he develops these doctrines more in detail, but it cannot be said that he strengthens his presentation of them. Of course, many things stated here are true, but there are as many more that are untrue, and the reasons given for the true things do not commend themselves as just. The author's knowledge of art is evidently purely theoretical and derived from/ reading only, and he makes blunders that are truly amazing. A single one must serve as an example. On page 41 is to be found this state ment: "In drawing and painting, shading is usually produced through the use of lines either in black or in color, which, for this pur pose, are either abruptly or gradually lesser ed in number or intensity." This is so completely wrong, and shows such entire ignorance of the arts under discussion, that it dispenses the serious critic from the necessity of further consideration of the writer. The book is lavishly illustrated with 200 odd cuts, raked together from all sorts of sources and nearly all bad.

The Portfolio for November is devoted, for once, to a purely modern subject, the recent Renaissance of Sculpture in Belgium.' Its author, Georges Destrée, is, we take it, himself a Belgian, and, for a guess, a Walloon, and patriotic impulses are perhaps discernible in his enthusiasm ; but whether or not modern Belgian sculpture is, as he would seem to intimate, the modern school of sculpture par excellence, it is only necessary to glance at the excellent illustrations he gives us to convince one's self that it has produced a series of most vital and interesting works. Here are half-ascore of artists whose very names will be new to most of us, and every one of them is a man of power and originality, whose work one may conceivably dislike, but must surely admire. Mr. Destrée writes in French, and the translation, seemingly excellent, has been done by Miss Florence Simmons.

Mr. F. Adolphus has put together his reminiscences of life in the French capital for more than forty years in a pleasant little volume, which he has entitled 'Some Memories of Paris' (Henry Holt & Co.). The most noteworthy chapters deal with the agony of the great city in 1870-71. A vivid description is given of the last day of the Second Empire, together with the account of the distribution of the English gifts of food to the Parisians after the siege, the narrative of an eye-witness of the entry of the Germans into the conquered city, and a record of personal experiences during the Commune. Mr. Adolphus seems to have had excellent opportunities for observing what was going on during these critical months, and to have kept his eyes open to the dramatic possibilities of his surroundings. He was with Laurence Oliphant, at that time correspondent of the Times, when the Germans entered Paris, and seems to have been on intimate terms with that erratic man of genius. Oliphant left Paris, so Mr. Adolphus tells us, after a narrow escape from a bullet on the day of the outbreak of the Commune, in the belief that the bullet brought him a message from Prophet Harris that he was to return at once to America. But in the middle of June, 1871, Oliphant returned, accompanied by Harris, who described the Commune as "a yell from the lower man; an up-seething from the turbid sources; a snatch at the impossible and the undefined; a failure where success would have meant a nation's shame" (p. 177).

'Europe in Africa in the Nineteenth Century,' by Elizabeth W. Latimer (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.), is an account, both too diffuse

and too brief at times, of the events which have led to the partition of Africa. It is illustrated by a number of portraits and some rude but serviceable maps.

The Fishes of Sinaloa,' by Prof. D. S. Jordan of Stanford University, is a reprint of 137 pages and 28 plates from vol. v. (second series) of the Proceedings of the California Academy of Science. The paper will be very useful in the study of our West Coast fishes. A large number of species are described and figured. The work would be much more convenient and helpful for reference if the date and place of publication had been added to the name of the describer of each species. These slight additions cost a writer but little trouble, and in saving the time and labor of investigators contribute greatly to the advancement of science.

The Report of the United States National Museum for the year ending June 30, 1893, is a bulky octavo of nearly 800 pages, with a large number of plates and other drawings. It contains the report of Prof. G. Brown Goode, and reports and special papers by a number of his assistants. Prof. Goode's report is an able presentation of the history, present status, and possibilities of the Museum, and of museum development in general. The numerous illustrations give a good idea of the cases, mountings, labels, arrangement, etc., accepted at the time as best adapted to their purposes. The majority of the special papers are ethnological, the most extensive being "Notes on the Ethnology of Thibet," by W. W. Rockhill, profusely illustrated. A paper of much interest to the ornithologist is that of Maj. Charles Bendire on the "Cow Birds." "The Poisonous Snakes of North America," by Leonhard Stejneger, is a work of great general as well as special interest. The author has gone deeply into the literature of the subject in all its bearings. His summaries of what is known of habits, distribution, anatomy, venom, remedies, etc., are comprehensive, the average of the many illustrations is good, and his descriptions and comparisons from the Museum's collections are admirable. It is matter of regret that in a work of so much excellence the synonymy is not entirely complete, and that apparently several of the snakes are not mentioned.

M. Paul Verlaine has given to the world, through the publishing department of the Fin du Siècle, a small volume of 'Confessions,' which cover the period of his life from his birth, at Metz, in 1844, to his meeting with Arthur Rimbaud, at the end of 1871. They are not very startling, and are pleasantly written. His description of his college life and examinations for the baccalauréat, and his account of his early poetic efforts, are interesting; but the real Verlaine is, after all, to be sought for in his works.

M. E. Lintilhac has put into book form, under the title Les Félibres-à travers leur monde et leur poésie' (Paris: Lemerre), the articles he wrote on this subject for the Temps. They are well worth preserving, and in their present form are infinitely more useful. The literature which is here treated of has an interest and value of its own, apart from the attention which it merits as a revival of a once rich and flourishing branch of the national literature of France. The work of Aubanel is studied most fully by M. Lintilhac.

M. René Doumic has already made a name for himself as a critic of weight. His latest book is not up to his former productions, however, and is rather ephemeral in character. La Vie et les mœurs au jour le jour' (Paris: Perrin & Cie.) is simply a collection of articles,

very bright and vivacious, and nearly all based upon a thought, occasionally a serious one, but scarcely worth putting together into more permanent form. They are witty, sarcastic, keen, and help to pass an hour enjoyably. This much praise may freely be given.

The Paris Journal des Débats announces that, beginning with the new year, its two editions, of morning and evening, adopted three years ago, will be abandoned. Hereafter there will be but one edition, in the evening, with the familiar pink color retained. The dimensions of the paper will be enlarged to rival the greatest yet adopted by the French press. In all other respects the character of this sober and civilizing journal will remain unchanged.

When Edmond Biré was engaged upon his volumes on Victor Hugo, he had access to the manuscript of Adolphe Jullien's 'Le Romantisme et l'Éditeur Renduel,' to which, as some readers may remember, he refers in several of his foot-notes. Out of consideration for persons still living, this work has hitherto been withheld from publication. But now the Revue des Deux Mondes (December 1) publishes a first instalment from it under the above title and the sub-title, "Eugène Renduel et Victor Hugo." The pages are interesting, but contain nothing important concerning the literature of the epoch. Hugo's character appears here in much the same light as that to which Biré has accustomed us. Renduel was the publisher and friend of many of the most noted writers of the Romantic period, and, as all his papers and books have fallen into M. Jullien's hands, we may expect much from the latter's divulgences.

Several astronomical articles of interest appear in recent numbers of Knowledge. Variable red stars are treated by Dr. Brester of Delft, and the question "What is a nebula ?" is again raised, this time by Mr. E. W. Maunder of the Royal Observatory, who gives answers as satisfactory as possible in the present state of information on this significant subject. The second and third of Mr. Stewart's articles on spectrum analysis appear, and an account of new stars by Dr. Brester, as well as a very interesting article by Miss Clerke on the exterior nebulosities of the Pleiades, followed by a note upon the same subject by Prof. Barnard, late of the Lick Observatory. With the beginning of the new volume for 1896, Knowledge will revert to its original title, "An Illustrated Magazine of Sci. ence, Literature, and Art," which it bore when Mr. Proctor founded it fifteen years ago. Although this implies a wide field, it is hoped that the magazine will not fail of filling it, and of affording its readers even greater interest in the future than in the past.

Some interesting facts as to the recent progress of Bolivia in building railways, post-roads, and telegraph lines, taken from the Chilian Minister's report to his Government, are given in Petermann's Mitteilungen for November. It contains also a discussion of the proper position for the provisional boundary-stone between Chili and the Argentine Republic, a question in which Bolivia and Peru are likewise interested. The distribution and religion of the various non-German races in the German Empire are shown upon an admirably colored and shaded map.

Capt. Lugard's account of his Borgu expedition, in the Scottish Geographical Magazine for December, is noteworthy for its vigorous denunciation of the liquor traffic in West Africa and his hearty advocacy of the Hausa Association. This has been formed to promote the study of the Hausa language, which is used

largely by the Moslems of the western Sudan. It is taught in their schools-the Arabic alhabet being used in writing it—and it has the rudiments of a literature. A grammar and dictionary of the language has been compiled, and a translation of a part of the Gospel of St. Matthew is already in print. The magazine also contains some notes, historical and geological, on Vancouver Island.

Signor Anderson (Rome: Spithöver) has been of late greatly increasing the debt owed him by all students of Italian art. He has made a reproduction approaching the original in size of Giorgione's "Soldier and Gypsy"; a reproduction the more valuable now that, thanks to the ridiculous pretensions upon private artproperty made by the Italian Government, the Giovanelli Palace is absolutely inaccessible. At Parma, Signor Anderson has photographed everything of interest. We need not speak of Parma's greatest treasures, its many Correg. gios; but the gallery contains unrivalled Cimas as well, and one of Sebastiano del Piombo's grandest works, a portrait of Clement VII., in itself worth all the biographies of that astute and fascinating Medici. In or near Parma are also to be found some of the finest works of Parmigiano, the most genuine and therefore the most lovable of décadents.

The Gallery of Modena was for twenty years unhung. At last it has been admirably arranged, and Signor Anderson has photographed its many interesting works. There, better than anywhere else, the Ferrara-Bolognese school can be studied; but the glory of Modena is its many masterpieces by Dosso Dossi, a most fascinating artist, hitherto almost undiscovered. Symonds is the only writer of note who has made so much as a passing mention of Dosso, whose "Jester" he greatly admired. This "Jester," even in the photograph, reveals its quality of Shaksperian humor.

-The annual report of the State Geologist for New Jersey for 1894 (only recently printed) is again to be remarked for Prof. R. D. Salisbury's report of progress in the study of surface geology. This novel survey continues to throw an unexpected light on the glacial and pre-glacial history of the State, as, in the influence of stagnant ice on the deposition of stratified drift, the evidences of submergence, etc. The study proceeds from the Schooley peneplain, and may be recommended to pedestrians and bicyclists whose excursions have a more substantial motive than mere exercise. To one who understands the topography of northwestern New Jersey, says Prof. Salis. bury, "the long, even crest of Kittatinny Mountain, stretching away for miles to the north, and the almost equally even crest line of the Highlands, seen in the distance across the valley to the east, tell of a lapse of time and of an amount of erosion beside which the gorge of the [Delaware] Water Gap seems paltry and mean. As a geographic feature, the Kittatinny Mountain cannot be said to have been greatly modified by the ice of the glacial period." The chapter on the abundance and direction of glacial striæ is extremely interesting, and so are those on the changes in drainage, on the nature and variety of the lakes of northern New Jersey, on the gravels and sands south of the terminal moraine, etc. "If the ice which coöperated with water in the deposition of the Pensauken [formation] was berg ice-emanating from glaciers-it is believed that it belonged to a glacial epoch antedating any which has heretofore been recognized in America." Of great practical value are the remarks on road material,

of which the Pensauken furnishes an abundant supply. The report is accompanied by plates and a large colored map of the surface formations of the Passaic valley and its surroundings. Mr. Lewis Woolman extends his annual record of artesian wells in Southern New Jersey, and enumerates the several diatom clay beds involved in the borings; No. 3, which extends to North Carolina, being the most remarkable and extensive in the world. The report on forestry, by Mr. C. C. Vermeule, reveals an unbroken tract of forest of 11,000 acres on the top of the Palisades. This is shown on a tinted map of the whole State. Finally, Mr. John Gifford makes a preliminary report on the forest conditions of South Jersey, which possesses a curious interest on account of its particularity, and especially for its information respecting forest fires, which there is urgent need of controlling by State regulation.

-At the founding of the American Ornithologists' Union in 1883, a committee, consisting of Messrs. Coues, Allen, Ridgway, Brewster, and Henshaw, was appointed to prepare certain canons of nomenclature and apply these to a revision of the list of North American birds. The code followed up to that time, tacitly and in the main, was the Stricklandian of 1844, which in its time formulated the consensus of opinion or general practice of ornithologists since the Linnæan period. The committee prepared a more elaborate and more precise code, some main features of which were the recognition of priority as a cast-iron principle of nomenclature, the taking of Linnæus at 1758 instead of 1766, and the rejection of homonyms in face of whatever sanction by usage, and thereupon drew up their list of native birds with a degree of consistency which had never before been witnessed in any department of zoology. This list acquired such authority that every name not on it went out of use. The code itself found great favor among other naturalists, particularly those working in other departments of vertebrates and in conchology and entomology; and many who found fault with particular provisions preferred to waive their objections and take it in en bloc, as being on the whole most conducive to that stability of nomenclature for which they yearned. The same ichor in due course infected the botanists; and the present eruption in their nomenclature, with all its "burning questions," which had never been allowed to ignite during Asa Gray's lifetime, is mainly due to the influence of the ornithological ordinances. original committee has remained the same, with one exception, and has never found occasion to revise its code in a single particular, but has just issued what may be called its first decennial revision of the list, mainly for the purpose of formally including the additions to our bird-fauna made during the past few years. These are more numerous than they ever were before in the same space of years; but of changes in names from some unexpected bearing of a canon in this or that case the instances are very few. We could not state the present total of species and subspecies recognized without actual count, as the committee use a, b, c, etc., for subspecies, and interpolate new species with a decimal point in order that the numbers originally affixed may be permanent; we suppose the total to be upward of 900. Names relegated to the "hypothetical list," which is the Union's waste-basket, are only 22 -a surprisingly small amount of refuse or refractory material after sifting and identifying several thousand names and synonyms. The list of fossil birds is 64–1 Jurassic, 23 Creta

The

ceous, the rest Tertiary. The names are printed in very heavy type, without synonymy excepting two references (to the original name and to the name adopted), and four others (by number only), to the prior lists of Baird, 1858, Coues, 1873 and 1882, and Ridgway, 1880; and a statement of habitat is made in every case. The book makes a sizable octavo of pp. viii, 372, and will doubtless remain the only recognized authority in classification and nomenclature until its next revision, which is expected to be another decennial one.

-Occasionally a scientific observation is made which gives a wide glimpse into the vast unexplored region of ignorance by which we are surrounded, and which will doubtless for ever save the scientist from the pain of being obliged to sit down with all his work accomplished. A German investigator has just made out the very curious fact that if the long, thread-like pseudopodia of certain low animals (foraminifera) are touched by the threads of another individual, they contract, shrivel up, and even break up into separate drops of protoplasm, but that if the threads which touch are those of the same individual, nothing of this sort occurs. The threads may even be cut off, and this same sensitiveness to the difference between the Me and the not-Me continues. There is, of course, absolutely no difference of structure-nothing in the organic world can be more alike so far as our powers of observation can be extended by all the appliances at our command, than these undifferentiated threads of naked protoplasm. And this still more curious fact is to be added-the pseudopodia of young individuals of the same brood do not cause this mutual contraction when brought into contact with each other; this difference in the protoplasm of different individuals, whatever may be its nature, is developed in the course of the life of the individual. If little things like orbitolites have such profound differences in structure as this would indicate, what deep physical bases may there not be for the antipathies and sympathies of highly organized human beings?

-The career of Antonio Gallenga, who died a fortnight ago in England, illustrated the boundless possibilities of romance which our miscalled commonplace century has furnished. He was born in Parma in 1810, and was swept into the whirl of Italian conspiracy by the abortive revolutions of 1831. Thenceforth he became an exile. Visiting this country, he was cordially received by, and for a time lived on intimate terms with, Longfellow, Prescott, Ticknor, and the older literary society in Boston and Cambridge. Returning to Europe, he made England his abode, if any one who travelled continuously could be said to have an abode. At any rate, his chief works, 'Mariotti's Italy,' 'Italy in 1848,' A History of Piedmont,' etc., were written in English and published in London. From 1859 till about twelve years ago, Gallenga was the Italian correspondent of the London Times, a position in which he exerted an influence that his character hardly justified, for Gallenga may fairly be regarded as an excellent specimen of the modern type of versatile, clever, and irresponsible journalist, and the ease with which he changed his political principles to suit the taste of his employer is further evidence of his fitness for journalism. His works, which we have mentioned, are still worth reading by any one who wishes to get a contemporary look at Italy fifty years ago. He writes with much vivacity-like Ruffini, he quickly mastered

English-and he has unusual ability in interweaving statistics, events, and aspirations. But probably he will be remembered longest as having been, in his youth, under the alias "Luigi Mariotti," engaged in an attempt to assassinate Charles Albert, King of Piedmont. According to his story, Mazzini gave him a dagger with which to commit regicide. Maz

zini denied complicity in the proposed crime, but for years his enemies used the insinuation, as if it had been proof, against him. Mazzinians, it may easily be imagined, were not disposed to construe charitably Mariotti-Gallenga's conversion into a courtier of the King whose father he had wished to kill.

BAIRD'S HUGUENOTS.

The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. By Henry M. Baird. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1895. 2 vols, pp. xxviii, 566; xix, 604.

Only a few points of interest in this long story, so voluminously told, can even be glanced at in the limits of this review. One feature of Huguenot development, then, that strikes the reader of Prof. Baird's volumes is the change that came over the party after the establishment of the Bourbon House. Though granted a large measure of privilege by the Edict of Nantes, the termination of the struggles which had torn France under the Valois Kings, and the opening of new avenues to advancement to the Huguenot chiefs under Henry IV., cost the party that active leader. ship of great representatives of the nobility which had been largely its source of political strength. Sully did much for France, but lit. tle for his fellow-Protestants. Bouillon preferred his own interests to theirs. Henry of Rohan, the last great Protestant leader, is esteemed by Prof. Baird "as generous as Admiral Coligny, whom he probably excelled in military genius"; but his unavailing attempts to support the political power of the Huguenot party by arms from 1621 to 1629 met with "a divided support from his fellow-believers," because it was "an age of inferior devotion and less ardent enthusiasm, an age in which the ideas of the royal prerogative had reached an exaggeration unknown in the preceding century."

of Bossuet, or their servants and associates, is as manifest as his revulsion from the cruel. ties of Marillac or Foucault; but he carries the stamp of fairness and of willingness to see good wherever it may be found. Prof. Baird's recent volumes have the same limitations, also-largely self-imposed, we judgewhich characterize his earlier narratives, and have already been pointed out by us. So entirely is his work the history of a party that contemporary political and intellectual de velopment is given a subordination that is almost exclusion. Not infrequently this neglect seems a real loss. It would certainly be germane to the story of the Huguenots to develop with some fulness the policy of Richelieu which led to the downfall of La Rochelle in 1628. That policy is outlined, indeed, but with the utmost brevity. Even more desirable would be a sketch of the growth of the philosophic spirit in France during the eighteenth century, for, assuredly, it was not increased love for Protestantism that gave toleration to the Huguenots in 1787.

Prof. Baird's two volumes under consideration cover nearly two centuries-from 1610 to 1802. In them, as he tells the reader,

"I have treated of the attempt to undo the work of the great Henry, from the gradual encroachments under Louis the Thirteenth to the more rapid and more violent measures that prepared the way for the formal Revocation of the Edict by Louis the Fourteenth. I have also pointed out the consequences of the recall in the great emigration, the suppression of Protestant worship save in the proscribed conventicles of the Desert, and the war of the Camisards, into which fanaticisin was driven by cruel intolerance. Finally, I have delineated the gradual recovery by the oppressed Huguenots of their ecclesiastical organization and of the civil and religious rights from which they had been long debarred, until, after being barely tolerated, they were at last fully recognized by the civil government."

Prof. Baird points out many instances of this zeal for royal absolutism among the French Protestants of the seventeenth century, remarking "that as the toleration of the Reformed religion became more and more precarious, . . . the Huguenots, in their endeavor to prove themselves to be, what in re

worthy subjects of the crown, were tempted to rear with their own hands that formidable structure of the absolute authority of the King, which, when once erected, was destined to prove the ruin of their hopes of quiet." Prof. Baird holds the address of Pierre Hesperien to Louis XIII., in the name of the National Synod of 1617, to be representative of the views of the party generally: "After God, we recognize your Majesty to be our only sovereign; and it is an article of our creed that there is no intermediate power between God and kings. It is among us a damnable heresy to call it into question." Daniel Tilenus, the honored theologian of Sedan, writing to his fellow-Huguenots in 1621, went so far as to say: "You wish him [Louis XIII.] to be bound to observe his predecessor's Edict in every point; but you do not consider that you owe him all obedience by an obliga. tion divine, natural, and civil. Bear in mind that no king is bound by the ordinances of his predecessors, nor even by his own. . . . By the laws of God and of nature he is undeniably bound; nevertheless, should he chance to contravene them, he has no other judge but God." Certainly the contrast between these views and those of their fellow-Calvinists across the English Channel is instructive, and a suggestive light is thrown on the later experiences of the Huguenots themselves.

The loss of La Rochelle in 1628 signified the passing away of Huguenot political power; but though a statesman like Richelieu could hardly have done otherwise than oppose that imperium in imperio which the Edict of Nantes had sanctioned in the assignment of hostage cities to Huguenot control, Prof. Baird shows that the Protestants found the great Cardinal an honorable master; and he deems the years from 1629 to 1660 the most prosperous in Hugue. not story. Counting "somewhat over one-fifteenth, never more than one-tenth part," of

the population of France, they yet possessed over 850 places of worship, served by upwards of 700 ministers, and a share in the commerce and manufactures of the land out of all proportion to their numbers. Prof. Baird attri butes the superior prosperity of the Huguenots of the middle classes to their high average of moral character, but he also gives weight to their non-observance of the ecclesiastical holidays-a neglect which be estimates as yielding an advantage of twenty per cent. in working time to the Protestants.

From the beginning of the personal reign of Louis XIV. the situation of the Huguenots grew rapidly worse. Yet the policy of the King seems to have looked towards the conversion of his Protestant subjects by Catholic missionary effort, by unfriendly interpretation of existing laws and the creation of new legal annoyances, and by the employment of bribery, rather than to have contemplated a revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Thus the King regulated the times of weddings and funerals, the duration of pastorates, and the dress and visitation of ministers; abolished the mixed courts of justice; deprived the Huguenots (between 1660 and 1684) of two-thirds of their houses of worship by a variety of legal devices; and finally (1681) made the expression of a preference for Catholic worship by Huguenot children who had reached the age of seven an irrevocable renunciation of their parents' faith.

Naturally, such unscrupulous royal zeal for the conversion of Protestants was emulated by those who wished to stand high in the graces of the King; and Prof. Baird shows that the notorious dragonnades originated in 1681 through the inventiveness of Michel de Marillac, intendant of Poitou, who turned the troops he had been using to collect unpaid taxes to the work of persuading Huguenots, with such apparent success as to win the approval of Louvois and Louis XIV. Public opinion did indeed force Louvois eventually to remove Marillac from office; but it was Marillac's system which Foucault revived in the spring of 1685, in Béarn, with the countenance of Louvois, and which, a few months later, when Foucault reported 21,000 "conversions" in his district as its result, Louvois applied widely, though officially disclaiming the violence which he and Louis XIV. must well have known was being exercised. These measures undoubtedly produced a nominal change of faith in great num. bers, and to the sanguine thought of the King it seemed as if Protestantism was about to disappear. Prof. Baird shows that the Revocation of the Edict in October, 1685, was due to a somewhat sudden determination on the King's part, "based upon a false opinion that Protestantism, thanks to the measures put into operation for that end, had almost, if not quite, ceased to exist." He assigns the chief influence in the royal deliberations to Harlay, archbishop of Paris, to Père de la Chaise, the King's confessor, and to Louvois; to Mme. de Main. tenon, so often charged with being a chief instrument in the Revocation, he ascribes no weight in swaying the King's decision, though she undoubtedly sympathized with the step.

Prof. Baird depicts the consequences of the Revocation with graphic minuteness. Of the Huguenot ministry, on whom the blow fell most severely, and to whom great inducements to conversion were offered, only about one-eighth abjured Protestantism. Of their flocks Prof. Baird estimates that not far from four hundred thousand (though exact figures are impossible) left France, in spite of the perils which the King put in their way, to the

lasting advantage of England, Holland, and Germany. With interesting fulness he traces the efforts to preserve Protestant worship, now officially non-existent. He concludes that at least fifty of the exiled pastors revisited their flocks before 1700, and the fate of such of these returned ministers as fell into the hands of the Government shows that the secrecy observed regarding the Man of the Iron Mask was no unique feature of the vengeance of Louis XIV. Sent to prisons like those of the Île Ste.-Marguerite or of Vincennes without public trial and with every precaution to avoid communication with the outside world, they disappeared no less completely than apparently mysteriously from sight, and friends inquired in vain for years for the secret of a fate which modern publication of records has revealed.

Of the Camisard war Prof. Baird has much to say, and the picturesqueness of the struggle makes the story of the efforts of these peasants one of interest, though the evident hopelessness of their task, and the fanatical spirit of so-called prophecy which they exhibited, made the rising the work of only a fragment of the Protestant population of France. It demonstrated, however, in the sight of all Europe the absurdity of any governmental claim that, since the Revocation, Protestantism had ceased to exist in the dominions of Louis XIV.

Of more value for the permanent interest of the land was the restoration of organized French Protestantism effected by Antoine Court in 1715, with its reëstablishment of the synods and regular ministry. The story of these churches of the "Desert," as they styled themselves in language borrowed from Scripture and conveniently indefinite as to their habitat, is told from their beginnings in the Cévennes to their ultimate recognition by the French Government. In spite of life-imprisonment and galley slavery for attendance on their services, they continued to grow, aided by the theological school which Court established at Lausanne about 1730. As the eighteenth century wore on, this opposition declined, so that though the last execution of a minister was as late as February 19, 1762 (François Rochette at Toulouse), the Protestants attempted to build church-edifices by 1755, and a year later could count 48 pastors-a number which had increased, when the memorable year 1787 arrived, to about 125. Yet the case of Calas, which Prof. Baird narrates at length, together with the efforts of Voltaire to right a great injustice, shows the popular and legal hostility to which Protestants were still liable. So far, however, did enlightened opinion outrun the slow processes of legal revision that the Government, speaking through its Comptroller-General, Turgot, in 1775, gave a recognition to the still proscribed Protestant bodies by invoking the services of their ministers in suppressing the bread riots. Such an act was natural from one who had written in favor of religious tolerance as early as 1753. It was Lafayette, however, who, on May 23, 1787, presented to the Assembly of Notables the resolution which that body transmitted without opposition to Louis XVI. praying that Protestant proscription might cease. The result was the Edict of Toleration, which did not, indeed, grant legal permission to Protestant worship, but relieved the Protestants from the worst of their disabilities. From this Edict the tide of the Revolution swung the cause of Protestant freedom rapidly onward to the law of April 7, 1802, by which the Reformed and Lutheran churches of France were given full rights, and placed under the controlling and supporting

supervision of the state-a law with which Prof. Baird closes his history.

Altogether the volumes under review are scarcely less suggestive to the student of general history than to the investigator of ecclestiastical story in their demonstration of the difficulty and costliness of crushing opinion by force; and one application of this lesson to events of our own age is pointed out by Prof. Baird in his preface, when he remarks: "As history repeats itself, the close of the nineteenth century is even now beholding the counterpart, or the copy, of the legislation by means of which Louis the Fourteenth undertook to crush out the Huguenot religion from France, in laws remarkably similar, menacing the existence of Protestantism in the Baltic provinces of a great empire of our own times."

BENJAMIN'S HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY.

The Intellectual Rise in Electricity: A History. By Park Benjamin. Appletons. 1895. THE present history is, in its two halves (the first down to Gilbert inclusive, and the second from Gilbert's successors to Franklin, inclusive), of very different orders of merit; the last part being much the more valuable. In the first part, in which we miss any reference to the graceful, useful, and beautifully printed translation by our countryman, Dr. Mottelay, of Gilbert on the Magnet, which we reviewed some months ago, every scrap of information has been diligently collected; but our comments will show that the work has its blemishes. In the second half, this work comes into competition with Dr. Priestley's History and Present State of Electricity,' which, be. sides being a thorough and full account of the matter, is also a particularly well-arranged account, which can hardly be said of Mr. Benjamin's. Priestley's is also entirely free from the sensational tone of our fin-de-siècle style. But there is enough, both of fact and of wellexecuted general sketches of historical situations, in the volume before us to establish it as the leading work on the subject in any lan. guage.

tion concerning which the scholastic doctors were agreed was the practical infallibility of Aristotle. What marked their teaching was, first, its general form (it was usually either a commentary or a disputation, or both), and, second, the algebra-like formality of its statements. Scotus Erigena was not a scholastic; for, first, he lived over three centuries before the regular organization of the universities, and in a deeply dissimilar civilization (or want of civilization); second, he is not an Aristotelean; third, the 'De Divisione Naturæ' is neither a commentary nor a disputation; fourth, it is not marked by great formality of statement; fifth, it is in no sense a school-book. The university of Alexandria, according to Benjamin, was "begun by Alexander." We apprehend it will be necessary to take the will for the deed, to make that out. As ornaments of that university are mentioned Archimedes and Hipparchus. The former did study and the latter may have studied there; but Archimedes did the work of his life in Syracuse, and Hipparchus at Rhodes and elsewhere. He did

not observe in Alexandria.

Mr. Benjamin's references are not seldom inaccurate. The following is a single specimen: "Vincenti Bellovacensis: Speculi Naturales, etc., tom. ii., lib. ix., c. 19." On one of the first pages there is a faulty reference to a passage in Pliny, which is all the worse because Pliny is not quite accurately reported. Even the scientific statements are often careless. Thus, we are told that the orientation of the Great Pyramid is in error by 19' 58", and that a surveyor "with the best modern compass" could hardly do better. Now, to begin with, the error of orientation is only about 14', which, being the minimum visibile, is as small as the probable error of the best possible nakedeye observation. No modern surveyor, when he wants to do nice work, dreams of employing a compass; and, for that reason, there has been no attempt to develop a compass of precision. But in all magnetical surveys the deviation of the needle is ascertained far more closely than the figure given.

But let us come to the substance of the work. The author has unfortunately a theory. If it were a very broad and instructive theory, esIn the period antecedent to the death of Ba- pecially if it were very solidly founded, this con there is much baseless conjecture. Thus, would be no misfortune. But it is neither Mr. Benjamin guesses that Gilbert lived in broad nor solid. It is that the knowledge of London in Linacre's house. But he could the earliest form of mariner's compass came easily have ascertained that Dr. Gilbert lived from the Baltic town of Wisby, that it came in the lane called Peter's Hill, south of Little to Wisby from the Finns, and that it had Knightrider Street, while the Linacre house been, perhaps, an ancient heritage of the great was No. 5 of Knight Rider Street proper, and, "Turanian race. Apparently because that we believe, on the north side. While thorough theory is sadly in need of support, the author scholarship was not an indispensable qualifica- accepts without the slightest reserve the theotion for Mr. Benjamin's task, we could wish ry of Mr. Terrien de Lacouperie of the Elamthere were fewer indications of the lack of it. ite origin of the earliest Chinese civilization. On the second page of the first chapter we read Singularly enough, however, when it comes to that Homer ("Iliad, Z.1 513: T.1 398") calls the sun accounts of the Chinese possessing compasses λéxTop. A proof reader familiar with the looks before the Europeans, he becomes unexpectedof Greek words would have challenged that. ly sceptical. The letter of Klaproth of 1835 Boesius is the name which Mr. Benjamin gives is generally supposed to have proved the propoto the philosopher Boetius. We are familiar sition that the Chinese, some time before A. D. with Boethius and even Boecius, but do not 400, at latest-that is, many ages before the remember Boesius. Under the reign of Ael- Europeans-knew that a needle could receive fred," Mr. Benjamin informs us that Scotus directive force from a lodestone. As for the Erigena "began the assertion of the scholas- Egyptians, Dr. Benjamin reaches the sane contic philosophy." There are three errors here. clusion that they knew nothing about magnets, In the first place, Erigena (whom it is no though the process by which he reaches that longer permissible to confound with another result is open to some objection. As for Irishman at the court of the Mercian King) knowledge of the magnet on the part of the was not a subject of Alfred. In the second Greeks and Romans, it is easily stated. Dr. place, the scholastic philosophy did not consist❘ Benjamin drags in irrelevant matter from in any assertion. It was the philosophy taught Rossignol's essay on the mythology of Greek in the lecture-rooms (schola) of the mediæval miners; but, for the matter in hand, the welluniversities. The only philosophical proposi-known passage in the 'Ion' of Plato gives all

the information there is. Namely, the Greeks knew that a lodestone would lift an iron ring, and that another, and so on; but they knew nothing of the polarity of the magnet.

It is next to impossible to prove the negative proposition, that the mariner's compass❘ (in some crude form) was not known at a given date. Such is the stupidity of man that it would be known for a very long time before it came much into use. On an Arabian vessel we first hear of it, Mr. Benjamin assures us, in A. D. 1240. Since the needle was floated on water, and was magnetized then and there (only soft iron being at hand), it would be used only on cloudy nights when the sea was pretty calm. It might go a long time unrecorded in a book; and it might be recorded in numbers of books before it was recorded in one which Western scholars have read. To show how slow progress was in those days, the compass is mentioned (as Klaproth shows) as a familiar thing in the laws of Alfonso X. of Castile dated A.D. 1263; and yet the evidence seems to be (we are indebted to Mr. Benjamin for this) that Spanish galleys were never supplied with it before 1403. The rational conclusion seems to us to be that it was probably known in the Mediterranean before A.D. 1200; but, owing to the choppy seas, it was little used in these waters until it was balanced on a point. We now turn to northern waters. The Norsemen used to follow the method of Noah, except that they sent out ravens instead of doves. The earliest description of the mariner's compass (in precisely the same form as that of the Arabians of A. D. 1240) which Mr. Benjamin finds is in Neckam's book 'De Natura Rerum,' written about 1180. He gives a flattering portrait of Neckam, and compares his book with the 'Origines' of St. Isidorus. But surely the two greatest merits of an encyclopædia are to be full and to be compressed. The work of St. Isidorus in twenty books has both those merits in an eminent degree. Considered as an encyclopædia, the work of Neckam is contempti ble, being both small and garrulous. Within a few years after Neckam, notices of the compass in northern waters multiply. M. Paulin Paris gave in 1842 some verses by Guyot de Provins and some others by another poet. Dr. Benjamin has very prettily translated several of these; but the originals would have been quite worth giving, too. Within fifty years of the first passage in Neckam we know of near a dozen passages referring to the compass. The contrast between this state of things and the single Arabian passage may be attributed to the thorough overhauling of early European literature. The inference is, that the compass could have been very little known, if at all, in Normandy much before the earliest of these quickly succeeding notices. Therefore, although the balance of evidence inclines toward the supposition that the com. pass was known in the north before it was known in the Mediterranean, it inclines only slightly that way. As far as investigation has gone, there is no evidence whatever of the compass having been known in those early days in the Baltic. True, it is mentioned as of great importance in the laws of Wisby; but it is probable that that law was a late insertion. We should expect that the compass would in its early shape have been used in the Baltic, owing to the fogs and the smooth sea; but positive evidence is altogether wanting.

Mr. Benjamin seems to regard the invention of the early mariner's compass as an exceed. ingly difficult one. If that be just, then decidedly the probable hypothesis about its introduction is that of Klaproth, that the Arabs

got it from the Chinese, and that from them the knowledge was carried through, or crept round, Europe to the north. But it may be doubted whether the invention is so difficult that it might not, without improbability, be supposed to have been independently invented in different places. Is it incredible that a man playing with two lodestones should find out their polarity, and then magnetization, and then the directive virtue of the needle ?

The latter half of Mr. Benjamin's history, after taking leave of Gilbert, is, on the whole, much the more interesting. To be sure, no startling discovery was here possible. The succession of discoverers was Von Guericke (Hauksbee ?), Gray, Du Fay. Watson, and Franklin. Mr. Benjamin modifies a little here and there our notions of what each did. It appears that that Sagredo who takes the leading part in Galileo's dialogues, not only was a living person, like the personages of Aretino's dialogues, but also probably discovered the secular change in the variation of the compass. He mounted a lodestone of five pounds so that it would support twenty pounds. It was in experimenting with that lodestone that Galileo found out the effect of the armature in causing the magnet to grow in strength. The Jesuit Nicolaus Cabæus is another old physicist whose achievements, as Mr. Benjamin states them, are of quite another order of importance from what we had supposed. To make our meaning clear, let us say that there are five departments of work in any branch of pure physics, like electricity; namely, (1), the phenomena bave to be brought out and seen; (2), suitable instruments have to be invented for their study; (3), the process of experimental analysis, or cross-questioning of Nature, must be applied so as to produce statements of the laws of the phenomena; (4), measurements have to be made (though, of course, there was little of this in the pre-Franklinian ages); and (5), hypotheses, mechanical or other, must be constructed and experimentally verified to show the inward nature of the phenomena. What we have hitherto been told about Cabæus was that he extended the list of electrics; that is, he slightly increased the range of a known phenomenon. But it now appears that he observed that when little bodies are attracted to an electrified body and strike it, they are at once thrown off from it. Now this observation was the first step necessary in the experimental analysis of the phenomenon, ultimately leading to a knowledge of its laws. Nor was that all. For it seems that Cabæus was the first to plunge a lodestone into a mass of iron filings and notice the result; and, further, that he made an analogous experiment by plunging electrified amber into a quantity of sawdust. Here he took a step of the second kind, in our enumeration; for these things were instruments of observation of high importance.

In many places, Mr. Benjamin fills up the gaps of history in this way. Nor does he neglect the historian's more difficult tasks. He pictures the fad for experimentation that was caused by Charles II.'s interest in it. He shows that that interest was pretty deep, too, and that it had a most stimulating effect upon experimental science in England. In France, on the other hand, the hollowness of Louis XIV.'s endeavor to interest himself in science, combined with the total absence of interest on the part of Louvois, are fully proved to have had a very unfortunate effect on French science. All such general sketches have been executed by Mr. Benjamin upon a basis of thorough study.

There are few contested points in the history of electricity from Gilbert to Franklin. One of these is whether Cuneus, a gentleman of Leyden, had any hand in the discovery of the Leyden jar. In the first printed account of it by the Abbé Nollet, in the 'Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences' for 1746, it is said that Cuneus had seen some of the experiments upon which the celebrated Musschenbroek of Leyden was then engaged, to ascertain whether the effects of electricity wonld not be increased by enclosing the electrified body in glass, and that Cuneus undertook to repeat one of them at his home. But instead of leaving the flask in which the conductor to be electrified was placed, on the table, he held it in his hand, and thus got a strong shock. It was afterwards said that Cuneus had nothing to do with it; that that was a story got up to detract from Musschenbroek's credit. But Dr. Priestley, writing his history only twenty years later, was in a condition to collect testimony. He says: "The views which led to this discovery in Holland were, as I have been informed, as follows." He states that Cuneus accidentally made the experiment in repeating an experiment by Musschenbroek; but he does not say, as the Abbé Nollet does, that to Cuneus belongs the credit. As Cuneus never made any reclamation, the inference is that he immediately communicated his experience to Musschenbroek, and that the analysis of the phenomenon was completed by the latter. Perhaps Cuneus did not of himself find out that the shock depended on bis holding the bottle in his hand. Mr. Benjamin inclines to disbelieve entirely in any share in the discovery by Cuneus.

Mr. Benjamin is quite wrong in speaking, as in one place he does, as if the use of experi. mentation as an instrument of discovery was at variance with the Cartesian philosophy. We will also venture to doubt his confident assertion that Sir Kenelm Digby, in his 'Two Treatises, in the one of which the Nature of Bodies, in the other the Nature of Man's Soule is looked into in the way of Immortality,' plagiarizes extensively from the 'Principia' of Descartes. The latter work appeared from the press of L. Elzevir in Amsterdam on July 10, 1644. Descartes had set out from the Hoef in May for Paris; for the censure (we presume) would not in those days permit "author's corrections" of the proofs. He arrived in Paris at some time between September 27 and October 1, inclusive, and there first received copies of his book. Digby had been in Paris all along. There is evidence that his book (a folio of medium thickness) had been substantially written in the previous spring. The dedication is dated in August. The last imprimatur was affixed September 26. Now, there could hardly have been time for extensive plagiarisms (for every hypothesis, if plagiarized, is modified) between the date at which Digby could have seen the Principia' and the date of the imprimatur. Descartes remained in Paris ten or twelve days, during which, though much pressed for time, he had several prolonged interviews with Digby. He rever made the least reclamation, though he hinted that Digby was a bold theorist, for he says to the Princess Elizabeth, "Pour ce qui est de l'état de l'âme après cette vie, j'en ay biens moins de connoissance que Monsieur d'Igby." Digby and Descartes never corresponded, and Descartes was a cautious man in the matter of communicating unpublished ideas, while Digby, on the other hand, was a talker. Finally, although no man ever more widely missed the style of Nature than Digby did in his physical hypotheses, yet those hypotheses have a strong.