how naturally prone to discipline. In accepting Islam as a state religion, the Turks of Turkestan, of Trans oxania, of Kharesm, adopted it as a whole without discussion, in a military manner, like a password. During a hundred years the monks and theologians of Bokhara were able to mould their brains at will without being embarrassed by a contradiction, a subtlety, or a simple commentary. Thus the Renaissance in Central Asia was nothing but a renewal of the Middle Ages. While the Europeans, under the spur of Hellenism, and daz. zled by the rediscovery of antiquity, were launching boldly out towards the unknown, towards free research, towards revolt, the Asiatics, their equals till the fifteenth century, let themselves docilely be brought back to the School as conceived by the sages of the orthodox Khalif. They discovered as a novelty Aristotle (as deformed by the Arabs), they returned to the Amalgest,' they plunged into Avicenna, their compatriot, they began again in Turkish the epoch of the Sassanidæ; they 'marked time,' but never advanced (ils piéti nèrent sur place). All their intellectual activity, and they had as much as others, spent itself in scholasticism, in jurisprudence, in rhe. toric; with great efforts they reconstituted Euclid, Ptolemy. Galen, Hippocrates-they hardly dared touch Plato; to go further would have been to lose themselves. Little by little, with the help of the monks, they came to think only of their salvation and to be content with the Koran." On Parody. By A. S. Martin. Henry Holt & Co. 1896. DR. JOHNSON had a very low opinion of parody, and so, no doubt, had Wordsworth; the former considered it too easy. But then, nobody ever contended for anything more than that it was an effective and very amusing form of satire. The very greatest writers of all ages have made use of it, and, so long as man retains the capacity of being amused by contrasts, so long he will continue to enjoy parody. Mr. Martin's book consists of an essay on parody, with numerous examples, many of which are good. Going back to the Greeks, and tracing parody down through the Roman and mediæval period to our own time, we find the Greeks and our own race to have been its masters. There is a good deal of mediæval parody that must have made the monks, friars, and priests laugh, but we have to mount to Aristophanes before we find the same kind of travesty that we enjoy so much nowadays. In English literature parody has been the test of fame; with the exception of Shakspere, every serious writer, and especially every serious poet, has had his parodist, often himself a great writer. Throughout English literature, parody is the laughing echo of all serious verse, and in our own time it has become a regular branch of literary business, each new writer possessed of a distinct style being welcomed by a chorus of travesty. This has been for years a specialty of Punch. It is surprising how much this book owes to verse contributed to that journal by unknown writers. Mr. Martin's survey is not by any means complete. He does not seem to know of Sir F. Pollock's extraordinarily clever verse, which certainly deserved mention; we miss also "Not a sou had he got, nor a penny or note." Maginn is cited only for "My heart leaps up when I behold Canning's Needy Knife-grinder" would have been far better than "Despairing beside a clear stream." But the book is full of good examples. We are glad to see some mention made of Mr. James Davis, a writer for the press whose name is far less known than it de. serves to be. His parodies were devoted-at least such of them as we remember-to satire of the attempt to found a cult or religion upon agnosticism. His creed, concluding with an avowal of belief in "the disunion of the saints, the survival of the fittest, the persistence of force, the dispersion of the body, and in death everlasting," is the only thing given in full (p. 23). His lines in imitation of Addison's should be, if we remember right: "Yon orb which shines to light the Day By forces and their correlation, A verse is missing from the hymn in praise of the spectroscope: and if his book reaches another edition, we hope Mr. Martin will look up the tract about the good little Positivist boy brought up in an atmosphere of pure ag nosticism (being allowed only to read such literature as the above, and to play only with philosophical toys), whom a little Christian boy misled for a time with his wicked Christian books and toys, until in the end the little agnostic caught cold and lay on his death-bed, when, fortunately, his parents were able to rescue him from the depraved influences to which he had sunk a victim, so that the little fellow died with a happy smile on his face murmuring, "Home-home-homeogeneous Evolution." Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture. By E. P. Evans. With a bibliography and 78 illustrations. Henry Holt & Co. 1896. Pp. xii, 375. THIS is a book of a class once more common than it is now, for it is rare in these times to see, at least in English, great masses of strange information put together without definite and declared purpose. This is not a history of animal or other symbolism in architecture, ecclesiastical or other, or in mediæval art taken together. There is in it a most entertaining account of the pagan statues, bas-reliefs, and gems which have been taken over into ecclesiastical service by attributing to John the Bap tist what originally belonged to Mars, and to the Virgin what had been dedicated to Venus (pp. 306 to 315). The well-known seated sta tues in the Vatican of the Greek comic poets, Poseidippos and Menandros, were, we are told, adored as saints after their discovery in Rome in the sixteenth century. This is rather a late instance, but such ascriptions were common enough in earlier years. The peacock and the eagle, as the attributes of Juno and Jupiter, are common on the sarcophagi of Emperors and Empresses; hence they were used for Christian tombs; from these they invaded other Christian decoration. Being received as common emblems in Christian art, their presence had to be accounted for, and strange legends are accepted as sufficient explanation. Thus, the peacock's flesh not being subject to decay, it is emblematic of the incorruptible spiritual body. St. Augustine was desirous of ascertaining whether the flesh of the bird had really this unusual property, showing in this a scientific spirit worthy of so great a thinker; and, the legend relates, he found that it was strictly true. In another part of the book we hear of the wonderful marine bishop who was caught as any mere merman might have been caught in the fifteenth century and in the Northern seas. The ecclesiastical dignitary refused or was unable to speak, but gave its episcopal blessing to its captors when they released it, by the well known gesture (made, it appears, "with its fin"). The unicorn, with all its strange asso ciations with maidens, by whom alone it can be caught, is of course a favorite attribute of the Virgin, and the picture common in the later middle ages of a unicorn hunted and flying to a maiden as if for shelter is capable of being explained in many different ways. Pearls are drops of dew, which a certain sea-creature, coming to the surface, receives direct from the sky. This legend has also several explanations. Stories like these, selected from many ancient authorities, or traced in the carvings of the earlier middle ages and in prints of a later time, fill this book from cover to cover. A very full index serves to unlock all its mysteries in their turn. It is as well read by the use of the index as in any other way. For example, we found our curiosity greatly excited by the entry, "Luther, Martin, on the aqueous origin of swallows," and on turning to page 149 read how Luther, in his commentary on Genesis, confirms the text about the waters bringing forth living creatures by pointing out that, even in his time, the swallows lay dormant under water all winter long and emerged every spring, even as they emerged on the fifth day of creation. To any one who desires a large amount of this sort of information, not very successfully organized, this book may be recommended. The Story of Cuba: Her Struggles for Liberty, the Cause, Crisis, and Destiny of the Pearl of the Antilles. By Murat Halstead. Illustrated. Chicago: The Werner Com. pany. 1896. MR. HALSTEAD's volume, apart from the historical portions, has a certain value as the report of a newspaper correspondent who has recently visited Cuba, though the evidence it contains is mainly what lawyers call "cumu. lative." The author does not seem to have seen anything of the island outside of Havana, nor to have ever been behind the scenes either of the Spanish or the insurrectionary side. We bear, as usual, a great deal about the wrongs and oppressions of the Spaniards, but, owing, no doubt, in great measure to the fact that the rising is not in the hands of political men, no definite explanation is given of what sort of redress is contemplated, beyond emancipation from the Spanish yoke. To all inquiries "Cuba libre !" is the invariable reply, just as it might have been in the time of Bolivar. But the world, having grown older and wiser than it was in Bolivar's time, wants to know now not merely that some one is struggling to be free, but what use he is likely to make of his freedom after he has attained it. On this point the Cubans are absolutely silent, and their present lack of anything like an organized civil government makes it extremely difficult to say even whether they have any political plan. Our politicians, therefore, very kindly answer the question for them by saying that of course Cuba will become part of the United States. No doubt this would in the end redeem the island, but it would be a frightful piece of work for us. Not only should we have to set tle with Spain, for a debt of millions has been heaped up on account of Cuba for which Spain is responsible, but we should add to our domain the country which Mr. Halstead describes-an island nearly the size of England, inhabited by a couple of millions, or less, of blacks and whites, the former only recently freed, and neither race having shown any political qualities, while both are fond of fighting and lawlessness. Outside the cities (Gallenga, in his prophetic 'Pearl of the Antilles,' describes the beginning of the process) the cultivated territory is relapsing into waste, and, as the present war is a marauding and predatory war, the entire sugar and tobacco "plant," outside the places guarded by troops, is being destroyed. But if we are to consider ourselves as heirs of the property, this fact is not of so much im portance as that the place of everything destroyed is being taken by debt, and that the population is composed of very poor materials for self-government. The island is naturally so rich that a few years would repair the waste, but what Senators it would send to Washington, what delegates and alternates to national conventions! Our Southern slaveholders' longing for Cuba was the natural diseased craving for a stimulant adapted to reinvigorate an exhausted social organism; the Southern demagogues' present passion seems to spring from causes quite as unhealthy. To our mind, Mr. Halstead's facts destroy the arguments suggested by political fancy. The argument from "destiny," however, is unanswerable, and always has been to those who believe in it. Cuba belongs by destiny to the United States, just as Canada and Mexico do, to say nothing of South America; it is also part of destiny that the present owners of these countries should vigorously resist parting with them, so that it will probably be centuries beore destiny is accomplished satisfactorily to all parties. Newspaper correspondents, how. ever, occupy themselves much with the future, and we are glad to know from Mr. Halstead that it will all turn out right in the end. Women in English Life, from Medieval to and the seventeenth, are the most readable. after all the abuse that has been heaped upon We cannot follow the arguments with which Prof. Nicholson disposes of the philosophers of the Fabian school, or exposes the shallow critics of the great economists of former days. We must content ourselves with general praise of his methods and specific commendation of the essay on the "Reality of Industrial Progress," that on the "Classical Political Economy," and the "Plea for Industrial Liberty." Altogether, the book is wholesome and stimu lating in a high degree, and time spent in Everywhere The Sun. By C. A. Young, Ph.D., LL.D. Strikes and Social Problems. By J. Shield practical certainty that no subsequent research THE title of this book is not very well chosen. We can mention but a few of the fallacies Seven hundred pages of stale "statements" of this kind do not make a book to be warmly welcomed; and the many chapters, and the countless paragraphs of sentences eight, ten, twelve words long, chopped off with an abrupt full stop, are not easy reading. The truth is, there is no pulse of vitality in these volumes: the deadness of mechanical produc-generation, and which Prof. Nicholson punction pervades them. They contain a mass of information-many masses, rather-but for the most part of a somewhat trivial quality, and which few persons could profitably select from and cook the facts for themselves, while, in its present condition, no literary stomach could digest it. The reader can only regret that so much ability for painstaking has been so misapplied, and that such attractive looking volumes should contain so little for either an idle or a studious hour. A heap, however large, of unsorted pebbles, even though they may have been brought from a distance, creates only a cairn that does not long detain the steps of the traveller. The work treats of five "periods." Period I., "Women in the Days of Feudalism," is dis missed in a hundred pages. Period II., "England after the Renaissance," occupies two hundred; Period III., "Life in the Last Century," one hundred and thirty; and Period IV.,“ Women in the Victorian Era,” just twice as many. The longest "periods," the nineteenth century tures. It has been so vehemently asserted as within the next quarter century can displace it. Dr. Gill of Cape Town and Prof. Newcomb of Washington have mainly contributed to this result. Prof. Young makes, however, a very proper reservation as to the embarrassment of the aberration method due to the newly found fluctuation of terrestrial latitudes; and it is altogether probable that our next noteworthy improvement in the sun's distance will come from a research taking full account of this perplexing variation. So thoroughly at home is Prof. Young in all the varied lines of solar work that one need fear no inaccuracy in his account of the labors of others. His presentation of recent advances in photogra. graphy of the solar spectrum embraces a new and interesting plate of the great Princeton spectroscope; and proper regard is paid to Prof. Rowland's epoch-making work at the Johns Hopkins University (dating from about 1890, and now everywhere accepted as the standard), to the extraordinary clearness and beauty of execution which characterize the detailed photographic maps of Mr. Higgs of Liverpool, and to the excellent maps of the late M. Thollon of Nice, showing the varying appearance of the spectrum corresponding to different altitudes of the sun. The presence of known terrestrial elements in the sun has been very fully investigated by Prof. Rowland in the last few years, and he can thus far reckon with certainty about forty elements. Iridium, platinum, tungsten, uranium, and a few others are doubtful; chlorine, fluorine, iodine, and bromine are among those not yet tried by Prof. Rowland; while antimony, gold, phosphorus, mercury, sulphur, and about ten others less prominent are not yet found in the sun. But, as Prof. Rowland has himself remarked, his failure to find them is very little evidence of their absence from the sun itself. Two other elements require especial notice from their manifestation of bright lines-coronium, not yet traced to earth; and helium, finally identified by Ramsay last year, in connection with his researches upon argon, discovered by Lord Rayleigh and himself as a hitherto unrecog nized constituent of our atmosphere. Helium, it has been found, can be obtained from nearly all the uranium minerals, in some instances commingled with argon and in others nearly pure. Meteoric iron contains it, also the waters of certain mineral springs in the Pyrenees and the Black Forest; indeed, as Prof. Young says, it turns out to be very widely distributed, although only in very small quantitities, and probably never free. But whether the new element is really elementary or a double compound is not yet known, and this question is still under investigation by Runge of Berlin and other leading spectroscopists, who have found that the lines of its spectrum divide into two sets mathematically independent of each other. Perhaps the most remaiable recent advances in methods of sc research are due to Prof. Hale of the University of Chica, whose ingenious spectro-heliograph rec 38 full elucidation at the hands of Prof. Young. Nor are the pictorial results obtained with it neglected, whether they be faculæ, which Prof. Hale was the first to photograph in belts across the sun's disk, similar to those in which the ordinary dark spots occur, or the protuberancəs which he (followed by Deslandres of Paris) now photographs at any time by monochromatic light, at any or all parts of the sun's limb where they may show themselves. We can hardly afford space for even mention of all the modern researches sufficiently treated by Prof. Young; but we have detected no omission on his part. Not only are all observational results dealt with, like Howlett's faithful thirty-five-year spot series recently completed, but the speculative theories of Brester and Schmidt receive that fair and careful treatment which their authors deserve, although neither of these theories can be said to commend itself in all particulars to practical students of solar physics. Also, we must pass by the late determinations of the effective temperature of the sun's surface, equal to about 14,000 degrees Fahrenheit, by Le Chate Francke's Social Forces in German Literature. A Study in the History of Civilization. By KUNO FRANCKE, Assistant Professor in Harvard University. $2 net. The author endeavors to give an account of the great intellectual currents of German life as expressed in literature, to point out the mutual relation of action and reaction between these current and the social and po litical condition of the masses from which they sprang or which they affected-in short, to trace the history of the German people in the works of its thinkers and poets. lier and Wilson independently, and Hale's repeated but unsuccessful attempts to photograph the sun's corona without an eclipse. But no modern solar research has aroused intenser interest than Prof. Langley's investigations of the infra-red portion of the solar spectrum through a highly sensitive heat-measurer of his own invention. His most recent achievement with this instrument is an ingenious method, accessory to it, by which all the rapid fluctuations of the tract in question are automatically photographed in a form precisely comparable with the upper portions of the spectrum as ordinarily recorded. We have now, indeed, a complete chart of this invisible heat spectrum ten times as long as the sun's entire luminous spectrum, and there are indications of heat even farther below the red. So sensitive is this delicate instrument that a change of temperature no greater than the millionth part of a degree centigrade is detectible. But the explanation of the geometrical arrangement of the lines in this invisible spectrum is a work hardly yet begun. A typographic inaccuracy here and there, as Burckhardt for Burckhalter (p. 253); and a slip as to the residence of Bigelow of the Signal Service, Washington, needs correction in a subsequent issue, which the great importance of the subject and the rapid growth of solar investigation will early render necessary. BOOKS OF THE WEEK. America and Europe: A Study of International Relations. Putnams. 75c. Becke, Louis, and Jeffery, Walter. A First-Fleet Family. Macmillan. $1.50. Clark, Imogen. The Victory of Ezry Gardner. T. Y. Crowell & Co. 75c. Delitzsch. Prof. F. Assyrisches Handwörterbuch. Vierter (Schluss) Teil. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs; Balti. more. Johns Hopkins Press. Fenn, G. M. The Tiger Lily: A Story of a Woman. Cassell. 50c. Fuller, Anna. A Venetian June. Putnams. $1. Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 50c. Hardy, Thomas. Wessex Tales. Harpers. $1.50. Hichens, R. S The Folly of Eustace, and Other Stories. Appletons. 75c. JUST PUBLISHED. 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