Recent Literature

THERE are three objects, easily conceived, which might at this day move a competent hand to undertake the composition of a new biography of the founder of the Christian religion. That method might be chosen to introduce or recommend to the world a particular view of the nature, character, or career of this person, or of the sense of his teachings. Such a work might also aim to establish an original theory of the literary sources from which most of our knowledge of him is drawn, to correct or supersede those sacred books called the Gospels of the New Testament. Or it might simply endeavor to regather the materials and recast the form of the familiar narrative, to invest it with whatever fresh attractions the genius of the writer or his researches in the various departments of modern scholarship should be able to supply; and so to strengthen or vitalize the current Christian belief, in men who hold it already. In other words, we might take up a life of Jesus reasonably expecting to find it constructed in the interest of dogmatic theology, of philosophical and historical criticism, or of the religions edification of Christendom as it now is. In the world of purely scientific inquiry and speculative thought either of the two former lines of effort would undoubtedly be regarded as the more important. Whether it is a harder test of intellectual power, however, to achieve a great success in either of those than in the latter, is at least doubtful. Any novel attempt at the telling of so old a story, in which we do not feel a touch of signal strength, must be insignificant if not impertinent. A critical analysis of the poetry of Homer would be an easier enterprise than a paraphrase of the Iliad. On the history or geology of Palestine ten men might venture to make treatises where one would dare to paint the landscape seen eastward from Mount Lebanon.

Being tin honest clergyman of the church of England, and putting a simple construction on his ordination vows, Dr. Farrar writes of course as an unquestioning believer in the canonical Scriptures. Having gained a considerable English reputation for classical and general scholarship in his Cambridge fellowship, and earning a still greater celebrity as a preacher of uncommon breadth of mind and richness of style, he became generally known to readers of religious literature in this country through his Halsean Lectures of 1870. According to the terms of the foundation, his business before the university at that time was to defend the dogmatic thesis of the divinity of Christ. His treatment of the subject proved at once his independence of routine methods, his impatience of both scholastic processes and technical phraseology, the moral intensity of his convictions, and the amplitude of his reading. As is indicated by the title of the volume, The Witness of History to Christ, he inverted the old order of the argument, and undertook by a luminous exposition of what the personal force of the Son of Mary has accomplished for society and for individual man, of its tremendous conflict with the Judaic and ethnic orders of life, and its constructive energy as a creator of the Western civilization, to throw upon the deniers of its divine origin the burden of accounting for this immense phenomenon. It was a demonstration, therefore, not of inspired texts or sacred pneumatology, but of historical fact. The authority for the highest claim ever set forth for a being in human form is sought not so much in the assertions of disputed oracles, as on the solid ground of admitted events and an existing Christendom. Christ’s divine sonship is inferred from Christianity; the creed from what the living subject of the creed has done; the supernal origin of the head of the church from his mastery over men. Here are a Christian age and world. Where did they come from ?

Evidently, however, this representation of the case would be incomplete without some view of the person himself. How do we know that this force, which has wrought so magnificently “ through the ages all along,” is not impersonal, after all ? Granted that it was deific, was it incarnate ? Was the man of Nazareth anything more to his system than Confucius, Brahm, Odin, to theirs ? Besides, to make out a case for Christianity, the original person of Christendom must be identified with the Christ of the four evangelists. If Christian teaching points to European and American civilization, including its roll of heroes and Saints, with one hand, it points quite as confidently to the witness of the New Testament with the other. Moreover, the same teaching insists emphatically on faith in the person as the very substance and characteristic of the religion. It has also declared, and never more boldly than in these later days, that a spiritual apprehension of what Jesus was and did is far more to men every way than merely to accept what he said. Dr. Chiinning was not alone among apologists in affirming that Jesus Christ was the Son of God because he said so, — said so, that is, being such as he was. His personal character is the fundamental matter. Our author is fairly obliged, therefore, by the logical exigencies of his former position, to supplement the testimony of history with the testimony of biography. What was first in the order of time is second in the order of thought. Do the sketches of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John harmonize into the self-consistent and verifiable portrait of a divine man ?

Whoever wants to see the affirmative of the proposition maintained with intellectual ability, with manliness of spirit, with singular candor, with a ready command of a large share of the appropriate learning, with an eloquence so fascinating that if it were not sustained by an indisputable sincerity, it would sometimes almost alarm the understanding into an attitude of jealous self-protection, and yet with the steady impression of a straightforward narration rather than with dialectical ingenuity or colorings of fancy, may well consult the pages of Dr. Farrar. That he should handle acknowledged difficulties with the absolute critical freedom of Strauss and Renan is precluded by the conditions we have mentioned. He frankly avows that he approaches them with a bias of reverence for the old record engendered by ancestral traditions, by the studies of a lifetime, by an unspeakable gratitude. One certainly would not look to a disciple so enthusiastically loyal and so deliberately pledged, for the destructive energy of the Leben Jesu or the brilliant audacity of the Vie de Jésus. But with this single abatement, we are obliged to confess that our author encounters the hard points of his subject with a freedom from prejudice that is unexpected and remarkable. A writer at once so thoroughly persuaded and so undogmatic is as refreshing as he is rare, in theological or any other science. Whether from a consciousness of security in the main issue, or from a transparent clearness of moral vision, he throws away with a prodigal hand the most tempting opportunities fur trick and subterfuge, over-statement and fallacious explanation. In relation, for example, to the doubt of a census of the Roman empire by Augustus, in the governorship of Quirinus, after arraying very carefully all the classical authorities that can throw light on both sides of the question, and while evidently believing that the correctness of St. Luke is established, he yet takes pains to add : “ I may observe in passing that although no error has been proved, and, on the contrary, there is much reason to believe that the reference is perfectly accurate, yet I hold no theory of inspiration which would prevent me from frankly admitting, in such matters as these, any mistake or inaccuracy which could be shown really to exist.”So in reference to the star of the wise men. Kepler’s calculation, and afterwards Ideler’s, offered to the rationalists a hint which they were not likely to waste, in fixing, a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, in the constellation Pisces,—three conjunctions, in fact, — upon the year A. C. C. 747. What more likely than that the quick eye of the astrological Persians should see in that extraordinary stellar glory the presage of some terrestrial revolution ? or that the superstition of later times should transform the coincidence into a miracle, and weave it into a beautiful Oriental legend to adorn the birth-scene at Bethlehem ? But then conies a plodding British astronomer, Professor Pritchard, who goes over all the calculations, compares every item of the celestial phenomena with the lucid particulars of St. Matthew’s account, and proves that in half a dozen, different respects the planets and the story refuse to conform. Here was a capital chance for a triumphant slur at the scientific skeptics; and it is good to see with what, exemplary reserve and moderation Hr. Farrar declines to indulge in that little luxury. Coming to the prolific question as to who were “ the brethren of our Lord,”we see the same unprofessional independence of judgment; he finds no basis for Jerome’s opinion that they were sons of Mary and Alplæus; none for the Epiphanian notion that they were sons of Joseph by a former marriage, traditional in Palestine and in the Apocryphal gospels ; none for the άϵі πɑρθϵνία doctrine so jealously guarded by the Roman Catholic cultus ; he gives his reasons on each count. And yet he concludes, with characteristic and admirable liberality, “ Each person can form upon that evidence a decided conviction of his own, but it is too scanty to admit of any positive conclusion in which we may expect a general acquiescence.”After a fine analysis of the moral elements of the temptation, discriminating the various hypotheses that have prevailed, from Origen to Schleiermacher, and having dismissed with something like impatience the damaging pretense of a false orthodoxy that this Son of man went through only a dramatic semblance of being tempted, preserving his sinlessness only by a non posse peccuve, he says of the various expositions, “ Each must hold the view which seems to him most in accordance with the truth ; but the one essential point is that the struggle was powerful, personal, intensely real, — that Christ, for our sakes, met and conquered the tempter’s utmost strength.” The same largeness of sight, the same tolerance of diverse exegetical conclusions, prevails throughout.

It is not to be understood that these catholic principles imply a feeble faith in the gospel as a whole, or in the authenticity of the writings where it is recorded. They imply rather that the faith is too strong to be dependent upon accidents. One of the lessons that the Christian world learns slowly, but is surely learning, is that the stability of the Christian system is not owing to its human outworks ; that men may not the less be believers, or believers to less purpose, because, in the vastness and complicity of mental relations, they are patient of those who believe less ; and that personal orthodoxy may rest on firm foundations of both learning and spiritual insight, without raising the subordinate and shifting and possibly perishable fabrics of well-meant interpretation into the rank of primary and eternal verities. Dr. Farrar would scout any imputation that he doubts the supernatural character of Christ’s public ministry. But, unlike most English apologists, he appears to believe the miracles because he believes in the person rather than in the person because he believes the miracles. Seeing, he might say, that a soul of such height and depth as the soul of Jesus of Nazareth has lived on the earth, it is not extra-natural but the most natural thing conceivable that the ordinary sequence of events should give way before it, that the customary course of physical events should he at some points broken up, that the apparent limits of the possible should yield and retire, to make room for so majestic and glorious a guest, and to allow the new order of life to settle into its place. That certain disorders, or even regularities, on the natural plane should seem to be upset at such a crisis of the race is what might be expected. The wonder is that anybody should suppose the upsettings are the grandest feature of the occasion. Nothing is plainer than that, all along, the wonderworker regarded them as quite secondary evidences of his divinity, rather pitying than praising the minds that mistook them for the real and higher marvel.

The author’s method, then, is not so much the method of the blind partisan as of the open-eyed, generous, and loving learner. If we could say it without disrespect to theological science, or the organizing idea of the church, we should say it is not so much the method of the theologian or the ecclesiastic as of illuminated common-sense and a divine philosophy. Adopting the four great, recitals as genuine, constructing no artificial attempt at a technical “ harmony,”raising no debate over the main drift of the story, the writer aims to bring out into full light everything that can give that story reality and life. He would make the reader feel, by a power of evidence that is constantly pressing up from within the subject itself, that the story must be true. A stamp of verisimilitude is put upon the parts of an irresistible, selfevidencing impression of veracity in the living whole. About forty years ago, Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia, turned attention in this direction very effectively in his Jesus and his Biographers. Many men now no longer young remember the eagerness of delight with which this charming book refreshed their spirits. With singular subtilty of perception and beauty of touch it brought out the truth-to-nature of the familiar incidents that transpired eighteen hundred years ago between Bethlehem and the coasts of Tyre. To not a few youthful students it formed a kind of epoch in their religious and intellectual life. Dr. Furness overshadowed the external evidence with the internal. Dr. Farrar goes far to obliterate the old distinction between the two, altogether making us forget our critical apparatus, informing the history with vital breath, and solving the question of inspiration in our consciousness. Here is the naturalness of the supernatural; or rather, so to speak, the humanness of the superhuman, the divineness possible in man.

With what felicity this is accomplished, the reader must be persuaded by reading. Around the entire course of the biographic current, as it sweeps on unbroken, are grouped and gathered all the resources of a comprehensive culture, of literary art, of archæology and psychology, of Greek fable, German erudition, and English poetry, of knowledge gleaned from libraries, from travel, from the open fields where the great teacher walked. To render himself more sure of his geographical and topographical materials, the author journeyed through Palestine. To leave no nook unexplored where an item of information could possibly be hid, he has gone well aside, right and left, from the beaten paths of research. An Oriental allegory, a Syrian flower, a Homeric allusion, an erudite comment, a fugitive shadow in the mysterious Scenery of feeling or imagination, is not too remote to serve his plan. To minds of ordinary compass, the surprises of this sort will be almost as numerous as the pages, and many Biblical scholars will charge themselves with negligence for having overlooked the variety and wealth of illustration capable of being brought to interpret those threeand-thirty years of solitary toil and suffering, which made it a new thing for men to live, and changed the face of the world. Take as a specimen of the manner a single paragraph, correcting a prevalent notion that this unprecedented character had its nurture and its home in an obscure corner of the earth : —

“ The scene which lay there [at Nazareth] outspread before the eyes of the youthful Jesus was indeed a central spot in the world which he came to save. It was in the heart of the land of Israel, and yet, — separated from it only by a narrow boundary of hills and streams, — Phœnicia, Syria, Arabia, Babylonia, and Egypt lay close at hand. The isles of the Gentiles and all the glorious regions of Europe were almost visible over the waters of that western sea. The standards of Rome were planted on the plain before him ; the language of Greece was spoken in the towns below. And however peaceful it then might look, green as a pavement of emeralds, rich with its gleams of sunlight and the shadows which floated over it from the clouds of the latter rain, it had been for centuries a battle-field of nations. Pharaohs and Ptolemies, Emîrs and Arsacids, Judges and Consuls, had all contended for the mastery of that smiling tract. It had glittered with the lances of the Amalekites; it had trembled under the chariot-wheels of Sesostris; it had echoed the twanging bowstrings of Sennacherib; it had been trodden by the phalanxes of Macedonia ; it had clashed with the broadswords of Rome ; it was destined hereafter to ring with the battle-cry of the Crusaders and thunder with the artillery of England and France. In that plain of Jezreel, Europe and Asia, Judaism and Heathenism, Barbarism and Civilization, the Old and the New Covenant, the history of the past and the hopes of the present, seemed all to meet. No scene of deeper significance for the destinies of humanity could possibly have arrested the youthful Saviour’s gaze.”

The value of the work is weightier than the value of fine writing. In the wide warfare of religious thought which wrenches and tosses the mind of Christendom, if there is any one fixed point that promises to be yet a centre of unity for these distracted elements, it is undoubtedly to he found in the living person to whom this Christendom is due. About specific doctrines or statements of doctrine, about ritual and organization, about symbols and discipline, about the inspiration of documents and the shaping of institutions, the contention will be prolonged much beyond our time. The phases of controversy shift, and ancient landmarks vanish. But the interest in what pertains to the Son of man himself gives no token of decline. Who he was, what he did, by what power he wrought, how to account for him, what shall explain his supremacy, are questions which seize and master the strongest thinkers and ripest scholars as inevitably as ever. All the lines that have run out from him converge to him again. Rationalism cannot let him alone. Any church separating itself from him is a church unbuilding and denying itself; and therefore every reform in Christian theology, Christian service, and Christian charity, must begin with the life of Christ.

— Mr. De Vere’s Alexander the Great is a poem that one can hardly read without a deepened and widened, sense of the best phase of Alexander’s character ; but we cannot promise the reader that he will be much moved by any part of the drama, or rise from it with a vivid impression of any situation; it is not strongly pervaded with the atmosphere of the time or place ; neither its Greeks nor its Persians possess you with a profound feeling of their national or personal traits. The poem is the contemplation and development of Alexander as an intensely proud, only half-conscious force ; he is himself aware that he does not wholly grasp the meaning and purpose of himself; he hardly rises above the instinct of conquest, and scarcely wins a glimpse of the truth that his transitory empire is to be succeeded by the eternal Greek dominion of the human mind. The poet is resolved that we shall believe little to Alexander’s discredit except his arrogance; he will have nothing to do with the theory that Philotas died unjustly and Alexander died drunk, and as history always leaves one the choice of several stories, he may be very right in this. The fine qualities of Alexander which he continually turns to the light are his prevailing magnanimity, his unselfishness, his wisdom in the treatment of conquered peoples. It was perhaps not his intention to produce strong situations or stirring effects; at any rate he has not done so; one does not easily separate his impressions of the drama from his impressions of the agreeable essay on Alexander’s character which introduces the drama. On the large canvas appear Greek, Persian, Indian, Babylonian, Tyrian, Jew ; cities fall, empires cease, arid all the great aspects of Alexander’s conquering march through the East are shown; but all is too dim, too resolutely subdued. If a poem moves, elevates, and possesses the reader, then this drama, which interests him and keeps his curiosity gently alive (and no more than that) to the end, can hardly be called a poem, with all its virtues of sane, pure English, beauty of diction, temperance, and decency of argument. Yet it has passages of subtle poetry in it, which leave a pleasant trace in the brain, as where Ptolemy says of the near-seen hills, that they are Nature’s

Something of the delicate grace of such a fancy as this is bestowed upon the idealization of Arsinoe, the daughter of Darius, whose love-affair with Hephæstion, Alexander’s friend, is palely traced through the larger story; she has a very maidenly Sweetness of soul that fitly expresses itself. The character of Arsinoe is a strain of poetry which we cannot give; but here is a touch of the sort of wisdom which we are losing sight of in these hard days of science and fact: —

— We are innocent of any intention of blaming covertly, when we say that A Daughter of Bohemia is a sensational novel. That term is used to bring discredit to a book, very much as the expression of the fact that a man has a good heart is taken for silent condemnation of his head, character, temper, disposition, intentions, and generally everything with which his fellowmen come in contact. In this instance, however, we mean nothing more than that there are some rather unusual incidents in the novel, and that the reader’s interest lies with them possibly more than, or at least quite as much as, with the delineation of the characters. There is no harm in this; what the reader wants is to be taken out of himself, and that result we are pretty sure will follow with any one who takes up this novel. The author, Christian Reid, has already written a number of novels, but this one, in our opinion, is much better than any of them. They all Seemed to show a certain amount of cleverness nearly hidden under a mass of fine language, of easy writing but hard reading. Those who take up A Daughter of Bohemia will know what we mean if they will look at its illustrations, so-called, which are perfectly in keeping with the previous stories of our author, but which in their sensationalism — we here use the word not in praise — and mock elegance are unworthy of this really interesting novel.

The scene of the novel is laid in the South. The characters are for the most part Southerners — the young woman engaged to the young man, the chattering widow, the peaceful Mr. and Mrs. Middleton : not that there is anything specially Southern about them; they are like wellbred people the world over. The other characters are Captain Max Tyndale and Miss Norah Desmond ; the last named is the daughter of Bohemia. We shall give no analysis of the story; it well deserves reading, not only for its plot, but also for the clever manner in which it is told, and, in great measure, for the excellent way in which the characters, and particularly the women, are drawn. Leslie Graham, with her amiable, affectionate, honest nature, is well described, and in excellent contrast is Norah — good, too, but in another way.

The writer has done one thing well which is an important part of the novelist’s art: she sets before ns a great many threads, keeps them perfectly distinct, and understands when to drop one and begin telling us about another without any confusion. If the adjectives which still abound in Miss Reid’s novels could be cut out with an unsparing hand, and Korah could have referred less to Bohemia and to herself as a Bohemian, we should have been glad. We have more cause to be glad, however, in the nearer approach to life which this novel shows. It will repay reading. We shall hope for something still better from a writer who shows such ingenuity in devising and keeping hidden her plot, and such admirable knowledge of character as is to be seen in Leslie and Norah. She has written an interesting book of its kind.

— In the preface to their elaborate volume on The Moon, the authors give the reasons which have led to its preparation, and they modestly say that “ a long course of reflective scrutiny of the lunar surface . . . convinced us that there was yet something to be said about the moon that existing works on astronomy did not contain.”

When we consider that each of these gentlemen has been employed in observations upon the moon for nearly thirty years (Mr. Nasmyth at his private observatory and Mr. Carpenter at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich), it is indeed credible that they together might say something of importance in regard to the subject of their study.

They have wisely limited the scope of their work, only giving passing references to lunar topography (which has been thoroughly treated by Lohrman, Beer, Mädler, and Schmidt) and to the moon’s motions, and devoting almost their entire work to the subject of volcanic energy as exhibited on the lunar surface.

The phenomena of volcanic action they have endeavored to explain by referring to a very few natural laws, all of which are well known, and they have further endeavored to connect the present condition of the satellite with that vast nebula assumed as a starting-point by Laplace in his Exposition de la Système du Monde.

In order to make their arguments conclusive to the general reader, it was necessary that he should see with his own eyes the craters, valleys, and mountain forms of which they speak; and this end they have accomplished in the most marvelous way. With extraordinary patience they have laboriously drawn, over and over again, portions of the lunar surface, selecting always those portions which were most favorably situated for the purpose, and after thirty years of drawing, comparison, redrawing, and renewed comparison, they have arrived at what they consider a just representation of certain portions of the moon’s surface. In order to present their sketches in the most advantageous way, these gentlemen have actually constructed models in relief from their drawings, and have photographed them with the real sunlight to make their shadows for them. How marvelously accurate their photographs are only an astronomer can appreciate ; it is as if the real crater itself were in the telescope.

The gigantic labor of modeling their patterns once accomplished, their task became easy: and it is no exaggeration to say that the owner of this book sees the lunar craters, with all their complexity, much better than many astronomers. Lunar photography has never been equal to an enlarged photograph of single craters, but the labors of these gentlemen show that any Want in that direction can now be filled. It requires just the qualities and abilities which they have shown.

In their Plate III., they give a copy of one of De la line’s photographs of the full moon: it is to be regretted that they did not obtain one from Rutherford, of New York, such a one, for example, as is given in Proctor’s Moon, in order that their illustrations of lunar scenery might all be of equal excellence. It is perhaps characteristic of an English book on any topic, that all American progress in the same direction should be unknown, but we wish simply to call the attention of American readers to the fact that Dr. G. W. Draper, of New York, produced daguerreotypes of the moon some time before De la Rue, “ the father of celestial photography,” and to remind them that the lunar photographs of Mr. Lewis Rutherford and of Dr. Henry Draper are still entirely unrivaled by English, or indeed by any foreign work of like kind.

On page 59 of their work, the authors divide the lunar features into four classes : craters, mountain chains, smooth plains, and bright radiating streaks. By the aid of their photographic copies of the models, they are enabled to study these intelligently and in a way easy to be followed by the reader, and they arrive at conclusions in regard to the process of formation of these various classes of lunar scenery which must be acknowledged as rational and consistent, if not absolutely final.

The radiating streaks they have carefully studied by means of glass globes which were subjected to an internal strain, and a photograph of one of these globes exhibits in a very striking way the peculiarities of these bright streaks on the moon.

In all of their reasoning, the authors are careful to fortify themselves by actual experiment where experiment is possible, and to explain in the very fullest way their position by excellently chosen wood-cuts. They discuss carefully the evidences of change in the lunar surface (and incidentally of change in nebulæ), and it is a fact to be noted that these two careful observers are of opinion that no change in the moon’s crust has yet been established.

On the whole, this work is one of the best which has ever appeared on a similar subject, and it thoroughly fulfills its object. The reason for its excellence is plain, and it conveys an absolute moral. The authors are thoroughly familiar with their subject by long and valuable study, and therefore their opinions are of the highest value.

— It is not every traveler whose paths lie in so strange and comparatively little known regions as those which Mr. Vincent visited, and which he mysteriously calls the Land of the White Elephant; and no one who has made this journey can fail to have something interesting to say about it, though how near one can come to being an exception to this statement, Mr. Vincent, we regret to say, is not far from showing, Burma, Siam, Cambodia, and CochinChina form a list at the head of a book which is sure to tempt many readers, but in this case they will find within less to entertain them than is to be wished. Some of the accounts of the author’s interviews with the kings of the countries he visited are tolerably interesting, but in general there are too many particulars about the bills of fare, too many minutiœ of the journey, and too little is said about the broadlymarked peculiarities of the people among whom he traveled. It reads like a dull diary. The title of the book is rather misleading ; it is well known that the Buddhists believe that in a white elephant there may be sojourning the soul of Buddha in one of his countless transmigrations. He is supposed to prefer the purer and rarer white to the ordinary color of the animal ; and hence the kings of Siam and other countries where Buddhism prevails are always on the lookout for the white elephant. Our author saw two at Bangkok. “These are kept,” he says, “fastened to stout posts, in large sheds, and covered in the same manner as those I saw at Mandalay, which belonged to the King of Ava. The first animal whose stable we entered was quite small, and possessed few of the peculiar characteristics of a dark cream albino, excepting perhaps the eyes.

. . . In another shed we saw a larger and also whiter elephant, its body having the peculiar flesh-colored appearance termed ‘ white. ’” The one referred to at Mandalay he says was “a male of medium size, with white eyes and a forehead and ears spotted white, appearing as if they had been rubbed with pumice-stone or sand-paper, but the remainder of the body was ‘ black as a coal.’ He was a vicious brute, chained by the forelegs in the centre of a large shed, and was surrounded by the adjuncts of royalty — gold and white cloth umbrellas, an embroidered canopy above, and some bundles of spears in the corners of the room.”

Although in a literary point of view the value of the book is hut slight, the illustrations are of merit. They are taken with considerable care from photographs, and are numerous enough to make the volume worthy of attention. Especially interesting are the views of the ruins of Angkor.

— Truly, if to have the path well lighted were all, this would be a generation of mighty characters. Dr. Carpenter’s treatise on the Principles of Mental Physiology might almost he classed among books of edification, so constantly are the applications of physiological laws to moral culture insisted on by the learned author. But what can good maxims do, when even good resolutions, as we all know, are no equivalent for those acts of volition on whose constant repetition the formation of character depends ? The actual instants of temptation are the only ones in which that useful work can proceed ; they alone, as a German pedagogue has well expressed it, form the fulcrums upon which the lever of the moral will may rest, while the man lifts himself up. Dr. Carpenter, while believing fully in the nervous conditions of mental action, yet holds to the principle of freewill; and one of the main themes of his book is to trace how acts and thoughts originally voluntary become, by the force of habit, automatic, by the aptitude of the organization to grow to the modes in which it has been much exercised, and probably to transmit to its offspring the same tendency. This is very fully done. There is also a very good account of various morbid states, based mainly on Braid’s researches into hypnotism and “ electro-biology,” which Dr. Carpenter was, we believe, the first scientific man of repute to estimate at their value. It may be that he overvalues them now, for in the running polemic against Spiritualism which seems to be the second great purpose of the book, he relies on them principally and on Faraday’s table-movingdetecting apparatus; which latter, if we are rightly informed, may now be called an obsolete weapon. The student proper either of psychology or of physiology will find nothing that is new in the work. But clergymen and educators will find it a valuable treatise, alike for its multitudinous facts and its practical deductions; while the style merits commendation in this day of slouchy familiarity, for its sustained polish and refinement.

— Colonel Chesney’s Essays are of especial interest to us Americans, because he devotes much space to a subject which is of very great importance to us, our last war ; and, while he treats this with all the respect it deserves, but which it has not always won from European critics, the value of the praise which both the North and the South get is enhanced by the frequent proofs the author gives of his qualification for the task. He is a military writer who is clear, and owing to the fact that he omits what are merely professional details, he is very entertaining.

There are four essays in this volume devoted to this country ; they deal with General Grant’s military life, the life of General Lee, the work done by the navy in the war, more especially at the capture of New Orleans, and Colonel’s Dahlgreu’s cavalry raid. All of these subjects, or rather the first three, — the pages on Colonel Dahlgren are few and of a different sort, — are carefully written, enthusiastically but with accuracy. General Grant, for instance, gets full credit for all that he did, and at the same time he is not spared sharp criticism for his obstinacy in the Wilderness, which cost the army so many lives. The testimony of an intelligent foreigner is valuable in this matter because in this country one’s opinion on either side of the matter is — or perhaps, more properly, was — nothing more than an announcement of the speaker’s side in politics. Colonel Chesney says: “Grant’s mode of assault, made ‘ along the whole line,’and without any reserve, was contrary to all the tactical rules of theory or practice. There is, indeed, an exception in one important case, when the enemy is decidedly worn out, and shaken by previous events. So Wellington ordered his general charge at Waterloo when the Prussian shock had shattered the French right flank, and made Napoleon’s battle a hopeless struggle. So Radetsky, acting on the same instinct of genius, threw all his front line suddenly on the exhausted Italians at Novara, ere Hess, his more methodical chief of staff, could array the reserves for a final assault. Grant had no such motive for his battle. The troops he attacked were not the ill-led swaggerers whose indecision at Port Donelson had been patent to his observant glance, nor the wearied stragglers whose officers stayed to plunder with them at Pittsburg. They were veterans, war-hardened to suffering and danger, confident in their general, feeling themselves invincible on the defensive, and making up by their priceless value as Individual soldiers for their want of discipline and numbers.”

General Lee has a great many pages devoted to him; with foreigners he is naturally enough a greater favorite, if not indeed the greatest favorite of all the leaders on either side. His reluctance to leave the army of the United States, a matter which has received a different explanation from that here given, his long success with inferior means, his stout upholding of what was sure to be the beaten side, and his final defeat, all combine to set him in a light which wins from other people more sympathy than he can get nowadays from us. The article gives an admirable exposition of his brilliant career, and makes an interesting pendant to that on Grant.

The chapter on the navy recounts the successes of that branch of the service in the Mississippi, and is most admirable reading. When the history of the whole war is written in that manner by one as familiar with the subject, as fair-minded, as impartial yet as enthusiastic, an admirable work will be done. Those who find the events of the war getting confused in their memory, or those who were too young to get more than vague information at the time, will find this volume an excellent means of instruction. No one, however, will fail to get pleasure from it. The remainder of the volume is very interesting. The essay on Lord Cornwallis treats of the life of that general after his return from this country, and of his great services in India. That on De Fezensac’s diary exposes the condition of the grand army, setting right many of the readilyformed misconceptions of those who are inclined to exaggerate the discipline of the French army Under Napoleon. That on Von Brandt does very nearly the same thing: the main difference being that it describes the state of affairs in Spain, though at about the same time, namely, that of the First Empire. Colonel Chesney says of Fezensac’s Souvenirs and the memoirs of Von Brandt, that they “ throw more light upon the details of the grand army, and upon the working of the system which all but enslaved the world, than had been shed by all the national histories and official biographies with which Europe has been deluged these sixty years past,” and the gist of these Colonel Chesney has managed to extract. The volume is, on the whole, most admirable.

— In no department of Mammalogy is there a greater dearth of accurate biographical and general information than in that relating to those species whose home is the oceanic waters and their shores,—the members of the order Pinnipedia and Cetacea, or the seals, whales, porpoises, dolphins, and their numerous allies. Captain Scammon’s work on the Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast and the American Whale-Fishery is hence a particularly welcome contribution to this department of science, and one whose value cannot be easily overestimated. In this volume of something over three hundred quarto pages we have the results of many years of observation and study by one who brings to his work the experience of a practical whaleman,— whose profession has necessarily given him the best of Opportunities for becoming familiar with the objects he describes,— and the enthusiasm, skill, and intelligence of a careful naturalist. He has hence given us not only a very detailed history of all the species of the Pacific waters which are pursued by the adventurous whalemen, but also full descriptions of those of less commercial importance, with biographical notes and lithographic figures from original drawings of nearly all the Species described. Numerous tables of measurements further increase the scientific value of the work.

The task here attempted is by no means an easy one, and if there are gaps in the histories of some of the species, we have still to thank Captain Scammon’s assiduous labors that they are not more frequent and greater. A moment’s reflection is sufficient to recall the difficulties of the undertaking, favorable opportunities for observing the habits of these aquatic monsters being rare and brief. The author says, in referring to this point, that his own experience “ has proved that close observation for months and even years may be required before a single new fact in regard to their habits can be obtained.” This, he says, has been particularly the case with the dolphins (whose history in many instances he has been able to give but very imperfectly), while “ many of the characteristic actions of the whale are so secretly performed that years of ordinary observation may be insufficient for their discovery.”

The work is divided into three parts, besides containing a lengthy “ Appendix.” The first part is devoted exclusively to the Cetaceans, or the whales, porpoises, dolphins, etc., and occupies about one third of the volume, giving very full accounts of the habits, distribution, migrations, and modes of capture of the species (California gray whale, bowhead or great polar whale, the right whale, sperm whale, etc.) which possess the greatest commercial importance. These chapters must possess great interest for the general reader as well as the naturalist; and they show that even these unwieldy creatures indulge in gambols and possess a great degree of sagacity. The whales soon learn the danger they are in from human foes, and display great cunning in eluding pursuit, often obliging their pursuers to adopt new methods of attack, and weapons effective at a greater distance than those previously used. As their game has become scarcer and more wary, the whalemen have had to employ the bomb-gun and bomb-lances in place of the hand-lances and harpoons of earlier days.

The California gray whale is not only one of the most important of the larger whales, but also one of the most dangerous to attack; to which latter fact the name “devil-fish,” often applied by the whalers to this animal, is a significant allusion. These whales are said to pass the summer in the Arctic Ocean and Okhotsk Sea. “ In October and November,” says our author, “ the California grays appear off the coast of Oregon and Upper California, on their way back to their tropical haunts, making a quick, low spout at long intervals; showing themselves but very little until they reach the smooth lagoons of the lower coast, where, if not disturbed, they gather in large numbers, passing and repassing into and out of the estuaries, or slowly raising their colossal forms midway above the surface, falling over on their sides as if by accident, and dashing the water into foam and spray about them. At times, in calm weather, they are seen lying on the water quite motionless, keeping one position for an hour or more. The first season in Scammon’s Lagoon, coast of Lower California, the boats were lowered several times for them, we thinking that the animals when in that position were dead or sleeping; but before the boats arrived within even shooting distance they were on the move again.

“ About the shoals at the mouth of one of the lagoons, in 1860, we saw large numbers of the monsters. It was at the low stage of the tide, and the shoal places were plainly marked by the constantly foaming breakers. To our surprise we saw many of the whales going through the surf where the depth of water was barely sufficient to float them. We could discern in many places, by the white sand that came to the surface, that they must be nearer touching the bottom. One, in particular, lay for a half hour in the breakers, playing, as seals often do in a heavy surf; turning from side to side with half-extended fins, and moved apparently by the heavy ground - swell which was breaking; at times making a playful spring with its bending flukes, throwing its body clear of the water, coming down with a heavy splash, then making two or three spouts, and again settling under water; perhaps the next moment its head would appear, and with the heavy swell the animal would roll over in a listless manner, to all appearance enjoying the sport intensely.”

The manner of pursuing and capturing the California gray whale, as well as of the other large species, is described with considerable detail, from which we learn that the method varies with different localities and at different seasons. In making the passage between their northern and southern feeding-grounds the whales have the habit of keeping near the shore. The whaling parties take advantage of this, and lie in wait for them in the thick beds of kelp, watching for a good chance to shoot the whales as they pass ; this method being called “kelp whaling.” The first year or two that this method of capture was practiced, says Captain Scammon, “ many of the animals passed through or along the edge of the kelp, where the gunners chose their own distance for a shot. This method, however, soon excited the suspicions of these sagacious creatures. At first, the ordinary whale-boat was used, but the keen-eyed ‘devil-fish’ soon found what would be the consequence of getting too near the long, dark-looking object, as it lay nearly motionless, only rising and falling with the rolling swell. A very small boat — with one man to scull and another to shoot — was then used, instead of the whaleboat. This proved successful for a time, but, after a few successive seasons, the animals passed further seaward, and at the present time the boats usually anchor outside the kelp. The mottled fish being seen approaching far enough off for the experienced gunner to judge nearly where the animal will ‘break water,’the boat is sculled to the place, to await the ‘ rising.’ If the whale ‘ shows a good chance,’ it is frequently killed instantly, and sinks to the bottom, or receives its death-wound by the bursting of the bomb-lance. Consequently, the stationary position or slow movement of the animal enables the whaler to get a harpoon into it before sinking. To the harpoon a line is attached, with a buoy, which indicates the place where the dead creature lies, should it go to the bottom. Then, in the course of twenty-four hours, or in less time, it rises to the surface, and is towed to the shore, the blubber taken off and tried out in pots set for that purpose upon the beach.”

After a few years, Captain Scammon tells us, the whales learned to avoid these beds of kelp, which had proved to them such fatal regions, and made wide deviations in their courses in order to practice their favorite sport among the rollers at the mouths of the lagoons they passed in their journeys; but even here they were followed with the deadly harpoon and still more destructive bomb-lanee.

Each species seems to have not only its peculiar habits and places of resort, but different methods of pursuit have to be adopted to secure them, the account of which occupies a large portion of the first part of the work.

Part II. is devoted to the Pinnipedia, or seals, and contains very full accounts, including much new matter, of the sea-elephant, walrus, sea-lion, and the fur seal of the Pacific coast, as well as of the sea-otter, which latter seems to have been inadvertently included among the Pinnipedia.

The third part is devoted to a History of the American Whale-Fishery, the author treating the subject statistically and chronologically, as well as describing the modes of capture, the weapons and implements of the chase, and the hardships, dangers, and excitements attending the prosecution of one of the most daring and successful of marine enterprises, and one in which our hardy seamen have taken so conspicuous a part. The chapter on the Life and Characteristics of American Whalemen, though simply written, has all the fascination of a romance, being a record of courage, fortitude, and danger, of reverses and successes. The following, from our author’s account of “ lagoon whaling,” shows the risks connected with this daring enterprise. “A cow with a young calf is usually selected, so that the parent animal may be easily struck ; yet the race is sometimes so prolonged as nearly to exhaust the boat’s crew ; and when at last the creature lags, so that her tired offspring may keep near, thereby presenting the opportunity to the ‘ harpoonierman ’ to thrust effectively with his weapon, the murderous blow often causes the animal to recoil in its anguish, and give a swoop of its ponderous flukes, or a toss of its head, which, coming in contact with the boat, produces a general wreck, and more or less injury to the men. In the winter of 1856, we were whaling about the esteros of Magdalena Bay, when, in attacking sixteen whales, two boats were entirely destroyed, while the others were staved fifteen times; and out of eighteen men who officered and manned them, six were badly jarred, one had both legs broken, another three ribs fractured, and still another was so much injured internally that he was unable to perforin duty during the rest of the voyage. All these serious casualties occurred before a single whale was captured. However, after a few days’ rest, while the boats were being repaired and new ones fitted to take the place of those destroyed, the contest with the ‘ devil-fish ’ was again renewed and with successful results. Several whales were taken without accident, and no other serious casualty occurred during the season.”

The Appendix is taken up largely with a systematic catalogue of the Cetacea of the North Pacific Ocean, prepared by Mr. W. H. Dall, of the U. S. Coast Survey, with especial reference to Captain Scammon’s work. To this Captain Scammon has added a glossary of whalemen’s phrases, and a list of “stores and outfits” of a first-class whaleman for a Cape Horn voyage.

While Captain Scammon’s work is written with scientific precision and clearness, he has not burdened his pages with discussions of nomenclature and synonomy, neither is there a tendency in his descriptions to sensational effect. The typographical appearance of the work is neat and attractive, and the illustrations are commendably executed.

— Even Goethe could say that the only real and the deepest theme of the world’s and of man’s history, to which all other subjects are subordinate, is the conflict between faith and unbelief. It is admitted on all hands that since the French Revolution, or within the last fifty or eighty years, there has occurred in the theological circles of Germany a very noticeable reaction against rationalism. The sifting which scholarly faith has undergone in Germany in the last hundred years has undoubtedly been the severest to which it was ever subjected ; but the result has been that Christianity in the nineteenth, as in every previous century of its history, has vindicated its intellectual supremacy.

Professor Christlieb’s vigorous Apologetic Lectures on Modern Doubt and Christian Belief unquestionably exhibit justly the theological tendencies of the best modern German scholarship ; and are thus, for any reader who occupies Goethe’s point of view as to history, an interesting contribution to the study of the signs of the times.

If, instead of following the division which this work makes of the causes of the power of rationalism into the historical, the philosophical, the ecclesiastical, the political, the social, and the ethical, we summarize its definite statements of facts on this branch of the topic, we may say that the sources of the power of skepticism in Germany in the last century have been fragmentary presentations of Christianity in the spirit of earnestness without science or of science without earnestness; maladroit organization of the German state church in the use of compulsory confessions of faith at the confirmation legally required of the whole population, whether believing or unbelieving, and in the absence of the familiar American and English distinction between the converted and unconverted, and a consequently stagnant church life; moral, intellectual, and social contagion from France; the demoralization arising in Germany from its having been the principal theatre of European wars; support by the church of popularly odious absolutism in politics ; German university life, in its peculiar limitations and stimulations of free discussion ; state aid to rationalistic organizations; Roman Catholicism in South Germany; the overthrow of several celebrated German systems of philosophy; and the doctrinal unrest of the age in most, from the organization of new facts in many, departments of thought. In view of these causes it is not surprising, nor to a scholar’s faith is it intellectually annoying, that skepticism has had power in Germany, and that it yet retains abundant influence among those slightly educated in respect to Christianity.

As to Professor Christlieb’s proof that rationalism is far less powerful now in Germany than fifty or eighty years ago, we shall find his more important facts, though not his order of discussion, if we notice that in the German universities the rationalistic lecture-rooms are now empty and the evangelical crowded, while fifty or eighty years ago the rationalistic were crowded and the evangelical empty; that histories of the rise, progress, and decline of Rationalism in the German universities have been appearing for the last fifteen years in the most learned portions of the literature of Germany; that such teachers as Tholuck, Julius Müller, Dorner, Twesten, Ullmann, Lange, Rothe, and Tischendorf, most of whom began their professorships with great unpopularity in their universities, on account of their opposition to rationalistic views, are now particularly honored on that very account; that the attitude of the general government at Berlin has destroyed the force of many of the political causes of disaffection with the state church ; that the victory at Sedan, and the achievement of German unity, diminish the chances of demoralization from European wars and by contagion from France ; and that, in the field of exegetical research , while rationalism has caused the dicovery of many new facts and the adoption of a new method, the naturalistic theory by Paulus, the mythical theory by Strauss, the tendency theory by Bauer, and the legendary by Renan, have been so antagonistic to each other as to be successively outgrown both by Christian and by rationalistic scholarship. Strauss’s last work, The Old Faith and the New, was regarded in Germany, even by his friends, as weak; while the mythical theory, as every scholar knows, did not outlive its author; and the Tübingen school itself has now no existence at Tübingen.

“ The proposal,” says Professor Christlieb, to “implore the divine blessing and assistance on the deliberations of the Frankfort Parliament was received with shouts of derisive laughter.” But “for the last thirty years, in spite of all hostilities, a truly Christian science has begun victoriously to lead the way, by new and deeper exegetical researches; by historical investigation ; by pointing out the remarkable harmony existing between many new archæological, ethnological, and scientific discoveries. In the pulpits of by far the greater number of the German churches, and in the theological faculties of most of the universities, it has so completely driven unbelief out of the field, that the latter has been compelled to retire in a great measure into the divinity schools of adjacent countries— Switzerland, France, Holland, Hungary. When compared with these and other countries, Germany shows that unbelief has a greater tendency to insinuate itself into and to make its permanent abode among half educated rather than thoroughly educated communities.”

As the German language is far richer than the English in connectives formed by inflected words, an involved sentence is far clearer in German than in English, so that a certain awkwardness of style is apt to characterize English imitations of the German literary manner; but this fault, which is the chief one of the present translation, results from its faithful literalness.

— The sixth number of the Journal of the American Social Science Association contains sufficient proof of the need for the existence of a society which shall give its best attention to those serious problems of public interest which demand careful study, as well as proof that there are men and women willing and able to devote themselves to these public matters without looking to political success as their reward. This volume of the reports of their doings shows that their range of interests is wide, and that they do their work with thoroughness is guaranteed by the fact that so profound and careful a thinker as Mr. David A. Wells deals with taxation, that so good an authority as Professor Sumner of Yale College discusses finance, and that so distinguished a scientific man as Professor B. Peirce of Harvard treats the important question of ocean laws for steamers. Mr. Gamaliel Bradford is the author of a paper on financial administration in which he tells once more the familiar story of the misfortunes the country labors under from the inefficiency of Congress, and from the gross incompetence of the secretaries of the treasury. The remedy that he advocates is one that he has before presented to the public, but, so far as we know, it has never received the honor of an opposing argument. It is “ the conversion of the nominal into the real head of the finances, the admission of the secretary of the treasury to the floor of Congress with the right and duty of taking part in debate, and subjection to what the French call interpellation.” The advantages and practicability of this reform he sets in a strong light.

Professor Sumner has a similar subject, it will be noticed, but without proposing a definite remedy he shows, with the clearness of one who fully understands his subject, the unwisdom of the doctrine of protection, and of the legal tender act. These two essays and that of Mr. Wells are of great importance at present. The association certainly is not what is called behind the times. Mr. Willard C. Flagg’s paper on the Farmers’ Movement in the Western States takes up a timely subject, but the treatment of it is not conspicuous for clearness. He quotes from Froissart and La Bruyère extracts which show the sufferings of the agricultural classes in former days, when “ certain wild animals, both male and female, scattered about the country, livid and wasted by the sun, bend over the soil, which they scratch and dig up with invincible perseverance.

. . . At night they retire to their dens, where they feed on black bread, water, and roots,” etc., etc. This description even the liveliest imagination would find hard to apply to the prominent members of the granges, even “ allowing for differences in civilization.” Mr. Flagg finds that the farmers suffer from various causes: “ the wealth of the country, although the product of the labor of our industrial classes, in great measure, does not remain in the hands of these classes, but accumulates in the hands of a relatively small number of non-producers;” few farmers are legislators, and legislation is consequently shaped to further the interests of the legislators; patent rights and protective tariffs do mischief and keep up prices; and owing to vicious legislation an unusually large proportion of the population is engaged in trade and other non-productive employments. The remedy proposed is very vague, but the “ fight is to be war to the knife with the semi-legalized but unjust privileges of chartered monopolies.” “ The time draws nearer when the cunning of the hand shall be directed by the brain of the worker, and not by the beck of the task-master.” We hope it may also escape the beck of the demagogue. “ And that means a more equal division of profits, a more pleasant life for the laborer, and a simpler and more republican life for those who would thrive by others’ toil.” These generalities do not even glitter, and certainly it will be hard for even the most intelligent leaders of the farmers’ movement to get a hearing so long as they indulge in merely such vague threatenings. That even those “who would thrive by others’ toil ” should be compelled by legislation to “lead a simpler and more republican life” sounds like anything but wisdom, and displays gross ignorance of political economy. The discussion of the paper, though brief, was more Sensible.

The other papers are interesting ; they treat of different matters. There is one on Pauperism in the City of New York, which shows the injurious tendency of indiscriminate charity ; one on the Reformation of Prisoners, which is a subject exciting more and more interest in the public mind; one on the Deaf Mute College in Washington; and one on the Protection of Animals, that deals with those animals eaten by man, and the ill effects of the treatment they receive.

It will be seen that this is a very interesting number, that it treats exactly the sort of subjects in which every one is interested and in which a wise and beneficent government would take the lead. It so happens that our government, from ignorance and selfishness, is behind the best intelligence of the country, and it is to be hoped that the sincerity and faithfulness of the association will overcome the prejudice so commonly felt against men who have knowledge of any specialties, and that the public will learn so much from these and similar efforts that at last some vague knowledge of the real wants of the country will work its way downwards even to the level of the politician’s intelligence.

— For a considerable time now, those who are under the fascination of Etruscan mystery have heard, and been saying to each other, “ Wait for Corssen’s book; ” and his translations, only known in private as yet, have received the approbation of some of the most learned Italian savans, themselves no careless or ignorant judges of a problem from the solution of which the primitive history of Italy must take its complexion. Mr. Taylor, in a single passage of his opening chapter, sums up the study and its result so far as is now known to the public: “ Fortunately we possess ample monumental records written in the Etruscan language, but they have hitherto successfully defied all attempts at interpretation. Now that the Assyrian and Egyptian records have been read, these Etruscan inscriptions present the only considerable philological problem that remains unsolved. But that it remains unsolved has not been from want of pains. A vast amount of ingenuity and of erudition has been wasted in attempts to explain the inscriptions by the aid of various Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian languages; Latin, Greek, Oscan, Hebrew, Phœnician, Arabic, Ethiopic, Chinese, Coptic, and Basque have all been tried in turn. Sir W. Betham believed the Etruscan to be a Keltic dialect. Dr. Donaldson and the Earl of Crawford have attempted to show that it is Gothic, Mr. Robert Ellis has expended much ingenuity and learning in the attempt to prove its Armenian affinities. Dr. Steub maintains that it is a Rhæto-Romansch speech.

“It may safely be affirmed that none of these attempts have been regarded as satisfactory by any person except their authors.”

Whether the sentence which our author has pronounced, and which doubtless embodies the verdict of philologists in general, may or may not be extended to his own attempt as well, we shall not be long in knowing from the pen of the recognized master of Etruscan studies, Corssen himself; but that need not prevent us from noting the nature of the difficulties which beset the question, or the important results which an authoritative solution of it will lead to. The discovered Etruscan inscriptions are either monumental or votive; the tomb and the articles consigned to it, either the dedicatory inscription or the isolated characterizing words needed to explain the object of the offering, being almost the only remains of a great civilization which can guide us to a conclusion as to the origin of it and the ethnic relation of the masters of Italy in the twilight of history. Standing on the threshold of the tolerably-Known we look back and find ourselves in presence of a mighty race — wonderful in art and all the evidences of old and ripe civilization; irresistible on the land as at sea ; wise in peace as well, with a confederation of powers and freedom from the common ambition of kings which no ancient nation beside seems ever to have been capable of. No foundation for conjecture exists as to the time when they began to be great, but one datum of tolerable value may be given which will show how hopeless chronology is. There have been found on Monte Albano some sepulchral urns, of which Mr. Taylor says, in following his argument on the tumulus as an evidence of ethnie relationship : “ Perhaps the most singular and striking proof that the tumulus is only a survival of the tent is supplied by the small cinerary urns which have been found at Albano (close to Tusculmn), two of which are in the British Museum. They are of immense antiquity, and are probably older than any other sepulchral remains of Italy.” These urns are found, it is said, under volcanic deposit. Now the whole Agro Romano is formed by the action of the group of volcanoes of which Monte Albano is the crown, and the various craters on the mountain are now lakes or their filled-up beds— the lakes of Nemi and Albano still remaining, while that of Aricia has become an enormous fertile plain. A temple of Diana, which stood in ancient times on the shore of the lake of Nemi at the edge of an alluvial flat then filling the upper end of the original lake, is now only some hundreds of feet from the water, while the Lake of Albano, which was tapped by Etruscan miners at the time of the siege of Veii, has scarcely diminished in size by all the washings of these centuries since the making of the tunnel. The topmost crater is a plain which served as the camp of observation for Hannibal in his war against Rome, and has evidently been a lake. No tradition remains even of a time when these volcanoes were active, and the whole civilization of historical and even mythical Italy has been marked on the great plain of volcanic ashes which has displaced the sea about it. If we admit that the position of these urns is what is claimed, how many ages must have elapsed since those ashes fell on them! But even if we cannot maintain this datum we have another equally significant.

Of all the literature of Etruria not a trace remains, save a few words preserved by Roman and Greek writers, while Roman jealousy Studiously destroyed all documents and inscriptions that might have commemorated the greatness of the older civilization. The alphabet, too, was derived from the Greek, not directly from the Phœnician, indicating that the language had been without letters until the time, comparatively recent, when communication was had with Greece.

The philological problem involved in the identification of the Etruscans is quite such as might be expected from these indications of antiquity. Corssen, it is claimed by those who have seen his translation, will prove that their language was an Italic dialect, and that therefore their civilization must have been developed on the spot, which is what we should on independent grounds conclude, all the technical peculiarities being such as we have never been able to find except where communication with Etruria was not easy.

But Mr. Taylor has taken comprehensive ground in the examination of the question. Comparative philology is, as he says, “ the most powerful, the most precise, and, within its proper limits, the most certain of all methods. But valuable as the method is, it has its limitation and its dangers.” Thus we know that in France alone changes have occurred which would, without historical explanation, utterly baffle the comparative philologist. The Roman invaded it and imposed his language ; the Northman invaded it and lost his, like the Teutonic invaders on the other side. This theory of Mr. Taylor is based on what he considers a sure ground — that which he designates as “ comparative psychology, or comparative phrenology ” — the comparison of mental peculiarities and distinctions; and the first important indication of the ethnic affinities of the Etruscans is found in their similarity to certain Turanian tribes in their religious beliefs, and especially in their tomb-building. This point he develops at great length, maintaining that all the great tomb-builders have been Turanian: —

“ But there have been three great civilized tomb-building races; one in Africa — the Egyptians; one in Asia — the Lydians and Syrians; and one in Europe—the Etruscans. The question arises, Were these three cultured nations of the same race as the semi-savage Turanian tribes who form the pre-Aryan substructure of Western Europe, and who constitute the existing population of Northern Asia ? This question must, I think, be answered in the affirmative.”

If an analogy of this kind could be erected into a positive and unassailable argument, it must be admitted that Mr. Taylor has done more than any one hitherto to suggest a final solution of this vague question; but the value of this analogy is dependent on the truth of the assumption that the Etruscans, Lydians and Syrians, and Egyptians are Turanian, for if they be not, then it is provable that tomb-building need not be an inherited ethnical tendency. The argument is weakest where we want most strength.

The author then goes on to establish the same analogy between the Etruscans and the “ Ugric or Altaic — the tribes of Finns, Tartars, Mongols, Samojeds, and Tunguses who people the inhospitable regions of Northern Asia,” as to their pontifical system, their law of inheritance, type of body and mind, their art, migratory and warlike character, and religious beliefs. He assumes that, skillful builders as the Etruscans were, “ there is not a vestige left of a single Etruscan temple, or of a single Etruscan palace. Their constructive powers, and the resources of their decorative arts, were lavished on their tombs.” This is very far from an exact statement of what is known. The Etruscan high-priest was a “ pontifex,” not a tomb-builder, and we know enough to assert that the Etruscans were, like the Romans after them, eminent engineers, bridge and wall and castle builders, while one of the temple orders in use in Rome was known as the Tuscan, and preserved as derived from Etruria. That there should be no remains of any temple built by the Etruscans is not singular when we know that there is none of Roman construction prior to the conquest of Etruria.

In the character of Etruscan art as compared with the Turanian, Chinese, and Japanese, Mr. Taylor is most fortunate, and a comparison of the religious beliefs certainly brings out some striking and interesting resemblances; and the coincidences in the mythologic nomenclature are certainly very remarkable, while no less can be said of the comparison with the external ethnical characteristics, assuming that we know those of the Etruscans.

The author’s general conclusion is that the population of Etruria was composed of two Turanian migrations, one, the earlier (and finally subjugated by the second), from the European or Finnic branch, while the second or conquering was from the Asiatic or Tartaric branch, thus forming two castes, the first including the Sabines, Marsi, etc., and probably the Pelasgi, while the latter was the Rasennic. Apart from the philological affinities, the amount of testimony he brings to bear to prove his hypotheses must make the question still more puzzling and mysterious if they cannot be maintained; but no question of myths or observances— even of national customs — will stand against philological affinities when these are, as with the Etruscan, free from all suspicion of an invading influence,

The same physical causes may possibly develop the same myths, and to a certain extent similar religious beliefs and observances, without any community of origin of those myths or observances, but the roots of a language cannot be controlled by any such casual or natural coincidences; and Mr. Taylor’s great erudition and admirably scientific method will not make us less anxious to hear Corssen’s solution, to which the leading philologists look as likely to envelop all that can be known from our present material.

FRENCH AND German.²

What will be sure to add to the tardy recognition in Europe of the importance of oar late civil war is the publication of the Histoire de la Guerre Civile fen Amérique, the work of the, Comte de Paris. Two volumes have appeared, and, judging from the completeness with which the author has performed this part of his task, the statement that they are to be followed by six others is very easy of belief. At present, we in this country would perhaps do better to collect and arrange the material at our disposal than to hasten to anticipate the task of posterity, and, while most of the principal actors are still living, to renew half-forgotten dissensions. Some perspective is needed for a fair view. In the present case, however, merely local distance and difference of interests secure greater impartiality than we should be able to give to the war, unless we were absolutely apathetic about it; and if we should write about it in that mood, whom should we get to read our history ? The Comte de Paris is not absolutely impartial; it is very easy to see his affection for his former brothersin-arms, but we fancy that no one of those to whom he was once opposed can feel dissatisfied with the admiration he expresses for their bravery and energy. He condemns their leaders, it is true, but so have events, and he gives a fair statement of the causes that brought about the war, and of the general condition of the country at the time of its outbreak.

The first volume, which brings us down no further than to the time immediately succeeding the first battle of Bull Run, contains a very complete account of what had been done by our army in the war of the Revolution, in that of 1812, in the Mexican war, and in the monotonous struggles with the Indians. He shows clearly the defects of our system, which experience had made so plain to us ten years ago, and gives full credit to the redeeming virtues of West Point, where the seeds of military training were kept alive in the face of the opposition of demagogues who were unwarned by history, of which they were ignorant, to set the proper value on the training which they enviously despised. The Mexican war is treated of at considerable length, since it shows very clearly the character of many of the leaders of the later war, as well as the faults and merits of the rank and file. In addition to this, we have the discussion of the political causes of the war, which the writer justly sees arose from the conflict between slavery and freedom. All the history of the winter before the war is told; we have once more an account of those uneasy days when we were so uncertain of the tragedy awaiting us, or, at the best, making vague preparations against some mysterious evil. Then follows the description of the beginning of the war, with the long treacheries of Buchanan’s cabinet leading up to it, and of the consequences it called forth in both North and South. There is, too, a full account of the preparations made by both sections of the country, and, what is so important for understanding some of the peculiarities of the war, a very complete account of the geography of the country. None of this is told in a wearisome way. The author has an exceedingly clear style, and his familiarity with his subject enables him to keep free from obscurity even when he is unraveling the intricacies of the relation borne by the troops raised in different States to the Federal authorities. To us this part of his subject is sufficiently familiar, but for the public for which the book is written it will, of course, be absolutely new. The distinctions he draws between the different qualities of the Northern and Southern armies will be readily assented to; he sees very clearly those faults in our troops which led to the first defeats of the North, and states them plainly ; they were, in his view, a lack of the “ collective courage ” which experienced armies have, and which by no means implies the absence of individual courage ; the need of discipline, ignorance of the proper way of marching, etc., etc. A very readable account is given of the, battle of Bull Sun, and its consequences.

In the second volume the narration goes on almost without interruption. It includes the operations in Missouri, the battle of Ball’s Bluff, the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson the battle of Shiloh, and the operations of the navy against Port Royal and in Burnside’s expedition to Roanoke Island. There is also a description of the fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor. The limit of the volume is the account of MacClellan’s preparations for the unfortunate campaign of 1862. We shall leave it to professional critics to discuss the questions that are sure to arise about the author’s treatment of the differences of opinion between President Lincoln and General MacClellan. There are at the end of this volume some tolerably clear indications of the author’s having made up his mind between these two in favor of his former commander, and in the next volume we may perhaps find that his complaints of the interference of the government will be even more frequent. This is a matter in which it is not easy at present for us in this country to form an impartial opinion. It is with the majority a part of their political faith to lay all the blame of the early defeats of the army of the Potomac on the shoulders of the general who commanded it. He is accused of culpable weakness or disgraceful treachery, while his upholders, as is the case with the author of this history, maintain that his plans were rendered abortive by the timidity of the government, the necessity for unfolding them to non-military officials, and the interference of those in authority. History, however, is not written in the same way that political principles are formed, especially in the way they are formed in times of great excitement, and the Comte de Paris is likely to set in its strongest light whatever can be said on the opposite side. In judging the book the critic will have much to do to keep his previously formed notions from poisoning his opinion of it, if he differs from the author. Leaving this matter, however, for completer discussion when the third or fourth volumes shall have appeared, it is impossible now not to praise the history. It is written in a singularly clear style, and every page shows great care in the preparation of the materials. The account of the different campaigns is remarkably lucid ; the dull skirmishes, which those who took no part in them have nearly forgotten, are put down without tiresome pedantry as well as without any attempt merely to provide entertaining reading. To the unprofessional reader this is remarkably well done, but quite as well done is the more difficult task performed of explaining the causes of the war and of giving the reader a fair notion of all those particulars we know so well and which are so little understood by foreigners. The fact that the war was one fought by troops who had had no previous training, that the regular army was but a small part of the vast forces that acquired skill only by severe experience, made the history of what was done read like a something which could have no interest to officers who felt sure of having trained levies to command. The fate of the French armies in the war of 1870, however, has shown that even in Europe it may be the citizens on whom the duty of defense finally rests, as it rested with us in the beginning. Hence the Comte de Paris does well to offer to his countrymen the account of what was done by armies which, like their own, were raised from civil life. To be sure, in our war the opposing troops were equally inexperienced, and each learned lessons from its own defeats, while the unrelaxing grip of the Germans gave the French no breathingtime to repair their errors. We were more equally matched in that respect. That General Von Moltke, that man of few words, should on the rare occasion of opening his mouth have called our armies rabbles, and have said that their experience was unprofitable, would seem to be probably not more than half true. If indeed it was said, which is a very unimportant matter and not sufficient cause for eternal hatred of the German race, we may be tolerably certain that it was corrected by remarks which have not yet found their way into the American daily newspapers. It cannot be denied that there is much to be learned from the history of our war. There is the eternal lesson of the need of trained men to do hard work in life ; that is what the war is supposed to have taught us, but such lessons are more readily set than learned ; and, besides that, there are to be noticed the incidental advantages of an army like that of the North, composed of skilled men who were able to turn their hands to almost any of the obstacles that Stand in their path. The purely military part of the war is full of instruction, and the wonderful deeds of the navy are certainly deserving of record and close study. At the beginning we find a long list of the errors to be avoided, and as we get further on we find the account of the successes which only deserve imitation.

These two volumes deserve to be read by every one; they contain a cool, temperate, and, so far as we can judge, an accurate account of the war. We can certainly warrant them to be fascinating reading, and it is a real joy to lay one’s hands on a serious book which bears proof of so patient research and so generous enthusiasm, and which shows so agreeable a union of instruction and entertainment. If we are not mistaken it will be for a long time the classic history of the war. The succeeding volumes will be very welcome, and we can look forward with pleasant expectation to a history of so important a period of our country’s experience, from so able a pen. We have always been discontented with the slight appreciation and comprehension the war found in Europe; now we can make that complaint no more.