(p. 74), "because they present no special difficulties, and afford a fair amount of variety; the aim is simply to introduce the Comèdie Humaine' to the English reader, leaving him to make better acquaintance with it if so minded." We think that is not unlikely; certainly every English reader who first comes across Balzac in this volume will admire the samples selected, and the instructive useful introduction to them.

Oratory and Orators. By William Matthews, LL.D. Hamilton, Adams, and Co. London. 1879.

The art of oratory has exercised an almost incredible influence over the history of the world in times past.

At the

Its degenerate descendant of our own day holds a rather anomalous position; being most cultivated outside the pale of its legitimate power and true service. bar argumentative skill supplementing the facts of evidence is productive of distinct harm. "And it has been suggested that the day is not far distant when lawyers will submit printed arguments to judge and juries to be read and weighed in the chamber and jury-room, and that the practice of making long harangues will be abandoned as tedious and wasteful of time, and tending to mystify and confuse, rather than to enlighten and convince." Printed arguments, of course, would stand or fall upon their own intrinsic merits.

In Parliament, where every member sides with his own party, personal influence is a mere fallacy.

In vain does the orator bring forward the weightiest, the most unanswerable reasons for a bill; in vain does he urge its adoption by the most passionate appeals; the Opposition laughs, weeps, applauds, but does not change its yotes."

At public meetings, too, the speaker advocates before an audience already convinced.

On the other hand, what can be more lamentable than the miserable apology for pulpit eloquence, which has rendered the five minutes pause before the sermon such a boon to many earnest members of the Church. And this brings us to the cause which Dr. Matthews desires to plead. He recognises that oratory cannot remount the throne of its former glory, whereon in our day the daily paper reigns in its stead. But the average standard of public speaking could with the requisite culture be raised to a much higher level. And though one speech cannot, as of old, decide the destiny of nations, a life-time of good speeches, a generation of good speakers, hold in their hands a form no less potent; less precipitate but more lasting. The larger portion of the volume is taken up with biographies of orators, and with careful comparison of their respective methods and merits.

The work of selection, owing to so vast a mass of material available, must have been a difficult one. But it has been accomplished with great success. The author may feel that he has well performed his somewhat melancholy task of reviving interest in what must always remain, to some extent surely, "a lost art."

Child and Child Nature. By Baroness Marenholtz Bülow. Translated by Alice M. Christie. W. Swan Lownenschein. London. 1879.

The axiom that "Nature repeats herself" is nowhere more strikingly manifested than in the development of philosophic principles and systems. Throughout history a kind of cycle may be traced. Some one discovers a principle and invents for it, fits to it, so to speak, a

system which, though necessarily defective, is his nearest approach to an adequate outward embodiment. While the underlying principle is to a large extent neglected and misunderstood, the system finds imitators far and wide. Every now and then some more thoughtful mind, bound to the author by ties of friendship or intellectual sympathy, assails these with the accusation of being false to their colours; professing to dispel the darkness once and for ever by his revelation of this much-injured philosopher's true meaning.

So by the strife between two parties, of whom the one endeavours to practise what they don't understand, and the other to explain what it is not their vocation to practise, great thoughts are perpetuated.

Baroness Marenholtz Bülow is desirous of promoting "a more thorough and universal understanding of the theories and philosophy on which Fröbel's educational system is based." In her opinion, the majority of his adherents follow in the letter letter only.

As written from the standpoint of real knowledge and comprehension, "Child and Child Nature may prove of service to those who are personally concerned in the management of Kinder Gartens, or who have already introduced the "Mütter and Koselieder" into their own homes. But we fear it will scarcely find favour with the general public, gathering in new converts to the cause. The style is marred by a continual display of rhetoric, at once incongruous with the subject itself and out of harmony with that spirit of calm inquiry in which such a subject ought to be approached. There is great lack of simplicity in the expression of metaphysical ideas, difficult enough

to grasp under any circumstances. And in conducting her readers to every fresh thought, the baroness chooses such circuitous routes that many of them will doubtless grow weary by the way and refuse to accompany her.

It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the ponderous German of the original ill bears translation into our language. The admirable preface is sufficient witness of literary capacity on the part of the translator.

And what of Fröbel himself? His beautiful analysis of childnature is beyond criticism. He realises infant consciousness, and brings his powerful intellect to bear upon the "frivolous" manners and customs that mother-love has instinctively evolved. He invents new manners and customs, but these, as might be expected, are of a much inferior type.

We find ourselves shrinking with an absolute horror from the idea of a theoretical education begun so early.

Far better let us keep the old ridiculous jumble of wisdom and folly, of over-indulgence and unreasoning harshness, than exchange it for the most perfect system carried out at the expense of natural mother-love.

But if those who have the care of children would steep themselves in the philosophy of childhood, and then act as it comes to act, their labours would not fail in producing good fruit.

known that Wig is derived from Pilus (Latin) a hair. Wig is from periwig (like 'bus from omnibus). Periwig-perruque (French)=peluca (Spanish), which is itself formed from a low Latin diminutive of pilus. If it is not very clear what all this has to do with the Rainbow, the Oath of the Seventh, and Transcendental Masonry, we beg leave to remind our readers of Voltaire's definition of etymology-"C'est une science où les voyelles ne font rien, et les consonnes fort peu de chose." The "cucumber" derivation is a joke: that of wig from pilus is seriously accepted. Bearing this in mind, let them turn to the volume itself, and read such passages as we now extract:

6

6

one-ness

"I have elsewhere analysed the word signifying One' in all languages. At present I will only mention that, in old French, the word 'one' (un') is rendered 'ung'-as in the motto of Lords Hatherton and Lyttleton, Ung Dieu ung Roi,' one God, one King, to express the supreme of either. That this 'ung' has varied into eng' and 'ong,' and always with a solar, or divine, or royal sous-entendu reference, see 'str-ONG' and 'str-ENG-th.' Now, I perceive it in the word 'MessENG-er," which, in a higher sense, is an ambassador; and observe that, 'the person of an ambassador is inviolate.'

*

*

"In the ninth chapter of Joshua, Bagster has the following note:An ambassador (Tseer) properly

denotes a H-ING-e, a person upon whom the business turns as upon a hinge; so, Latin Cardinales (see Cardinal Points), from Cardo, a H-ING-e. A Hinge was the title of the Prime Minister of the Emperor Theodosius, though now only applied to the Pope's Electors and Counsellors.' The word, Pothoth, means the socket in which the 'Hinge' moves.""

"Now, this word 'H-ING-e' as applied to God's Sun in the Heavens, is precisely That on which the Matter, or Th-ING or material world, h-ANG-s, or depends, and turns, in vital dependency, for Life, and Joy, and Light, and endless Blessings. The Sun, as that great Hinge (Tseer), is therefore the str-ONG-est 'One,' and the very source of str-ENG-th."

The view of etymology here taken may be either the "periwig" view or the "cucumber view. Our own opinion inclines towards the latter. There is throughout the work a very decided Voltairism in dealing with the elements of which words are composed. We find it difficult to believe that any one would perpetrate a joke based on Transcendental Masonry, and therefore we must assume that the author is serious in his derivations. Not being Transcendental Masons ourselves, we have been at a disadvantage in following his meaning in many instances; and without claiming to have read through the volume, we may candidly admit that we are as wise now about the Oath of the Seventh as we were when we had never heard of IIPOTEYΣ.

THE three grand secrets of nature which it has been the great object of the student of magic and of alchemy to surprise, have been the elixir vitæ, or universal remedy for all diseases, including old age; the philosopher's stone, or that agent which should convert base metal into gold; and the command of perpetual motion, or the means of applying the natural forces of nature to the mechanical service of man.

In the present state of science objects bearing some close relation. to the dreams of the alchemist form the special pursuits of the physician, the metallurgist, the analytic chemist, and the engineer. In the first branch of study great progress has been made in the discovery of the action of specific agents on specific functions of the human mechanism. There may be reason for the opinion that a very great development will hereafter be given to this study. As to transmutation, the atomic theory, to which we owe so extraordinary an advance in that analysis of the properties of matter which we call chemistry, is now, in its turn, on its defence; and the idea of the ultimate unity of matter is held by some of the profoundest students

of nature. As to the third, while an improved knowledge of mechanics has taught us that the production of matter is due, physically speaking, to the transformation of the energy of heat, our chief advance of late (and that a very gigantic one) has been made in the construction of machines which are moved by heat, such heat being liberated from the stores accumulated in past times by the vegetative produce of the carboniferous flora of the earth, which is stored up in the fossil form of coal.

As to this method of subjecting nature to the science of man, there can be no doubt that its development hitherto has wrought the most wonderful revolution in human history-a revolution of which we only see the commencement. The practical check to progress is the cost of the extraction of coal from beneath the earth, and of the conveyance of the fuel to the place where it is required to originate motion. Beyond this lies the theoretic mischief, that the supply of coal, though enormous, is in fact limited, and that no method of supplying stored-up heat has yet been pointed out on which the engineer can rely in the absence of coal. The saving

clause here is to be found in the pursuit of forestry. But even the wisest adoption of the regulations of forestry would but ill make up for the want of coal.

The utilisation of the waste power of nature would be a practical solution of the problem of perpetual motion. In the energy of the tides, in the fall and rush of water, and in the movement of the atmosphere, are mighty forces continuously in exercise, the conversion of which to mechanical duty would supply us with the power of millions of horses, free of every charge but that of the transmission

of the power. From very early times these powers have been utilised by men, in the form of tidemills, of river-mills, and of windmills. The limits to their use have been two first is the irregularity of action the force at one time being very great, and at another time almost insensible; secondly, and more unmanageable, is the difficulty of transmission of energy. The operations of machinery, as now at work, are required chiefly in the centres of human population. The spots where the great genii of nature are ever twisting their ropes of sand are for the most part remote, as in the falls of mighty rivers, or on the shores of tidal seas. The problem of perpetual motion is not, in our time, that of setting the energies of nature to work at command, but that of transmitting the force thus imprisoned to the spot where its exercise is required. If we can do that, we shall have solved the problem of perpetual motion. For so stupendous is the wasted power of nature, regarded from the standpoint of the engineer, that a very small percentage will serve all the need of man, if it can only be indeed available.

One per

cent. of the force of Niagara can be easily obtained, and would suffice for lighting, warming, and

moving all kinds of machinery, over hundreds of square miles. The difficulty now opposing that utilisation is solely that of transmission of energy.

Our attention has recently been pointedly called to this question of the transmission of power; and we cannot conceal our wonder that certain scientific evidence on that subject which has been accessible for nearly two years, has hitherto failed to receive that full attention which its importance demands.

The mode of transmission to which we now refer is not by hydraulic or pneumatic appliances, but by electrical agency. It has until recently been assumed by every writer on the subject of electricity, that a limit to the economical transmission of electric energy is imposed by a primary law of nature. The resistance of a conductor to the transmission of the electric energy is in direct proportion to its length, and in inverse proportion to its sectional area. Thus, in order to obtain the same efficiency at double a given distance, it would be necessary to double the area of the conductor as well as to double its length; or, in fact, to increase its weight in a fourfold ratio. This fact has been expressed in the formula, that the cost of conductors increased as the square of the distance. Such large figures are so soon reached by this method of progression that the subject has been held to be set at rest by the operation of this law of resistance; and the idea of the economical transmission of electric energy for long distance has, to a great extent, been laid aside.

In the course, however, of observations made with a view to the establishment of the electric light at the South Foreland Lighthouse, Dr. Siemens has arrived at a conclusion which, if sustained, tends very materially to affect the opera