ly marked style of their own. They have nothing of the flavor of eclecticism. Nor can we admit that any hypothesis of the 'Two Treatises' is so precisely accordant with that of the 'Principia' that it is necessary to attribute them to one author. Digby, by the way, is a better psychologist than physicist. He treats of the association of ideas, and even proposes a physical hypothesis to account for it. We find it very difficult to let this interesting work go without saying anything more about it. An excellent present for a scientifically minded young person would be Motte. lay's translation of Gilbert on the Magnet (Wiley) and Benjamin's 'Intellectual Rise' (Appleton).

The Herschels and Modern Astronomy. By Agnes M. Clerke. [The Century Science Series.] Macmillan. 1895. LITTLE could Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Watson, as he strolled through Walcot Turnpike, Bath, late in an evening about Christmas time, 1779, have thought that his stopping in the street to look through the telescope of a "moon-struck musician " was to lead the way to the immediate inception of one of the most remarkable careers in the history of astronomy. Such, however, was the fact. Frederick William Herschel, born at Hanover, November 15, 1738, into a family possessed of an irresistible instinct and aptitude for music, having landed as a lad at Dover with but a French crown-piece in his pocket, drifted through a series of ably filled engagements as a professional musician until, in 1776, he had become Director of the public concerts at Bath. But while all this time a musician in body, he was an astronomer in spirit, at no time losing sight of the vision of the skies; and it was in the latter capacity that he had the good fortune to attract an able and willing patron, whose friendship provided precisely that opportunity which was needed for full development of his powers. All the while that, in his official capacity, he had "to engage performers, to appease discontents, to supply casual failures, to write glees and catches expressly adapted to the voices of his executants, and frequently to come forward himself as a soloist on the hautboy or the harpsichord," he was absorbingly occupied with a self-imposed task of minutely reviewing all the heavenly bodies and every spot of the celestial vault. During the progress of this unprecedented task it was that the above incident happened; for young Herschel, then engaged in a series of observations on the lunar mountains, had brought his seven-foot reflector into the street in front of his house, and was gazing diligent ly when Dr. Watson chanced to pass by. Fortunately he did not rest with merely expressing great satisfaction at the view of the moon courteously afforded by the young German; he called the next morning to make his further acquaintance. Instantly this led to an introduction to a local philosophical society, then to the Royal Society of London, and in little more than two years to an audience with his Majesty George III. Thenceforward the great Herschel's life and work are the common knowledge of every astronomerand it is a little singular that a century should have elapsed with no thoroughly competent history of that life and work, and no republication of Herschel's unsurpassed volume of technical papers, which have still to be sought in the original editions of the Philosophical Transactions.'

No less astonishing is it that his equally fa

mous son, Sir John Herschel, now dead near. ly a quarter of a century, has thus far experienced a like fate. Miss Clerke's 'The Herschels and Modern Astronomy' is almost the sole attempt to acquaint the lay reader with these great names. Sir William's sister, Caroline, hes been more fortunate, and her accurate 'Journals and Recollections' form the chief authority for her brother's eminent life. Indeed, he often referred to her for the dates of events in his earlier years. Collateral infor. mation about him is meagre; but in the case of Sir John Herschel there is this important difference, that his long and intimate friendship with Sir William Rowan Hamilton led his conscientious biographer, the late Dean Graves, to make ample inclusions of Herschel's letters. Still, his life, as Miss Clerke modestly says, has yet to be written; and, as we are at liberty to judge from her excellent success with the little volume now before us, no one could tell the fascinating story of that life more entertainingly than Miss Clerke herself. Her evident sympathy with the breadth of his aims in physical investigation, her accurate knowledge of methods, and her singular felicity of expression all fit her worthily for this noble task.

But to return to Sir William. Miss Clerke has admirably told the authentic anecdote of the odd old German organ-builder, Schnetzler, who, exasperated at the staccato performance of Herschel's rival, became wild with delight when, on ascending to the loft, Herschel took from his pocket two leaden weights with which he held down an octave, all the while improvising a majestic counterpoint. "I vil luf dis man," cried Schnetzler, "because he gif my pipes time for to shpeak." And here is her crisp description of the very beginnings of Herschel's building of his own telescopes (page 15):

"In June, 1773, when fine folk had mostly deserted Bath for summer resorts, work was begun in earnest. The house was turned topsy-turvy; the two brothers attacked the novel enterprise with boyish glee. Alexander, a born mechanician, set up a huge lathe in one of the bed rooms; a cabinet-maker was installed in the drawing-room; Caroline, in spite of secret dismay at such unruly proceed. ings, lent a hand, and kept meals going; William directed, inspired, toiled, with the ardor of a man who had staked his life on the issue. Meanwhile, music could not be neglected. Practising and choir-training went on; novelties for the ensuing season were prepared, compositions written and parts copied. Then the winter brought the usual round of tuitions and performances, while all the time mirrors were being ground and polished, tried and rejected, without intermission. At last, after two hundred failures, a tolerable reflecting telescope was produced, about five inches in aperture;

but those two hundred failures made the Octagon Chapel organist an expert, unapproached and unapproachable, in the construction of specula."

It was with this new instrument that, in the following March, Herschel began his astronomical work by an observation of the great nebula in Orion, the record of which is still preserved by the Royal Society.

Herschel married at fifty Mary Baldwin, only daughter of a London merchant, and widow of Mr. John Pitt. Her jointure, we are told, relieved him from pecuniary care, and her sweetness of disposition secured his domestic happi

time by Miss Clerke with some approach to suitable fulness. The wider sympathies of the son make his life of greater general interest than his father's, and not a single phase of his beautiful character escapes that careful touch which marks the perfect biographer.

Astronomy, before the Herschels, had been mostly dry formulæ and drier figures, and the irresistible momentum imparted to modern physical astronomy by the elder Herschel received a marked accession of impulse from the life and work of his brilliant son. Before their day, astronomers had mainly been content with inquiry as to precisely where the heavenly bodies had been and would be; anything beyond the crudest speculation as to what these orbs might themselves be, rarely occurred. Not only has the older astronomy not been neglected, but the new astronomy of the nineteenth century has made uninterrupted progress with every decade; and this broad movement, begun by the Herschels in England, was ably promoted by Arago in France, nor has America failed to lend a hand. Not only was a "knowledge of the construction of the heavens" the ultimate object of the elder Herschel's observations, but his conception of the sun, as ruler, fire, light, and life of our planetary system, was more than a half century in advance of his time, and no less prophetic. As early as 1801 he wrote: "The influence of this eminent body on the globe we inhabit is so great, and so widely diffused, that it becomes almost a duty to study the operations which are carried on upon the solar surface." In our day many great observatories are charg. ed with almost the sole duty of that study. Neither to the younger Herschel was astronomy merely a matter of right ascension and declination; of poising, clamping, and reading off; of cataloguing and correcting—a mere "inventory of God's property," as Thoreau has aptly said. "It was his peculiar privilege," remarked Dean Stanley in his funeral sermon, "to combine with those more special studies such a width of view and such a power of expression as to make him an interpreter, a poet of science, even beyond his immediate sphere."

Unintentionally we have left little space for Miss Clerke's chapter on Caroline Herschelprobably the best of all the brief treatments of her life extant. Traits of modest simplicity and singular self-effacement were preeminently hers, and the story of her self denial for her brother's sake will never grow old. Miss Clerke's welcome book is one which no philosophic student of modern astronomy can pass over, and its importance as pure biography places it in the first rank among the lives of famous pioneers in science.

The Oxford Church Movement: Sketches and Recollections. By the late G. Wakeling. With an Introduction by Earl Nelson. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.; New York: Macmillan. 1895.

IN the great variety of books that have grown up about the Oxford Movement there have been many degrees of interest. Mr. Wakeling's place is near the bottom of the scale. It comes very near to being a lucus a non lucendo, there is so little in it about the Oxford Movement, speaking carefully. Dean Church, in his admirable history of the Movement, dates its conclusion from the condemnation of Ward in 1845. Certainly its influence upon the church for good or ill went on for a long time after that, but, though nearly related to the Ritualististic Movement, it was quite a differ

ent thing. To read Pusey's 'Life and Correspondence' is to learn that he did not know the alphabet of that language of ceremonial -observance which has too frequently been called "Puseyism." The spirit of Newman and Kehle and Pusey in the early days of the Movement bad its best representative after 1845 in Dean Church, and his indifference to the Ritualistic Movement is a striking feature of his beautiful biography. But it is of the Ritualistic Movement that Mr. Wakeling writes almost exclusively.

One of his earliest recollections as a bov was of some mention of the Tractarians in 1840. It follows that he was still a boy when the Movement collapsed five years later, and conse-quently all we have here concerning the Tractarians proper must be a matter of reading or mere hearsay. This fact is much disguised, we trust not wilfully, by the manner in which the matter of the book is presented. Everything in the arrangement is helter-skelter, and we pass back and forth across the line which -divides the writer's personal knowledge from his second hand material without a hint of the transition. Matters which occurred before his birth are produced as if he bad sketched them on the spot. There is very little, how-ever, about the Tractarians that we have not had before in better shape. The real interest and value of the book, so far as it has any, lies in its exhibition of the development of Ritualism. Even here, so wide is the field from which the facts are grubbed, only a small part can go to justify the "Recollections" of the titlepage, and the whole is like the primitive chaos, without form and void. Only occasionally does a date emerge for us to cling to in the wide inundation of incidents and names.

The names are generally so unfamiliar that they go far to justify the complaint which has been made of the lack of conspicuous personality in the Ritualistic Movement. The incidents are trivial only to the unritualized mind, and there is something very entertaining in the naïve enthusiasm with which, page after page, such things are set down as these: "The choir were not in surplices till Advent, 1846." "The altar was the only part that there was a hope of making decent, and this, with the aid of dorsel and flowers at festivals, cross and candlesticks, was all that for some years was attempted." Many are the congratulations on the splendor of the later vestments, decorations, and observances, in comparison with the weak beginnings. Every change in this direction is recorded with the enthusiasm of one reporting moral victories. Here and there the triviality verges upon silliness, and, to make it more conspicuous, it is frequently injected into the body of a paragraph with which it has little or no connection, as if tco good to lose. How incidents of such slight im. portance could have been remembered by any body of good sound intelligence, it is difficult to conceive.

There is abundant evidence of improvement in the taste and decency of religious services. The parish clerk does not inform the rector nowadays between the prayers that the bear for the bear-baiting has arrived and that he is a fine animal. Daily service and weekly communion are the rule, and we should seek in vain for "the old country rector who, without the least conscious profanity, at the monthly celebration would consecrate nearly half a loaf, giving it at the end of the service to the poorer communicants who flocked to the altar rails." The heinousness of this, of course, de pends somewhat upon the point of view. One habit, not distinctly moral, seemed rather to

first venture in early manhood, after gradua tion from Union College, was as a school. teacher in Georgia. After a year of pedagogy he decided to enter the ministry, and went to study in Princeton Seminary. He married Miss Helen S. Coan (who survives him as biographer), and, after a six months' voyage, reached Ningpo in 1854, where Dr. D. Bethune McCartee had come as pioneer. In Ningpo, as a well-equipped speaker and writer of Chinese, he was finely prepared for his main life work in the province of Confucius. He died at his post and in his own home, in presence of his wife and among his books, after only a few hours of illness. His grave is at Chefoo. He visited Korea once and Japan several times. One is not surprised to have Mrs. Nevius write:

increase than to diminish under the new dispensation. "Mr. Keble mentions a saying of Justice Coleridge, ‘If you want to propagate your opinions you should lend your sermons; the clergy would then preach them and adopt your opinions,' and this has really been the effect of the Plain and other Sermons. It seems a pity that the price of the volumes was so high." "What a boon these sermons must have been to hard-working parish priests who certainly could not secure the leisure to write more than one good sermon a week!" This sermon-stealing sometimes led to painful situa tions, and a sickly gleam of humor plays for a moment across Mr. Wakeling's solemn page when he tells of a few sermons, printed with a memoir, which the subject of the memoir had not written. Mr. Wakeling has not exaggerated the triumph of ritualism in the English church. Ward was condemned and disgraced because, in his 'Ideal Church,' he insisted on the right of the Anglican to the free use of the entire Roman ritual and doctrine. That was just fifty years ago. Now there are hundreds of Anglicans making good his claim, with no one to molest or make them afraid. The Church of England has given the Church of Rome an effectual check in England by the encouragement of home manufactures as nearly as may be resembling those of the Eternally combined the ideal and the practical, deCity.

The Life of John Livingston Nerius. By Helen S. Coan Nevius. Fleming H. Revell Co.

IT sometimes happens that the best works accomplished by a man during his life are left out of his posthumous biography. We are not sure but that something like this has happened in the present instance. Dr. Nevius was for nearly forty years a missionary in China, and the story of his life as told by his wife is one of great moral and spiritual beauty. He entered Shan Tung, the holy land of the Chinese, the birthplace and tomb of Confucius, when the people handed back the tracts and books of the missionaries, saying, "We neither approve nor desire them." He died after having, with his colleagues, planted Christian churches throughout the peninsula. This biography pictures him as husband, friend, teacher, author, and preacher. Yet, unless the reviewer mistake the impression left on his own mind by the Chinese themselves and by nonclerical and non-professional English-speaking people in China, Dr. Nevius was equally powerful and influential in other ways. His practical common sense, his knowledge of manual expedients, his power and willingness to aid the Chinese in applying the arts and sciences of the West, his willingness to meet them on their own ground and to respect their traditions and their sensibilities, were not least among the secrets of his power. These made him everybody's friend, and kept his influence ever potent. Without belittling "the power of the Gospel" or the ordinary means used to spread it, it is none the less true that the quality of manhood in the messenger is, at first, even more potent than the message. Among the hundreds sent out as missionaries to China there is still much room where Dr. Nevius dwelt when on earth-at the top.

John Nevius was born in the beautiful region of the "finger lakes" in central New York, spending his boyhood between those named Seneca and Cayuga. The name Nevius, from the French Neve but Latinized, proves, along with well-supported traditional and documentary evidence, that the ancestral stock was Huguenot and Netherlandish. His

"As to the people of Japan, the opinion we formed of them so long ago [1860] has never changed. There is a certain shrewdness and vivacity and readiness to learn of others, in which they undoubtedly are superior to the Chinese; but in most respects I think the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom' are fully their equals."

Rather above the average of missionary bio. graphy in piquancy of style, liveliness of narrative, and quality of details, this literary picture of an American gentleman who so grand

serves the study of young men as it will command the delighted attention of Dr. Nevius's old friends. There are illustrations, a map, and a good portrait, but no index.

Side Talks with Girls. By Ruth Ashmore. Charles Scribner's Sons.

MISS ASHMORE speaks to girls with the wisdom of experience. This is just the sort of wisdom which, unless displayed with much discretion, girls are little disposed to profit by. The book is very discreet, the author putting herself easily on terms of equality with her audience, imparting advice tactfully, and, in every way, doing her best not to excite that rebellicus spirit which prompts the daughters of each generation to think themselves wiser than their mothers. The most valuable chapters (for they discuss matters beyond the ex. perience of many mothers) are those addressed to girls who leave comfortable homes in order to seek fortune in large cities. The descriptions of the life of the average actress, artist, and shop-girl are unexaggerated statement of fact. Any error is in understatement of the hardship and discouragement which the homeless working-girl must face, and of the demoralization which frequently ensues. For the girl whom actual necessity drives to scramble for a living as best she may, there are useful hints and suggestions of employment not leading to glory or fortune, but fairly remunerative and quite compatible with preservation of bodily health and personal decency.

In her comments the author emphasizes the joy of being a good girl at home, rather ignoring the sometimes besetting temptations to be a bad one. Fathers, mothers, and occasionally brothers, are not always compact of good temper, justice, and love; if they were, Miss Ashmore's talks would be largely superfluous, and the "Advanced Woman" whom she scourges might possibly never have come into existence.

BOOKS OF THE WEEK.

Almanach de Gotha, 1896. Gotha: Justus Perthes; New York: Westermann

Chambers, R. W. The Red Republic: A Romance of the Commune. Futnams. $1.25.

Channing, Grace E. The Sister of a Saint, and Other Stories. Chicago: Stone & Kimball.