College, and others, and the well-known Saturday Evenings at Miss
Lynch's, where literature and art and general speculation have for
some seasons had a common center, all illustrate the disposition of an
active and cultivated society, not engrossed by special or spasmodic
excitements, to cluster by rules of feeling and capacity: and clusters
of passion and mind are rarely for a long period inert. When they
become common they are apt to assume the direction of private custom
and public opinion and affairs.

In view of these things, we are sure that the readers of the
_International_ will be interested in the following translation of
Professor Schlosser's brilliant survey of those _bureaux d'esprit_
which so much distinguished society and influenced its history
in Europe, from the beginning to the middle of the last century.
Schlosser is a Privy Councillor and Professor of History in the
University of Heidelberg. He is chiefly known in continental Europe
by his great work, the History of the Eighteenth Century, and of
the Nineteenth till the overthrow of the French Empire, a work which
derives its value not merely from the profound and minute acquaintance
of the author with the subject, from the new views which are presented
and the hitherto unexamined sources from which much has been derived,
but from his well-known independence of character--from the general
conclusions which he draws from the comparative views of the
resources, conduct, manners, institutions and literature of the great
European nations, during a period unparalleled in the history of
the world for the development of the physical and mental powers of
mankind, for the greatness of the events which occurred, for the
progress of knowledge, for the cultivation of the arts and sciences,
for all that contributes to the greatness and prosperity of nations.