under review, the last century fills half. And the greatest care has been taken to bring the story down to date and to indicate as clearly and calmly as possible the underlying causes of the vast contemporaneous European war, which has already put a new complexion on our old historical knowledge and made everything that went before seem part and parcel of an old regime.

As to why the author has preferred to begin the story of modern Europe with the sixteenth century, rather than with the thirteenth or with the French Revolution, the reader is specially referred to the _Introduction_. It has seemed to the author that particularly from the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century dates the remarkable and steady evolution of that powerful middle cla.s.s--the bourgeoisie-- which has done more than all other cla.s.ses put together to condition the progress of the several countries of modern Europe and to create the life and thought of the present generation throughout the world.

The rise of the bourgeoisie is the great central theme of modern history; it is the great central theme of this book.

Not so very long ago distinguished historians were insisting that the state, as the highest expression of man"s social instincts and as the immediate concern of all human beings, is the only fit subject of historical study, and that history, therefore, must be simply "past politics"; under their influence most textbooks became compendiums of data about kings and const.i.tutions, about rebellions and battles. More recently historians of repute, as well as eminent economists, have given their attention and patronage to painstaking investigations of how, apart from state action, man in the past has toiled or traveled or done the other ordinary things of everyday life; and the influence of such scholars has served to provide us with a considerable number of convenient manuals on special phases of social history. Yet more recently several writers of textbooks have endeavored to combine the two tendencies and to present in a single volume both political and social facts, but it must be confessed that sometimes these writers have been content to tell the old political tale in orthodox manner and then to append a chapter or two of social miscellany, whose connection with the body of their book is seldom apparent to the student.

The present volume represents an effort really to combine political and social history in one synthesis: the author, quite convinced of the importance of the view that political activities const.i.tute the most perfect expression of man"s social instincts and touch mankind most universally, has not neglected to treat of monarchs and parliaments, of democracy and nationalism; at the same time he has cordially accepted the opinion that political activities are determined largely by economic and social needs and ambitions; and accordingly he has undertaken not only to incorporate at fairly regular intervals such chapters as those on the Commercial Revolution, Society in the Eighteenth Century, the Industrial Revolution, and Social Factors, 1870-1914, but also to show in every part of the narrative the economic aspects of the chief political facts.

Despite the length of this book, critics will undoubtedly note omissions. Confronting the writer of every textbook of history is the eternal problem of selection--the choice of what is most pointedly significant from the sum total of man"s thoughts, words, and deeds. It is a matter of personal judgment, and personal judgments are notoriously variant. Certainly there will be critics who will complain of the present author"s failure to follow up his suggestions concerning sixteenth-century art and culture with a fuller account of the development of philosophy and literature from the seventeenth to the twentieth century; and the only rejoinders that the hara.s.sed author can make are the rather lame ones that a book, to be a book, must conform to the mechanical laws of s.p.a.ce and dimension, and that a serious attempt on the part of the present writer to make a synthesis of social and political facts precludes no effort on the part of other and abler writers to synthesize all these facts with the phenomena which are conventionally a.s.signed to the realm of "cultural" or "intellectual"

history. In this, and in all other respects, the author trusts that his particular solution of the vexatious problem of selection will prove as generally acceptable as any.

In the all-important matter of accuracy, the author cannot hope to have escaped all the pitfalls that in a peculiarly broad and crowded field everywhere trip the feet of even the most wary and persistent searchers after truth. He has naturally been forced to rely for the truth of his statements chiefly upon numerous secondary works, of which some acknowledgment is made in the following _Note_, and upon the kindly criticisms of a number of his colleagues; in some instances, notably in parts of the chapters on the Protestant Revolt, the French Revolution, and developments since 1848 in Great Britain, France, and Germany, he has been able to draw on his own special studies of primary source material, and in certain of these instances he has ventured to dissent from opinions that have been copied unquestioningly from one work to another.

No period of history can be more interesting or illuminating than the period with which this book is concerned, especially now, when a war of tremendous magnitude and meaning is attracting the attention of the whole civilized world and arousing a desire in the minds of all intelligent persons to know something of the past that has produced it.

The great basic causes of the present war the author has sought, not in the ambitions of a single power nor in an isolated outrage, but in the history of four hundred years. He has tried to write a book that would be suggestive and informing, not only to the ordinary college student, but to the more mature and thoughtful student of public affairs in the university of the world.

CARLTON J. H. HAYES. AFTON, NEW YORK, May, 1916.

NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author begs to acknowledge his general indebtedness to a veritable host of historical writers, of whose original researches or secondary compilations he has constantly and almost unblushingly made use in the preparation of this book. At the close of the _Introduction_ will be found a list of the major works dealing with the whole period under review, or with the greater part of it, which have been drawn upon most heavily. And there is hardly a book cited in any of the special bibliographies following the several chapters that has not supplied some single fact or suggestion to the accompanying narrative.

For many of the general ideas set forth in this work as well as for painstaking a.s.sistance in reading ma.n.u.script and correcting errors of detail, the author confesses his debt to various colleagues in Columbia University and elsewhere. In particular, Professor R. L. Schuyler has helpfully read the chapters on English history; Professor James T.

Shotwell, the chapter on the Commercial Revolution; Professor D. S.

Muzzey, the chapters on the French Revolution, Napoleon, and Metternich; Professor William R. Shepherd, the chapters on "National Imperialism"; and Professor Edward B. Krehbiel of Leland Stanford Junior University, the chapter on recent international relations.

Professor E. F. Humphrey of Trinity College (Connecticut) has given profitable criticism on the greater part of the text; and Professor Charles A. Beard of Columbia University, Professor Sidney B. Fay of Smith College, and Mr. Edward L. Durfee of Yale University, have read the whole work and suggested several valuable emendations. Three instructors in history at Columbia have been of marked service--Dr.

Austin P. Evans, Mr. D. R. Fox, and Mr. Parker T. Moon. The last named devoted the chief part of two summers to the task of preparing notes for several chapters of the book and he has attended the author on the long dreary road of proof reading.

INTRODUCTION

The story of modern times is but a small fraction of the long epic of human history. If, as seems highly probable, the conservative estimates of recent scientists that mankind has inhabited the earth more than fifty thousand years [Footnote: Professor James Geikie, of the University of Edinburgh, suggests, in his _Antiquity of Man in Europe_ (1914), the possible existence of human beings on the earth more than 500,000 years ago!], are accurate, then the bare five hundred years which these volumes pa.s.s in review const.i.tute, in time, less than a hundredth part of man"s past. Certainly, thousands of years before our day there were empires and kingdoms and city-states, showing considerable advancement in those intellectual pursuits which we call civilization or culture,--that is, in religion, learning, literature, political organization, and business; and such basic inst.i.tutions as the family, the state, and society go back even further, past our earliest records, until their origins are shrouded in deepest mystery.

Despite its brevity, modern history is of supreme importance. Within its comparatively brief limits are set greater changes in human life and action than are to be found in the records of any earlier millennium. While the present is conditioned in part by the deeds and thoughts of our distant forbears who lived thousands of years ago, it has been influenced in a very special way by historical events of the last five hundred years. Let us see how this is true.

Suppose we ask ourselves in what important respects the year 1900 differed from the year 1400. In other words, what are the great distinguishing achievements of modern times? At least six may be noted:

(1) _Exploration and knowledge of the whole globe_. To our ancestors from time out of mind the civilized world was but the lands adjacent to the Mediterranean and, at most, vague stretches of Persia, India, and China. Not much over four hundred years ago was America discovered and the globe circ.u.mnavigated for the first time, and very recently has the use of steamship, telegraph, and railway served to bind together the uttermost parts of the world, thereby making it relatively smaller, less mysterious, and in culture more unified.

(2) _Higher standards of individual efficiency and comfort_. The physical welfare of the individual has been promoted to a greater degree, or at all events preached more eloquently, within the last few generations than ever before. This has doubtless been due to changes in the commonplace everyday life of all the people. It must be remembered that in the fifteenth century man did the ordinary things of life in much the same manner as did early Romans or Greeks or Egyptians, and that our present remarkable ways of living, of working, and of traveling are the direct outcome of the Commercial Revolution of the sixteenth century and of the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth.

(3) _Intensification of political organization, with attendant public guarantees of personal liberties_. The ideas of nationalism and of democracy are essentially modern in their expression. The notion that people who speak the same language and have a common culture should be organized as an independent state with uniform laws and customs was hardly held prior to the fifteenth century. The national states of England, France, and Spain did not appear unmistakably with their national boundaries, national consciousness, national literature, until the opening of the sixteenth century; and it was long afterwards that in Italy and Germany the national idea supplanted the older notions of world empire or of city-state or of feudalism. The national state has proved everywhere a far more powerful political organization than any other: its functions have steadily increased, now at the expense of feudalism, now at the expense of the church; and such increase has been as constant under industrial democracy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as under the benevolent despotism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But in measure as government has enlarged its scope, the governed have worked out and applied protective principles of personal liberties. The Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the uprisings of oppressed populations throughout the nineteenth century, would be quite inexplicable in other than modern times. In fact the whole political history of the last four centuries is in essence a series of compromises between the conflicting results of the modern exaltation of the state and the modern exaltation of the individual.

(4) _Replacement of the idea of the necessity of uniformity in a definite faith and religion by toleration of many faiths or even of no faith_. A great state religion, professed publicly, and financially supported by all the citizens, has been a distinguishing mark of every earlier age. Whatever else may be thought of the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century, of the rise of deism and skepticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth, and of the existence of scientific rationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth, there can be little doubt that each of them has contributed its share to the prevalence of the idea that religion is essentially a private, not a public, affair and that friendly rivalry in good works is preferable to uniformity in faith.

(5) _Diffusion of learning_. The invention of printing towards the close of the fifteenth century gradually revolutionized the pursuit of knowledge and created a real democracy of letters. What learning might have lost in depth through its marvelous broadening has perhaps been compensated for by the application of the keenest minds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to experimental science and in our own day to applied science.

(6) _Spirit of progress and decline of conservatism_. For better or for worse the modern man is intellectually more self-reliant than his ancestors, more p.r.o.ne to try new inventions and to profit by new discoveries, more conscious and therefore more critical of conditions about him, more convinced that he lives in a better world than did his fathers, and that his children who come after him should have a better chance than he has had. This is the modern spirit. It is the product of all the other elements of the history of five hundred years--the larger geographical horizon, the greater physical comfort, the revolutionized political inst.i.tutions, the broader sympathies, the newer ideals of education. Springing thus from events of the past few centuries, the modern spirit nevertheless looks ever forward, not backward. A debtor to the past, it will be doubly creditor to the future. It will determine the type of individual and social betterment through coming centuries. Such an idea is implied in the phrase, "the continuity of history"--the ever-flowing stream of happenings that brings down to us the heritage of past ages and that carries on our richer legacies to generations yet unborn.

From such a conception of the continuity of history, the real significance of our study can be derived. It becomes perfectly clear that if we understand the present we shall be better prepared to face the problems and difficulties of the future. But to understand the present thoroughly, it becomes necessary not only to learn what are its great features and tendencies, but likewise how they have been evolved.

Now, as we have already remarked, six most important characteristics of the present day have been developed within the last four or five centuries. To follow the history of this period, therefore, will tend to familiarize us both with present-day conditions and with future needs. This is the genuine justification for the study of the history of modern times.

Modern history may conveniently be defined as that part of history which deals with the origin and evolution of the great distinguishing characteristics of the present. No precise dates can be a.s.signed to modern history as contrasted with what has commonly been called ancient or medieval. In a sense, any division of the historical stream into parts or periods is fundamentally fallacious: for example, inasmuch as the present generation owes to the Greeks of the fourth century before Christ many of its artistic models and philosophical ideas and very few of its political theories, the former might plausibly be embraced in the field of modern history, the latter excluded therefrom. But the problem before us is not so difficult as may seem on first thought. To all intents and purposes the development of the six characteristics that have been noted has taken place within five hundred years. The sixteenth century witnessed the true beginnings of the change in the extensive world discoveries, in the establishment of a recognized European state system, in the rise of Protestantism, and in the quickening of intellectual activity. It is the foundation of modern Europe.

The sixteenth century will therefore be the general subject of Part I of this volume. After reviewing the geography of Europe about the year 1500, we shall take up in turn the _four_ factors of the century which have had a lasting influence upon us: (1) socially and economically--The Commercial Revolution; (2) politically--European Politics in the Sixteenth Century; (3) religiously and ecclesiastically--The Protestant Revolt; (4) intellectually--The Culture of the Sixteenth Century.

ADDITIONAL READING

THE STUDY OF HISTORY. On historical method: C. V. Langlois and Charles Seign.o.bos, _Introduction to the Study of History_, trans. by G. G.

Berry (1912); J. M. Vincent, _Historical Research: an Outline of Theory and Practice_ (1911); H. B. George, _Historical Evidence_ (1909); F. M.

Fling, _Outline of Historical Method_ (1899). Different views of history: J. H. Robinson, _The New History_ (1912), a collection of stimulating essays; J. T. Shotwell, suggestive article _History_ in 11th edition of _Encyclopaedia Britannica_; T. B. Macaulay, essay on _History_; Thomas Carlyle, _Heroes and Hero Worship_; Karl Lamprecht, _What is History_? trans. by E. A. Andrews (1905). Also see Henry Johnson, _The Teaching of History_ (1915); Eduard Fueter, _Geschichte der neueren Historiographie_ (1911); Ernst Bernheim, _Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie_, 5th ed. (1914); G.

P. Gooch, _History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century_ (1913).

TEXTBOOKS AND MANUALS OF MODERN HISTORY. J. H. Robinson and C. A.

Beard, _The Development of Modern Europe_, 2 vols. (1907), a political and social narrative from the time of Louis XIV, and by the same authors, _Readings in Modern European History_, 2 vols. (1908-1909), an indispensable sourcebook, with critical bibliographies; Ferdinand Schevill, _A Political History of Modern Europe from the Reformation to the Present Day_ (1907); T. H. Dyer, _A History of Modern Europe from the Fall of Constantinople_, 3d ed. revised and continued to the end of the nineteenth century by Arthur Ha.s.sall, 6 vols. (1901), somewhat antiquated but still valuable for its vast store of political facts; Victor Duruy, _History of Modern Times from the Fall of Constantinople to the French Revolution_, trans. by E. A. Grosvenor (1894), verbose and somewhat uncritical, but usable for French history. More up-to-date series of historical manuals are now appearing or are projected by Henry Holt and Company under the editorship of Professor C. H. Haskins, by The Century Company under Professor G. L. Burr, by Ginn and Company under Professor J. H. Robinson, and by Houghton Mifflin Company under Professor J. T. Shotwell: such of these volumes as have appeared are noted in the appropriate chapter bibliographies following. The Macmillan Company has published _Periods of European History,_ 8 vols.

(1893-1901), under the editorship of Arthur Ha.s.sall, of which the last five volumes treat of political Europe from 1494 to 1899; and a more elementary political series, _Six Ages of European History_, 6 vols.

(1910), under the editorship of A. H. Johnson, of which the last three volumes cover the years from 1453 to 1878. Much additional information is obtainable from such popular series as _Story of the Nations_ (1886 _sqq._), _Heroes of the Nations_ (1890 _sqq._), and _Home University Library,_ though the volumes in such series are of very unequal merit.

Convenient chronological summaries are: G. P. and G. H. Putnam, _Tabular Views of Universal History_ (1914); Carl Ploetz, _Manual of Universal History_, trans. and enlarged by W. H. Tillinghast, new edition (1915); _Haydn"s Dictionary of Dates_, 25th ed. (1911); C. E.

Little, _Cyclopaedia of Cla.s.sified Dates_ (1900); _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. XIII (1911). The best atlas--a vitally necessary adjunct of historical study--is either that of W. R. Shepherd, _Historical Atlas_ (1911), or that of Ramsay Muir, _Hammond"s New Historical Atlas for Students_, 2d ed. (1915); a smaller historical atlas is that of E.

W. Dow (1907), and longer ones are _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. XIV (1912) and, in German, Putzger, _Historischer Schulatlas_. Elaborate treatises on historical geography: Elisee Reclus, _The Universal Geography_, trans. and ed. by E. G. Ravenstein, 19 vols.; _Nouveau Dictionnaire de Geographie Universelle_, by Vivien de Saint-Martin and Louis Rousselet, 10 vols. See also H. B. George, _The Relations of Geography and History_ (1910) and Ellen C. Semple, _The Influence of Geographic Environment_ (1911).

STANDARD SECONDARY WORKS AND SETS ON MODERN HISTORY. _The Cambridge Modern History_, 12 vols. and 2 supplementary vols. (1902-1912), planned by Lord Acton, edited by A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero, and Stanley Leathes, written by English scholars, covering the period from 1450 to 1910, generally sound but rather narrowly political. Better balanced is the monumental work of a group of French scholars, _Histoire generale du IVe siecle a nos jours_, edited by Ernest Lavisse and Alfred Rambaud, 12 vols. (1894-1901), of which the last nine treat of the years from 1492 to 1900. For social history a series, _Histoire universelle du travail_, 12 vols., is projected under the editorship of Georges Renard. _The Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed. (1910-1911), is the work mainly of distinguished scholars and a storehouse of historical information, political, social, and intellectual. Also available in English is _History of All Nations_, 24 vols. (1902), the first nineteen based on translation of Theodor Flathe, _Allgemeine Weltgeschichte_,--Vols. X-XXIV dealing with modern history,--Vol. XX, on Europe, Asia, and Africa since 1871, by C. M. Andrews, and Vols.

XXI-XXIII, on American history, by John Fiske; likewise H. F. Helmolt (editor), _Weltgeschichte_, trans. into English, 8 vols. (1902-1907).

Sets and series in German: Wilhelm Oncken (editor), _Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen_, 50 vols. (1879-1893); _Geschichte der europaischen Staaten_, an enormous collection, appearing more or less constantly from 1829 to the present and edited successively by such famous scholars as A. H. L. Heeren, F. A. Ukert, Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, and Karl Lamprecht; G. von Below and F. Meinecke (editors), _Handbuch der mittel-alterlichen und neueren Geschichte_, a series begun in 1903 and planned, when completed, to comprise 40 vols.; Paul Hinneberg (editor), _Die Kultur der Gegenwart, ihre Entwicklung und ihre Ziele_, a remarkable series begun in 1906 and intended to explain in many volumes the civilization of the twentieth century in all its aspects; Erich Brandenburg (editor), _Bibliothek der Geschichtswissenschaft_, a series recently projected, the first volume appearing in 1912; J. von Pflugk-Harttung, _Weltgeschichte: die Entwicklung der Menschheit in Staat und Gesellschaft, in Kultur und Geistesleben_, 6 vols. ill.u.s.t. (1908-1911); Theodor Lindner, _Weltgeschichte seit der Volkerwanderung_, 8 vols. (1908-1914).

Valuable contributions to general modern history occur in such monumental national histories as Karl Lamprecht, _Deutsche Geschichte_, 12 vols. in 16 (1891-1909), and, more particularly, Ernest Lavisse (editor), _Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu"a la Revolution_, 9 double vols. (1900-1911).

BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARIES. General: _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 11th ed., 29 vols. (1910-1911); _New International Encyclopedia_, 2d ed., 24 vols. (1914-1916); _Catholic Encyclopedia_, 15 vols. (1907-1912). Great Britain: Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (editors), _Dictionary of National Biography_, 72 vols. (1885-1913). France: Hoefer (editor), _Nouvelle biographie generale_, 46 vols. (1855-1866); _Dictionnaire de biographie francaise_, projected (1913) under editorship of Louis Didier, Albert Isnard, and Gabriel Ledos. Germany: Liliencron and Wegele (editors), _Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_, 54 vols. (1875 _sqq_.). Austria-Hungary: Wurzbach (editor), _Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich_, 60 vols. (1856-1891). There is also a well-known French work--L. G. Michaud, _Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne_, 45 vols. (1880).

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Many of the works cited above and most of the works mentioned in the following chapter bibliographies contain convenient bibliographies on special topics. The best general guide to collections of source material and to the organization of historical study and research, though already somewhat out-of-date, is C. V. Langlois, _Manuel de bibliographie historique_, 2 vols. (1901-1904). See also C.

M. Andrews, J. M. Gambrill, and Lida Tall, _A Bibliography of History for Schools and Libraries_ (1910); and C. K. Adams, _A Manual of Historical Literature_, 3d ed. (1889). Specifically, for Great Britain: W. P. Courtney, _A Register of National Bibliography_, 3 vols. (1905- 1912); S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, _Introduction to the Study of English History_, 4th ed. (1903); H. L. Cannon, _Reading References for English History_ (1910); _Bibliography of Modern English History_, now (1916) in preparation under the auspices of English scholars and of the American Historical a.s.sociation. For German bibliography: Dahlmann- Waitz, _Quellenkunde der deutschen Geschichte_, 8th ed. (1912); _Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft_, a valuable annual publication issued under the auspices of the Historical a.s.sociation of Berlin. For French bibliography: Gabriel Monod, _Bibliographie de l"histoire de France_ (1888), new ed. projected (1910) in 4 vols.; _Manuels de bibliographie historique_ (1907-1916): Part II, 1494-1610, by Henri Hauser, _Part III, 1610-1715_, by emile Bourgeois and Louis Andre; _Repertoire methodique de l"histoire moderne et contemporaine de la France_, an annual publication edited by Briere and Caron. For American bibliography: Edward Channing, A. B. Hart, and F. J. Turner, _Guide to the Study of American History_ (1912). Among important historical periodicals, containing bibliographical notes and book reviews, are, _History Teacher"s Magazine, The American Historical Review, The English Historical Review, Die historische Zeitschrift, Revue d"histoire moderne et contemporaine, La revue historique_, and _La revue des questions historiques_. For periodical literature see _Poole"s Index_ (1802-1906) and _Readers" Guide_ (1900 _sqq._). The most famous lists of published books are: _The American Catalogue_ (1876 _sqq._); the _English Catalogue_ (1835 _sqq._); C. G. Kayser, _Bucher-Lexikon_ (1750 _sqq._); Wilhelm Heinsius, _Bucher-Lexikon_ (1700-1892); Otto Lorenz, _Catalogue general de la librarie francaise (1840 _sqq_.); and, for general comment, American Library a.s.sociation, _Index to General Literature_ (1893 _sqq._).