THE GALAXY. (continued 6)

THE "GRASSHOPPER COMMISSION."

The last Congress made an appropriation of $18,000 for an Entomological Commission, and for once the Government has made a perfectly satisfactory series of appointments. Prof. C. V. Riley, the distinguished and experienced State entomologist of Missouri, is the chief of the commission, while Prof. Cyrus Thomas, State Entomologist of Illinois, one of the most noted American authorities, and Dr. A. S. Packard, author of several works on insect and other morphology, are its other members. They will have their headquarters at Dr. Hayden's office, in Washington, and also a Western office in St. Louis. In the division of work Prof. Riley takes the country east of the Rocky mountains and south of the forty-eighth parallel, Prof. Thomas has Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and East Wyoming, and Dr. Packard the remainder of the country west of these two areas. The object of the commission may be stated to be the discovery of the best means of lessening the ravages of insects upon American crops; but to learn this it will be necessary to study not only the life histories of the grasshopper and Colorado beetle, but also their climatic and geographical relations. The damage done by insects probably amounts to some scores of millions yearly, and it has long been apparent that one of the next services demanded of scientific men would be efficient aid and direction in the warfare of man against his smallest foes in the animal world. In the early history of a country, it is possible to provide against these losses by cultivating an excess of land, but when population becomes concentrated it is necessary to avoid the loss. The destructiveness of insects has never attracted so much attention as within the last half century, which is also notable as a period of extraordinary increase in the population of the civilized portions of the world. Now that the welfare of a great empire has been seriously threatened by the operations of one insect, and several States in our own country have been so overrun with another insect that both the States concerned and the general Government have been compelled to modify their laws in order to afford relief to farmers, the important relation of insect to human life has become clear, and is receiving due attention.

SURVEYING PLANS FOR THE SEASON.

The work of the Government surveys will not be stopped by the unfortunate failure of Congress to pass an appropriation for the army. Hayden's party Will be in field by the middle of May, and Wheeler will, no doubt, be equally prompt. The former will confine his work to the region north of the Pacific railroad and east of the Yellowstone Park. The triangulating party, under Mr. A. D. Wilson, will survey a system of triangles, and locate the principal peaks. Mr. Henry Gannett will take charge of the topographical work in the western and Mr. G. B. Chittenden in the eastern half of the field. A fourth division, under Mr. G. R. Bechler, will survey in the northern portion, near the Yellowstone Park. Each of these divisions contains about ten thousand square miles, so that if the parties are able to complete their work, the ground covered will be quite large.

THE CAUSES OF VIOLENT DEATH.

The violent deaths in Great Britain in 1874 were no less than 17,920, the highest number ever registered. There were 18 executions and 1,592 suicides, so that 16,310 may be classed as unexpected. Railways killed 1,249, horse conveyances 1,313, and it is noted that those modes of conveyance which are mostly peculiar to cities were not responsible for this great slaughter. Street, or so-called horse railroads, killed 62 persons, omnibuses 55, cabs 61, and carriages 82, and these numbers show how great is the skill and care exercised in the crowded streets of cities. The source of the remaining 1,053 deaths by horses is not given in our authority (a Scotch paper), but it is probable that exercise in the saddle had much to do with them. There were 942 deaths in coal mines, and 118 in copper, tin, iron, and other mines. Lightning killed 25, sunstroke 90, and cold 114. There were 461 persons poisoned, about one-third being suicides. The bite of a fox, of a rat, of a leech, the scratch of a cat, and the sting of a hornet each killed one person, and two were stung to death by wasps. Of other noteworthy causes of death, it is mentioned that a girl fourteen years old died in childbed.

A NEW INDUCTION COIL.

The largest induction coil ever made has lately been constructed for Mr. Wm. Spottiswoode by Mr. Apps. It has two primaries, of which the one used for long sparks weighs sixty-seven pounds and is formed of a bundle of iron wires 44 inches long and 3.5625 inches in diameter. The wire is 0.032 inch in diameter. This primary has 660 yards of copper wire 0.096 inch in diameter, and wound in 1,344 turns in six layers. The spark obtained with this primary is remarkably long in proportion to the battery power used. With five Grove's quart cells the spark was 28 inches, with ten cells 35 inches, with thirty cells 37.5 inches and 42 inches, and it is thought that even better results could be obtained. The insulation is so good that seventy cells have been used without injury. The condenser is smaller than usual, being of the size commonly used with a ten-inch coil. It has 126 sheets of tinfoil, 18 by 8¾ inches, separated by two sheets of varnished paper. The other primary is heavier than the above described, weighing 92 pounds. The secondary coil contains 280 miles of wire, in 341,850 turns. It is used for spectroscopes and for short sparks. The power of this instrument is really comparable to that of lightning. A block of flint glass three inches thick has been pierced with the 28-inch spark.

FRENCH PROPERTY OWNERS.

The financial strength of the French is a constant marvel to other nations. Political economists point to the single standard of coinage or to the double standard, according as they consider France to adhere to one or the other of these systems, as the source of this strength. But the difference between that and other nations is probably more conspicuous in the management of government loans than in any other thing. The French government does not depend on syndicates. More than four million French men and women have subscribed to the public debt, and whatever arrangements are made with great bankers, the common people of France are always invited to take a part of the bonds at a fixed and fair price. That country is noticeably distinguished from Great Britain by the equally wide distribution of land. There are more than five million peasant proprietors in France, while the United Kingdom is owned by about 200,000 persons. In England one person in 130 probably owns land, as distinguished from mere house property, and outside of London one in 30 owns a house. In Scotland one in 400 is a landowner, and one in 28 has a house in his name. In Ireland one in 315 owns land, but only one in 120 has title to a house.

TRIGONOMETRICAL SURVEY OF NEW YORK.

The board of commissioners in whose charge is placed the projected trigonometrical survey of New York State report that preparations have been made for beginning the work in ten counties westward from the line of the upper Hudson river to Seneca lake. The starting points are the four United States Coast Survey stations at Mt. Rafinesque, near Troy, Helderberg, Princetown, and Greenwich. The position of these points has been very accurately ascertained by means of two independent lines of triangles carried from New England and Fire Island through Connecticut and Massachusetts. The State Survey, therefore, enjoys the advantage of starting from points that belong to the great chain of stations established by the general Government, and these are so placed that the first line of triangles which crosses the State will connect directly with another chain of similar stations on the great lakes. The plan followed includes the selection of prominent elevations of land for principal stations. An earthen vessel of peculiar shape and markings will be sunk below the first line, and its centre clearly marked. Above this will be placed a squared stone projecting from the ground. The latter will be the visible base of operations in common use, but the former will be the permanent and authoritative reference in case of any difficulty or doubt. It is intended to establish these points about twelve miles apart, and their positions will be determined by careful astronomical observations, checked by accurate measurements of their distance from neighboring stations. Wherever the nature of the ground compels the placing of these stations at distances inconveniently great, subordinate points will be established in the intermediate ground. In the present working ground the highlands which bound the Mohawk valley on the north and south afford admirable positions for these stations.

The director of the survey reports that the work is well received by farmers, and he gives some excellent reasons why it should be. Boundary marks have so generally disappeared that in tracing the boundaries of eleven counties where sixty corners had been made, only two were found. It is a part of Mr. Gardner's plan to preserve these old lines, marking them in a permanent manner. The cost of bad work appears to have been very large to the people. The citizens of the State spend $40,000 for maps that are really worthless. Designing persons obtain aid for improper enterprises by exhibiting false maps, and there is no means of disproving their assertions. Counties and towns have contributed large sums to such projects, and the total is estimated at forty million dollars. Half of this was paid for the Oswego Midland railroad, which Mr. Gardner says would never have been built had its supporters known the character of the country it would cross and the ruinous original cost and running expenses involved in its heavy cuttings and high grades. The cost of surveying the whole State is estimated at $200,000 for the trigonometrical work, which is all that is now projected. To this must eventually be added topography and mapping, though these are not necessary for fixing boundaries. Still, the whole sum required, distributed as it would be over ten years' time, would be a light burden and a remunerative expenditure.

THE USE OF AIR IN ORE DRESSING.

A correspondent, Mr. M. F. M. Cazin, writes us that the article on "Hot Water in Dressing Ores" in the March number "is another good illustration of how great men will stumble over little things. Permit me to express a principle with regard to the same matter, by which without Rittinger's profound calculations, without Ransom's laboratory experiments, the entire question about the best medium (liquid or fluid) for separating two equal sized particles of solids according to their density (specific gravity) can be settled for every special case." His "principle" is that the ideal fluid for this purpose is one that is more dense than the lighter of the two particles and less dense than the heavier. But this is no new revelation. The difficulty is that there is but one fluid of the kind, and only one metal (disregarding the very rare ones) to which it can be applied. The fluid is mercury and the metal gold. The latter has a specific gravity of say 19, and therefore sinks when it is carried upon a bath of fluid quicksilver, with a specific gravity of say 13.6. The sand with which the metal is mixed has a specific gravity of only 2.6 to 5, and floats over the mercury bath and away into the waste, thus effecting the desired separation. This operation, and the fact that there is such a thing as a theoretically ideal fluid, was clearly pointed out by Rittinger, for whom Mr. Cazin appears to have so little respect. The latter gentleman does bring forward one new point, and it is an important one. He asserts that air can be made to act as an "ideal" fluid, in the sense referred to here, by imparting motion to it. This conclusion depends on the consideration that "motion of the fluid in an opposite direction to the fall of the solid particles is equivalent (by friction, adhesion, resistance) to an increase of density of the fluid. Therefore air may by imparted motion have the same separating effect, in a specified case, as water would have without motion."

If Mr. Cazin would state his case differently, he would see more clearly the place that air has as a separating medium. It cannot be made an ideal fluid, but it is comparable with water, which also is never an ideal fluid, for there is no ore of common occurrence that is lighter than water. The question in ore dressing really is whether air can be made to work as well as water. Theoretically we can see no objection, but in practice a great many obstacles arise. The cost is greater both for machinery and operating expenses; the ore has to be dried either before or after crushing, and the efficiency of the apparatus is still doubtful. It may be possible to save more fine dust than by the wet methods, but this point remains unproved.

This subject is a very important one, and involves very great interests. It is a singular fact that the mechanical treatment of ores, which is a fundamental part of mining science and practice, is not taught in any of the American mining schools. English scientific men occasionally point to America as the land of sound and general scientific teaching, but we fear that a nearer acquaintance with our schools would rob us of that reputation. It is difficult to imagine a less complete system of instruction than that in some of our technical schools, or a more erratic sense of industrial needs than among some of our school managers.

POLAR COLONIZATION.

Congress did not appropriate the $50,000 asked for by Capt. Howgate, but from the peculiar state of politics in the last Congress this is not thought to indicate an unfavorable reception of his scheme. The bill was not reported from the naval committee. It will probably be brought up next December. That will of course be too late to accomplish anything this year, so that the summer is lost to the main expedition, but Capt. Howgate now proposes to send out an agent to settle upon a site for the proposed camp, engage Esquimaux, and make other preparations. In fact, it is proposed to spend as much as $17,000 in preliminary work and stores, and it is thought that this can be done without increasing the ultimate cost of the expedition more than four thousand dollars. We regret to see that the newspapers are apt to talk about "a dash to the pole" when they speak of this scheme. It is to be hoped that no such dash will be attempted. Capt. Howgate should start out with the fixed determination of making no attempt whatever to reach the pole the first year or two. The dashing style has been the only one used in the centuries through which the history of Arctic exploration runs. What is now of most importance is the inauguration of tentative methods. They are pretty certain to win in the end, and the other method of management is about as certain to fail.

The Government commission appointed to investigate the conduct of the English expedition has reported that its failure was principally due to the omission of lime-juice from the provision of the sledge parties. The reason for leaving it out was that fuel would have to be carried to thaw it, and with a load of 237 pounds to the man, the sledge parties were already weighted down. This shows how the most labored and extensive preparations for a "dash" may be defeated by failure in even one apparently small item.

Now that the subject of Arctic colonization is so energetically discussed in this country, it may be worth while to republish the recommendations of a German government commission appointed to consider the scheme, when it was first proposed by Weyprecht. These were as follows:

"1. The exploration of the Arctic regions is of great importance for all branches of science. The commission recommends for such exploration the establishment of fixed observing stations. From the principal station, and supported by it, are to be made exploring expeditions by sea and by land.

"2. The commission is of opinion that the region which should be explored by organized German Arctic explorers is the great inlet to the higher Arctic regions situated between the eastern shore of Greenland and the western shore of Spitzbergen.

"Considering the results of the second German Arctic expedition, a principal station should be established on the eastern shore of Greenland, and at least two secondary stations, fitted out for permanent investigation of different scientific questions, at Jan Mayen and on the western shore of Spitzbergen. For certain scientific researches the principal station should establish temporary stations.

"3. It appears very desirable, and so far as scientific preparations are concerned, possible, to commence these Arctic explorations in the year 1877.

"4. The commission is convinced that an exploration of the Arctic regions, based on such principles, will furnish valuable results, even if limited to the region between Greenland and Spitzbergen; but it is also of opinion that an exhaustive solution of the problems to be solved can only be expected when the exploration is extended over the whole Arctic zone, and when other countries take their share in the undertaking.

"The commission recommends, therefore, that the principles adopted for the German undertaking should be communicated to the governments of the States which take interest in Arctic inquiry, in order to establish, if possible, a complete circle of observing stations in the Arctic zones."

It will be observed that the Germans looked forward to occupying the adjacent parts of Greenland and Spitzbergen as their share of a line of outposts to be established by different nations around the Arctic circle. In any such scheme America would necessarily be called on to bear a part, and by Captain Howgate's plan her station would be the line of Smith's Sound and its northern prolongations. This is certainly her natural field, and is not only the roadway by which most of our explorers have made their attempts to reach the pole, and therefore hallowed by their historical struggles, but it is also that portion of the Arctic region which lies nearest us. It is emphatically a home field to us.

Twenty-seven meteors fell in the United States, and two earthquake shocks were experienced, in February.

When the Great Eastern was recently cleaned 300 tons of barnacles were scraped from her bottom, an area of more than 52,000 square feet.

During the hurricane of January 30 the waves in the British channel were forty feet high as measured by a mareograph.

In December, while the snow was blocking the roads of this country, Australia enjoyed a temperature of 110 to 116 in the shade.

Search has again been made for the planet Vulcan, the existence of which is indicated by Leverrier's calculations, but without success.

Among the results of Nordensjold's last trip to the Jenisei river in Siberia was a piece of mammoth hide found with some bones of that animal.

Hygeia, "the city of health," is to be built on the Courtland's estate, about a mile and a half west of Worthing, Sussex, England. Work will be commenced this spring.

The "Big Bonanza" yielded $20,108,958 gold and $25,700,682 silver from its discovery to September 30, 1876. In this deposit the usual preponderance of gold over silver is reversed.

The Mammoth Cave is but one among many caverns in the subcarboniferous limestones of Kentucky, the total length of which Prof. Shaler thinks is at least 100,000 miles.

During the continuance of the Centennial, the Pennsylvania railroad carried nearly five millions of passengers to Philadelphia, and out of their 760,486 trunks, valises, bags, boxes, and bundles only 26 were mislaid.

The opening of the safes, more than twenty in number, which were exposed in the great fire at the American Watch Company's New York building proved that safes, as now made by good firms, are really fire-proof under ordinary circumstances. Watch movements, bank bills, diamonds and jewelry, all came out in good order from most of them, though in some cases the outside plates were red hot. In one safe was a delicate lace shawl, worth $1,500, which was quite uninjured.

Two French astronomers, MM. André and Angot, have asked to be sent to San Francisco to observe the transit of Mercury on May 5, 1878. They hope to obtain data which will make the next transit of Venus more fruitful.

During the last year the Signal Service extended its telegraph lines across the Staked Plain to San Diego, California. Two continuous lines of telegraph now extend across the country, one in the northern and one in the southern region.

Additions of interesting animals are frequently made to the New York Aquarium. The blind Proteus from Austria, Axolotl from Mexico, Salamanders from Germany, and some curious fish from China are among the latest additions to the tanks.

The combined Signal and Life-Saving Service at Cape Henry is reported to have saved $500,000 worth of property in the storms which marked the end of March. Telegraphic connection is found indispensable to efficient work in watching the coast.

The bullion product of the United States from July 1, 1875, to June 30, 1876, was about $85,250,000, of which $46,750,000 was gold and $38,500,000 silver. The annual gold product of the world is supposed to be about $25,000,000 greater than that of silver.

The copper-bearing rocks of Lake Superior are reported by the geologist of Wisconsin to extend almost uninterruptedly across that State. In the Nemakagon river masses of native copper have been found, and that country may become a rich copper region.

The second congress of Americanistes will meet in Luxembourg September 10 to 13 next. Information and tickets may be had in England of Mr. F. A. Allen, 15 Fitzwilliam Road, Clapham, S.W. It is to be hoped there will be less speculation and more research than at the last congress.

Persons desirous of procuring brook and salmon trout for restocking the waters of New York State can do so by addressing Seth Green at Rochester, who will send them on the payment of the travelling expenses of a messenger and the giving of full directions as to route and whom to call on.

A class in plain cooking was lately formed at the New York Cooking School. The course consisted of twelve lessons. The tuition fees for girls who bear their own expenses are fifty cents for a single lesson, or $5 a course; for charitable societies, in behalf of their protegées, $5 a course; for ladies sending their cooks for instruction, $10 a course.

A shower of stones is reported to have fallen February 16 in Social Circle, Walton county, Georgia, varying in size from a hen's egg to that of a man's two fists, irregular in shape, dark grayish color, interspersed with a bright, shiny substance resembling mica. The shower was brief, extended over about four acres of ground, and followed an explosive sound.

Panic fears are likely to prove the destruction of the Spitz dog. The belief that this species is peculiarly liable to hydrophobia, and inclined to bite on small provocation, has led a great many owners to deliver up their Spitz dogs to the police for destruction. In one city, East Brooklyn, there was said to be 4,000 of them, but the number is now much reduced. Is it not possible that a similar panic among brutes may account for the extinction of some wild species of animals?

According to one of the German papers, the Zoölogical Garden at Cologne has been the scene of a tremendous fight between two Polar bears. They were male and female, and the latter, being overcome, was finally dragged by the male to the reservoir of water in the den, and held down until she was dead. Then her lifeless body was dragged around the place for some time by her furious conqueror.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Miss Martineau's "Autobiography,"2 which comprises two-thirds of this voluminous publication, is an interesting specimen of an interesting sort of book. It appeals much more to the general reader than most of the multitudinous volumes which she gave to the world during her lifetime, and we shall not be surprised if it takes its place among the limited number of excellent personal memoirs in the language. (For this purpose, however, we must add, it would need to be disembarrassed of the biographical appendage affixed to it by the editor, which, though carefully and agreeably prepared, we cannot but regard as rather a dead weight upon the book. It repeats much of what the author has related, and envelopes her narrative in a diffuse, eulogistic commentary which strikes the reader sometimes as superfluous and sometimes as directly at variance with the impression made upon him by Miss Martineau's text.) Miss Martineau was indeed, intellectually, one of the most remarkable women who have exhibited themselves to the world. She was not delicate, she was not graceful, or imaginative, or æsthetic, or some of the other pretty things that literary ladies are expected to be; but she was extraordinarily vigorous; she had a great understanding—a great reason. She gives, intellectually, a great impression of force. She was a really heroic worker, a genuine philosopher, and she made her mark upon her time. Her reader's last feeling about her is that she was thoroughly respectable. He will have had incidental feelings of a less genial kind; he will have been irritated at the coarseness of some of her judgments and the complacency of some of her claims; at her evident want of tact and repose; at a disposition to which he will even permit himself, perhaps, to apply the epithet of meddlesome. But he will have a strong sense of Miss Martineau's care for great things—her sustained desire, prompting her always to production of some kind, to help along and enlighten the human race. She was a combatant, and the whole force of her nature prompted her to discussion. Such natures cannot afford to be delicate—to be easily bruised and scratched; neither can they afford to have that speculative cast of fancy which wastes valuable time in scruples that are possibly superfluous and questions that are possibly vain. In spite of any such apologetic view of her disposition as may be put forth, however, it is probable that Miss Martineau's autobiography will give offence enough. She speaks out her mind with complete frankness upon most of the persons that she has known, subject to the single condition of her book being published after her death. Of its being postponed until the death of the objects of her criticism we hear nothing, though this would have been more to the point. Miss Martineau deals out disapproval with so liberal a hand, that among those persons concerned who are still living much resentment and disgust must inevitably ensue. Downright and vigorous as she is in spirit, there is no mistaking the degree of her censure, and as (whatever else she may be) she is not a flippant writer, it has every appearance of being deliberate and premeditated. We do not pretend to decide upon the propriety of her hard knocks, or to point out the particular cases in which they might have been a little softer; but we cannot help saying that there is something in Miss Martineau's general attitude toward individuals which inspires one with a certain mistrust. She was evidently always judging and always uttering judgments. Her business in life was to have opinions and to promulgate them, and as objects of opinion she seems to have regarded persons very much as she regarded abstract ideas—attributing to them an equal unconsciousness of denunciation. This eagerness to qualify her fellow members of society would have been perhaps a great virtue if Miss Martineau's powers of observation had been of extraordinary fineness; but in spite of an occasional very happy hit, we hardly think this to have been the case. Sometimes, evidently, she went straight to the point, and often, independently of the justice of her appreciation, this is expressed with an extremely vigorous neatness. But frequently her descriptions of people strike us as both harsh and superficial, and more especially as heated, even after the lapse of years. She goes out of her way to pronounce very unflattering verdicts upon men and women who have apparently had little more connection with her life than that they have been her contemporaries. This is apart from the rightful spirit of an autobiography, which, it seems to us, should deal only with people who have been real factors in the writer's life. The latter pages of Miss Martineau's first volume contain a series of portraits, some brief, some more extended, of which it must be said that their very incisive lines make them extremely entertaining. Miss Martineau's style is always excellent for strength and fulness of meaning, and at times she has a real genius for terseness. Lord Campbell "was wonderfully like the present Lord; was facetious, in and out of place; politic; flattering to an insulting degree, and prone to moralizing in so trite a way as to be almost as insulting." That has almost the condensation of Saint-Simon. There is a very vivid, satirical portrait in this same chapter of a certain Lady Stepney, who wrote silly novels of the "fashionable" type which Thackeray burlesqued, and boasted that she received £700 a piece for them; and there are sketches of Campbell, Bulwer, Landseer, and various other persons, which if they are wanting in graciousness, are not wanting in spirit. Miss Martineau gives in extenso her opinion of Macaulay, and a very low opinion it seems to be. It is, however, very much the verdict of time—save in regard to the "dreary indolence" of which the author accuses him, and which will excite surprise in the readers of Mr. Trevylyan's "Life." Of Lockhart and Croker and their insolent treatment of herself and her fame in the early part of her career, she gives a lamentable, and apparently a just account; but stories about the underhandedness and truculence of these discreditable founders of the modern art of "reviewing" are by this time old stories. There is also a story about poor Mr. N. P. Willis, which, though it consorts equally with the impression which this littérateur contrived to diffuse with regard to himself, it was less decent to relate. When Miss Martineau left England for America, Mr. Willis gave her a bundle of letters of introduction to various people here; and on arriving in this country and proceeding to present Mr. Willis's passports, she found that the gentleman was unknown to most of the persons to whom they were addressed. A fastidious delicacy might have suggested to Miss Martineau that her lips were sealed by the fact that, of slight value as these documents were, she had at least accepted and made use of them. We suppose there was no case in which, even when repudiated, they did not practically serve as an introduction. But Miss Martineau was not fastidiously delicate.

This copious retrospect appears to have been written about the year 1855, when the author had ceased to labor; having earned a highly honorable repose, and being moreover incapacitated by serious ill health. She appears then, at fifty-three years of age, to have thought her death very near; but she lived to be a much older woman—for upward of twenty years. Her motive in writing her memoirs is affirmed to be a desire to take her good name into her own hands, and anticipate the possible publication of her letters, an event which, very properly, she sternly deprecates. As to these letters, however, Mrs. Chapman publishes several, and makes liberal use of others. The reader wonders what her correspondence would have been, since what she destined to publicity is occasionally so invidious. Another motive with Miss Martineau appears to have been a desire to set forth, in particular, the history of her religious opinions—the history being sufficiently remarkable. Born among the primitive Unitarians (the city of Norwich, her paternal home, was, we believe, a sort of focus of this amiable form of Dissent), she passed, with her advance in life, from a precocious and morbid youthful piety to the furthest limits of skepticism. The story is an interesting one, and it forms both the first and the last note that she strikes; but we doubt whether (even among persons as little "theological" as herself) her reflections on this subject will serve to exemplify her judgment at its best. Her skepticism is too dogmatic and her whole attitude toward the "superstition" she has cast off too much marked by a small eagerness for formulas in the opposite direction, and a narrow complacency in the act of ventilating her negations. She cannot keep her hands off affirmations about a future state, and she lacks that imaginative feeling (so indispensable in all this matter) which suggests that the completest form of the liberty which she claims as against her theological education is tacit suspension of judgment. In general Miss Martineau is certainly not superficial, but here, in feeling, she is. This however is the penalty of having been narrowly theological in one's earlier years; it always leaves a bad trace somewhere, especially in reaction. The chapters in which Miss Martineau describes these early years are admirable; they place before us most vividly the hard conditions of her childish life, and they describe with singular psychological minuteness the unfolding of her character and the growth of her impressions. They have a remarkable candor, and it certainly cannot be said that the author's portrait of her youthful self is a flattered one. We doubt whether, except Rousseau, any autobiographer ever had the courage to accuse himself of so ungraceful a fault as infant miserliness. "I certainly was very close," says Miss Martineau, "all my childhood and youth." Her account of the circumstances which led to and accompanied her first steps in literature, of the first money she earned (she was in sore need of it), and of the growth of her form and development of her powers, and her confidence in them—all this is extremely real, touching, and interesting. She succeeded almost from the first, but her success was the result of an amount of unaided exertion which excites our wonder. What fairly launched her was the publication of her "Tales in Illustration of Political Economy," and there was something really heroic in the way that as a poor young woman with "views" of her own and without helpful companionship, she explored and mastered this tough science. Her views prevailed, and floated her into distinction. We have no space to allude to the details of the rest of her career, one of the principal events of which was her visit to America in 1834. It lasted more than two years, and was commemorated by Miss Martineau, on her return, in no less than six volumes. Mrs. Chapman deals with it largely in her supplementary memoir, treating chiefly, however, of the visitor's relations with the Abolition party. Miss Martineau evidently exaggerates both the odium which she incurred and the danger to which she exposed herself by these relations. They were natural ones for an ardently liberal Englishwoman to form, for the Abolitionists, to foreign eyes, must at that time have represented the only eminent feeling, the only sense of an ideal, visible amid the commonplace prosperity of American life. In her last pages Miss Martineau indulges some gloomy forebodings as to the future of the United States, which offers, she says, the only instance on record "of a nation being inferior to its institutions." This was written in 1855; we abstain from hazarding a conjecture as to whether she would think better or worse of us now.

We have two good novels, one very foreign and the other very domestic. The first is by Auerbach,3 whose high purpose and truly ideal treatment of the narrative all who have read "On the Heights" will remember with pleasure. He preserves the same style essentially in this story, although it is of an entirely different character. A painter visiting a country village in company with a young scholar and philosopher who is an assistant librarian and is called the collaborator, paints as a Madonna the beautiful daughter of the keeper of the village inn. He falls in love with her, attracted no less by her unconcealed love for him than by her beauty. He takes her to town with him, a town where there is a little German court, very refined esthetik, and very high-dried old manners. The poor girl drives him almost mad with her awkwardness, her ignorance of polished life, and her independence. It does not help the matter that in the latter respect she wins the favor of others, even of the Prince himself. After a while he avoids her, takes to wine-drinking, and comes home drunk. She sees her position, and from what he is suffering, and she goes back to her parents, leaving behind her an unreproachful, fond, and most touching letter of farewell. Poor girl! sad as it was for her, what else could she do? It was the best course under the circumstances; for although her heart broke over it, she at least kept her love for him, and that by remaining she might have lost. After a while she dies, and he after a long time betrothes himself to another woman, who loves him, and to whose love he responds with such a feeling as beauty and sweetness and devotion might raise in the breast of a man whose heart is really in the grave of his dead wife. He dies before a second marriage from injuries received in a dispute with his brother-in-law. It will be seen that this simple story of humble life presented temptations to treatment in the most literal and realistic way. But in Auerbach's hands it is ideal. Its likeness in certain respects to the story of "A Princess of Thule" will strike all the readers of William Black's most charming novel. But the treatment is as unlike as the incidents and the localities. Auerbach's little novel is essentially German in thought, in feeling, in purpose, in treatment. We have never read a more thoroughly German book. This character is given to it, and its ideality is very much enhanced by the character of the collaborator, who is constantly looking upon every incident of life from a lofty philosophic point of view; serious generally, sometimes humorous, often serio-comic. "Wilhelm Meister" itself is not a more thoroughly characteristic production of the German mind. But it is nevertheless a sweet, simple, touching story, the sentiment diffused through which has a peculiar charm. It forms one of Mr. Henry Holt's well selected "Leisure Hour Series." The translation is marked by idiomatic vigor and a very skilful adaptation of the rustic phraseology of one language to that of the other.

—As unlike to this as can be is a novel by an author whose name is entirely new to us, but whose work bears the traces of some literary experience.4 Its double title is very well chosen. In it a number of people, young and middle-aged, are gathered together for the summer in the beautiful Connecticut country house of one of them—a wealthy young bachelor. There they all fall in love. We can hardly say that everybody falls in love with everybody else; but it is pretty nearly that. Everybody is in love with some one else; and the consequence is, after a good deal of cross-purposing and some suffering, half a dozen marriages. The change that has taken place in the purpose of the novel and in the manner of treatment of character by the novel writer could not be more clearly exampled than by "Love in Idleness." It is absolutely without plot, has hardly enough coherence to be called a story, is entirely without incident. And yet it is very interesting from the first page to the last, although its interest is not of the highest kind even in the novel range. To give our readers any notion of it is quite impossible without telling them almost all that happens, all that is said, thought, and felt by the various personages. The book is strongly American; but its Americans are of the most cultivated classes; and it is guiltless of hard-fisted farmers, Southern slave-drivers, and California gold-diggers. It is entirely free from that irritating intellectual eruption sometimes called American humor. In fact, its personages are taken both from the Old England and the New; and side by side, one set can hardly be distinguished from the other as in real life. He who must perforce be called the hero is a Senator, forty-eight years old, who is engaged to marry a rather cool, reserved, and stately woman of thirty, but is loved almost at first sight by Felise Clairmont, a girl of nineteen, half French, half American, of enchanting beauty, and still more captivating ways. She is loved by almost every other man in the book; but her avowed lover is the Senator's younger brother, who is the host of the assembled company, exclusive of Felise, who lives near by with her guardian, a certain judge. The Senator loves the young girl as fondly as she loves him, and still more deeply, and what the result is we shall leave our readers to find out from the book itself, which will richly repay the novel reader. It is exceedingly well written, and its social machinery is managed with skill; but it is a little too much elaborated in the conversations, which are rather excessively epigrammatic at times. The author of such a novel, if not an old hand, should give us something better and stronger ere long.

—"The Man Who Was Not a Colonel"5 is an amusing story of that kind that may be denominated "light" even in fiction. The author rattles on through a variety of incidents, and adventures, and true-love tangles, without trying the reader's intellect with any particularly severe infliction of character study. It is a model of that literature which has received the distinctive title of railway, because in travelling we do not care to be bothered with thinking on our own part or others.

Mr. Wallace has done well in selecting the comprehensive title "Russia"6 for his book. It is no mere record of a journey, or description of a country or people as a traveller sees them. The author spent six years in the land of the Tsars, studied the language, and lived with the people, and now he endeavors to show the origin and composition of the nation, its past history and present struggles, besides making minute studies of the serf system, the communes, emancipation in its methods and results, the peculiar conjunction of autocracy and democracy in the principles and practice of government, the agriculture, the religion, politics, population, and other important factors of a great empire. The book is sufficiently praised when we say that all these subjects are well treated. The author is careful to point out, as an analyst should, where his studies are incomplete, and he modestly tells us that his work is not presented as an unassailable summation of truth, but as the conclusion to which an unprejudiced observer came after long and careful study. We could not ask for better evidence of his sincerity than in the defence which he, an Englishman, makes of the Tsar's policy of foreign annexation! He tells us that this is not the result of autocratic choice, but is the only available one of three modes of restraint against marauding tribes. These three are a great wall, a military cordon, and annexation. The first is impossible in a country that for hundreds of miles has no durable building material, the second has been tried and found impracticable. As to the last, there is a choice between an armed frontier and occupation of the marauder's country, and the latter course is followed because it is cheaper in a pecuniary sense. To the question so often asked in England, How far is Russian "aggrandization" to go? Mr. Wallace answers that the Russian arms cannot stop until they reach the frontier of some stable power. In short, to those Russophobists in England who look with such alarm upon the approach of the Russians toward India, he calmly replies that this approach is both inevitable and desirable! No wonder he tells his countrymen that it is their duty to know Russia better. It is plainly impossible to even review in the most concise manner the numerous important discussions in this remarkable book, without producing another book in doing so. Mr. Wallace's work is one of the most valuable studies in social and governmental economy ever written, and several causes, aside from his personal fidelity and fitness, combine to make it so. In general, Russian society exhibits, so far as the peasantry are concerned, a simplicity of life and thought that carries the imagination irresistibly back to prehistoric times. No civilized race, no culturvolk, presents such aboriginal relations in its family and commonwealth. The nobles, on the other hand, and all the cultured class, are fermenting with great views and plans of social reform. The ideas that made such havoc in the early days of the French revolution have again swept within human vision, but this time they were caught up by a practical-minded Emperor and crystallized into the greatest premeditated political reform of this century! The wonderful feat of quietly emancipating forty million bonded servitors, at one stroke, the institution on a tremendous scale of what the dreamers have declared to be the classic relation of social man—communism, the division of land, taking about one-half from the rich and giving it to the poor—such marvels as these throw a halo of Arabian magic about the history of this simple people since 1861. When to these attractions is added the fact that this land of social classicity and political ideals is entirely accessible to study, as no other nation of like simple culture is, we think that reasons enough have been given for saying that our author has chosen the ripest field in the world for his harvest labors. He has shown himself a most conscientious and able worker in it, and our own country will be fortunate if the social revolution that has taken place in its Southern States ever finds so unprejudiced and painstaking a historian as he. To Americans Mr. Wallace's book should be more interesting and valuable than to any other readers, for many of these questions which he discusses so thoroughly have been settled in precisely the opposite way in this country! For instance, emancipation here was violent, the severance of master-and-slave relations complete, the future status of the two interested parties was not previously fixed, and no compensation was given to either. Here land is held solely by individual tenure; no person has enforced local bonds, but is free to move everywhere—that is, with the sole exception of Indians. We reject the colonization plan of dealing with marauding enemies, and adopt the armed frontier system. In short, we are diametrically opposite in our conclusions, and yet we have a national problem that is in two important respects essentially the same as Russia's. The settlement of a continent and the amalgamation of races is the double task imposed on us as well as them. One mode of accomplishing it we can see going on about us; its precise opposite is well exhibited in Mr. Wallace's "Russia."

Mr. Anderson cannot be considered a model traveller. His "Six Weeks in Norway"7 gives hardly anything but the starting out on each morning, the names of places passed, and the arrival at night. But the traveller in that country needs something of just this kind, and this book will therefore do very well for a guide. Indeed, it is well filled with facts suitable to such a service. Norway is a hard country to travel in. The frequent rains and steady fish diet are depressing to dry foreigners with a previous sufficiency of phosphorus, and like our own country there is little besides the scenery to engage attention. Nor is the interior the best part of the country. It looks best in a profile view seen from the water. Whoever would see Norway must visit the fiords in a yacht, and not trouble the land much.

The discussion of the mutual attitude of religion and science, particularly in regard to what is known as the theory of development, goes ceaselessly on. Books upon the subject follow each other so rapidly that it would seem that they must long since have ceased to find any considerable number of readers, much more of buyers. We confess that we are somewhat weary of the controversy; particularly as it is kept up chiefly on the side of those who call themselves religionists, who mostly seem to be unable to bring forward any new arguments, and no less to fail to appreciate the attitude and the purpose of those whom they have made their antagonists. Science, as we believe, did not seek this controversy, but was forced into it by the attacks of the champions of religion, and is now necessarily kept somewhat on the defence. It would seem that nearly all that can be said, and all that need be said, has already been brought forward. But each new disputant that enters upon the defence of theological dogma seems to be convinced that he is the man of men who is to protect religion against what he believes to be the danger in which it is placed by the observation of nature and the speculation upon discovered facts which now occupies so many physicists, including some of first-rate ability.

We may as well say, if we have not already said in our previous remarks upon the books upon this question which have been reviewed in the pages of "The Galaxy," that we do not regard the theory of evolution as established. Facts of great interest bearing upon it have been discovered, and deductions from those facts have been made and set forth with great ingenuity and plausibility, so that it demands serious attention from the scientific point of view. But this seems to us all that has been done. Our feelings and our convictions, not to say our creed, are all against it. It is a degrading and a hopeless view of the universe, and particularly of man. Him it places in the attitude of a mere physical item in the cosmos—one link, although the last and a golden one, in a chain of events the beginning and the future of which are alike unknown. All our instincts revolt against it. We don't believe it; and we candidly confess that we are in the position, abhorrent and ridiculous to the scientific mind, of not wishing to believe it. We believe, and we desire to believe, that man was made, however and when, as man; and that however inferior he may have been in his first condition to what he is now, he was never anything less than human.

Feeling thus and believing thus, we nevertheless cannot see that those who are resisting science on the ground that its assumed discoveries are at war with the assumed teachings of revealed religion are doing wisely, or that they, even the best of them, have written one word which in the least impairs the value or the significance of the facts and the deductions which science has set forth. Science is only to be met by science. Theology cannot touch it. A beast and a fish cannot fight: one must stay on land and the other must stay in the water. Religionists, on the one hand, say that if science has discovered, or professes to have discovered, anything at variance with the Mosaic cosmogony, it is not to be believed. Scientific observers say on the other that if theology teaches anything at variance with fact and logic, so much the worse for theology. This attitude of the two will be maintained. It is natural, and in a certain sense right, that it should be maintained. Each will hold its position. Neither can accept the conclusions of the other or its methods without both ceasing to be what they are. Notwithstanding this difficulty, which is radical, the controversy will go on, until it is decided, not by argument, but by time, experience, and the moral and intellectual development of mankind.

A laborious contribution to the controversy has been made, by Clark Braden,8 who announces himself as president of Abingdon college, Illinois. It is our own fault, probably, that we have never heard before of the president or of the college. Neither he, however, nor his publishers will fail through lack of confidence to make themselves known, or because they have any misgivings as to the sufficiency of their work. The author, in a prefatory note addressed "to reviewers and critics," invites the most searching criticism of his book, but earnestly requests that it shall be carefully read, and asks to have all criticisms, particularly those which are adverse, sent to him, that they may, as he says, "aid him in his search for truth." But plainly he has little doubt that he has settled "the question of the hour," and what he wishes is to enjoy the spectacle of science vainly struggling in his giant grasp. His tone throughout the book is one of overweening self-confidence. Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, Carpenter, and the rest are to be snuffed out by the president of Abingdon college, Illinois; nay, their very methods of research and modes of reasoning are to be swept into the intellectual dust-bin of that institution by his besom. And in a long address which accompanies his book, in which the publishers speak, but the style of which bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Mr. Braden, it is pointed out with unction that while much has been written by the advocates of the theory of creation by intelligence, in refutation of the evolution hypothesis, yet "no thoughtful reader has ever felt satisfied with any one book"; "no one has attempted to present, in all its infinity, mystery, and unfathomable depth, the problem for which evolution is offered as a solution. This is a fundamental failure." Of course this great need is to be supplied, this fundamental failure made good, by Mr. Clark Braden's book. And then the publishers break forth in words which seem to be the genuine utterances of their own feeling: "The book is a compactly printed volume of four hundred and eighty pages, printed on the best quality of paper, and printed and bound in the best style of art. It contains as much matter as most three-dollar books, and more than many of them.... Every preacher and believer of the Bible should have a copy. All who profess to believe these theories of evolution should, above all others, have a copy. We want to place a copy in the hands of all parties." Doubtless. This is delicious. Every one who believes the Bible should "have a copy," and every one who don't believe it should "have a copy." In a word, to "have a copy" of this book is the chief end of man, the first requisite to reasonable existence for every human being. And then the publishers wind up with a request for copies of the reviews of the book, as "we desire to use them in the sale of the book, and in selecting papers in which we will advertise." Innocent creatures! that last touch shows how guileless they are; how they wouldn't think of such a thing as offering a bribe to editors and publishers of newspapers; and how purely disinterested they are in their desire to place "a copy" in the hands of "all parties."

We fear that our pages will not be selected for the advertising of this book; which, by the way, is commonly printed and meanly bound. Candidly we do not think that it is the end of all things. Possibly there may be some controversy hereafter; some men may go on investigating nature and believing in facts alone. The book reminds us of a social sketch in "Punch," which shows two dilapidated field preachers, evidently among the most ignorant and feeble-minded of their class, meeting on the edge of a heath from which people are going away. One says to the other, "Been on the 'eath? What did you preach about?" "Oh," is the reply, "I give it to Darwin an' 'Uxley to rights." Not that Mr. Braden is in any sense ignorant, or in any way to be compared to "Punch's" field preacher except in his evident belief that he has "give it to Darwin an' 'Uxley to rights," and in the perfect indifference with which Darwin and Huxley will regard his performance. Briefly, nothing worthy of particular remark in Mr. Braden's book. Those who wish to find the whole question between science and revealed religion set forth as it appears to Mr. Braden, and the facts and arguments of science met by the usual stock-in-trade weapons of the theologian and the metaphysician, may find all this in Mr. Braden's book, in which the author certainly does go pretty well over the whole ground. What is really his theme is found in this passage of one of his appendices (p. 382): "The issue between theist and atheist is: What is the necessary, absolute, uncaused, unconditioned being or substance? What is it that is the self-existent, independent, self-sustaining and eternal? What is the ground, source, origin, or cause of all existences and phenomena? This is the problem of problems, that determines all systems of science, philosophy, and thought." Well, to these questions science answers, We don't know; we don't pretend to know, and we probably never shall know. We have discovered by patient observation certain facts, and, according to the laws of right reason, we think that between these facts there are such and such relations. In this we may be mistaken. If we are, very well; we shall be glad to correct our error. In either case we shall go on observing, considering, and reasoning, but confining ourselves strictly to fact. If any dogma or transcendental notion that you know of is at variance with fact or with reason, we may be sorry or we may not; but in either case we can't help it. Dogmas and notions are nothing to us. And as to that self-existent, unconditioned, eternal intelligence that you talk about, pray tell us what you know about it. We shall be glad to learn. Don't tell us what you think, believe, or have an inward conviction of, but what you know. What do you know about it? Give us at least a solid basis of absolute knowledge to stand upon and to start from, and we are ready to listen to you. If you cannot do this, good morning; look you after your dogmas, and we will keep to our facts. The truth is that not Paul and Barnabas were more driven to part company than the disputant who sets up as of any authority a theological dogma, no matter what, or a metaphysical abstraction, no matter what, and the man who studies nature scientifically. One believes because he believes, and really at bottom from no other reason; the other is in a chronic state of inquiry; he believes nothing in regard to any subject of inquiry but that which rests upon the ground of absolute knowledge. Mr. Braden's book, although it is filled with evidences of wide reading and high education, reads like a book of metaphysical and theological commonplace. It reminds us of our college days in the lecture room of the professor of moral philosophy. It is well enough in its way, but it will attract little attention in the pending controversy. Of its style we must say that, considering the position of its author, we wish it were better, and that in the use of language it were an example more worthy to be followed. Its first sentence is: "One of the wise utterances of one whom his contemporaries declared spoke as never man spoke, was that no wise man would begin," etc. On the next page we have such vulgar error as "transpiring before our eyes," "decay and dissolution transpiring in every department of nature"; and as to shall and will the author seems to have no conception of their proper functions in English speech. This, for the president of Abingdon college, is not well.

—Of a somewhat different character, and of much greater importance, is a little book which presents James Martineau's last utterances on this subject.9 It is made up of an address delivered in Manchester New College, October 6, 1874, and two papers which appeared subsequently in the "Contemporary Review." Dr. Bellows, in his introduction, expresses the feeling with which religious minds will read these papers when he says, "it is refreshing in the midst of the crude replies which alarmed religionists are hastily hurling at the scientific assailants of faith in a living God, to hear one thoroughly furnished scholar, profound metaphysician, and earnest Christian entering his thoughtful and deeply considered protest against the tendencies or conclusions of modern materialism." Mr. Martineau may now be justly regarded as the leading champion of faith. He has this distinction because he is not hampered by creeds, or articles, or hierarchal responsibility; he is yet an earnest believer in the essentials of the Christian religion as it is accepted by all orthodox Protestant denominations, while to these qualifications he adds a wide range of knowledge and eminent ability as a reasoner. He is able to meet the men of science on their own ground, and he does so. They will not acknowledge themselves vanquished; and perhaps from the very nature of the case, as we have already remarked, they cannot be vanquished by any argument in which revelation or metaphysics enters as a premise; but they will not refuse their admiration at the union of subtlety and strength, of ability and courtesy with which they are treated. We find many admirable passages in this book marked for reference, as we went through it; but we must pass them by. During the last few months we have devoted so many pages of our department of literature to the discussion of this subject, that readers with whom it is not a hobby might reasonably object to a further continuance of the subject here. We content ourselves with recommending this little, thoughtful, strongly written book to the attention of our readers. They will find the best array of arguments with which to meet scientific materialism.

—From the same publishers, who seem very catholic in their reception of authors, we have a volume which, the more because of its ability and its calmness of tone, Mr. Martineau would regard with sadness, and with horror, and perhaps with dread.10 Mr. Frothingham has undertaken the task of studying the records of the foundation of Christianity from a purely literary point of view and with all the aids that can be derived from criticism. The result of his studies may be said to be the satisfaction of his own mind that Jesus of Nazareth was not and did not intend to be the founder of a new religion; that he believed himself to be and set himself up as the Messias, the temporal Messias, expected by the Jews; and that Christianity was founded by Paul. His conception of Paul is striking, and however he may fail in establishing his position in regard to him, it certainly must be admitted that he has made of him a very interesting and energetic figure, and one which is consistent with itself and with all that we are told of the great apostle to the Gentiles. He calls him both Jew and Greek—Jew by parentage, nurture, training, and genius, Greek by birthplace, residence, and association, an enthusiast, even to fanaticism, by temperament, and yet freed from extreme narrowness of mind by intercourse with the people and the literature of other nations. He was a Jew whose feeling upon the Christ question was always intense, so much so that he worried and tormented the people who did not believe as he did. He was a Messianic believer of the school of the Pharisees, or strict Jews; but all at once, as such things do happen to such men, another aspect of the Messianic expectation burst upon him with the splendor of a revelation, and determined his career. To the conception of the Messias and of Jesus's conformity to it which suddenly took possession of Paul, Mr. Frothingham assigns the origin of the Christian religion as it was known in the second century. With a cool and almost humorous adaptation of a political phrase of the day, he calls this Paul's "new departure." That Mr. Frothingham's book is clear in thought, interesting in substance, agreeable and good in style every one acquainted with his writings will readily believe. As to the points that he has undertaken to establish, we are pretty sure that after reading his book few will think with him who were not ready to do so before they began it.

Dr. Watson F. Quinby of Wilmington has written an odd pamphlet on mongrelism in races. His belief is that population tends to become homogeneous, but this is not an averaging process. When two races mingle and intermarry, the mongrel product does not exhibit the balanced characteristics of both, but the traits of the higher race are absorbed and hid in those of the lower. Asia, he says, "was formerly powerful, with white peoples all along its northern and eastern borders, and far into the interior. But they first enslaved the black race, then mingled their blood, and have finally become merged in them." The resulting mongrel people always lacks the intellectual force necessary to maintain the civilization of the higher. Arts decline and national decay sets in. In this way is explained the existence of noble ruins among inefficient and barbarous nations, who practise a much ruder style of architecture. The Mexicans are the type of this retrogression. Dr. Quinby predicts for them an increasing decline until Aztec civilization is restored. If the Doctor's theories could be established, there are enthusiastic ethnologists who would not hesitate to say that the Mexicans could not be put to a better use than this. Shut them up and compel them to breed themselves back into Aztecs! Dr. Quinby's speculations are, to a great extent, based on studies of language, and of lingual affinities he is a bold, not to say reckless, expounder. Some of his work reads as if Mark Twain had turned philologist. For instance:

"Eighty miles from the mouth of the Indus was a place called Hingliz. The people of this part celebrate the festival of Bhavani on the first day of May, when their custom is to erect a pole in the field and adorn it with pendants and garlands. They also celebrate another festival on the last day of March, called Huli (Phulee), when they amuse themselves by sending one another on foolish errands. All this has a very Hinglish look(!). This is probably the place where the Hinglish people came from, for though the Romans called themselves angles, they call themselves English."

To explore libraries, to sift out from masses of irrelevant matter what alone is of value to the naval student, to subject the poetical descriptions of great battles to the cold eye of professional criticism, and to give the results in a condensed, well written, and interesting form, is the task Commodore Parker has assumed, and so far as the volume under consideration is concerned11—the first of a series—the task has been well and faithfully performed. The amount of labor involved is immense! The author passes rapidly over the navies of antiquity for the reason, probably, that we are more familiar with that history than with the naval history of a period nearer to us both in time and relationship. What schoolboy has not read of Xerxes sitting in his golden chair overlooking the Piræus and the galleys of his immense fleet strung along the coast of Attica as far as the eye could reach?

Such was Salamis.

When his narrative reaches the navies of the Italian republics of the middle ages, however, our author seems all aglow with love of his theme, and well he may be! Venice, in her day of glory, possessed the finest navy of the times. Captain Pantero Pantera, writing of it in 1614, speaks with enthusiastic admiration of its fine arsenals, numerous stores, and numbers of workmen on permanent pay. These things, he says, were always most "carefully attended to by the republic of Venice, which indeed in this respect not only equals, but excels all the naval powers of the Mediterranean." There is so much of romance and poetry, indeed, in connection with the naval history of Venice, that it requires a cool head and steady hand to steer along the courses of sober truth; but that truth we must not be surprised to find, in that clime of sunshine and beauty, often out-vieing the wildest efforts of fiction. Very similar is the history of the sister republic of Genoa. Unfortunately these lovely sisters were great rivals, and during wars which covered a period of about one hundred and thirty years wasted each other's strength and resources without achieving a particle of good to either. As a judgment, it would almost seem, for such stupendous and long-continued folly, the seeds of destruction were planted without their own bosoms. Both attained the pinnacle of earthly glory, but from both issued forth a wanderer who was destined in time to set his seal upon the fate of his native city. The Genoese Columbus, followed by the Venetian Cabot, led the way to the great western continent which, by diverting the course of trade and commerce from its old channels, caused the loss of wealth and the final decay of the Italian republic. The spirit of discovery once aroused, other navigators followed, and Vasco da Gama, by opening the road to the East Indies by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, so injured the trade of Venice with the east as to render her downfall inevitable. But the history of the old sea kings of the north, and the tracing of their line of descent through old England to the hardy seaman of New England, is still more interesting to our naval students.

The Vikings—"sons of the fiords"—were undoubtedly the most arrant pirates of all history. They were the dread of all Europe. "A furore Normanorum librera nos Domine," prayed the Church throughout Christendom. Many of these piratical princes became, through habitual success, so devoted to their calling that they never extinguished it, but rather gloried in passing their lives on board their ships. It was their fond boast that they never reposed under an immovable roof, nor drank their beer in peace by their fireside, and the ships in which they had led their wild and adventurous lives formed in death their sepulchre. Passing over the discovery of North America by Eric the Red (about 700 B.C.), we may come at once to Harold Harfagra—Harold the Fairhaired, or Harold Fairfax, a name so well represented to-day in our own navy. Having made himself master of all Norway, the restless young spirits of the realm took themselves off on one of their accustomed expeditions. Led by a youth named Rollo, son of the celebrated sea-rover Jarl Ragnvald, they ascended the Seine and laid siege to Paris. So successful were these Normans that Charles the Simple ceded to Rollo that part of Neustria since called Normandy. By the terms of the treaty, Charles was to give his daughter Gisele in marriage to Rollo, together with the province of Normandy, provided he would do homage, and embrace the Christian religion. To do homage was to kiss the feet of the king. All that the sturdy Rollo could be prevailed upon to do, however, was to place his hand in that of the king, and to depute one of his followers to do homage for him. The gentleman to whom this duty was assigned raised the king's foot so high that his majesty was thrown upon his back; whereupon the rude Normans burst out laughing, so little respect for royalty had these wild rovers of the sea. Two hundred years later the descendants of these same Normans achieved the Conquest of England. They became by the heat of much and continued contest and attrition gradually fused, with the Angles and the Saxons, already inhabitants of the island, into the modern Englishman and his representative on the shores of New England.

This volume not only shows the reader—the general as well as professional reader—the large scope embraced in a proper study of history, but it also demonstrates that naval archaeology is not a mere idle amusement, suited to the elegant leisure of the scholar. It has a great and practical value, enabling an officer to understand his own profession the more thoroughly in all its branches. Commodore Parker has conferred a material benefit on his profession by the valuable contribution he has made to its literature. He has, moreover, by his straightforward narration, pleasant style, and copious illustrations from standard authorities, rendered agreeable and entertaining to the general reader what otherwise might have proved technical, and of too special a character.

Mr. Perkins's book12 almost disarms criticism by its very character, for it is impossible to make a selection of books that is at the same time limited in size and adapted to diverse and contrary necessities. Private libraries want the best books, public libraries the books most called for by the general and often undiscriminating public. "The Best Reading" contains the titles of about ten thousand books, and as that is less than half the number printed every year, the work is confessedly incomplete from whatever point of view we look at it. Still it is useful to librarians, of whom there are several hundred inexperienced ones in the country, and to professional essayists, or magazine writers, a class that must contain thousands of persons. With every allowance for unavoidable imperfections, we think Mr. Perkins can revise the list with advantage, taking out some obsolete writers and putting in some new ones in their place—Herbert Spencer for example.

Both Mr. Loftie's "Plea for Art in the House" and the Misses Garrett's advice on "House Decoration"13 belong to the best kind of works on the very important subject of cultivating good taste in the furniture of the home. They are very direct and clear, and their authors are entirely competent to instruct us all on this subject. Especially are they free from what we consider to be the worst fault a book of this kind can show, an obtrusive pretension to superior taste. It is a great mistake to suppose that we can elevate people by showing them that we consider ourselves far above them in taste and judgment; but this mistake is not unfrequently made. That may be the fact, but if there is no evidence of it but a patronizing treatment of others, there is little hope that much good will be done. Both these books are free from that error, and Mr. Loftie especially takes his readers into a survey of a good many branches of decorative art, exhibiting a familiar acquaintance with them all, talking alternately of the blunders and successes of collectors, real and would-be, and all with a natural enthusiasm and freedom from superciliousness. The Garrett sisters also give a great number of valuable suggestions and some very taking illustrations of tasteful decoration. We wish they had given less of their work to criticism of the conventional London house and more to the description of what is good. So far as we are acquainted with books of this class, they abound in two faults, discursiveness and inordinate discussion of bad models. Artistic house decoration is a technical art, and must be taught like all other arts—by the exhibition of good precedents. Strictly speaking, there can be no theories in matters of taste. All the so-called laws or canons of taste are obtained by observing what has been well done. From that we may learn what is well doing, and the educated taste produces good work. There is nothing in art so implicit as the surveyor's dependence upon the law of magnetic attraction. The notes of a survey well made to-day can be given to a surveyor a century hence, and he will bring the lines out to within half an inch, and put his hand upon each boundary mark that has been made. But it is not so in art. In all the reconstructions of ancient Grecian buildings not one has been rebuilt. Neither the Madeleine nor the Valhalla repeat the art of the Parthenon, however faithfully they repeat its form and measurements. Good taste is a thing that no French surveyor can secure with any refinement whatever of the metric system. But still there is a soil in which this plant can be grown, and that soil is the collective evidences of good taste in the past. Let us have a book so full of good illustrations that didactic instruction shall not be needed.

NEBULÆ.

—Our discussion of life insurance management, in this part of "The Galaxy," was but preliminary to the thorough article upon the subject which we present to our readers in this number. It is a subject of great importance, and one which concerns multitudes of the very best class of our citizens, to whom we recommend this article for thoughtful perusal. Its writer has a more thorough acquaintance with life insurance management than is probably possessed by any other one man in the country. He knows, he does not infer or conjecture, and he has learned by experience the only way in which to bring life insurance companies to an effective responsibility. What they are, even when they are not managed in a manner undeniably fraudulent, has been shown by the recent investigations at Albany, which brought to light the payment of salaries and bonuses of monstrous extravagance and the use of proxies by the thousand on the part of the officers who took these great sums out of the pockets of clerks and clergymen, widows and orphans. Something must be done, and that speedily, to correct this abuse even among the honest companies, and the way to doing it is pointed out in the article to which we refer.

—Since= we prepared our last nebulous notes, General Grant has passed into private life. The country has accepted the event as a matter of course; it has elicited very little comment. The end of his administration was made the occasion of some retrospection and some criticism, it is true; but that did not, in either case, touch the subject which presents itself to us in connection with the change which took place in Washington on the 4th of March. General Grant, by becoming then a mere private citizen, closed one of the most remarkable careers in modern history. Men, a very few men, have done more, or been more, than he has done or has been; but it would be difficult to name a man in modern times who rose from obscurity to such a height, passed through such a series of events, held such power, and who passed peaceably, and in full possession of his health and all his faculties, into an absolutely powerless and private condition, and all this in sixteen years. The experiences of Cromwell and Washington were most nearly like Grant's. But Cromwell fought six years ere he won his crowning victory at Worcester; and although he was made Lord Protector in 1657, was known to all England as an able and energetic member of the Long Parliament, and one of the leaders of the popular party in 1640, seventeen years before. Washington also saw six years pass from the time when he drew his sword under the old elm at Cambridge, as Commander-in-Chief of the colonial forces, to that when he received Lord Cornwallis's at the surrender of Yorktown; and, made President in 1789, he retired in 1797, twenty-three years after he took command. But he was a prominent citizen of Virginia thirty-five years before that date, and was nominated deputy to the colonial congress in 1774. The position of our retiring President was very different, and his career was briefer and more crowded with events. In March, 1861, except his old West Point comrades and his few personal acquaintances, there were probably not twenty people in the country who knew of the existence of ex-brevet Captain Grant, U.S.A. Three years saw him the victor in hard-fought fields, in which the forces on either side more than trebled all that ever Cromwell or Washington commanded, and in 1864 he became General-in-Chief of the immense army of one of the great powers of the world; one year more saw him absolute victor, and the saviour of the Union. Four years passed, and he voluntarily laid down his sword and his supreme military command, to become President of the United States, doing so because he was regarded as the only man who could save in peace what he won in war. At the end of four years, he received, like Washington and Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, the honor of a reëlection, and three years later he seemed likely to have the unprecedented distinction of an election to a third term. Now, although we may not say there is none so poor to do him honor, he is entirely without position, military or civil, and it is certainly true that many a mousing politician has far more influence than the victor of Appomatox and he who was once dreaded by many people, and looked to by others without dread, as the coming "man on horseback."

—Such a career in these days was possible only in this country, and here it will probably be impossible hereafter. Of civil war we have, we may be sure, seen the last, as it was really the first, that was ever fought on our soil. And indeed it was big enough to suffice for our share of that sort of thing for ever. That we shall ever be called upon to wage war with a foreign foe is in the extremest degree improbable. No other power wants any of our territory, at the price, at least, which it would cost to get it; and we have taken all that we want from other people. Cuba, if we get it—the advantage of which is not clear to all minds—we shall get by purchase. We shall, therefore, it would seem, never be so greatly indebted again to a successful general. In case we should be so, and he should be one of General Sherman's successors, it may be reasonably doubted if, with General Grant's experience before his eyes, he will give up the assured life position of General-in-Chief for the temporary honors and troubles of the Presidential chair. It is not necessary to be a blind admirer of General Grant, or a member of the party which made him twice President, to do him the justice of admitting that his resignation of the office which he won with such eclat, and held with such general honor, the world over, was a sacrifice to the good of the Union for which he fought. He had for life a position equally honorable with that of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and more striking in its distinction. He had no superior but the President of the United States; not a certain man, but the incumbent of the office for the time being. He might, and probably would, have seen a succession of such men rise, and pass into powerless privacy, while he maintained his high position. He gave up this permanent distinction, with its well-assured emoluments, at what we must admit that he regarded as the call of duty, of patriotism. And now he is, so to speak, a nobody. Admitting all the errors that have been charged against him—and he doubtless committed many—admitting even that the party which he represented is hostile to the best interests of the country (we do not say that it is so, for we speak for no party and in no political interest in these pages)—the spectacle of the passage of such a man into absolute public insignificance, without any public care or public thought for his future, is a very impressive one, and one not in all respects admirable. As his career was possible only in this country, so also was the close of it. The government, the people of no other great nation, would drop a man who had done what he did, and held the positions which he held, into an unprovided, obscure future, putting him off, like an old shoe. Once the victorious commander of an army of half a million of men, a man whose name was in the mouths of all the civilized world, for eight years the ruler, with more than kingly power, of a nation of forty millions, and a country which stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and which covered the temperate zone in a continent, he has been remitted again, as far as the nation is concerned, into his former unimportance, we cannot say obscurity, to live a private life upon a very moderate competence. It may be right that this should be so; but none the less is the spectacle one of great interest and significance; all the more is his brief career one of the most remarkable in the history of civilized peoples.

—General Grant's successor seems to be in earnest upon one subject, in his apparent purpose in regard to which he must have the hearty approval of good men of all parties—civil service reform. In this there is no doubt that General Grant himself was at first quite as earnest. But the Republican politicians were too much for him; his own military habits of thought and his devotion to his personal friends also led him to adopt a course of action in this respect inconsistent with the purpose which he first avowed in regard to it; and the great and much needed reform still remains to be worked out. After all, the principal point, the great good, to be attained is the suppression of office-seeking as a sort of business, the extinction of office-seekers as a class. Our politics are sadly in need of purification. The corruption which disgraces our Government in the eyes of all good men at home and abroad taints both parties. In this respect there is nothing to choose between them. Now nothing would tend so much to better our condition in this respect as the absolute removal from the arena of political strife of the tens of thousands of minor offices at the disposal of the party in possession of the Government. Let them no longer be the prizes of victory at the polls, and the men who now make politics a trade would find their occupation gone, and they would no longer concern themselves much about nominations and elections. The political affairs of the country would then naturally fall into the hands of the honest, intelligent, and thrifty men who now have little influence upon them. Let it be once understood that, whatever party is in power, no man in office, except those directly around the President, is to be removed except for incompetence, neglect, or malversation, and the first great step will have been taken toward our political regeneration. Nor is its influence upon politics the only great benefit which would thus be secured. The existence of a great body of men who are withholding themselves from the ordinary business and work of life in the hope that something will turn up in politics which will enable them to live, and perhaps to get money in irregular ways, by office-holding, is demoralizing. It tends to make and to keep in existence a body of shiftless men who otherwise would be obliged to turn their attention to mechanics, to trade, to agriculture. It helps to increase our too great tendency to speculative and unstable habits of life. It is bad in every way. As to the particular method by which the much-needed change is to be brought about there may be various opinions; but among sensible and decent men there is none as to the prime necessity of the extinction of office-seeking. In whatever he may do to effect this the new President will have the best wishes even of the greater number of those who cast their votes against him.

—From civil service to domestic service is a great leap; but there is this likeness between the two, that both, in this country at least, are in a deplorable condition of inefficiency. And as to domestic service, the complaints of householders in England are hardly less loud and grievous than those which go up daily in America. In both countries there is a great cry for provision for unemployed women; and yet in both countries the procurement of women capable and willing to give good household work in return for good wages seems to vibrate between the not remote points of difficulty and impossibility. Disorder, dirt, waste, and cooking which is only the destruction of good viands by reducing them to an unpalatable and indigestible condition are, according to all accounts, the lot of all housekeepers whose means do not enable them to procure the most skilful and highly trained domestic servants. In England a strange remedy has been proposed, adopted in a measure, and thus far with success. It is the introduction of what are called, even in England, "lady helps." There is something amusing in seeing our cousins, who used to sneer at the Yankee phrase "helps," and also at the Yankee help herself, who would not be regarded (unwisely it may be) as a servant, turn in despair to the word and the thing as the only relief in their domestic perplexity. The scheme was first proposed by Mrs. Crayshaw, of Cyfarthfa Castle, the wife of one of the wealthiest iron masters in England. Considering the fact, known to everybody there, that there were thousands of poor gentlewomen—that is, of women born and bred in the comparatively wealthy and cultivated classes—who were absolutely penniless, living in want, in suffering, or in a pitiful and oppressive dependence, she thought that many of these women would be willing to enter domestic service under certain conditions. She made inquiries; she was encouraged; and she set herself to work to effect what promises to be a great and beneficent reform. The conditions which she exacted for her protegées were that they should have comfortable and separate rooms, that they should be called upon to do none of the rough work, like scrubbing, for example, or boot-cleaning (although they were responsible for its being well done), and that they should be treated with personal respect. They were to be called "lady helps." She started her project only about two years ago; and although it was met at first with incredulity and with ridicule, already it is so successful that although the applicants for such employment are many, she cannot supply the demand by housekeepers for her helpful ladies. For it is found that these ladies give what is wanted, intelligent, conscientious service. They are truthful; they can be trusted; they learn easily; they work well; they are quiet, pleasant in manner; and, strange to say, they are cheerful. To the last one other of her conditions may contribute largely. They are to be hired only in couples, so that they have companionship of their own sort. What will be the end of all this who can tell? The prospect, however, is cheering to that class of householders who have not large means and who yet require faithful, well-trained, intelligent domestic servants for their daily comfort, and no less to a large class of respectable and educated women, who may find under the new domestic regime a refuge from the woes of extremest poverty—poverty which presses the more hardly upon them because they are educated and respectable. There is nothing in itself degrading in the performance of domestic labor; quite the contrary. No woman who is worthy of her sex hesitates to perform it for her husband, her children, or herself, or feels in the least degraded thereby, or is so regarded by her acquaintances. The feeling against performing it for others is a mere prejudice born of custom, of fashion. Let it once be understood that no woman loses the respect of others or need diminish her own by doing it for others as a means of livelihood, and the ranks of lady helps will be crowded.

—In illustration and in furtherance of Mrs. Crayshaw's truly, and, it would seem, wisely benevolent scheme, a little book has just been published in England, and reprinted in this country. It is by Mrs. Warren, who is the writer of some half a dozen excellent hand-books of household management. It professes to tell the story of the troubles of a small household, that of a professional man, whose wife is reduced to despair by the incompetence, the neglect, the wastefulness, the untruthfulness, and the dishonesty of the servants, who come to her one after another, each worse than the other. The causes of complaint are exactly those from which American housewives suffer. Depending upon her servants, whose deficiencies she is incapable of supplying herself, she is sometimes unable to give her husband a wholesome meal, decently served; and this preys upon her to such a degree that when he happens to be kept away she fancies that he remains away voluntarily because his home is unattractive. In her despair she proposes a "lady help" to him. He scouts the suggestion. The thing is impossible, ridiculous. She practises a pious deceit upon him; gets a lady help surreptitiously into the house, and keeps her out of sight until order, and cleanliness, and good dinners have subdued him into a proper frame of mind to receive with meek acquiescence the announcement of the origin of this beneficent change. Then all goes on happily. Money is saved, comfort supplants wretchedness and confusion, and domestic life becomes enjoyable upon a small income. It must be admitted that the authoress has it all her own way. The lady help is a paragon. She is the niece of a distinguished man of science, well bred, highly educated, self-respecting, but humble and modest, kind-hearted, and without the least pride or false shame. She is an angel of goodness to the under servant, who does the coarse work of the house, and teaches her as if she were her younger sister. She herself, although invited into the parlor and to sit at the family table, prefers to remain in the kitchen, which she brings into such a condition of neatness and order that it is a sort of little culinary palace. Plainly such women cannot be always looked for in "lady helps," and, moreover, there is this difficulty: If it should get about, as it surely would, that such a paragon of womanhood and housekeeping skill was to be found, if she had only moderate personal attraction, the kitchen over which she "presided" would be besieged by an army of bachelors, among whom it would be quite out of the order of nature that there should not be one that would victoriously carry her captive and put her in a parlor somewhere, with "helps," lady or other, to do her bidding.