CURRENT LITERATURE.
With one exception, the non-Scotch articles in the April num- ber of the Scottish. Review have a belated look. It is virtually impossible to say anything fresh about Darwin, Emerson, or Schopenhauer, although we must admit that the Rev. Mr. Munro, who discourses on "The Founder of Modern Pessimism," shows that he has mastered the literature of his subject. The exception is "Songs and Rhymes from the Dialects of South Italy," which may fairly be described as an excursion into a region that, from the literary point of view, is almost a terra incognita. Certain of the beauties of South Italian poetry, as made known by the writet of this paper, strike us as positively revelations. The purely Scotch articles are numerous, and most varied in their character. The Treasurer of the Scottish Home-rule Association writes on "Scot. land and Home-rule" in a way which certainly shows how far a movement of this kind can go when once it is commenced. Readers of a paper with the mysterious and, indeed, gruesome title of " Huchown of the Awle Ryale," will find that it is only an essay—but a very learned essay in its way—on one of the first and least known of Scotch poets, who is probably identical with a Sir Hew Eglinton who figured in the Scottish Court in the middle of the fourteenth century. There are not, perhaps, many new facts in a paper on "The Culdees," but old facts are dealt with in a fresh way, and an attempt is made to clear up certain historical uncertainties.
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