IF the St. Louis preacher who lately tilted against novels chose

judiciously his points of attack, he presumably won a victory. His own

Sunday-school library is very likely filled with wishy-washy fiction

for bright young minds that might be harvesting works worth

remembering, whether of romance or history. The prudent Quakers of

Germantown rejoice in a free library without a novel, and a librarian

who never read one. Indiscriminate novel reading is as sorry a tipple

as addiction to newspapers, which also, in fact, are largely works of

the imagination. Besides, the moral of even a goody-good story may be

ingeniously twisted by perverse readers. The other day a lad was

indicted in England for breaking into the Rev. Mr. Sherratt's

schoolroom, where he stole some books and cake, trudging off with them

in a wheelbarrow at midnight. He was an old pupil, the son of

respectable parents; in his pocket was a book entitled "Industry

Without Honesty," and his ambition was to become a _Chevalier

d'Industrie_ of the sort he had been reading about. It is said that

Dumas's story, "Monsieur Fromentin," so spread the rage for lottery

gambling that the author in great grief bought up and burned every copy

he could lay hands on. For generations English youth have turned

footpads or thieves, in emulation of Sir Richard Turpin, Lord John

Sheppard, and other knights of the road whose careers are set forth in

the shining pages of biographical romance. French youngsters have a

like exemplar in Louis Cartouche. Two San Francisco lads are now in

jail for trying to rob a stagecoach, in Claude Duval style--luckless

little victims, knocked down by the passengers in a way not recorded in

the novels that had ruined them. Lads are for ever running away to sea

in imitation of some Jack Halyard or Ben the Bo's'n; and surely we know

that urchins of all ages and sizes are picked up on their way west to

"fight Injuns," thanks to their dogs'-eared dime novels narrating the

prowess of Buffalo Bills and Texas Jacks. Boyish sympathy goes out

toward the Paul Cliffords, the Arams of romance. I remember, as if it

were of yesterday, the sad fate of Red Rover, and how the overwrought

little reader, when he came to the hero's death, put by the book that

he could not finish, and walked about in the twilight of a Saturday

whose hours had slipped unnoticed away, inconsolable with sympathy and

grief.

But the preacher need not rest his case on "Mike Martin," or "Rinaldo

Rinaldini," or "The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main," or any of the

predatory heroes embalmed in story for the improvement of youth, since

he has also the field of poisonous French romance to complain of, with

its imitations in our tongue. In short, he can indict in a lump the bad

books of fiction, and against the good he may charge that they exhaust

our tears and passion on imaginary distresses.

Still, nothing would then have been said of novels which could not be

said in a degree of the newspapers, the drama, the law, the pulpit

itself. We must not judge them by their worst fruits. "Pamela" was

praised from the pulpits of its day, although, to be sure, it would

hardly now be given to young women. I well remember, when prowling

about the homestead bookcase, coming upon Rowland Hill's "Village

Dialogues." Their characters were fictitious, the distresses imaginary;

still I presume the St. Louis preacher would not object to "Socinianism

Unmasked," the "Evils of Seduction," and the "Awful Death of Alderman

Greedy." Everybody sees how fiction is a weapon of philanthropy. Christ

himself taught by parables. Clergymen resort to romance to achieve what

the sermon cannot do, and men of science to achieve what the essay

cannot do. Religious newspapers publish serial novels. The

anti-slavery, temperance, prison reform, and poor law agitations owe

immeasurably to novels. Daniel Webster said of Dickens that he had done

more to ameliorate the condition of the British poor than all the

statesmen that ever sat in Parliament. And this present wonderful

movement of the Jews to recover Palestine--what does it not owe to a

novel?

A noble influence, too, comes from some novels that do not aim to be

_doctrinaire_ or proselyting. A story of Thackeray is a tonic to the

scorn of base action; a story of Charles Kingsley is a trumpet call to

Christian duty; a story of George Eliot is an inspiration to high

thought and honorable living. Some of her sisterhood are probably

capable of uneasily disliking George Eliot because she has a depth of

intelligence quite beyond their plummet, which the world admires; but I

should think that most women would be proud of the strength and vast

influence of one who, in succeeding to the royal line of feminine

novelists, has carried its triumphs far beyond anything achieved by

Miss Burney, Jane Austin, Miss Porter, Miss Martineau, Charlotte

Bronté, and Georges Sand.

We lay aside some authors with a sense of fulness that will not let the

attention be immediately distracted to other persons and things. The

greatest books put the mind at once into a fruitful state, as if it had

received seed of instantly bearing power. Less great books may still

give us the desire to imitate their heroes or follow their maxims. Only

dead books neither beget new thoughts nor incite by examples. As the

characters of children are partly moulded from their surroundings, so

the imaginary friends of fiction are mental associates for good or ill.

We take heart and hope from the novelist's scenes, or are so wrought

upon by his personages that these phantoms move us more than most real

men and women. If all we know of Adam Bede is what we read of him, pray

what more do we know of Czar Peter? Instead of lamenting the

fascination of the story-wright, let us rather plead for its noble use,

saying of him, as a great and generous brother writer said of Dickens:

"What a place it is to hold in the affections of men! What an awful

responsibility hanging over a writer! What man holding such a place,

and knowing that his words go forth to vast congregations of

mankind--to grown folks, to their children, and perhaps to their

children's children--but must think of his calling with a solemn and

humble heart! May love and truth guide such a man always!"

Most of us have known an era in life when we looked down on novels like

Miss Muloch's, with their gentle refrain: "He was so handsome, how

could she help loving him? She was so beautiful, what could he do but

adore her?" Better worth reading were stories of frontier trails,

knightly tourneys, chases of smuggler and corvette--those stimulating

feasts that we swallowed rather too hastily for health, and which, I

grant the St. Louis preacher, formed so rich a mixture that nightmare

sometimes followed a _pâté_ of adventure and murder on which we had too

bountifully supped.

Yet who would willingly forget the terror of that moment when Crusoe

discovers the footprints on the lonely shore? I fancy many a lad has

borne testimony to the genius of De Foe by popping his curly pate

beneath the bed clothes at that awful juncture, in as great fright as

if he himself had just seen the track in the sand. Or perhaps, living

by the seaside, he has rowed his wherry to some neighboring bunch of

rocks, to take possession of it, Crusoe fashion, bribing some less

enthusiastic companion to act the rôle of Friday, until, unworthy of

his faithful prototype, the extemporized Friday sulks and throws off

his allegiance. I lately heard that Crusoe's isle was now tenanted by

industrious German colonists, who had planted and stocked it, not like

Robinson, but under all agricultural advantages, and that Juan

Fernandez was a regular entrepot for whale ships. Think of it! Yankee

tars revictual where the lonely mariner saw cannibals feasting! But it

is only Selkirk's domain that is thus invaded; Crusoe's right there is

none to dispute; safe in the keeping of genius, his monarchy can no

more be annexed by filibuster or colonist than the magic isle of

Prospero.

Musing on popular novels, one is struck by the changes of fashion in

fiction. Who now reads "Clarissa," which Dr. Johnson pronounced the

first book of the world for knowledge of the human heart; which

D'Alembert styled unapproachably greater than any romance ever written

in any language; for which Diderot predicted an immortality as

illustrious as that of Homer? Who reads "Cecilia," which Burke sat up

all night to read? The romances over which our great grandmothers

simpered and sighed are to our age intolerable bores. Reade, not

Richardson, is the man for our money; Miss Braddon, not Miss Burney, is

the rage at the circulating libraries. Whither are gone those stories

that a few years ago could not be printed fast enough--"The

Lamplighter," "Hot Corn," and the rest of that brood? They are hidden

under dust in the alcoves, or have been carted off to the pulp mill.

Could mind of man have fancied, an oblivion so swift for those

favorites of the public? Could mortal ken have foretold its present

fate for the "Wide, Wide World"?--a story now quite dropped out of

sight, but once the town's rage, and whose heroine I remember as a sort

of inexhaustible human watering cart with the tear tap always turned

on.

What has become, too, of those learned novels, patterned after

Bulwer--extracts from Lemprière in dialogue form, sandwiched with

layers of low life? "Surely, my dear niece, you remember what Athenæaus

quotes on this subject from the Leontium of Hermesianax of Colophon,

the friend of Philetas?" "Perfectly, aunt, and methinks mention is also

made of the same elegiac poem in Pausanias, and again in Antoninus

Liberalis, the latter saying," etc. Where, I say, are the novels in

that vein, with their charming mixture of murder, mythology, and

metaphysics? They have their run, strut their brief hour, and give way

to some "Madcap Violet" or "Helen's Babies." Never fear a lack of fresh

novels. If the lads lose Mayne Reid, they find Jules Verne. The secret

is an open one: the novel is the best paid branch of literature--always

excepting Mr. Gladstone's pamphlets. Times have changed since "Evelina"

was sold for £20.

Perhaps of all novelists Victor Hugo receives the largest earnings for

a single work. One of his clerical enemies, Mgr. de Ségur, has bitterly

attacked him for his gains--"$100,000 for 'Les Misérables' alone," said

the critic in angry extravagance. But Hugo's admirers will not grudge

his gains.

The English have put a premium on prolix novels by giving them a

regulation length of just three volumes, to be cold for a guinea and a

half. This droll uniformity has much less basis of reason than the old

custom of writing tragedies and comedies just five acts long; for there

is sense in making a play last out an evening. Trouble to writer and

weariness to reader must come of spinning a novel against space,

overlaying a plot with trivial incidents, and stuffing a story with

padding, merely to reach a standard of length both arbitrary and

absurd. Yet prodigious was the patience of our novel-reading ancestry

prior to Fielding. The "Grand Cyrus" was issued in ten volumes,

"Clarissa Harlowe" in eight, and sometimes an heroic romance reached

twelve. Jules Janin puts Richardson on Shakespeare's level, and modern

French readers appreciate "Clarissa" more than English--but they get it

abridged. Mr. Dallas, following Janin, has abridged the famous novel

with care for English readers, too, and a more recent editor likewise

aims to evade its monotony by striking out "tediously unnecessary

passages and unimportant details," though old-fashioned readers may

still like to take "Clarissa" in all its prolixity. As to the romances

that preceded it, they seem to our age duller than any ever

written--"huge folios of inanity," said Sir Walter, "over which our

ancestors yawned themselves to sleep." I warrant their descendants

never yawned over "Guy Mannering."

Still, modern novels as a class are more apt to be voluble than prolix.

Story-writers like Trollope, Mrs. Edwards, and McCarthy amaze us at the

ductility which the English tongue assumes for them. They seem less to

compose than to _reel off_ their pages. To Trollope's free-and-easy

flow is there any stop? None, surely, through mental exhaustion. His

bright loquacity and productiveness remind one of that bewitched salt

mill in the story of Nicholas, which ground on for ever, without effort

or wearying, until it had salted the whole sea.

PRIMOGENITURE AND PUBLIC BEQUESTS.

SOMETHING was said, in a former "Driftwood" essay, regarding the

frequent dedications of private fortunes, in America, to public uses.

We see a philanthropic millionaire stripping himself, even in hale

life, of all his wealth save a slender annuity and the portions

reserved for his heirs and legatees; or we see the bulk of a great

fortune given to charities in a testamentary bequest.

Certainly Americans, though often overreaching in making a fortune, are

proverbially lavish in distributing it. New England, the home of

'cuteness in trade, is extraordinary for the number and extent of its

charitable bequests. Americans may do things that an Englishman will

not in getting the best of a bargain, but quite as quickly as the

average Englishman, they give the whole fruits of the sharp trade to

some sufferer. Unscrupulous in a contest of wits, they yet have bowels

of compassion beyond many other nations, are perhaps the least cruel of

all, and have made American private endowments of educational and

charitable institutions famous the world over.

But can we put all the credit of these endowments to the score of

national character? Is not some part traceable simply to the abolition

of the old privileges and customs of primogeniture? I fancy that were

it American usage to pass the bulk of great estates to a succession of

eldest sons or to the nearest heir, we should see fewer great bequests

to the public. "The heir" would ever be an overshadowing figure in the

rich man's plans; whereas now, if kith and kin be well provided for, no

one finds it strange that the bulk of an estate like Mr. Peabody's or

Mr. Lick's or Mr. Cornell's should go to public education and charity.

Our English-speaking race, as we all know, has ever had a thirst for

posthumous power; so bent were our ancestors on tying up their estates

in perpetuity that when the law came in to forbid it many were the

devices to prolong the grasp. Privileges of primogeniture are still

jealously guarded in England, for the sake of accumulating family

honors and wealth. Even in America older brothers sometimes oddly think

themselves sole managers of the parental estate--a fancy due, perhaps,

to the influence of our English derivation. We see its traces where

even an estimable oldest brother, as self-appointed head of the family,

deals with the inherited estate as if it were all his own: prescribes

the household expenses, "invests" the portions of others as may seem

good unto him, loses them in his speculations without qualm of

conscience, or doles out from his gains to his younger brothers and

sisters with the air of a munificent prince giving bounties.

Paterfamilias was eminently just in taking him into the historic firm

on a third share, but it would be preposterous to do the same by

brother Tom. Let Tom and Harry, after a few years' longer probation of

clerkship than Primus needed, be generously taken in; but let them

divide a third of the partnership between them. Primogeniture, I

repeat, still leaves its curious traces with us in these unpleasant

delusions of the oldest male child; but the abolition of its ancient

privileges, and the habit of distributing fortunes and opportunities

share and share alike among equal heirs or legatees, have accustomed

many rich men besides childless millionaires to sparing a generous

portion for charities and colleges. This view is strengthened by

observing that the famous dedications of private fortunes to public

uses are made by men who have earned their wealth, not inherited it.

Inherited wealth is more likely to be transmitted to its owner's heirs

than broken up for public benefactions. And so, in fine, we may trace a

part of our national celebrity for public bequests to the lack of

primogenital laws and of any social system of retaining the bulk of

family wealth in a line of eldest sons.

We are sometimes unjust toward men of prodigious wealth who disappoint

public expectation by bequeathing nothing for public purposes. The

American who keeps fifty millions intact in his family only does what

is customary in other lands, and what may be done without reproach. If

he break no law, a man may do what he will with his own--although, to

be sure, so may his countrymen talk as they will of what he does; and

they will hardly lump in a common eulogy the public benefactors and

those who devise none of their prodigious wealth to the public weal.

For these latter the one or two of their fellow men who have become

millionaires by their wills may properly raise memorial churches, and

stained windows, and chimes of bells; but such wills have earned no

pæans of public gratitude.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

PHOTOGRAPHING FROM THE RETINA.

ONE of the first fruits of the daguerreotypic art was the suggestion

that unknown murderers could be detected by photographing the last

image left on the retina of the murdered person's eye. The idea

that this could be done seems to have taken strong hold of many

imaginations, and we believe this suggestion is repeated to the police

authorities of New York on the occurrence of every noticeable and

mysterious murder. That such a detective task will ever be accomplished

by photography is extremely doubtful, on account of the length of time

that usually passes before the discovery of a murder. But science has

now advanced so far that the image on the retina _has been fixed and

photographed_. This has been done by Prof. Kühne of Heidelberg, but not

with human subjects, as decapitation is one necessary part of the

process. Prof. Kühne placed a rabbit four and a half feet from a closed

window, in the shutter of which was an opening twelve inches square.

The animal's head was first covered by a black cloth for five minutes

and then exposed for three minutes. The head was then instantly cut

off, and one eye taken out in a room illuminated by yellow light. The

eyeball was opened and instantly plunged into a five per cent. solution

of alum. This occupied two minutes, and the other eye, still remaining

in the head, was then exposed at the window just as the first had been.

It was then taken out and placed in the alum solution like its fellow.

The next morning the two retinæ were carefully isolated, separated from

the optic nerve, and turned. On a beautiful rose red ground a sharp

image, somewhat more than one millimetre (one-twenty-fifth inch) square

was found. The image on the first retina--that which was exposed during

life--was somewhat reddish and not so sharply defined as that on the

other.

This fixature of the last impression on the living retina is by no

means an accidental discovery, but is the final step in a laborious

series of delicate researches. Nor is it the triumph of one man alone,

the preliminary work having been performed by two distinguished

physiologists. Prof. Boll of Rome discovered that the external layer of

the retina in all living animals has a purple color, which is destroyed

by light. During life the color is perpetually restored by darkness,

but after death, Boll thought, it disappeared entirely. Prof. Kühne

followed up this wonderful discovery and confirmed it in general, while

correcting some of Boll's conclusions. He first ascertained that death

does not necessarily destroy the color, since a retina that is not

exposed to white light, but is kept in a room lighted by a yellow

sodium flame, retains this "vision purple" for twenty-four or

twenty-eight hours, even though incipient decomposition may have set

in. It is destroyed at the temperature of boiling water or by immersion

in alcohol, glacial acetic acid, and strong solution of soda, but in

strong ammonia, saturated solution of common salt, or glycerine, it

remains undiminished for twenty-four hours. On testing the effect of

different colored lights upon this "vision purple," he found that the

most refrangible rays change it most, while red has hardly more effect

than yellow light. The color is not so delicate as Boll supposed. A few

moments' exposure to daylight does not bleach the retina. This requires

exposure for a considerable time to direct sunlight. The source of the

color was found to be the inner surface of the choroid upon which the

retina lies. If a portion of the retina is disengaged from the choroid

and raised up, it bleaches, though the remainder, still attached

portion, retains its color. If the raised flap is carefully replaced

upon the choroid, it regains its purple hue. This restoration is

believed to be a function of the living choroid, and probably of the

retinal epithelium, though it is independent of the black pigment which

this epithelium contains. This vision purple is the latest discovery in

optical physiology, and it cannot fail to be a most important one. How

far it will alter the received views upon the subject of changes in the

strength of vision, which are now attributed to alterations in the

distance of the crystalline lens, cannot be foretold. But it may be

found possible to stimulate by drugs the restorative action of the

choroid, and thus by gaining increased "definition," improve weak

sight. As to the detection of murderers by photographing the last

retinal picture from their victims' eyes, while these discoveries do

not leave this an impossibility, they do not much improve the

probability of its ever being done. Very often the sight of the

assassin is not the last which comes within the victim's vision. Too

long a time also usually elapses before discovery. These and similar

difficulties must prevent the utilization of these discoveries in this

direction, even if they should prove to be in themselves all that is

hoped. The retinal picture has not yet been photographed, but it seems

probable, from the above recounted experiments, that it can be.

ACTION OF ORGANIC ACIDS ON MINERALS.

DR. H. C. BOLTON of the New York School of Mines has made the

interesting discovery that minerals may be decomposed by boiling with

organic acids, just as they are by treatment with the strong mineral

acids. He has tried the action of such acids as citric, tartaric,

oxalic, acetic, malic, and other acids, on finely powdered carbonates,

silicates, sulphides, and other classes of mineral. All the carbonates

examined (fourteen in number) dissolved with effervescence, sulphides

were decomposed with evolution of sulphuretted hydrogen, and silicates

with formation of gelatinous silica. This important discovery will

greatly add to the resources of the mineralogist, who is compelled to

do much of his work in the field. Hitherto he has been debarred from

using the mineral acids (the action of which sometimes forms a decisive

test) by the impossibility of carrying them in the pocket or wallet

without danger. The organic acids are solid, and can be conveniently

stowed away. Their action, however, is not so decided as that of the

mineral acids, but this is not always a defect, but offers additional

means of determination. For example, all the specimens of bornite and

pyrrhotite examined yielded sulphuretted hydrogen with tartaric,

citric, and oxalic acids, but chalcopyrite and pyrite do not. On the

other hand, the use of the organic acids may give rise in some cases to

the formation of nitric acid, which in its nascent condition will

afford a very powerful agent of decomposition. Thus all the sulphides

examined (seventeen), with the exception of molybdenite and cinnabar,

were quickly attacked by citric or tartaric acid, to which a little

potassium nitrate had been added. Potassium chlorate produces a similar

though slower action. These examples are sufficient to show that Dr.

Bolton has found a promising field of inquiry, and, singular to say,

considering the attention which the action of organic acids has

received, it is a field believed to be entirely new. He is continuing

his researches.

SCIENTIFIC ORCHESTRATION.

Prof. Mayer has turned his valuable researches in acoustical science to

æsthetic uses, and criticises the present mode of arranging orchestras,

the defects of which he proves by experiment. He took an old silver

watch, beating four times a second, and caused it to gain thirty

seconds per hour, so that every two minutes its tick coincided with the

tick of an ordinary spring balance American clock, also making four

beats the second. The latter was placed several feet, and the watch two

feet, from the ear. In this position the ticks of the watch were lost

for _nine seconds_, about the time of coincidence. The tick of the

watch disappeared, "with a sharp _chirp_, like a cricket's, and

reappears with a sound like that made by a boy's marble falling upon

others in his pocket." This experiment shows most effectively that one

sonorous impression may overcome and obliterate another, but to do so

it must be more intense and of lower pitch. If of higher pitch, it

cannot neutralize the other sound, however much the first may exceed

the latter in intensity. This discovery, Prof. Mayer thinks, is, "next

after the demonstration of the fact that the ear is capable of

analyzing compound musical sounds into their constituent or partial

simple tones, the most important addition yet made to our knowledge of

hearing." High sounds cannot obliterate low ones, but, on the contrary,

the sensation of each partial tone of which compound musical sounds is

formed is diminished by all the tones below it in pitch. These

discoveries he applies to orchestration as follows: "In a large

orchestra I have repeatedly witnessed the complete obliteration of all

sounds from violins by the deeper and more intense sounds of the wind

instruments, the double basses alone holding their own. I have also

observed the sounds of the clarinets lose their peculiar quality of

tone, and consequent charm, from the same cause. No doubt the conductor

of the orchestra heard all his violins ranged as they always are, close

around him, and did not perceive that his clarinets had lost that

quality of tone on which _the composer_ had relied for producing a

special character of expression. The function of the conductor seems to

be threefold: First, to regulate and fix the time. Second, to regulate

the intensity of the sounds produced by individual instruments, for the

purpose of expression. Third, to give the proper quality of tone or

_feeling_ to the whole sound of his orchestra, considered as a

single instrument, by regulating the _relative intensities_ of

sounds produced by the various classes of instruments employed. Now

this third function, the regulation of relative intensities, has

hitherto been discharged through the judgment of the ears of a

conductor, who is placed in the most disadvantageous position for

judging by his ears. Surely he is not conducting for his own personal

gratification, but for the gratification of his audience, whose ears

stand in very different relations from his own in respect to their

distance from the various instruments in action. Is it not time that he

should pay more attention to his third function, and place himself in

the position occupied by an average hearer? This position would be

elevated, and somewhere in the midst of the audience. That the position

at present occupied by the conductor of an orchestra has often allowed

him to deprive his audience of some of the most delicate and touching

qualities of orchestral and concerted vocal music, I have no doubt, and

I firmly believe that when he changes his position in the manner now

proposed, the audience will have some of that enjoyment which he has

too long kept to himself." These views were verified by Prof. Mayer

visiting different parts of the house during a public performance, and

observing the different effects of the music. It is not to be supposed

that a satisfactory change can be made at once. A quantitative analysis

of the compound tones of all musical instruments must be made. On this

work he is now engaged. One noteworthy result of his researches is the

opinion that orchestral instruments should be made on different

principles from those used in solos. The reason for this is, that

certain over tones should predominate in orchestral instruments in

order to give them their due expression in the midst of graver sounds.

These exaggerated peculiarities will unfit them to be played alone. If

the learned Professor's views are carried out, a theatre or opera

manager will be obliged to own the instruments of his orchestra, and

perhaps to have different sets for different musical works!

THE NITROGEN OF PLANTS.

The direct source of the nitrogen contained in plants is an unsolved

mystery, though the ultimate source of much of it must be the

atmosphere. A wheat crop gave on unmanured land from 15.9 to 25.2

pounds of nitrogen, per acre, yearly, but the amount found in the

rainwater of the same district was only from 6.23 to 8.58 pounds per

acre. Singular to say, the use of a fertilizer, called a "complex

mineral manure" in the reports, added only about two pounds of nitrogen

per acre. But the case is altered when potassic manure is used, and

especially when applied to land bearing beans. Such a crop gains 13-1/2

pounds of nitrogen by the addition of saltpetre, or 28 per cent. A

similar result was obtained with clover--a leguminous crop. A potassic

fertilizer increased the yield of nitrogen one-third. One of the

anomalies observed in the study of plant growth is that a good crop

instead of exhausting the soil seems to improve it. The better the

crop, and the more nitrogen removed, the better will the succeeding

crop be. Thus clover removes a much larger amount of nitrogen than

wheat, the quantity being on unmanured land, say 30.5 pounds per acre

for clover and 20.7 pounds for wheat, and yet the wheat crop is

improved if clover is occasionally interpolated or a fair rotation of

crops kept up. In 1874 barley succeeding barley gave 39.1 pounds of

nitrogen, while barley following clover gave 69.4 pounds of nitrogen

withdrawn from an acre of soil. These amounts take no account of the

nitrogen carried off by the drainage of the soil, which analysis of

drainwater proves to be considerable. The source of all this nitrogen

is undoubtedly the atmosphere, but the mode of conveying it into the

soil is unknown.

IMPORTANT PREHISTORIC DISCOVERIES.

Few persons are aware of the wealth of what are called "prehistoric"

remains. The finding of an isolated skeleton, in a cave, with

stalagmite completely covering it, is accepted as an occurrence that is

not very remarkable. However ancient it may be, the preservation of the

bones is exceptional. But a late discovery in France, near

Hastiére-sur-Meuse, is of much more importance. No less than fifteen

burial caverns were found, and from the five that have been explored no

less than fifty-five human skeletons have been taken, among which are

thirty-five well-preserved skulls.

In addition to these "finds" the plateaux yielded sixteen dwelling

places of the old inhabitants from which have been taken a quantity of

stone implements. These show the age of the skeletons to be that of the

polished, or "new" stone period. The prospect of being able to restore

the men who lived before the earliest recorded dates is now very good.

Some hundreds of their skeletons, with a valuable series of skulls and

enormous collections of their handiworks, are now in the museums of the

world.

Some of the more remarkable of these discoveries have been alluded to

at different times in this Miscellany. One of the latest and most

interesting consists of some pointed sticks, found in a Swiss coal bed,

the pointing having been done by hand. It may be thought difficult to

establish so remarkable a fact in a mass of coal in which the rods have

been pressed flat and perfectly carbonized. But a microscopic

examination of one of these pieces shows that the fibres of the wood

run in two different directions, the two systems meeting at an angle.

One of the sticks has had its end shaved down, the cut surface being

then applied to the other, and some substance, probably bark, being

wound around the joint. The marks of this wrapping are perfectly

distinct, and in one case the wrapping itself remains. As the bark used

for this purpose was different from the natural bark of the rods, the

microscope is now able to distinguish between the two, though both are

turned to coal. Descriptions and illustrations of these interesting

relics are published in the "Primeval World of Switzerland," by the

celebrated Professor Heer. There is no doubt they formed part of some

basket work. Their age is still doubtful, but must be very great.

THE PHYLLOXERA CONQUERED.

The investigation instituted by the French Academy of Sciences into the

best means of destroying the phylloxera, or grapevine pest, has ended

in the conclusion that the sulpho-carbonates are a complete antidote to

these destructive insects. This result has already been announced in

this Miscellany, and it only remains to explain the action of these

salts. Under the influence of carbonic acid, which is always present in

soils containing organic substances, they decompose. A carbonate is

formed, and sulphuretted hydrogen and bisulphide of carbon are evolved.

Both of these are deadly poisons to the phylloxera as well as to man.

To complete the fitness of these salts to agricultural uses, the

sulpho-carbonate of potassium has an excellent effect upon the vines,

potash being one of the most valued constituents of manures. Success in

using the antidote depends upon bringing it in contact with every part

of the root-system of the plant. This can be done by dissolving the

salt, but it is better to mix it with half its weight of lime and

sprinkle it on the ground at the beginning of the rainy season, which

in France lasts from October to March. M. Mouillefert, who examined

this subject under direction of the Academy, reports that as an

antidote the sulpho-carbonates are a proved success, and nothing now

remains but to educate the vine growers to their proper use. This

subject has peculiar interest to Americans, for the phylloxera is our

evil gift to France. It is matter of common observation, both in animal

and vegetable physiology, that one race or species may live in comfort

with an enemy--be it a disease or a parasite--which is destructive to

other species. The American vineyards are by no means free from the

phylloxera. On the contrary, they are full of this insect, but the

vines do not lose their hardiness in consequence. They flourish in

spite of their enemy.

THE SUN'S HEAT.

Prof. Langley of the Allegheny observatory has made a direct comparison

between the heat of the sun and that of the flame in the mouth of a

Bessemer steel convertor. Estimates of the sun's temperature probably

vary among themselves more than any other attempts at scientific

knowledge, ranging from 10,000,000 down to 1,500 deg. We have already

published in this Miscellany some late French determinations which

place it below 2,000 deg. C. Prof. Langley's choice of a standard is

excellent. The flame of the Bessemer convertor results from the burning

of carbon, silicon, iron, and manganese within the vessels, the result

of using this once novel fuel being a heat so great that the most

refractory iron or steel is melted to thin fluidity and so much excess

of heat imparted, that the mass will remain fluid, without further

heat, a considerable time. The temperature of the flame is not known,

though 4,000 or 5,000 deg. Fahr. has been suggested as an approximation.

This does not vitiate Prof. Langley's experiment, for he used it merely

as one of the most powerful artificial sources of light obtainable. His

method was to compare its light with that of the sun by an arrangement

that resembled a camera obscura, the light from the sun and the flame

being repeatedly superposed upon each other. The arrangement worked

admirably, and the observer was able to note the spots on the sun. He

found that the intensely hot flame was like a dark spot compared to the

sun's light and that the latter must be at least 2,168 times hotter

than the flame. This carries the result in favor of the largest

estimates. The flame of the convertor is not so hot as the melted

steel from which it comes, but it offers better opportunities for

observation. The steel itself as it was poured from the convertor was

found to be not more than one-sixty-fourth as hot as the sun.

DEAF MUTES IN POLAND.

Mr. George Darwin has brought forward statistics to prove that the

intermarriage of near relations does not have the unfavorable effect

upon offspring which is commonly supposed. But the director of the

Warsaw Institute for Deaf Mutes and the Blind combats this theory, and

says that the registers kept at that and similar institutions support

the popular opinion. The system of instruction at this asylum is very

perfect. Mimic language being almost totally prohibited, the pupils are

taught to understand the motion of the lips and to speak more or less

distinctly; and after a four years' residence in the Institute, they

generally attain in both a high degree of perfection. With great

judgment the managers have made the technical instruction at the school

of the best kind, so that the pupils readily find situations on

leaving, and indeed there are never enough to fill all the situations

offered. This appears to be the true method with students who would

otherwise find themselves at a disadvantage with more favored

competitors.

THE COMPASS PLANT.

The well-known dispute as to the "compass plant" has recently been

settled by Mr. Meehan in a manner which recalls the opinions of

judicial officers who deal with other than scientific questions. One

party of observers say that this plant always points its leaves north

and south, the leaf standing edgewise to the earth and the two sides

facing to the east and west. This plant is found on the prairies and

plains, and is known scientifically as _silphium lacinatum_, popularly

as pilot weed, rosin weed, and turpentine weed. It stands from three to

six feet high, and the trappers and Indians are said to find their way

in dark nights by feeling its leaves. These assertions of polarity are

denied by the other party. Mr. Meehan now says that both are right.

When the leaves are young and small the pointing to the north is

unmistakable, but when they become larger, are beaten down by rains,

and weighted with sand and dew, they are not able to recover their lost

bearings.

BALLOONS IN METEOROLOGY.

Balloon ascensions are quietly but frequently used by scientific men

for the purpose of studying the upper parts of the atmosphere. Russian

savants have lately paid especial attention to this work, but have been

prevented from extending their examinations to any great height. Prof.

Mendeleef of St. Petersburg now undertakes to accomplish this also, and

devotes the profits of two books published by him to the construction

of a balloon. This is to have a capacity of two or three thousand cubic

yards, and will be filled by means arranged by him. France also pursues

this path of investigation with great vigor. Count Bathyani recently

took up a radiometer to a height of about a mile. At the earth it made

in the shade thirty-five revolutions per minute. At the height of 5,000

feet it made sixty-four revolutions, also in the shade. In the sun,

2,300 feet above the earth, it made fifty-four revolutions. Count

Bathyani also took up an ethereal apparatus for the purpose of

condensing water vapor at various heights, in order to collect the

microscopic particles floating in the air. This line of investigation

will be continued by means of an apparatus filled with methylic ether.

This will give a temperature of -20 deg. C., or -15 deg. Fahr. The

moisture will condense as ice which will be scraped off the vessels.

All the solid particles floating in the immediate neighborhood of the

apparatus will also be obtained.

THE LEAD PRODUCT.

The mining of lead is a business in which Americans are successfully

using the remarkable resources of this country. In 1866 the amount made

here was only 14,342 tons, while we imported 23,330 tons. In fact the

importation has exceeded the home product ever since 1850 with the

exception of one year--1860. This improper "balance of trade" was due

to the system and intelligence with which foreign smelting works are

conducted, and the ignorance which prevailed in our own country where

the mining resources are really superior to those of Europe. But this

state of things has changed with the foundation of mining schools and

the spread of mining knowledge in this country. In 1873 the "balance"

turned the other way. The importations have been since then 22,114,

17,674, 7,305, and 4,685 tons; while the home product shows a rise

corresponding closely to this falling off, being for the same years,

37,983, 46,500, 53,250, 57,210 tons. In fact we export as much as we

import, for the 4,300 tons of pig lead imported is balanced by the

quantity sent back to Europe in the form of bullets. This change in the

business is traceable to the fact that refining has been found to pay

in America, and our lead is thus in request by the white paint makers.

For years our product lay under a stigma, and it was said that it was

not suited to the manufacture of the best lead. This evident error has

been corrected; the refined virgin lead of Missouri and Illinois makes

the best white lead, and the mining of the metal is not likely to

suffer from so many causes of depression again. The Territories are now

large producers, the five principal sources of supply being in 1876--

Tons.

Importation 4,685

Sales of Government old lead 1,050

Missouri 17,165

Galena district 6,425

Utah, Nevada, California 33,630

------

62,955

The production of some few selected places was: Palmer mine, 466 tons,

Mine LaMotte, 1,657, St. Joseph mines, 1,938, Granby mines, 4,423 tons,

these being all Missouri; Omaha smelting works, 11,336 tons, St. Louis

and Pennsylvania smelting works, 8,000 tons, New York and Newark works,

7,776 tons, California, Nevada, and Utah works, 6,518. The latter four

items amount to 33,630 tons, which is all made from silver-lead ores,

mostly by the zinc process of refining.

ARCTIC EXPLORATION.

In fitting out the lately returned Arctic expedition the English

government attempted to make it the last one of its kind. That is, it

appropriated a million dollars and engaged the coöperation of the best

scientific authorities, and sent out its best men, who departed in the

full knowledge that their enterprise had aroused a real national

enthusiasm, and that the most strenuous effort was expected of them.

The purpose of these accumulated advantages was to so fortify the

voyagers that their success or failure should satisfy the world upon

the subject of polar exploration. They went, struggled so bravely that

their loss of life was greater than on any expedition since the fatal

one under Franklin--and came back without succeeding. Their commander

deliberately declared success to be impossible from the nature of the

difficulties which always exist near the pole, and that this goal of

nine centuries' effort would never be reached.

But, in spite of Captain Nares's positiveness, the Arctic question is

now just where he took it up. Seventy miles has been added to the

distance covered, but the world is just as unsatisfied as ever, and

polar exploration is just as ardently desired as ever. The spirit is

unchanged, but the name is altered. Against the uniform report of the

explorers who have been so numerous during the last decade that a mere

journey to the pole is not likely to yield much addition to man's

knowledge, it is hardly possible for even the most enthusiastic

navigators to stand up. But when Lieutenant Payer, on returning from

the Austrian expedition north of Spitzbergen, declared that there was

but one way to make the icy northern regions yield up their scientific

secrets, and that was by colonizing parties within the Arctic circle,

to stay there long enough to make a continued study of its meteorology

and physics, the scientific world gave him its unqualified support.

Several nations have been reported to be on the point of organizing

such a colony, but America seems likely to be the first to act

energetically on the suggestion. Captain Howgate of the Signal Service

Corps has petitioned Congress for $50,000 with which to send out a

company of forty men, provided with supplies for three years. They are

to be taken by a government vessel to some point between 81 deg. and 83

deg., the route taken to be by Smith's sound. There they will be left,

the vessel returning. An annual visit is to be paid the colony, but

otherwise they will be left to themselves. To prevent the scandalous

quarrels which ruined the Polaris expedition, the whole party will be

enlisted in the United States service, and strict discipline will be

maintained. The fact that the suggestion for the expedition comes from

a Signal Service officer will give the country confidence in the plan,

and also ensure proper attention to that science which may hope to reap

the greatest benefit from Arctic observations, the science of

meteorology and cosmic physics. The scientific members of the party are

to include an astronomer, one or more meteorologists, and two or more

naturalists. The project is by no means on a sure footing as yet, but

it has got so far as to be favorably reported on by the Naval Committee

of the House of Representatives. It certainly embodies the plan which

scientific men all over the world unite in endorsing, and which seems

to offer the most promising rewards to effort. But disguise the fact as

we will, it still remains true that it is in exploration and discovery

that such schemes find their surest ground for support. The gains to

science have uniformly been greater than the satisfaction to curiosity,

and this plan is professedly made with especial care to secure the

greatest return to science. But the march to the pole is the thing that

is inviting, and it entices now just as strongly, after all the

failures, as it ever did. Captain Howgate's plan provides for this.

During their three years' stay his men will be on the watch for

opportunities to advance northward, and if they find none, they intend

to make such a study of currents, ice, and seasons as will give the cue

to others in after years.

The principal difficulties in pushing far northward may be summed up in

a few words. The attempt must be made in summer (the Arctic day), when

the ice is liable to break up. A boat must therefore be carried, and

this makes the sledge train heavy. The ice to be crossed is extremely

rough, and explorers have not been able to find smoother spots of any

considerable size. By rough we mean that it is covered with deep rifts,

blocks and snow drifts from five to twenty feet or more in height, and

these impediments cover the surface so closely as to leave no

alternative but a slow tugging of the sledges over the most available

parts of them. The English expedition found these drifts to lie

directly across their course, having been formed by a west wind. The

labor of crossing them is performed with the thermometer far below the

freezing point. There is no fire, provisions have to be carefully

husbanded, sleep is dangerous unless frequently broken, and if one of

the party breaks down, the strength of the whole is seriously

diminished, while its task is greatly increased. Such has been the

history of exploration up to within 400 miles of the pole, and it is at

least probable that many of these difficulties will be intensified as

that point is reached. The north pole may now be considered to occupy

the centre of an area 800 miles in diameter, the condition of things

within which it is not possible even to conjecture. We may plausibly

suppose (1) that it is not land, for the ice of the Arctic sea is never

more than 150 feet thick, and there are no glaciers; (2) that it is a

shallow sea; and (3) that the precipitation of moisture in the centre

must be considerable, as the ice is moving in all directions from the

centre during the summer. The theory of an open sea at the pole is now

discarded by most scientific men, and, we believe, by all experienced

explorers except Hayes. In the present state of knowledge it rests upon

the presumption that the polar sea is very shallow, so that the deep

and warm currents which are known to enter the Arctic ocean may be

forced to the surface there; and that the ice drift removes the ice as

fast as it forms.

EXPLORATION NOTES.

THE Portuguese government has decided to spend $100,000 on a

scientific expedition to Central Africa.

EVERY exploring expedition across the continent of Australia has to

taste the extreme difficulties of travel in the barren parts of that

extraordinary country. Mr. Giles, the last explorer, says: "From the

end of the watershed in longitude 120 deg. 20 min., the latitude being

near the 24th parallel, to the Rawlinson range of my last horse

expedition, in longitude 127 deg., the country was all open spinifex

sandhill desert. At starting into the desert most of the camels were

continually poisoned, the plant which poisoned them not being allied in

any way to the poison plants of the settled districts of Western

Australia. I now know it well, and have brought specimens. The longest

stretch without water was a ten days' march. One old cow camel died

after reaching the water. We had some rain on May 8 before reaching the

Ashburton, and some of it must have extended into the desert. It was

the only chance water we obtained."

PROF. NORDENSKIOLD, who sailed from Norway to the mouth of the river

Jenesei, in Siberia, is now preparing for a voyage from that river

along the shore of the Arctic sea to Behrings straits. It may be that

the navigation of the Arctic sea, which is impossible away from land,

can be accomplished in its neighborhood. The return journey will be

made by way of China, India, and the Suez canal, the whole forming the

most remarkable voyage ever undertaken by one ship.

* * * * *

BRADFORD, Pennsylvania, is lighted with gas from a well situated about

two miles from town.

IN the United States heavy rains are less frequent between 4:35 P.M.

and 11 P.M than at any other part of the day. The greatest number are

between 7:35 A.M. and 4:35 P.M.

IN the Alps the snow line is 8,900 feet high on the northern side and

9,200 feet on the southern. In the Himalayas it is 16,600 feet on the

northern side and 16,200 feet on the southern.

THE eminent physicist, Prof. J. C. Poggendorff, for many years

professor in the Berlin university, and editor of "Poggendorff's

Annalen," has died in Berlin, in his eighty-first year.

THE magnitude of the prizes which may be drawn by exploring

antiquarians in Europe is shown by the recent finding near Verona,

Italy, of two large amphoræ containing 50,000 coins of the Emperor

Gallienus and his immediate successors. The majority of them are of

bronze, but there are some of silver. Nearly all of them are in the

finest state of preservation, and are so fresh from the mint as to make

it evident that they were never put into circulation.

PROF. LOOMIS says that in this country great rainfalls do not generally

continue over eight hours, and very rarely do they continue for

twenty-four hours, either at one place or a number of places considered

successively.

ACCORDING to the Washington "Gazette," the paint makers are grinding up

Egyptian mummies for the fine brown color which they make when

powdered. This color is due to the asphaltum with which the cloths

wrapped around the mummies was impregnated.

THE Washington monument is probably doomed. In its present condition it

is a grievous eyesore in the Washington landscape, and a board of army

engineers now say that its foundations are not strong enough to permit

raising the shaft higher, and it is proposed to take it down.

MR. H. BYASSON has produced a kind of petroleum by the mutual action of

steam, carbonic acid, and sulphuretted hydrogen in presence of iron at

a white heat. All these substances are known to be contained in the

rocks of the earth's crust, which also has at various times afforded

the necessary heat.

GOLD, though the principal standard of value, is not moved about the

world much. The entire import of London, the greatest banking city in

the world, was only $116,222,350 in 1876, and the export was

$81,097,850. Nearly the whole of the difference went into the vaults of

the Bank of England, the stock of which increased $34,992,020.

PROF. HAWES has proved the existence of metallic iron in the basalt

dykes of New Hampshire. It exists as small specks in the centre of

grains of magnetite. This contradicts the theory that the metallic iron

of the dykes is the result of carbon acting upon the magnetite in them,

and proves that the iron is the primary and the magnetite the secondary

product.

THOUGH agricultural professorships are not considered to have produced

all the good that was once expected from them, there is one lately

established by the French Government which might well be copied in

other countries. It is a professorship of comparative agriculture at

Vincennes, and its occupant will make a systematic comparison of home

and foreign agriculture.

THE character of the Yale lectures to mechanics is seen from the

following titles to some of the lectures: "Forester and Forest

Products," Prof. William H. Brewer; "Mosses," Prof. C. D. Eaton; "Our

Red Sandstone," G. W. Hawes; "The Usury Laws," Prof. F. A. Walker; and

"Sanitary Engineering," Prof. W. P. Trowbridge. The course contains

thirteen lectures, and costs $1.

A FRENCH paper says that "an American company proposes to introduce fur

seals from Alaska into Lake Superior! The temperature of the lake is

considered to be sufficiently cold for the purpose, and the company

hopes to obtain from Congress and the Canadian Parliament an act

protecting the creatures from slaughter for twenty years, after which

time it is supposed that they will be sufficiently acclimatized and

numerous to form subjects of sport." As the fur seal is a marine animal

and Lake Superior is a body of fresh water, the success of the

experiment, and even the authenticity of the story, is at least

doubtful!

M. GIFFARD, inventor of the steam injector which bears his name, has

entered upon a line of invention of which Americans have been very

fond. He is building a small steamer to ply, during the French

Exposition, over the three miles of the Seine between Pont Royal and

the Exhibition. The steamer will be thirty metres, or one hundred feet

long and three and a half metres, or eleven feet eight inches broad,

and is to make forty-five miles an hour! The length is to the beam,

therefore, as 8-1/2 to 1. It is singular that marine engineering has

gained but little from these attempts to attain excessive speeds. The

real advances have been obtained by small successive improvements.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

MR. HENRI VAN LAUN is known in the world of letters by his admirable

translation of Taine's "History of English Literature," and also by his

not yet completed translation of Molière's works; the latter being not

merely a translation, but a very thoroughly worked English edition of

the great French dramatist. He now presents us with the first volume of

an original critical work of great importance and interest[9]--nothing

less than a history of French literature. Mr. Van Laun's work is not a

mere critical appreciation of French writers, which of itself would be

an undertaking of very considerable moment, and which would fill a

place hitherto unoccupied in our critical literature. The present work

is in fact a history of French thought, and even more; it is a history

of the French people as exhibited in the writings of Frenchmen from the

very earliest period. The author accepts the theory which has lately

come into vogue among the more elaborate, if not the profounder

critics, that the literature of an age is a manifestation of its

spirit; that a nation, or rather a people, has a soul like an

individual man, and that that soul is manifested and is to be read in

the pages of its authors; that as it, the people, is developed,

intellectually, morally, socially, and politically, from age to age,

the changes through which it passes are reflected in its literature,

and that there no less, perhaps even more, than in the record of its

doings at home, abroad, in the family, in society, in commerce, in

manufactures, in art, and on the field of battle, is to be found its

true portraiture. Indeed, he begins his book with the assertion that

"the history of a literature is the history of a people; if not this,

it is worthless."

[9] "_History of French Literature._" By HENRI VAN LAUN. I. From

its Origin to the Renaissance. 8vo, pp. 342. New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons.

To this theory and its general acceptance we owe chiefly the very wide

scope and the philosophical profundity of most modern critical writing

of the higher kind. Critics are not content nowadays with taking up a

poem, novel, essay, or history, and looking at it by itself as an

individual and isolated work of art. They must look into the personal

life of the writer; they must discover and estimate all the influences

by which he was surrounded; and among these they give a very important

place to the condition of the society in which he lived, the political

and religious forces which were at work while he was studying,

thinking, writing. Briefly, they regard him not as an isolated

individual force, but as a manifestation, a result of many forces, as

doing his work less by personal volition than as the unconscious agent

or representative of the times in which he lived. Consequently a

critical edition or appreciation of a great writer has come to be not a

purely literary task, but an attempt to unfold the mental and moral

condition of a people and a period. Compare, for example, Addison's

criticism of the "Paradise Lost," to which in a great measure the

general appreciation of that poem is due, with David Masson's "Life of

Milton." The former can all be included in a thin duodecimo volume, and

has been so printed; the latter, still unfinished, fills several

ponderous octavo volumes. Addison concerns himself with the poem

itself; Masson writes an elaborate history of Puritanism and of the

English people during the development and completion of that religious,

social, and political revolution which produced the Commonwealth in Old

England and the Puritan emigration to America, with the formation of

the religious commonwealths of New England. True, Addison did not

undertake to do what Masson undertook, and allowance must be made for

the avowed difference between the methods of the two writers. But still

that very difference is the significant exponent of the critical spirit

of the times in which they lived. The very fact that the Victorian

critic has undertaken his tremendous task, which Addison or any man of

his time would not have thought of, is significant of the change in

critical manner to which we have referred.

That the new theory of the proper scope of criticism is well founded,

cannot be entirely denied. Literature to a certain degree is a

characteristic product of the age and of the people for which, if not

by which, it is produced. And if Mr. Van Laun had confined himself to

the affirmative part of his proposition, his position would have been

less disputable than it became when he added his negative assertion. It

is not quite true that the history of a literature is the history of a

people; still further from the truth is it that literary history which

is not the history of a people is worthless. It might be easily shown

that some of the very greatest literary productions known to the world

have very slight relations, or none at all, to the condition of the

society in which they were written. What, for example, is there in

Shakespeare's plays, or in Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels, which

is a manifestation of the spirit of their time? Scott, Wordsworth,

Byron, and Moore were strictly contemporaries. What could be more

unlike than their poems in spirit or in substance? What one trait have

they in common? The theory in question is an example of the tendency of

men to over generalization of particular facts, and of a like tendency

to over subtlety in critical philosophy.

The spirit of a people is, however, undeniably manifest in the writings

of its best and most favored authors; and to trace the rise of that

spirit and the gradual formation of a national or popular character is

a legitimate and a very instructive part of the task of a critic who

undertakes to present a full appreciation of a national literature.

Mr. Van Laun certainly begins at the beginning. He shows us what the

French people are; how the French nation arose and gradually grew into

an individual existence; and he thus imitates and emulates the

distinguished French critic whose work he has translated. M. Taine is

strong on the manifestation of Anglo-Saxonism in English literature,

and even finds the results of English beef and beer, and of the very

rain and fog of England, in the books of English writers.

Mr. Van Laun's theory of the origin of the French people is not a very

clear one; not even in his own mind, it would seem. He starts with the

assertion, in very positive terms, that the Iberians were the vanguard

of the invading races who overwhelmed and swept before them the oldest

known inhabitants of Western Europe--the Celts; and his language

implies that the former were and the latter were not an Indo-European

race; that the vanguard of the Indo-European invaders _found_ the Celts

in Europe and overcame them. But there is no doubt, we believe, that

the Celts themselves were, or are, an Indo-European race, and that they

are the oldest representatives of that race in Europe. Their position

in the extreme west, even in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland,

shows this. As to the Iberians, the name itself is rather vague as that

of a people or a race; but as far as we know anything of the race which

Mr. Van Laun seems to have in view, _they_ were found in the west of

Europe by the invading Celts. The Basques are regarded by philologists

and ethnologists as the modern representatives of the "Iberians," if

that name must be used--at any rate of the prehistoric inhabitants of

Western Europe. Of this Mr. Van Laun himself seems to have an inkling,

for he says "they were possibly themselves an indigenous European race

driven back upon the Celts by the invading tribes which so persistently

trod upon their heels." He finds a confirmation of this supposition in

a curious etymological coincidence. In the Basque tongue _atzean_

signifies "behind," and _atzea_ "a foreigner." He accounts for this by

supposing that the Iberian, pushed hard by the invaders, made common

cause with the Celt, and that therefore the ever-encroaching Goth and

Frank were "the people behind him." But if his "Iberians" were an

indigenous European race, how could they be "driven back" upon the

Celts unless the latter had gone through and through them, and so

actually got before them, leaving the indigenous people between

them--the Celts--and the succeeding Indo-European invaders? The fact is

that Mr. Van Laun has begun so very far back that he is in deep water,

rather out of his depth--out of any one's depth indeed. For as to the

Basques, they are still an ethnological and philological puzzle. The

balance of probabilities, however, seems to be in favor of their being

the, or an, indigenous European race, not connected with the Aryan or

Indo-European races, against whom they, a small remnant, have managed

to hold their own, and preserve their individuality in language, law,

and customs for more than two thousand years. The first element, the

ground, so to speak, of the French nation, is, however, doubtless

Celtic; and as to how much of an intermingling there may have been

between them and the "Iberians," or the indigenous race represented by

the Basques, we do not know. Judging by the very remarkable

individuality of that strange people, their boldness, and their

disposition to keep themselves to themselves, the probabilities of any

very great intermingling between them and their conquerors are very

small indeed.

Upon the Celts came the Greeks and the Romans. The former took no such

hold of the country as the latter did; but yet there seems to be some

reason for Mr. Van Laun's summary of the influence upon Gaul, (not yet

France) of the two great nations of antiquity when he says: "Greece,

the commercial nation, had charmed and penetrated her hosts by her

poetry, her rhetoric, her arts; Rome, the military nation, remodelled

her victims by her laws, her administration, her moral vigor." This is

somewhat loosely expressed for a work of such literary pretensions as

those of the book before us; but it suggests the truth. There was,

however, in the end, to use a popular phrase, "no comparison" between

the influence of the Greeks and that of the Romans upon Gaul. It was in

letters as in society and in politics; the intellectual existence of

Gaul, as well as her physical existence, was to be inextricably

interwoven with that of her Roman conquerors. Gaul became Romanized;

the language of the country, whatever it had been, was driven out, and

Latin took its place. The people of the country became one of what are

now known as the Latin races, chiefly because of their languages.

French is little more than Latin first debased and then by culture

reformed into a language having a character and laws of its own. The

words which form the bulk of the French language may be traced, have

been traced, down step by step from the original Latin forms; and it is

found that changes from ancient Latin to modern French took place

according to certain phonetic laws so absolute that, given a Latin

word, philologists can tell surely under what form it must appear in

French.

After the Romans came the Teutonic invaders; and of these the Franks so

imposed themselves upon the country that they gave it their name, and

Gaul became France. Charlemagne was neither Celtic nor Latin, but

simply Karl the Great, a Teutonic monarch under whose sceptre all the

Franks were united. The predominance of the Franks in Gaul for many

generations had a modifying influence upon the people. The Celtic Gaul

was a lively, spirited, vain, bold, but not a very steadily courageous

man. The Teutonic was a quieter, steadier, more reserved, and more

thoughtful man. He was a bigger man, too, and like big men, he took

things more quietly; he had the steady courage which the dashing and

gaily caparisoned Celt somewhat lacked. And yet it is remarkable that

in the end the Celtic nature reasserted itself in France, although with

some modification; and to-day the Frenchman is a Celt, as fond of talk,

of fanciful poetry, of fine dress, and show, and dash, as his

forefather was fifteen hundred years ago.

It was not until about the year 850 that the language of the people of

France assumed a form distinctively French, according to the modern

standard; and even then it was so rude and unformed that to a modern

uneducated Frenchman it would be quite as strange and incomprehensible

as Latin itself. From the very first the great distinction between the

language of the north and that of the south seems to have existed. The

_langue d'oc_ and the _langue d'oil_ contended for the mastery, which

was finally won by the latter. This is remarkable, as the former was

the softer and more cultivated tongue. The finest and the most of the

very early poetry of France was written in the _langue d'oc_. To this

literature and to the condition of the society in which it was produced

Mr. Van Laun gives much attention, as might have been expected. This

part of his book is interesting to students of literary history; but we

must confess that the songs of the troubadours have to us very rarely

any of the charms of poetry, and that we think that much of the

admiration of them which has been expressed by literary antiquarians is

fictitious. There is occasionally in these poems a touch of natural

feeling; but generally they are cold and full of conceits. Form seems

to have been more important in the poet's eyes than spirit; and instead

of genuine fervor we have deliberate extravagance. The great epic poem

of the French language--its greatest if not its only great poem--the

"Chanson de Roland"--is written in the _langue d'oil_. Mr. Van Laun

notices this poem of course, and gives a brief summary of its plot, or

we might better say of its incidents; but we are surprised that he does

not give it more attention. It is far more worthy of critical

examination than the fantastic love poems of the troubadours.

In his account of feudal society and of the effect which its conditions

had upon such literature as there was in that day, Mr. Van Laun could

hardly pass over those tribunals so characteristic and so foreign to

our modes of thought and feeling nowadays--the courts of love, of which

the troubadours were, in a sort, the advocates. These courts were

governed by a Code of Love, which had thirty-one statutes or ruling

maxims. Of these maxims the most significant, and some of the most

remarkable, are the following:

The plea of wedlock is not a sufficient excuse from love.

None can be bound by a double love.

It is undoubted that love is always diminishing or increasing.

A two years' widowhood is enjoined for a deceased lover.

It is shameful to love those with whom marriage would be shameful.

A true lover does not desire the embrace of any one save his

companion in love.

Love rarely endures when made public.

Easy acceptance renders love contemptible; a slow acceptance causes

it to be held dear.

A man full of love is ever full of fear.

Love can deny nothing to a lover.

There is nothing to prevent one woman from being loved by two men,

nor one man by two women.

In the last quoted of these remarkable laws (which were the work of

women and of a few men who wished to please women), it will be observed

that no authority or countenance is given to the loving of two women by

one man. Our author regards the effect of these courts and their code

as on the whole beneficial. His judgment may be sound, monstrous as the

code seems to us, recognizing and even sanctioning as it did relations

of the sexes not formed according to civil laws; for, as he says, "it

refined the inevitable evil, substituted an easy for an almost

impracticable moral code, and being compelled to draw a new line

between venial offences and coarse licentiousness, exacted a rigid

obedience to those laws." There is also some force in his plea that the

courts of love "rescued woman from what would have become a condition

of intolerable degradation, elevated affection rather than passion into

the place of honor, and encouraged devotion in the stronger sex, grace

and propriety in the weaker." It is undoubtedly true that when society

became more rigid in sexual morality, and the mediæval code of love

disappeared, there remained the tenderness and courtesy for the fairer

and weaker sex which that code had done so much to develop.

Mr. Van Laun's first volume brings us down only to the Renaissance. But

at that period the characteristic trait of French literature developed

itself strongly. That trait is satire; not the bloody scourge of

Juvenal, but a light, caustic, reserved, and almost pleasant although

malicious satire--malicious in the French sense of _malice_, which is

not so strong a word as its English counterpart. The difference between

the French spirit and the English is shown by the fact that with free

thought in the English race came stubborn dissent; in the French,

light-hearted satire. "Satire," as Mr. Van Laun justly says, "is at the

root of the French character, an instinct among the descendants of the

ancient Gauls, who loved to fight and to talk well." This satire broke

out in the sixteenth century with a brightness and causticity which has

ever since distinguished French literature. The leader was Marguerite,

sister to Francis I., the well-known Queen of Navarre. Her "Heptameron"

is a strange book for a woman, and not a bad woman, a lady, and a

queen, to have written. In it "she vents her contemptuous scorn upon

husbands, although [perhaps because] she was married; against monks,

though she was an ardent devotee of religion; against lawyers and

doctors, though she was a queen." But it is most happily added that

"her shrewdest satire of all is unconsciously pointed against herself;

for she stands revealed to us a very woman, the rivals for whose favor

are God and the devil, and who affords to neither of these more than a

short coquettish glance."

It was at this period that the present school of French literature had

its beginning; the spirit then so strongly manifested, the tendency to

clearness, brightness, and high finish of style which then appeared

among French writers, have since that time been the signs and tokens of

the French mind and hand in literature. All that goes before is rude or

fantastic or pedantic; then French literature rises in its splendor; we

can hardly say its grandeur. Mr. Van Laun's first volume is full of

interest which, however, is rather historical than literary; in the

succeeding part of his work we may look for criticism more acceptable

to the general reader.

--We pass easily from this history of the earliest days of French

literature to its very latest, and we may add, one of its most

characteristic productions. Alphonse Daudet's novel, "Fromont Jeune et

Risler Ainé," has suddenly attained one of those rare and brilliant

successes which seem possible only in France. Within an incredibly

short time sixty thousand copies of it were sold, and it was "crowned"

by the French Academy; whatever that may mean, whether an actual

crowning of either book or author, it certainly does imply the awarding

of the highest honors by the most eminent literary tribunal in France.

It has now been reproduced here in a translation which leaves nothing

to be desired, whether as a transfusion of the French spirit of the

book, or as an example of a fine English narrative style.[10] Indeed,

it unites these two most important requisites of a good translation in

a rare and remarkable manner. As to the book itself, although it is a

very good novel, and carries upon its face the evidence that it is a

careful study of a certain phase of French life, we are at a loss to

account for its phenomenal success. It is all about Sidonie, who may be

called its heroine, as Becky Sharp is the heroine of "Vanity Fair." Now

Sidonie is a pretty, vulgar, vile-souled shop girl who uses her beauty

to make her way to a certain sort of _bourgeois_ fashionable life, but

who is really a far more infamous creature than many a common harlot.

For she is not wanton; she is not merely venal; she is pitilessly

selfish and fiendishly malicious. She has no honesty of any kind--of

mind, heart, soul, or body. A baser, viler creature in female, and

therefore in human form, it would be impossible to conceive. For to all

grovelling, debasing vice she adds a monstrous, cold-hearted cruelty.

With all this she is not remarkable for anything except a pretty,

blooming face and a low cunning. What need to familiarize us with the

life of such a creature? She ruins the happiness of two men, one of a

noble soul and the other a weak-minded creature; she breaks up a

family; she brings her principal victim to suicide; and all this not

even for a grand passion, but that she may have fine dresses, diamonds,

and a social success. This is very barren business. We do not care to

have such a life as this laid before us with all the particularity of

treatment which belongs to the realistic school. But granted that we

did desire it, we must confess that we could not wish for it better

done. The life-portraiture, inner as well as outer, is perfect and

minute to admiration. The end is brought about in fine melodramatic

style. Around Sidonie are grouped several personages lovable and

unlovable, admirable and unadmirable, but all painted with perfect,

clear conception and firm, minute touch. The distinctive Frenchness of

the author is manifest in every page. It is shown particularly in the

absence of any touch of humor in the portraiture of Sidonie. Unlike

Becky Sharp, she hems no little shirt in public until a little Rawdon

has long outgrown it. The hard portrait of her hard soul has no such

softening touch as that. The book is of a bad sort; but of its sort

most admirable.

[10] "_Sidonie._" From the French of ALPHONSE DAUDET. 16mo, pp.

262. Boston: Estes & Lauriat.

* * * * *

The Lenten season is peculiarly the time for religious books, and the

publishers have not failed to take advantage of it this year. Among the

most interesting and valuable of the new works is Dr. Gregory's

examination into the reason for having Four Gospels.[11] Why there

should be two, three, or any number more than one, or less than eleven,

is a question that has been considered significant for many centuries.

Why out of eleven faithful disciples, precisely four should be inspired

to write the history of the founder of the Church is certainly a

problem that must be worth examining. The first idea, and it is one

that has not died out yet, was that the four Gospels were so many

incomplete but supplementary narratives, and in the second century

efforts were made to improve upon the Biblical record by the

Harmonists, who tried to compile what they considered a consistent and

progressive account of the acts of Christ's ministry. They were

followed by the Allegorists, who took the vision of Ezekiel, with its

likeness of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, and applied it to the

writers of the Gospels as an exemplification of the meaning each of the

narratives was intended to have. Though they, and their modern

followers also, have not been able to agree upon this symbolical

purport, the four Evangelists have retained in art those symbolical

figures. The lion and St. Mark, the eagle and St. John are indissolubly

connected in ecclesiastical art and story. The other schools of

interpretation are, according to Dr. Gregory, the rationalists and "the

common-sense critics." His own answer to the question, Why Four

Gospels? is, that Christ had a mission to the Jews, and Matthew

presented that argument for his divinity which was best calculated to

impress that people; and to the Romans, to whom Mark was an

interpreter; and to the Greeks, to whom Luke spoke; and to the Church

at large, for whom John wrote his gospel of gentleness and love. The

Jew, the Roman, and the Greek then composed the world of

civilization--the existing society of that day--and in the Bible we

find one writer for each of these nations, and one for the whole

Church. This is certainly a rational and unembarrassed explanation. Dr.

Gregory enforces it with great force and learning.

[11] "_Why Four Gospels?_ or, The Gospel for all the World." By

D. S. GREGORY, D.D. New York: Sheldon & Co.

* * * * *

MR. BUCHANAN'S "Shadow of the Sword"[12] has so many faults that it is

a wonder he could have written it to the end without arousing his own

disgust. It revives the long-neglected horrors of the time of the first

Napoleon, and deals with them in a way that is brutal, not artistic.

Its hero is a deserter, and he is so sharply followed by the gendarmes

that for a year or more he lives the life of a burrowing animal, until

reason itself is unseated. The only relief to a picture which the

author strives vigorously to make revolting is the love of the hero's

betrothed; but that too is so mingled with terror that it only throws a

more lurid light upon the sufferings her lover undergoes. The style is

as close an imitation of the French as the author can produce,

occasionally varied, however, most ludicrously by an unguarded

exhibition of English slang. The heroine has those eyes so rarely seen

outside of novels, of "that mystic color which can be soft as heaven

with joy and love, but dark as death with jealousy and wrath." For

those who get near enough to gaze long into them, they reveal "strange

depths of passion, and self-control, and pride." The individual who did

this gazing is a tall, lusty fellow, and healthy as the average of

fisherman's boys, but for all that he has the soul of romance within

him. When his comrades are lounging on the beach, _he_ is "walking in

some vast cathedral not made with hands," or performing daring feats of

strength. Unluckily forsaking his cathedral, to lounge on the beach

with his true love, like common mortals, they are caught by the tide,

and have to wade through the water to escape. She bares her legs for

the bath without hesitation or blush, for "she knew that they were

pretty, of course, and she felt no shame." But there is one thing this

young lady would not for worlds reveal, and that is _her hair_, which

is invariably concealed beneath a coif. But as the waters deepen, Rohan

throws the pretty-limbed creature over his shoulder and wades thigh

deep. As he lands her he looks up, "and lo! he saw a sight which

brought the bright blood to his own cheeks and made him tremble like a

tree beneath his load." _Her hair had fallen down_, and the cheeks

and neck that bore unmoved the exposure of her knees, were now "crimson

with a delicious shame." This incident "bared each to each in all the

nudity of passion," and it certainly bares the nudity of the author's

invention. He is nowhere prurient, and nowhere delicate. He describes

the revolting details of the story with as much unction as if they were

the important things, and he leaves his hero at the end a complete

failure in life and love, wasted in strength, and ruined in mind.

[12] "_The Shadow of the Sword._" A Romance. By ROBERT BUCHANAN.

New York: Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co.

* * * * *

WE are glad to see Dr. McClellan persist in his study of the cholera

question.[13] We know of no publications which are better fitted than

his to awaken the people to a proper sense of the duty, and also of the

efficiency, of personal providence against disease. He is an advocate

of the Indian origin theory of the disease and its spread by personal

infection only, and in this pamphlet maintains two propositions: 1st,

that Asiatic cholera has never yet _originated on the American

continent_, but in every instance has spread from a first case which

reached its shores from some countries beyond the ocean; and 2d, that

it is diffused by the migrations of individuals who are infected by the

disease, a specific poison existing in their dejecta, which reproduces

the disease in any person to whom it gains access. This is a theory of

epidemic cholera which is rational, consistent with the constantly

developing facts of scientific research, and which happily includes a

remedy that is every way practicable and thorough. But it is a theory

that is not yet acknowledged by all authorities. Telluric conditions,

malaria, and other local influences are frequently pointed to as the

cause of the disease, and the doctrine of specific cholera poison still

demands strong partisan advocacy.

[13] "_Lessons to be Learned from the Cholera Facts of the Past

Year._" By ELY MCCLELLAN, M.D., Surgeon U.S.A. Reprinted from the

"Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal."

--An anonymous pamphlet on vivisection, which takes ground against that

mode of obtaining knowledge, is not worth serious notice except for the

odd argument that crime is likely to increase if the vivisectionists

are allowed to experiment on cats and dogs, as the new English law

proposes! Criminals, says the authoress, rarely have had pets, and

_therefore_ if we kill all the pets, and thus deprive ourselves of the

refining influences of kitty and the ennobling example of doggy, we

shall the more readily turn to criminal ways. Another powerful

argument is that "the countries where vivisection has prevailed seem

to have secured no lasting blessing, but to have been the subjects of

peculiarly calamitous afflictions, direful disasters, unnatural

_internal tribulations_, and other multiplied evils." This is

theocracy with a vengeance.

* * * * *

FOR some years past the "North American Review" has been enriched by

papers from the late Mr. Chauncey Wright on various subjects in the

wide field of modern philosophy, but especially in the much disputed

theories of biology. They exhibited such proofs of independent judgment

and critical acumen as to give their author immediate standing among

European as well as home savants. These critiques have been collected

and published under the name "Philosophical Discussions."[14] Much as

we admired these articles when they first appeared, we do not see that

a republication of them is needed unless as a graceful monument to an

enthusiastic student. In their permanent form they lose the immediate

fitness to questions under universal discussion, which is the true

_raison d'être_ of such papers. The extreme wordiness which was Mr.

Wright's principal literary fault is disagreeably manifest when his

book is laid by those of other masters in positive philosophy. This is

especially noticeable in the only strictly original discussion in the

book, the one on the arrangement of leaves in plants. In this paper the

editor has left out the "strictly inductive investigation" which

contains the kernel of the essay! He has omitted the soul and given the

"limbs and outward flourishes" of the author's discussion, and much to

the latter's discredit. Aside from this tendency to sentences and words

of philosophical length, Mr. Wright's style is extremely agreeable,

clear, and strong. It frequently shines with unexpected felicities of

expression, just as the author's argument frequently awakens the

perception with its unusual keenness and depth of thought.

[14] "_Philosophical Discussions._" By CHAUNCEY WRIGHT. With a

Biographical Sketch of the Author by Charles Eliot Norton. New

York: Henry Holt & Co.

* * * * *

"THE CONVICTS,"[15] by Auerbach, will not increase that author's

reputation in America. It belongs to the distinctively romantic school

of German fiction. The story is that two convicts, reformed through the

agency of a charitable society, marry and bring up a large family of

children. These suffer pangs of sorrow when they learn of the stain

on their parents' name, but otherwise they do not appear to be

inconvenienced by their unfortunate origin. They marry into stations

very much above them, though in addition to the embarrassing criminal

history of their parents, they suffer what in Germany is the hardly

less disaster, of being the children of a railway signal man! We

suppose the object of this plot, and of much special social sentiment

which is introduced in the story, is to represent the increased

importance which the industrial classes have in Germany, as elsewhere

in the world. Here in America the improvement in the condition of the

working-man does not excite attention except from professed students of

political economy. But in Germany it is contrasted with a previous

state of almost complete vassalage, and the poets there seem to think

it indicates an approaching brotherhood of man. Wealth and worth are to

embrace each other, and the sins of the father are not to descend even

to the first generation of children. We cannot but sympathize with the

Councillor of State (whose granddaughter wants to, and does, marry one

of the convict flagman's sons, an artisan) when he says:

See! see! This then is the latest ideal? Formerly the ideals were

painters, musicians, hussar riding masters, and players. Now love

also is practical. So then an artisan? All the enthusiasm runs to

tunnels and viaducts.

[15] "_The Convicts and their Children._" By BERTHOLD AUERBACH.

Translated by Charles T. Brooks. Leisure Hour Series. New York:

H. Holt & Co.

The book is marred by unnecessary exactitude in translation. Thouing

and theeing make no impression of intimacy and confidence on the

American understanding as they do on the German, and should be omitted.

Nor has the author the strength of his youth, and the beauty of his

fancy no longer atones for the weakness of the story. Nothing in the

whole of the book proper is so good as the following from the preface:

A generation has passed away since I began to present in a

framework of fiction the interior life of my countrymen and

neighbors. If after another generation a poet shall again undertake

to express the village life of my home, what will he perhaps find?

Flowers bloom in all times out of the German soil, and Beauty will

in all times bloom out of the German soul.

* * * * *

OF late years there has been a tendency to abandon the exhaustive

"manuals" which once formed the only style of school and hand-books

known, and to use in their place books which contain only so much of a

science as is taught in some one well-proportioned school. The change

is based on the rational supposition that whatever suffices for the

thorough instruction of students should also satisfy the wants of an

ordinary practical worker. Mr. Ricketts's "Notes on Assaying"[16]

belong to this modern kind of text-book. They contain what the students

in the School of Mines in New York learn, and as a thorough knowledge

of assaying is obviously necessary to a mining engineer, the author

considers that the same course if honestly worked through should

suffice for practice outside the school. The book covers both dry and

wet assaying, and gold parting, and there are chapters in which the

apparatus and chemical reagents are described. A few condensed notes on

blowpiping finish an extremely concise and useful book, always

available for reference, and in which the self-taught workman may find

his way without confusion.

[16] "_Notes on Assaying and Assay Schemes._" By PIERRE DE

PEYSTER RICKETTS, E.M. New York: The Art Printing Establishment.

--Under the pressure of incessant examinations for admission to and

promotion in many fields of human activity, from the Government service

to apprentices' workshops, English literature is receiving important

accessions to its facilities for teaching science. All kinds of

positive knowledge are condensed into class books, sometimes by the

very master minds of scientific research, sometimes by experienced

teachers. Of the latter kind is Mr. Lee's "Acoustics, Light and

Heat,"[17] which he has written to meet the wants of students for the

Advanced Stage Examination of the British Department of Science and

Art. Excellence in such a work requires that the main principles of the

science should be sufficiently covered, explanations be clear,

illustrations sufficient, and language as simple as possible. Mr. Lee's

book appears to us somewhat over-condensed, but otherwise conforms to

these requirements.

[17] "_Acoustics, Light and Heat._" By WILLIAM LEES, M.A. With

200 illustrations. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

* * * * *

LORD DUFFERIN'S "Letters from High Latitudes," describing the yacht

voyage he made in 1856 to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen, are so

well known that it is only necessary to say they are republished by

Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co., a Canadian firm that has lately established

itself in New York. In reading these familiar and gossipy letters, one

is painfully impressed with a sense of the dreariness of the Northern

regions. Whatever there is of interest is carried there by the

traveller. The country itself, even including Iceland, adds little to

the narrative, and sea life, whether stormy or calm, is not provocative

of incident. But in spite of these inherent discouragements, the author

maintains his cheerfulness throughout with such uniformity that we

cannot resist a suspicion of its genuineness. He comes up to the

inditing of each epistle with the determined smile of a much battered

pugilist, when a new round is called--and we are very much in his debt

for his pluck.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

"_Sir Roger de Coverley._" J. HADBERTON. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.00.

"_Childhood of the English Nation._" ELLA S. ARMITAGE. The same. $1.25.

"_Modern Materialism._" JAMES MARTINEAU. The same. $1.25.

"_Acoustics, Light and Heat._" W. LEES, M.A. The same. $1.50.

"_Letters from High Latitudes._" LORD DUFFERIN. Lovell, Adam, Wesson &

Co.

"_Shadow of the Sword._" ROBERT BUCHANAN. The same.

"_The Splendid Advantage of being a Woman._" CHAS. J. DUNPHIE. The

same.

"_King Saul._" A Tragedy. BYRON A. BROOKS. Nelson & Phillips.

"_U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._" F. V. HAYDEN. Vols. IX.

and X., and Annual Report for 1875.

"_The Jukes._ A Study in Crime and Pauperism." E HARRIS, M.D. G. P.

Putnam's Sons.

"_Waverley Novels_," Riverside Edition. HURD & HOUGHTON.

"_The Abbot._" $1.50.

"_Kenilworth._" $1.50.

"_Fortunes of Nigel._" $1.50.

"_The Pirate._" $1.50.

"_Heritage of Langdaler._" Mrs. ALEXANDER. Henry Holt & Co. $1.25.

"_The New Church._" B. F. BARRETT. Claxton, Remsen & Halffelfinger.

"_List of Merchant Vessels of the United States._" Government Printing

Office.

"_Smithsonian Report 1875._" Government Printing Office.

"_Six Weeks in Norway._" E. L. ANDERSON. Robert Clarke & Co.

"_Alexander Hamilton._" Hon. GEORGE SHEA. Hurd & Houghton. $1.00.

"_Harriet Martineau's Autobiography._" Two volumes. M. W. CHAPMAN. J.

R. Osgood & Co. $6.00

NEBULÆ.

--WE have not yet entered into rivalry with Mexico; and although to

those who looked upon our politics during the last two months from the

outside only, we have doubtless seemed to be tending toward anarchy,

revolution, and pronunciamentos, we were really in no such danger.

Teutonic blood and the English language (Anglo-Saxons and Germans are

both Teutonic) seem to carry with them a certain steadiness and

capacity of common-sense perception which are preventives of great

political folly; and although it is not the habit of our politicians to

speak very respectfully of each other from the opposite sides of a

political canvass, and the conduct of our Representatives at Washington

is not always quite so admirable and exemplary as it might be, we do

not, in French phrase, "descend into the streets," or raise barricades,

or fly at each other's throats unless we mean real revolutionary

business. Even then we are apt to go decorously, if not solemnly, about

our work, and talk about "the course of human events" and "a decent

respect for the opinions of mankind"; we at least did so once, and

notwithstanding the great changes that have taken place in our

political and social condition, it may be safely assumed that we should

do so again. Frothy talk at Washington gives occasion for leading

articles which are not always less frothy, and for sensation headings

that gladden the eyes of newsboys. The desperate political game played

at Washington for the Presidency has had a very bad effect upon our

reputation, and has increased the very political demoralization of

which it was an outward sign; but it is safe to say that when the most

furious politicians there talked revolution they did not "mean

business." Both parties stood before the world in a not very admirable

light. On the one hand, the Democrats digged a pit and fell into it

themselves. The Electoral Commission was their own contrivance; and

when they were moved to wrath and denunciation by the decisions against

their case, they only showed that they formed the Commission in the

supposed certainty that it would decide in their favor. They did not

want a tribunal of arbitration, but a decision under the forms of

arbitration. On the other hand, the Republicans appeared with changed

front on the subject of State sovereignty. No assertion of the purely

federative constitution of the Union could equal in force the decision

that, fraud or no fraud, Congress should not go behind the electoral

certificates of the Governors of the various States. Partisanship was

equally binding on both sides. If then all the Republicans on the

Commission always voted one way, with like "solidarity" all the

Democrats always voted the other. To adopt a phrase attributed to the

ex-Confederate General Jubal Early, the seven-spot couldn't take the

eight. One result of the struggle, and of the revelations which it

brought about, was the remarkable one of the destruction of the

prestige of the candidate who came within one electoral vote of the

Presidency. It is safe to say that if a new election had been brought

about, the Democrats would not have ventured to go into it with Mr.

Tilden in nomination.

* * * * *

--THE struggle is over, and the uncertainty is past; and now, according

to very general anticipations, business ought to revive and prosperity

to return. We would gladly believe that such will be the result, but we

doubt it. Business will revive, prosperity will return; for the country

is rich, never more so, and is daily becoming richer. It is impossible

to stop the onward course of a people who have our advantages; but the

causes of our present depression lie too deep to be touched by the

settlement of a mere party contest. We are suffering from the effects

of a political, social, and moral revolution which has been in progress

for nearly twenty years, and which the rest of the world has felt

hardly less than ourselves. We have suffered the most because on the

one hand our financial position is at any time less stable than that of

other people, and on the other because we of all have undergone the

greatest moral deterioration. We have been brought to that sad

condition in which we are afraid to trust each other. So many of us

have been playing the part of adventurers, so many have been playing a

"confidence game," that confidence is gone in another sense than that

in which it is so often said to be wanting. Prosperity will return to

our business circles slowly and surely as our moral tone rises, and as

business is conducted upon stable principles and upon an honorable

basis. We must cease to "swap jackknives" in the shape of railway bonds

and unimproved land; we must do more productive work and keep better

faith. Hard work and honesty will do more for us than the settlement of

the Presidential question, although that will probably do something.

* * * * *

--THIRTY-FIVE years ago Charles Dickens, having visited the legislative

capital of a great nation, wrote thus about the men that he found

there: "I saw in them the wheels that move the meanest perversion of

virtuous political machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.

Despicable trickery at elections, underhanded tamperings with public

officers, cowardly attacks upon opponents with scurrilous newspapers

for shields, and hired pens for daggers, shameful trucklings to

mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered is that every day and

week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are like

dragons' teeth of yore in everything but sharpness; aiding and abetting

of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions

of all its good influences--such things as these, and in a word,

Dishonest Faction, in its most depraved and unblushing form, stared at

me from every corner of the crowded hall." Of what country could he

have thus written? Manifestly some "effete monarchy" in the most

degraded stage of its decadence.

* * * * *

--THE effort to establish carnivals in America is not a very

encouraging sign of a healthy moral tone in the public mind. Surely

there was never an attempt more superfluous, untimely, or out of place.

Not only New York, but the whole country is swarming with thousands of

people who are in need of money to buy shelter, food, and clothing;

banks of discount, savings banks, trust companies, the very charitable

institutions, are brought to ruin and disgrace by fraudulent

bankruptcy; and this is the time that is chosen to entice people to

playing the fool publicly in the open streets. If ever a Lent should

have been kept in the sackcloth of humiliation and the ashes of

despair, it is that which has just passed. People who would take part

in a carnival now would dance upon the borders of their own open

graves. And what do we want of a carnival, even if we were prosperous?

Carnivals are not suited to our national traits. They suit the Latin

races of the south of Europe; and even among them they are fading away

before the light of diffused intelligence and the thoughtfulness that

comes of knowledge. To us they are entirely foreign. They do not suit

our sober, practical habits of life and thought; and if we attempted

them, we should only make ourselves ridiculous by our awkwardness.

Festivals of that kind require a volatile people, who at least can

practise folly gracefully. We should unite folly with dulness and

stupidity. Moreover, such festivals cannot be got up to order anywhere.

They are results; they are the growth of centuries. Italians and

Frenchmen do not say, Go to! we will have a carnival. The thing belongs

to them by inheritance; the memories of it mingle with their earliest

recollections. As for us, we might go through a carnival dolefully, as

a penance fitting to Lent; but as to enjoying one, except as

spectators, to us that is quite impossible. All such festivities are

foreign to our nature. We cannot even keep up an interest in

"Decoration Day." We revere the memories of our dead; but a ceremonial

exhibition of our reverence sits ill upon us. We do not take kindly to

public spectacles, and ourselves never appear well in them. As to the

sober procession for which the municipal laws in New York compelled the

projected masquerade to be changed, it will be, if it is at all, only a

means of advertising. That sort of display we take to hugely. It was

with difficulty that President Lincoln's obsequies were preserved

against the projects of advertisers. We turn the mountains into posters

and the hills into sign-posts. If we must do that, let us do it openly

and plainly; but a carnival! Fudge!

* * * * *

--WE cannot successfully imitate Europeans in their graceful follies;

but in their soberer and more practical habits we might well follow

their example. A step has been just taken in Germany which is more

needed here, and which yet there is hardly any hope that we shall

profit by. The union of German apothecaries has addressed a petition to

the Federal Council demanding that the secret medicines concocted and

advertised by quacks shall be officially tested before they are

permitted to be sold. A more creditable and needful step was never

taken, or one which was more indicative of enlightenment and high

civilization. Quack medicines are on the whole a curse to mankind. They

are generally imposed upon the ignorant and credulous by men who care

not what harm they do so long as they profit by their business. Many of

these medicines--so called--are very injurious, and a still greater

proportion of them are entirely useless. The very fact that their

composition is kept secret is against them. It is a law absolute among

all honorable physicians that no remedial agent shall be kept secret.

Such physicians, if in their practice they discover a remedy for any

disease, at once make it known to the whole profession. To keep such a

discovery secret would be to lose caste, if not to be entirely excluded

from honorable professional association and recognition. If such an

examination as that proposed in Germany is needed there, here it is

required by a tenfold greater necessity. America is the great field of

operation for the patent medicine vender. Here he thrives. Here he

accumulates huge fortunes if he will only advertise persistently and

with sufficient disregard of truth. And his chief victims are women and

children. He is one of the pests of our society. We cannot exclude him,

or extinguish him entirely; that would interfere with the individual

liberty of the citizen; not only of the seller, but of the buyer. If

people choose to poison themselves gradually, they insist upon their

right to do so unhindered by government action. But at least we might

do what the German apothecaries ask to have done, and require as a

condition of the granting of a patent for a medicine that it should be

tested and its contents officially declared. The effect of such a

measure upon the general health would be in the highest degree

beneficial; and at least the public would be protected against the

fraudulent representations of the majority of patent medicine makers

and venders.

* * * * *

--IN another matter, church chimes, we have imitated Europe, and not

discreetly, and we have had our first check. A certain chime of church

bells in Philadelphia became annoying to the people in the

neighborhood, who complained to the courts, and obtained an injunction

restricting the use of the chimes to certain times of day. Even were

this often bell-jangling not the annoyance that it is, the whole

American public would owe something to these good Philadelphians simply

for the good example of their action in this matter. They were annoyed

by some one, the agent of a corporation, who, although he did not

commit murder, burglary, or arson, interfered with their comfort and

marred their enjoyment of life; and they, like sensible men, instead of

putting up with the annoyance after the American fashion, and saying,

"Oh, no matter! What can we do to stop it? Let it go!" set themselves

to work to see if they couldn't stop it. They tested the question

whether a certain number of men might please their taste or their

religious fancy at the risk of disturbing and annoying others; and they

succeeded. It is to be hoped that the lesson will not be lost in regard

not only to the specific annoyance which was the cause of complaint,

but all other selfish indulgences by which some men interfere with the

rights of others. The law of common sense and justice in such matters

is that every man may enjoy himself as he pleases so long as he does

not interfere with the enjoyment of their natural rights by others. A

man may give his days and nights to ringing chimes so long as they are

not heard outside of his own house; but if they are so heard, and they

deprive a single person of rest, or even of a quiet enjoyment of life,

he has passed the limit of right. A dozen men may like a strong

perfume; but they have no right to load the common air with it to the

annoyance even of a thirteenth. This matter of ringing church chimes

has become somewhat of a religious and sentimental affectation. Chimes

have a very pretty effect in literature; and at a distance in the

country they are charming. But when they clang daily in the tower of a

city church within a few hundred yards of you, they become a great

nuisance. Nor is the annoyance they give diminished when the chimer,

instead of ringing such changes as are suited to bells, will insist

upon playing _affettuoso_. In fact, all church bells are an annoyance

in cities, and a needless one. They were first used to call people to

church when there were no clocks, and before watches were heard of.

Now, when the humblest apartment has a clock that strikes the hour,

"the church-going bell" is entirely superfluous for the object for

which it is rung, and is really a great annoyance not only to the sick,

but to those who are in health. It is a noisy anachronism which clamors

with iron tongue and brazen throat for its own suppression.

* * * * *

--AND so at last the marriage of Adelina Patti to the Marquis of Caux

has come to its natural end. What could the Marquis or the lady

expect? He married her for the money that she earned, and that he

might own so charming a celebrity; she accepted him as a husband for

his title. Years have passed, and nothing has occurred to bind them

more closely. The lady has no children, or any prospect of one; and so

there is nothing in the way of a judicial separation on account of

incompatibility. It is not necessary to suppose that the distinguished

prima donna has actually run away from her husband with a lover; but

it would only be natural if there were a man in the distance more to

her taste. It is remarkable, by the way, that so great an interest

should be taken by Americans in the fortunes of this lady, who, since

she has developed her extraordinary talent, has turned her back

entirely on this country. She is spoken of here often as an American

prima donna. This can only be the result of a very great and an absurd

misapprehension. Adelina Patti is an Italian. Her father and mother

were both Italians, who could speak hardly a word of English. Her

education and habits of life have been entirely Italian. Even if she

had been born here by the chance of a professional residence here by

her mother, that would not have made her anything else than Italian,

more than a like chance residence in Russia or in Turkey would have

made her a Russian or a Turk, or than the Irishman's being born in a

stable would have made him a horse. When a family emigrates and

resides permanently in another country, assuming the life and the

habits of that country, and intermarrying there, it changes its

nationality, but not otherwise. The eagerness which many Americans

show to claim as American everything meritorious in art over whose

supposed origin the Stars and Stripes may have been thrown, is a

witness to our real native poverty in that respect, which we reveal by

the very means by which we would conceal it. And besides all this,

Adelina Patti was not even born in this country. She came here from

Europe a little girl, with her mother, Katarina Barili-Patti, a prima

donna, who, although she had not her daughter's facility of execution

and range of voice, sang in the grand style, and who, as a dramatic

vocalist, was far beyond _la diva_, as Adelina is absurdly called. As

to her parting company with M. Caux, nothing is more probable than

that the restraint--at least external--which belongs to the life of a

marquise became too intolerable to her inborn Bohemianism, and that

she seeks deliverance not only from an unloved and unloving husband,

but from the galling restraints of dull respectability.

* * * * *

--THERE is a club in London, the Albemarle, which admits both men and

women as members, and which the wags have therefore nicknamed the

Middlesex club. An English gentleman being urged to join this club on

the ground that he could take his wife there, plumply refused on that

very ground, saying that the chief good in a club consisted in its

being a refuge for married men. Whereupon the average woman exclaims,

"The brute! What did he marry for if he wanted to be rid of his wife?"

A view of the case not unnatural perhaps in a woman, but most unwise.

Passing by the not very remote possibility that there are women (as

there are men) who in the matrimonial lottery could not be regarded as

prizes, there are strong reasons for the exclusion of women, even the

most charming, from clubs. For women a man may see at home daily or in

society. It is in those places that he expects to find them; there they

naturally belong; there they are attractive. But when he sets up a club

it is for the very purpose of enjoying man companionship and indulging

his mannish tastes. He wishes there to be entirely at his ease, and not

to be called on for "little attentions." He wears his hat in the

club-house if he likes, and he does not wish to be called upon to take

it off unless he likes. In short, he wishes there to be free, for a

time, from the restraints which the presence of ladies puts upon the

conduct and conversation of men, even of those who neither in act nor

in speech pass the bounds of reasonable decorum. Women in clubs are

pretty annoyances, fine things very much out of place. Moreover, it is

true, although by most women, particularly married women, it will not

be believed, that clubs, by their exclusion of women, make the society

of the sex more pleasant to the average man, and tend to keep warm the

marital love of the average husband. Woman, whether to her credit or

not we shall not undertake to decide, can bear the continued

companionship of a favored man much better than man can bear that of a

woman, no matter how beautiful, how charming, or how much beloved. But

even women are happier for the inevitable separation from them of their

husbands every day and during a greater part of the day. As to men,

unfortunately many of them would begin to weary of a woman, and at last

to dislike her, if they were compelled to pass every evening in her

company. Here the club steps in (we are not speaking of the mere "club

man"), and interposes its conservative influence. Many a man's love is

kept fresh by his having his club for a refuge; and many a love which

has cooled almost to indifference has been prevented from turning into

aversion by the soothing influences of that refuge. For the leisurely

classes of men clubs are a benign invention; and women should in their

own interests avoid giving them anything of a "middlesex" character.

* * * * *

--WHILE we write a new grand scandal is impending of the Beecher-Tilton

kind, which will attract less attention than that did because the

parties to it are less widely known. But as the principal person is a

late minister of Trinity Church in New York, and now the head, of the

far-famed charitable association known as "St. John's Guild," and as

the principal witness and complainant is this gentleman's wife, who is

the daughter of a late rector of Trinity, and as she has already,

before the investigation is begun, shown an inclination to have no

connubial reserves with the public, the affair promises to be what the

journalists call a rich case. It certainly is a very deplorable one,

however it may result to the persons principally interested. It is much

to be regretted that the investigation has been announced with such a

flourish of trumpets, calling in the wife, who declares herself so much

injured, inviting the press, and announcing that the investigation will

be held with open doors; and this after a publication almost in minute

detail of all the charges brought against the Reverend defendant--at

whose own request, by the way, the investigation is set on foot.

Investigations like these must needs sometimes take place; but

everything should be done to confine a knowledge of them to those who

are called upon to take part in them, either as parties, as referees,

or as advocates. On the contrary, everything is done to make them as

public and as injurious and offensive as possible. In this the press is

chiefly culpable. Nothing is gained for justice by such public

exhibitions, and much is lost to decency.