to only the emancipated and discerning few what he really is at his best—their greatest earthly friend and benefactor. All I have seen of American schoolboys impresses me that the feeling which dictates their bearing toward their teachers is born of a clear-sighted and intuitive appreciation of superior knowledge, worth or experience, and not of conventional observance or necessity. It is generally said abroad that American children are unruly, forward and irreverent toward their parents and elders; and one reason assigned is that parents are careless of teaching their children the little ceremonies and graduated formalities of speech, "in which," as an English bishop recently alleged in an after-dinner speech, "there is embodied so much wholesome discipline that a careful attendance to the practice of them gives the young man or woman an advantage not offered by any other method of training." Spartan, but indigestible! A keener observer than the bishop—the heresiarch Thackeray—wrote in his Philip: "I never saw people on better terms with each other, more frank, affectionate and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up young folks in the United States;" and certain it is that the description is applicable to the intercourse between teachers and pupils.

The faults of the latter are aimlessness and impatience; and their misfortune—which is largely responsible for those faults—is that they are too soon allowed to plunge into the quagmire called by euphemism "society," and often whelmed in its sorry pleasures and petty ambitions—too soon, also, invested with the right to manage their own affairs and to choose their own associates, advisers, and even instructors; in a word, permitted to breathe the invigorating spirit of the Declaration of Independence before their constitutions are fitted for its reception. This may sound trite enough, but I see no other way of accounting for the intellectual—and, alas! moral—failure of so many of the brilliantly-gifted lads whom I have known and loved in these United States.

I might proceed to give a few illustrations of this resultless restlessness, this dissipation of the youthful forces, to which I have alluded; but there is one phase of my experience here which goes further to prove its prevalence and baneful effects than a thousand instances derived from my knowledge of boys in school or in the closer contact of private tuition. From time to time there appear in the "Instruction" column of the daily newspapers advertisements like the following: "Wanted, lessons in the evenings by a gentleman of neglected education;" "Wanted, lessons in grammar and conversation (sic) by a married couple." It was by answering such advertisements as these that I fell upon the most satisfactory portion of my labors in this country, and met with pupils of both sexes the memory of whom will be to me a source of pride as well as of pleasure as long as I live. Ladies and gentleman of good social standing they were, who, bitterly regretting neglected early opportunities, had the moral courage to "go to school"—with the wise meekness and receptiveness engendered in fine natures by ultimate self-disparagement—even when their avocations seemed to preclude the possibility of sustained and fruitful study. But when I contemplate a long array of such pupils (covering a period of three years)—from the young banker's clerk or embryo lawyer chagrined with himself because of the poor figure he cut at last week's party, and commendably determined to try and remedy his defects, to the mature business- or even professional-man, humiliated because his accomplished wife's every sentence made him feel ashamed of his squandered youth, and so constrained, at the eleventh hour, to employ a private tutor—it is difficult for me not to recognize that in a country where the children enjoy so many privileges, where they are taught regularly, systematically, patiently, conscientiously—where, in short, everything is taught, and everything is taught well—there must be some mistake in the exercise of the parental guardianship that creates and fosters the aimlessness and impatience which prevent so many of the children from reaping adequate benefit from their noble heritage.

One thing that occasioned me a good deal of trouble and anxiety in my first school was the system of "marking" for each lesson with a view to obtaining a weekly average standard. Not that I was unused to the method, but I had never before seen it pushed to such an extent nor pursued on exactly the same principle. A boy would be marked up by his various teachers in about a dozen subjects during the week, and on Friday a printed slip would be handed him showing his weekly average in each subject and in all the subjects taken together. An average of 95 per cent. was quite common; 80 was not in high favor; 70 was shaky, while 60 was quite bad. A quarter's experience of it convinced me that the thing was a piece of abominable red tape: I do not mean in theory, but in the results of its working in that particular case. I had seen boys and men in school and college in England and Scotland obtain "first-class honors" with a mark of 75, and I now marvelled how it happened that boys who had but a faint idea of what hard work really meant were able to produce such brilliant results, more especially when so much of their time and attention was devoted to the preparation of orations and dialogues, and even to the rehearsal of private theatricals (the principal would have gone crazy had any one presumed to call them by that name in his hearing) for the approaching "entertainment," two of which treats were offered "by the school" (a great deal in those three words) to the public during the year. I may mention that on these two occasions it was the part of the principal to ascend the stage during the entr'acte and read off from a paper he held in his hand a few particulars regarding those precious averages which seemed in the speaker's and hearers' minds to be exactly commensurate with the standing and progress of the pupils.

My marking made me for some time rather unpopular; and beginning at last to follow the time-honored injunction, "When you are in Rome do as the Romans do," I hoisted my boys from the sixties and seventies to the more plausible eighties and nineties. It was, no doubt, an unprincipled thing to do, but I soothed my outraged conscience with the thought that I was making a martyr of myself—that when the examination-week arrived the examiners' reports would confound me by exposing the difference between my paper and their gold. The examination-week did arrive, of course, and I found that I was to be myself the examiner of my classes. Let not the reader think that I would be pleasantly satiric when I say that not till then did I fully awake to the fruitful meaning of the expression, "American independence." And neither let him infer that I take such a school to be a representative American high-class school: I only say that it is a fair representative of a class of schools that is both numerous and popular in the cities I have named above. Here, indeed, was an application of the sui-juris principle that, though it certainly eased my feeling of apprehension and doubt as to the probable results of the examination, yet filled me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. And the reason is not far to seek: my English training would naturally have the effect of making me look for a verdict on my work not to my own notebook, nor even to the principal's returns, but to some higher and extra-mural authority who should test the attainments of the pupils and the efficiency of the school by a searching and impartial examination.

In English middle-class schools the advent of the "Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board" is regarded with no small anxiety by principals, masters and scholars alike. It marks an epoch in their lives, and is the only period of the year in which there is anything like a rapprochement between them, as if in the presence of some imminent crisis. The eccentric jackanapes who is by turns the butt and witling of the school stands for once consciously on equal terms with his principal, and can for once even "cheek" the school-bully with perfect impunity. All is excitement, anticipation, preparation and much consuming of midnight oil. Perhaps a very brief account, in conclusion, of the methods of procedure in these examinations may interest the reader; and in case he should think that my object in offering my sketch is to draw an invidious comparison between the English and American methods of examination, I refer him to an animated and interesting correspondence in the April issue of the Nation between President Eliot of Harvard and Professor Adams of Michigan University—a discussion in which the former gentleman enthusiastically claims for the English method a degree of excellence which the most ardent home advocates of the system—who know its working faults as well as its positive advantages—would hesitate to claim for it.

The English board holds two kinds of examinations: First, examinations of schools for the benefit of schools exclusively, and having no effect to admit individuals to the universities or to exempt them from subsequent examinations, whether at the universities or elsewhere; second, examinations of individuals for certificates which give exemption from the entrance-examinations at Oxford and Cambridge, from the earliest examinations of the university course, and from the preliminary examinations of certain professional bodies. The examinations cover thirty-four different and carefully-specified subjects (no candidate taking the whole), and on the average two hours are allowed for writing answers to the questions in each subject; the examinations last from eight to twelve days, and are held three times in the year; and the schedule of days, subjects and hours for each year is published nearly a year in advance. The decision of the board is upon the individual: "Has he passed a satisfactory examination in a sufficient number of subjects?" and the board takes no account whatever of the opinions and certificates of school-authorities concerning the individual. A printed report is annually made by the board, showing the name of each person who obtained a certificate, the subjects in which he satisfied the examiners, and the school from which he came. The examinations are conducted in writing for all the subjects, but for a few subjects oral examinations are superadded. The questions are printed; they are the same for every candidate in any given subject; and they are made public when the examinations are over. In order to secure uniformity of standard at the examinations, the results obtained at the different places of examination are compared by the central board of examiners. Each candidate pays a fee of two pounds, and from these fees each examiner is liberally paid for every day of service spent in setting questions, attending the examinations and looking over the answers of candidates.

There never was a method of examination without its drawbacks, and the chief weakness of the English system is that it tends to excite a spirit of rivalry which is apt to resort for aid to cramming processes. As yet, however, the examinations have been conducted in such a manner that the special "cramming-schools"—of which there are not a few—have very generally come to grief, even when they have had successes before the examiners for the civil service.

D. C. Macdonald.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

Besides the journals above named, the Moscow Son of the Fatherland and two others published in the capital (the Birjeviya Vedomosti, or Bourse Gazette, and the Peterburgskiya Vedomosti, or St. Petersburg Gazette), though now eclipsed by their younger rivals, formerly held a high place among Russian dailies. The Russian magazines cannot be dealt with in the limited space of the present article: it must suffice to mention the two most important—namely: the Russki Vestnik (Russian Courier) and the Vestnik Yevropi (Courier of Europe). Several of M. Tourgueneff's later stories have made their first appearance in the pages of the latter, which, numbering among its contributors some of the foremost writers in Russia, and combining, like the Revue des Deux Mondes, the functions of a review with those of a magazine, is in every way the worthy successor of its now defunct forerunner, the Sovremennik (Contemporary), formerly owned and edited by the poet Nekrassoff.[B]

The comic element of Russian journalism is represented by the Iskra (Spark) and Budilnik (Alarm-Bell), the latter having the superiority in pictorial illustrations, though the savage and personal cast of its satire, together with its imprudent fondness for political allusions, has more than once all but occasioned its suppression. Both journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation, though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career of untranslatable pleasantry, till some special atrocity calls forth the fatherly admonition of the police. Immediately a reaction ensues, filling the objectionable columns with harmless sneers at the weather and other safe objects of attack, until the effect of the warning has died away, and all goes on as before.

Those of our readers who were in Russia a few years ago must remember the famous caricature of "National Music," representing the various journals as a band of musicians. In the foreground stands the minister of police as bandmaster, regulating the time with the flourish of his baton: on his right is the Russian Invalid (the government organ) with a trombone, on his left the Military Gazette with a kettledrum. Immediately below, the Moscow Gazette, in the person of its celebrated chief, M. Katkoff, is playing in a reckless, haphazard fashion upon an enormous bass fiddle. Close by are the two leading comic journals, the one tinkling a triangle, the other blowing the pandean pipes. Farther on the Voice (Golos) is bawling through a speaking-trumpet, and the Bourse Gazette flourishing a tambourine, a host of minor performers being loosely sketched in the background; while far in the distance a hand outstretched from a cloud of mist is tolling a cracked church-bell, symbolical of M. Kerzen's famous Kolokol (Bell), at that time in the zenith of its sinister renown; and Russia, as a young lady in a ball-dress, is vainly attempting, with a look of dismay, to close her ears against the uproar.

Equally clever and equally audacious is a more recent travesty of the well-known scene in Dante's Inferno where Bertrand de Born, a noted sower of sedition, comes forth with his severed head in his hands. In the Russian version the renowned editor of the Moscow Gazette is seen hobbling along with a cannon-ball labelled "Police Surveillance" at his ankle, and carrying by the hair his own head, which is so drawn as to bear a grotesque likeness to an inkstand with a pen in each ear. The text of Dante is thus travestied:

The backwardness of the Russian press, attributed to so many different causes, is really due to one very simple one—the want of readers. Among a population of whom only nine per cent. can read, and who neither know nor care what passes in the world of politics, the existence of free public opinion, or indeed of any opinion at all, can hardly be expected; and thus, while no country contains such frantic republicans as Russia, no government is more absolutely secure. Upon that tremendous passivity the utmost efforts of such men as Netchaieff and Bakounin fall like a pellet on the hide of an elephant. The popular cries which madden other races are utterly meaningless to the docile, unemotional "mujik," loyal and conservative to the very marrow of his bones.

But the vivifying of these petrified millions may safely be left to the influence of time. The provincial schools recently established may be trusted to do their work, however slowly; and the "educated Russia" dreamed of by Alexander I. may yet crown the age of Alexander II. Those who, like the writer, have lived in the villages of the interior, and have seen the Russian peasant as he really is, cannot but have hopes of his future, in the teeth of the hasty and one-sided observers who love to depict him as a brute with the single human attribute of dishonesty. The ignorance, sluggishness and intemperance of the mujik belong to the system under which he has been reared: his frank hospitality, cheery good-humor and simple child-like piety are all his own. To raise these brave, simple natures out of the unwholesome darkness which has so long imprisoned them is a noble and Christian work; as far above the mere material emancipation of 1861 as the soul is above the body.

D. K.

A MIDSUMMER NOON'S PHANTASM.

"Ghosts? No, I don't believe in ghosts: I have seen too many of them," is a very fair thing on one of the oldest of subjects. My case is different. I have been trying all my life to believe in ghosts, and saw my first four days ago. Toward noon I fell into a doze—very short and slight it must have been—over my book. No one was in the room, and the door was closed. The book was held up in the usual position, a little below the level of the eye, in the right hand. I awoke—if the word can be applied to what was so very slight a slumber—and saw limned with perfect distinctness against the page the head of a girl or boy six or eight years old, blue-eyed, light-haired, and fair but not clear in complexion. It was below life-size, not more than four inches in height. Only the head was visible, without anything below the jaw. At first it seemed perfectly solid, but the lines of print, which were still held up as in reading, gradually showed themselves through the fading apparition until it entirely died away. This happened in about a third of a minute, the beautiful little face continuing the whole time to gaze at me with a calm but not sad expression. It was not in full front, the right side being turned to me in what is called a three-quarter position. The light which illuminated it did not come from the window, which was directly behind me and gave all the light there was in the room, and yet the impression was in no respect that of a picture. Not for a moment did this interpretation occur to me, strongly as did the evanescent character of the head militate against the idea of reality. The fading was most rapid at the occiput, and may be said to have begun there, extending to the right and upward. There was no background or accessory of any kind, the head being quite isolated and detached, objectively as subjectively.

The lineaments were not those of any one of my acquaintance, and recalled no countenance I had ever seen. If the appearance suggested a young member of the family, it was not because of resemblance, but from his being frequently in my mind, and apt to be associated with any alarm due to the tinge of superstition from which none of us are wholly free. For the reason already given it could not have been a reminiscence of a picture. The shading and coloring were too exact for anything painted. My easel was, it is true, near by, on the opposite side of me, and on it were two heads of nearly the size of that I describe; but they were hard-featured old saints of a deep mahogany hue, relieved by a very dark background, and therefore the exact antipodes of my shadowy visitant. On these I had been painting an hour or two before; and that is the solitary connection conceivable between the spectre and anything tangible. The reader will perhaps be inclined to set it down as having been complementary to them. I do not think it was; but were it so, the point mainly craving explanation remains untouched—that what I saw was with the waking eye. It may have come from the land of dreams, or from a remote outlying province of it, but its perceptible existence was entirely in the realm of actualities. I was not conscious, and had no recollection, of having had a dream. It is true that, according to a theory necessarily and in its nature incapable of being sustained by positive proof, we may have unconscious dreams, and be always dreaming when asleep without knowing it. Persons who rise at night, take pen and paper and solve problems which had been the worry of their waking hours, and return to their couch still asleep, present cases analogous to mine in so far as their unconscious mental activity leaves an outcome and expression obvious to the senses. Another parallel would be that of a sleep-walking artist who should when in a state of somnambulism execute a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand, would, should I transfer my aërial sitter to canvas, simply paint what I saw when wide awake, just as in undertaking to reproduce any other face from memory, whether observed once for twenty seconds or frequently and for longer periods.

It is usual to explain the common stories of phantoms by attributing them to ocular illusion, aided or not aided by the imagination or by particular conditions of the bodily or mental health. The eye, of course, is never quite proof against deception, but there needs some little material for it; and in my case there was absolutely none—no waving sheet or trees or clouds, nothing but the printed page; and that was visible, unchanged except by the utterly inharmonious and contrasted image before it. My imagination was not affected before, at the time, or after. My pulse may have been a little quickened for the moment, for I did not accept the appearance as a matter of course, as we do everything, however preposterous, in a dream, but, on the contrary, quite recognized its abnormal character. I know of no existing cause of especial or temporary liability to any delusion of the kind. In short, though I have not—and had not when I continued after the disappearance to contemplate, without moving a muscle, the book against which the head had been projected, and coolly reflect upon what I had seen—the slightest belief that it was supernatural, I should be compelled, if called on in court, to swear that I had seen what must be provisionally named a spectre. "If I stand here, I saw it!"

E. C. B.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

As the traveller is whirled along over the great stretch of railway between Liverpool and London, he passes (about midway) through Nuneaton, a busy little manufacturing town, situated in a most delightful and fruitful part of the "Garden Land." About two miles from this town (which the gifted authoress has dubbed "Milby" in her Scenes of Clerical Life), on the broad smooth highway leading to the ancient and renowned city of Coventry, stands the house where Marian Evans was born. It is a large brick building, surrounded by a well-stocked and pleasant garden, devoid of ornament, but highly suggestive of comfort and convenience—such a house as our forefathers used to build fifty years ago, when comfort was not sacrificed to appearance, and when the owner had more to do with the design than the architect.

Robert Evans, the father of the renowned authoress, was bailiff to Lord Howe and to Sir Roger Newdigate—father of the present M. P. of that name, who is such an earnest champion of Protestantism as it is reflected in the Church of England, and who has made such earnest but as yet fruitless endeavors to have a bill passed for the periodical visitation and inspection of the monastic and conventual institutions of Great Britain. Her brother, Isaac P. Evans, still occupies that responsible position, and resides in the old homestead. The country around Mrs. Lewes's early home is rich in historic associations. Not far away is Bosworth Field, and in another direction are the ruins of Astley Castle, within whose strong walls Lady Jane Grey passed a portion of her brief, chequered life. Near the castle stands—or stood—a tree in which her father, the duke of Suffolk, took refuge when pursued by the emissaries of the sanguinary queen. A small table used by him while concealed in the huge hollow trunk is still preserved.

There are several very ancient churches in the vicinity of the residence where George Eliot passed her early days. The parish church of Nuneaton, to which she alludes in her Scenes of Clerical Life, is a grand structure, six hundred years old, with a massive embattled tower containing a chime of eight melodious bells; and Coton (Shepperton) Church, which in her girlhood she attended with her parents, is perhaps still more ancient, as it is certainly more weatherbeaten and venerable in appearance. The writer's parents have often seen the future authoress sitting in the antiquated, high-peaked family pew and taking part with grave attention in the service.

In Atteborough, a village in the same neighborhood, there resided an eccentric character named Joe Liggens. He had received a university education, but, lacking application and industry, had chosen no pursuit in life, and passed his time in lounging around his native village and frequenting the tap-room of its alehouse, where, surrounded by an admiring crowd, he puffed away at his long pipe, removing it from his lips only when he deigned to express an opinion upon some subject of debate and give his open-mouthed hearers the benefit of his wisdom and erudition. When Scenes of Clerical Life first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, describing places and persons familiar to the villagers, they naturally wondered who the author could be, and decided at last that it could be no other than Joe Liggens. Had he not been to Oxford? Didn't he know Latin and all sorts of things? And wasn't he acquainted with the scenes and personages described in the new book? No one else could be thought of combining these various and essential qualifications. When Joe was questioned on the subject he merely smiled and said nothing—the strongest confirmatory proof, and an exhibition of the modesty inherent in genius. In recognition of the honor he had conferred upon his native place, a subscription was started for the impecunious Joe, and a goodly sum was on the point of being presented to him when the real name of "George Eliot" was revealed, and Joe Liggens found himself treated as an impostor by those who had thrust upon him undeserved honors.

W. B.

THE FATE OF SOUTH JERSEY.

The Camden and Atlantic, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City, the New Jersey Southern, and some minor railroads, pass through portions of New Jersey long known as the "Jersey Barrens." They are all new roads, comparatively speaking, but they have wonderfully stimulated the enterprise that has created so many flourishing villages that ten years ago had never been heard of. Vineland, the fairest and most flourishing village in the country, as well as the largest, is only about fifteen years old. Its population is six thousand. Forbidding-looking swamps, giving rise to swarming myriads of mosquitoes and to malaria through their dank, decaying vegetation, have been converted into flourishing cranberry-meadows, and the dry land into fine vineyards and fruit-orchards surrounding homes of every grade of elegance, from the simple vine-covered cottage to the costly villa with carefully-kept evergreen hedges enclosing exquisite lawns, statues, fountains and rare flowers. The extent of these hedges is estimated at seventy-five miles.

But this prosperous reclamation of the waste lands of South Jersey has already received a check from an insidious but terrible enemy, destined to undo the labor of years unless promptly and wisely attacked. This enemy is drought, traceable directly to the destruction of the forests. Formerly, glass-manufacturing companies established themselves in well-wooded regions, used the forests for their furnaces, and when these were exhausted migrated to new places to repeat the work of devastation. Then the settlers "cleared up" the land extensively, and since the railroads have been built the burning of the woods along their routes by cinders from the locomotives has been terribly frequent, and often extensive. A conductor on the Camden and Atlantic stated last year that he had counted fifteen forest-fires during one trip from Camden to the sea.

Yet nothing is done to prevent these ever-recurring calamities. The citizens complain, mourn over the destruction, grumble at the railroads, and thank God when the fires are at a safe distance from their own homes. When personally threatened, they turn out, men, women and children, aided by terror-stricken and sympathizing neighbors, and "fight the fire" by felling trees and clearing away the inflammable matter in the path of the fire. Sometimes a whole neighborhood will struggle for days together without respite as only the desperate can. Many of these fires, it is said, are due to the wilful mischief of boys and others. Hundreds of acres are destroyed every year. Along the Camden and Atlantic almost every tract of woodland has been burned over once or more.

The effect of the decrease of the rainfall in South Jersey is already serious. The water-supply in Vineland, Hammonton and other places is constantly lowering: all the wells except those that were dug very deep at first have had to be lowered at least two feet.

The most practical step at present toward arresting the destruction of woodlands is no doubt the organization of forest-protecting and planting societies like those in Germany, which have now so far secured the aid of the legislative power that no landowner can cut down one of his own forest trees without the consent of the authorities. This seems like tyranny, but it is really that wisdom which recognizes the good of the whole community as paramount to any private consideration.

M. H.

THE SAFFAH COBBLESTONES.

Le Devoir gives some interesting information about the wonderful stones of Saffah, now on exhibition in the Asia Minor department of the Museum of the Louvre. This department has lately been reopened to the public, after being closed six months for internal improvements. Visitors pass before the cases containing these ordinary-looking cobblestones, and wonder why they should be there instead of in the street, where they seem to belong. But these ordinary-looking stones are, in the eyes of scholars, among the most precious objects of history: they are covered with writings in some unknown, and even unheard-of, tongue. Some of the writing is fine, some coarse: sometimes the lines are straight, from right to left, and sometimes they wind about, like the trail of a serpent, in every direction. Saffah is a desert plain in Syria extending east from the lakes of Damascus, and a part of it is covered with these curious stones. Antiquaries like Renan, Ganneau, De Vogué, Waddington and Pierret are sorely puzzled over the writing on them, for the character resembles none that has yet been deciphered. They will not, however, abandon the task, for antiquaries are Patience personified; and we shall one day know the history, language, manners and customs of a race whose very existence up to the present time has not even been suspected.

M. H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Steam-service is steadily growing more frequent, regular and expeditious, and the next generation of Americans will doubtless pack their portmanteaus as lightly for the Canaries, the Loffodens and the Galapagos as that now in being does for Appledore or Mount Desert. For individual health, relaxation or enjoyment, not more than for the general invigoration and well-being of the race, we need to be on easier terms with the sea. The old maritime spirit, so striking to the eyes of Burke, seems to have died out from among us. If we are to have a brilliant and assured future, we must not look for it wholly to the land. It may not rise sheer, Britain- and Aphrodite-like, from the breast of ocean, but it must yet rest partly upon that most solid of supports, the ever-shifting wave.

The Principles of Light and Color. By Edwin D. Babbitt. New York: Babbitt & Co.

Were we to open this book about the middle we should be disposed to set it down, on the strength of its latter half, as a contribution to the literature of the Pleasantonian (or blue-glass) school of natural philosophy. This impression would be humored by the bluish tint of the paper upon which it is printed. But an inspection of the entire work would show that it is something more comprehensive and ambitious, not to say more interesting and suggestive. It is the product of a bold and original, if not exactly close and systematic, thinker—one who, with a longer and severer experimental training in the fields he has chosen for exploration, would command the respectful attention of leading scientific men. He begins with the reflection that, "in spite of the wonderful achievements of experimental scientists, no definite conceptions of atomic machinery, or the fundamental processes of thermal, electric, chemical, physiological or psychological action, have been attained." He proposes to remedy this failure, and to carry the natural sciences to their "basic principles." He proceeds to speculate with great ingenuity on the nature of light, the form, relations and movements of atoms, the action of electricity upon them, the constitution of the atmosphere, mode of creation of the solar system, and the rationale of chemical affinity. From these lofty regions he stoops to his conclusion in the new science of "chromo-therapeutics." He undertakes to define and explain the alleged effects upon mind, soul and body of all the colors of the spectrum. Among these colors he assigns the place of honor to blue, that tint emanating from the frontal portion of the brain in rays visible to certain finely-organized individuals, and being associated with the highest intellectual faculties. Red belongs to the opposite pole of the cerebral sphere, and holds special relations with the grosser part of man's abstract nature. In this mysterious region of inquiry he joins hands with some questionable allies, such as the Spiritualists, the phrenologists and the mesmerizers. The power of the clairvoyants he does not doubt. Indeed, he claims to have used it himself, and to have fattened on it, his present weight of one hundred and eighty pounds having been attained, he tells us, together with perfect health, by the judicious employment of "these subtler agencies." One is tempted to ask, in view of such a result, why waste time on the color-cure when the mesmeric system succeeds so admirably?

Should we demur to these eccentricities of an enthusiastic savant, he would perhaps point us to similar excesses in some of the acknowledged lights of intellectual progress, and cite as a recent instance of the madness of too much learning the ascription, by the brilliant yet matter-of-fact and practical Tyndall, of almighty "potency" to matter. Of course we should reply that Tyndall was a sincere and earnest student, and not a charlatan or a fanatic; whereto our author might respond, and respond justly, in sharp disclaimer of the latter brace of characters. He seems to be sincere: he can read and think, and does both, as the first part of his book, and much of the rest of it, show. He would have escaped the imputation we have suggested as not unapt to be cast upon him, secured a full hearing in a more respectable quarter, and gained higher aid in the development of his ideas, had he been less hasty in forming and stating some of his ultimate conclusions and the practical application of them. Many very able men who have preceded him in scientific labor, and who do not believe that "the bowels will be aroused into animation" by the exhibition of "a small strip of yellow glass three inches in depth, bordered by its affinitive violet," to the umbilical region, or that "Major Buckley developed one hundred and forty-eight persons so that they could read sentences shut up in boxes or nuts," would listen attentively to what he has to say on the anatomy of an atom, metachronism and "chromatic attraction."

Around the World in the Yacht Sunbeam. By Mrs. Brassey. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Some of the best books of travel we have had lately have been written by women. Their way of looking at new things, even if superficial—which is not by any means always a safe assumption—is pleasant and refreshing after the more sober, philosophic and blue-booky style of comment we are accustomed to be favored with by observers of the other sex. Many valuable trivialities are lost by the effort to go deeper than the surface. The phases of life, manners and scenery which strike one in a rapid tour are perhaps most instructive, and certainly most entertaining, when reproduced just as they appear. The light female touch, which revolts at figures and documents, is well suited to that work, if work it can be called. The male traveller, we know, does much of his research when he gets home, keeping up, however, with a view to that end, a solemnly didactic frame of mind all the time he is abroad. He is thus apt to give us less of what he sees than of what he thinks—an error into which a woman is less prone to fall. She is less critical, less ashamed of being startled and pleased, and more frank and naïve in her confession of it. She resembles in this respect the delightful voyagers of the Middle Ages—the Polos, Batutas and Mandevilles—who were too much occupied with the novelty of everything they saw to bore us with their opinions, and who were untrammelled by the slightest idea of publishing a résumé of political, religious or economic conclusions when they got home. What an infinitesimal proportion of us understand even our own country! Why, then, obscure and flatten our impressions of foreign lands by supposing, and preparing to make others believe, that we can understand them after a cursory study of a few weeks or months?

Mrs. Brassey is not a literary woman. She has no "mission," and makes no pretensions to culture. She simply chronicles a tour made in her husband's yacht, accompanied by two or three young children and as many friends. But she has good sense, good temper and character, and what she writes fully justifies her husband's prefatory statement, that "the voyage would not have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have been completed, without the impulse derived from her perseverance and determination." Unprepared by special study, and quite devoid of science, she yet notes well, and interests us in, the animals, plants, human occupants and natural phenomena generally of the countries visited. And without any command or affectation of imagery or fine language she is very graphic in her descriptions of sea and shore. Her account of a visit to the great Hawaian volcano is one of the best we have ever read, being simple, terse and vivid, without the overloading with detail that spoils so many of the pen-pictures of the day.

The trip was made in eleven months of 1876-77. The route lay from Chatham to Madeira, Rio, the river Plate, Valparaiso (through the Straits of Magellan), the Society and Sandwich Islands, Yokohama, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Alexandria, Malta, and so on back to England. It thus threaded a large part of the tropical world, and we are led to perceive a greater variety in tropical life and scenery than we are in the habit of realizing. The rapidity of movement facilitated this, as it brought the different points more closely together, and made what there was of contrast more striking. Not that the movements of the party were uniformly hurried either, for weeks were spent in Rio, the Pampas, Chili and Japan, and sufficient stoppages made at many other places. The slow passage through the stormy Straits makes us acquainted with the savages of the Land of Fire and their picturesque country, decidedly more damp than fiery. Japan was reached in the season of ice and snow, and the author, wrapped in furs and ulsters, was puzzled by the native contempt of the thermometer as shown in their wooden-walled houses with paper partitions and the popular passion for the lightest possible raiment. We join in her amazement at the proceedings, on a frosty morning, of the propellers of her jenrishka—or, as it is punningly termed, pull-man-car—who, compelled by law to wear their clothes in town, deliberately stopped when they struck the country and divested themselves of almost the last stitch—a performance paralleled in the opposite hemisphere by a party of Fuegians, man, wife and son, who came off in a canoe to trade, and stripped themselves utterly of their one garment of fine sea-otter skins in exchange for beads and tobacco. The author seems to have armed herself against surprises of this and all other kinds, and to have set out prepared to accept outlandish ways as they came, and look on the bright and reasonable side of everything. She manifests no national prejudice, whether against savage or civilized people, and commends frankly American carriages, railways, tramways, calicoes and canned fruits wherever she meets them; and that is, for one or another item of the list, nearly everywhere. Our manufacturers will read with interest the compliments recorded as paid by their customers, actual and possible, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the superior merit of their fabrics as compared with those of Manchester.

Altogether, should Mrs. Brassey's yacht be ready for another circumnavigation before ours, we do not know that we should refuse the offer of a spare berth.

Art-Education. A Lecture by General William Birney. Delivered February 6, 1878, before the Washington Art-Club. Washington: Art-Club.

This brochure is mainly a sketch of the consequences to industrial art of the English Exhibition of 1851, or a consideration of the fruits of the South Kensington Art-School. The humiliation of England in that Exhibition is well known, and the way in which she profited by the bitter lesson is full of instruction to this country. Thoughtful Americans, whether directly concerned in the welfare of laboring men or not, remember uneasily the troubles of last year, listen with compassion to whatever sounds of distress come from the assemblies of those who call themselves "workingmen," and look with anxiety for evidence of returning prosperity and contentment. All Americans worth mentioning are workers and are in sympathy with labor. If any "workingmen" think that there is a large or powerful class in this country opposed to the interests of labor, they should at once dismiss the notion, and look further for the cause of their troubles. Considerate people see that the "workingmen" should take a wider view of their situation than most of them seem to do; that they should look above and beyond the ranks of partisans for the light they need; that they should listen to those who will discuss their problem with the coolness, the disinterestedness, the unhesitating honesty which characterize the leading scientists of the day in other fields of inquiry. Such are the speakers and writers they should invite to their assistance. Instead of wasting their breath in expressions of self-admiration, in threadbare platitudes about the nobility and rights of labor, in appeals to the omnipresent politician, in complaints against labor-saving machinery, in talk about the Eight-Hour law, it would be more encouraging if they would try to supplant foreign workmen by simply excelling them in workmanship, and try to find employment by the creation of new industries. Higher education in industrial art is the stepping-stone to this.

As the depression is the result of a combination of causes, it is not probable that a panacea exists. Complete restoration will come from several remedies, each having its due effect in its own time and place. But perhaps the most potent of all, one indispensable to thorough and lasting prosperity, is thus revealed by General Birney:

"Although the United States has not hitherto directed her attention to art, her manifest destiny is to do so. The necessity of events will compel it. We have entered upon a long peace, in which we shall have to compete with civilized nations for the supply of the markets of the world. A population of forty millions cannot exist in comfort when they sell to the world nothing but agricultural implements, sewing-machines, revolvers, clocks, corn, cheese and cheap cottons, and buy everything else from it. The end of that course must be national ruin.

"For self-preservation, we must manufacture: we must have skilled labor. The rapid increase of scientific knowledge makes art a necessity. As science throws men out of employ, art must provide employment. The scientist and artist must walk hand in hand. The invention of labor-saving machinery for the farmer, enabling one man to do the work which formerly required ten, is rapidly driving men from the country to the cities. The invention of other machinery is rapidly throwing large numbers of workmen out of employ. Political causes are adding to this evil. How to put the unemployed millions to work is the problem of the day. The salvation of the country depends upon its solution. The nation stands before each public man demanding that he shall read the riddle or be destroyed.

"One of the helps to a solution, if not a solution, is the introduction of skilled labor. It takes but a few men to fashion a ton of iron into bars, but a thousand are not too many to work it into watch-springs. Five men can make all the coarse pottery used in this District: it takes five hundred to make its decorated ware and porcelain. Rough hand-labor is being superseded by machinery. But the demand is greater than ever before for skilled labor, both to manage the machinery and to take the product where machinery has left it and fashion it into value by the art of the decorator. Such a workman plies his handiwork at his own house, teaching his sons the secrets of his trade. He is the necessary coadjutor of the machine-owner, and has no need to resort to the brutal methods of Molly Maguires and trades-unions to get a fair reward for his labor. Let demagogues rant about our danger from competition with the pauper labor of Europe! We never were, and never will be, injured by that. What we should fear is the skilled labor of well-paid, cultured and educated artisans."

The French, who won so easy a victory over the English in 1851 in the manufacture of whatever directly augments the luxury and elegance of life, now fear that England will overcome France on her own ground. An able Parisian, criticising the Exhibition of 1878, and acknowledging the facts it reveals, asks the French government to send, at the public expense, a hundred workmen every year to Great Britain as a means of keeping French artisans abreast of British and holding their own in the markets. Ours is not a paternal government. If it should send a hundred men to England, half of them might be political bummers, whose chief study would be, not how to learn to work for the benefit of their countrymen, but how to live without work. The American people are as individuals supposed to take care of their own business. Do our trades-unions and labor-clubs and workingmen's associations send a hundred picked men abroad every year for study and practice? Are they too conceited or ignorant to realize what most concerns them? Thousands of foreign subjects are earning money from us, while thousands of our countrymen are suffering. This is not the fault of those foreign workmen, nor of the American purchasers of their artistic work, nor of our government. It is in a great degree because Americans have not the skill and taste to take up material where machinery leaves it, and lay it down beautified by the touch of real art. An "appeal to the ballot-box," the sovereign remedy of a true American for every ill; the enactment that two and two shall make five, which is about what the Eight-Hour law amounts to; the declaration by statute that so much of one metal shall equal so much of another metal,—has there not been enough of this? Would not a few hundred well-educated emissaries of our trades-unions and labor associations kept in the technical schools and workshops abroad be of rather more value? "How many of the graduates of the South Kensington Art-School, and artisans whose ability is traceable to it, might have been induced to try here the fine work which now, in England, is making the French tremble for their laurels, by a judicious use of the money which public halls, meetings, brass bands, processions, delegations, disturbances, transparencies, lobbyists, blather-skites and strikes have cost the 'workingmen' of America?"

Books Received.