CURRENT LITERATURE.
Italics. By Frances Power Cobbo. (Trubner and Co.)—A series of most valuable sketches of Italy, embedded in reflections on things in general and the wrongs of woman in particular. It is an odd and in places rather a tiresome melange, but it is worth reading, for Mies Cobbe even when treating of the Nemesis of Woman writes well and simply, and as one who has something to say which she has herself observed. Her opinion of the now kingdom is, we need not say, favour- able, and she seems to believe that its organization will in the end display the French vigour with the English love for individual freedom. The most original chapter in her book is perhaps that on education, to which the Government is paying great attention. Italy has at present no less than 19 universities attended by 5,270 scholars, and 21 normal schools for training schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, the number being 901 of the former and 1,637 of the latter. Besides those there are elementary schools in 7,390 out of 7,730 communes, sometimes three to a commune, the total number being 21,000, attended by 452,273 boys and 341,929 girls, the Italian Government which is fight- ing the priests taking equal care of each sex. The course of instruction is good in principle, but it only lasts two years, and is impaired by the necessity of drawing off the pupils from the normal schools at too young an age in order to supplant the ecclesiastical teachers, still frightfully numerous. All instruction in these schools is gratuitous. There are besides infant schools, and in Genoa and Piedmont the population are creating adult schools for themselves. The Government is disposed to give the widest latitude to the desire for education, and Miss Cobbe thinks that in this thing at least it is working with a will.
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