others, ignoring the expediencies of parties and the selfishness of class interests, grapple with rigid social conditions, expound the laws of trade, declare an international code of procedure, and indicate the legislation that, conserving national sovereignty, will at the same time contribute to the world's peace, prosperity, and happiness. Dr. Denslow's masterly work belongs to the latter class of recent issues, and is therefore a book for statesmen, and all others who, irrespective of prior views or affiliations, desire to grasp the subject in its width, compass, and unfoldings. There is no phase of the economic problem, historical, philosophical, social, political, and moral, that has escaped the attention of the patient and thoughtful author; and there are no facts, or statistics, or principles, or state or national laws bearing upon any particular phase that seemingly have not been appropriated or consulted by this impartial historian of the subject.

It is not to be expected, however, that whatever may be the philosophy of man's temporal condition, and whatever lessons history infallibly teaches respecting that condition, all readers will agree with the author, either as to the facts quoted or the inferences they justify. As he alludes to " fiat money," supports the principle of "protection," holds up capital as an emancipator, and objects to socialistic theories concerning the American railway system, he may be judged harshly, and, notwithstanding the statesmanship of his presentation, be pronounced illogical in logic and untrue to the nature of things. All that may be required of him is that his facts be genuine, and, as they were obtained from documents accessible to all, of this no suspicion can be raised except by those who disagree with the stubborn report of history. With the theory of Adam Smith, Malthus's so-called law, John Stuart Mill's a priori interpretation, and a theoretical or metaphysical exposition of economic life, he has little sympathy; but with the facts pertaining to wealth, land, labor, taxation, values, and prices, and the laws governing them, he is in perfect harmony, and is as instructive as he is correct. Its facts respected and its laws observed, the individual will triumph over his temporal obstacles, and the nation will evolve into a solid and exemplary perpetuity.

Philosophia Ultima; or, Science of the Sciences. Vol. I. An Historical and Critical Introduction to the Final Philosophy as Issuing from the Harmony of Science and Religion. By CHARLES WOODRUFF SHIELDS, D.D., LL D., Professor in Princeton College. Third Edition, Abridged and Revised. 8vo, pp. 419. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Only a thinker of as large ability as the reputed author of this volume would be justified in undertaking to cover the breach, long existing and still wide and deep, between such antagonists as science and religion. Though his task was great he has performed it with both the patience and labor it imposed, and satisfied at least the parties of one side to the great conflict. He very properly first submits, not only the attitude of the philosophical parties in the contest, but the parties themselves, such as infidels, sciolists, dogmatists, apologists, and eclectics, clearly pointing out the indifferentism, eclecticism, and historical causes of the strained

relations between them. As a preliminary statement, part first is valuable, and prepares the reader for the profounder discussion of the philosophical theory of the harmony of science and religion. The positive philosophy, or theory of nescience as ignoring revelation, of which Auguste Comte was the exponent, he rejects; the absolute philosophy, or theory of omniscience as superseding revelation, of which Sir William Hamilton was the chief expositor, he likewise puts aside; but the final philosophy, or the theory of perfectible science as concurring with revelation, is that form of thought upon which in his judgment harmony is predicable and certain of fulfillment. Another volume elaborating the final theory will soon appear, when the student may possess a philosophic solution of a difference that long since should have disappeared, because truth is one and fraternal.

The Virtues and their Reasons. A System of Ethics for Society and Schools. By AUSTIN BIERBOWER, Author of The Morals of Christ. 12mo, pp. 294. Chicago: George Sherwood & Co. Cloth, $1 50.

As a text-book on ethics for schools, it is admirably arranged and comprehensive in treatment, fulfilling the purpose of the author. It is specific in the discussion of duties regarding others, including kindness, beneficence, forgiveness, truth, honesty, patriotism, etc.; and it is emphatic in representing the duties regarding self, such as self-development, industry, self-support, self-control, temperance, self-respect, purity, and conscientiousness. Its definitions are philosophically accurate; its distinctions broad and clear; its logic conclusive; and the ethical content wholesome. Avoiding religious teaching per se, it may be perused with profit by Catholic, Jew, and Protestant; but a narrow mind, forgetting its design, may object to the absence of the religious spirit. This, however, is a commendatory feature. To the statement that the idea of right is that which men consider best for them we stoutly object, and the author acknowledges its insufficiency. Morality has a higher ground than utility. Still, if some men can be led into right-doing because of self-interest it will be a gain to the world; but the race needs higher teaching, and must act from loftier ethics.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TOPOGRAPHY.

Patriotic Addresses, in America and England, from 1850 to 1885, on Slavery, The Civil War, and the Development of Civil Liberty in the United States. By HENRY WARD BEECHER. Edited, with a Review of Mr. Beecher's Personality and Influence in Public Affairs, by JOHN R. HOWARD. 8vo, pp. 857. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Price, cloth, $2 75; half morocco, $4 25. Mr. Beecher was the largest American figure of his time. He was more than a religious preacher: he was an actor in the civil drama of his country. He was more than an orator: he was a writer of commanding force, and a thinker of the first magnitude. He was a citizen, an author, a teacher, an editor, a minister of the Gospel, a patriot, and the heroic

representative of American manliness and aspiration. With infirmities glaring enough to be seen, and compromising himself all too often by the exercise of an enlarged erratic tendency, he sometimes lost prestige when he might have retained it, and by a seeming vacillation in his faith alienated followers who otherwise would have adhered to him to the end. But his personality and great political influence, as well as the pre-eminence he occupied in the American pulpit, cannot soon be forgotten; nor should the republic be ungrateful enough to overlook his services in its behalf in the days of its peril and progress. He was the friend of humanity, the lover of the poor, the advocate of the slave, the terior of treason, and the embodiment of imperishable devotion to his country. The addresses here given represent him more as the patriotic speaker than the pulpit orator. In one he denounces slavery with all the wrath of fire; in another he portrays the evil of compromise of principle; here he defines the modes and duties of emancipation; there he emphasizes the conditions of a restored Union; and in all the undercurrent of a transparent loyalty is strong and impetuous. Fortunately, the addresses he delivered in England and Scotland during the American Rebellion, in which his courage is at the front, and which terrified the English throne, are here reproduced, giving the reader a glimpse of the greatness of the man in emergencies such as tested his fidelity to conviction, and his heroism in the presence of foes. While these addresses do not reveal all of Mr. Beecher's resources, they are the open door to his inner life, the true life of honor, patriotism, and morality, and as such must be prized by the American citizen and the uncritical Christian. Mr. Howard's review of Mr. Beecher's personality and political work is impartial and thorough, enabling us to understand the great preacher without asking very many questions, and, as it reveals him in his positive and negative aspects, we can see how human he was, and yet what a tower of humanity he also was as he stood among men. The publication of these addresses will revive the memory of his life, and preserve it over to the generations to come.

Martin Luther: His Life and Work. By PETER BAYNE, LL.D. In two volumes, 8vo. Vol. 1, pp. 518; vol. ii, pp. 583. London, Paris, New York: Cassell & Co. Price, cloth, $2 50 per volume.

At last a standard work on the divinely called German leader of the Protestant epoch in Europe has appeared, containing not only the biography of the reformer, but also an historical and, as it progresses, a philo. sophical portraiture of the great Reformation, with the causes that invoked it and the permanency of the work accomplished by it. Granting that other men, strong and true, assisted in the separation of more than one European people from the dominion of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, Luther was the genius of the movement, and intensified it by a personal force wanting in his associates and all other helpers. Without him the Reformation had not been; yet with him it was sometimes compromised, if not enfeebled, by a harshness of method and a narrowness of Scripture interpretation, as the ground of his independence, that repelled not a few of

the devoted adherents of the providential emancipation. In an estimate of that mighty revolution that threatened the overthrow of Catholic influence every-where, the infirmities of leadership must be forgotten in the magnificent courage of those at the front and their unchangeable purpose to prosecute the undertaking to completion. Whatever personal disqualifications one may discover in the lives of such men for such work, there is no wavering of faith, no vacillation of purpose, no uncertainty as to the result in their minds, or in those of their followers. The enthusiasm of the Reformation was a quenchless fire that consumed in its spread the opposition of the foe, and it never expired while its leader led or lived. Dr. Bayne, unlike Köstlin, D'Aubigné, Von Ranke, and other biographers, exalts Luther in his supervision of the movement until he stands out as the commanding general of a nation's army, or as a veritable pope of a new and prophetic-born Church. In this scheme of exaltation his coadjutors occupy subsidiary relations, and seem to accomplish less than other historians have attributed to them. As the one rises into conspicuous authority the others sink into commonplace, or assigned, positions. This distribution of influence is occasioned by the endeavor of the author to find the embodiment of the Protestant principle, and in none of his co-laborers is it so intensive and causative as in Luther. He is the Moses of the reform movement, eclipsing those nearest him and most serviceable to him. Besides, these volumes are written with less respect to the Reformation than to the instrument of it, which accounts in part for the conspicuous position of the great leader. By this we do not mean that one will not understand the Reformation from the reading of these volumes-for, without assuming to be historical, it is essentially an analysis, keen and discriminating, of the epoch and the movement-but that the leader will seem greater than the event, because he is more prominently recognized by the author. But, as the history of the Reformation should be rewritten, and Luther's life and character have a new avowal and vindication, we indorse these volumes, commending them to Roman Catholics, whose abuse of their foe was never equaled except by the Jews in their denunciations of Jesus; to unbelievers, who confuse all religions into a mass of absurdities, and to Christians, who may see in the rise of the day-star of the Reformation the bidding of Providence, and who may hear the words of Luther the thunderous echo of a divine messenger, robed in the garments of freedom and dwelling in the mountains of holiness.

My Story of the War. A Woman's Narrative of Four Years' Personal Experience as Nurse in the Union Army, and in Relief Work at Home, in Hospitals, Camps, and at the Front, during the War of the Rebellion. With Anecdotes, Pathetic Incidents, and Thrilling Reminiscences, portraying the Lights and Shadows of Hospital Life and the Sanitary Service of the War. By MARY A. LIVERMORE. Superbly Illustrated with Portraits and numerous Full-page Engravings on Steel and Fine Chromo-Lithograph Plates. 8vo, pp. 700. Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington & Co. Price, cloth, $350. The above description, taken from the title-page, accurately sets forth the purpose of this volume, but it should be added that so different is it from

any other record of the war, narrating experiences and phases of military life usually relegated to hospital statistics or omitted altogether, no one's history of the national struggle for existence can be considered complete without this superb addition to his library. Nor does it merely contain new experiences of a nurse; it is practically a new history of the great conflict: not a philosophic analysis of the causes that incited it, nor a technical report of its battles, nor an historian's methodical presentation of its progress; but a pathetic and yet virile revelation of the sufferings, hardships, and sacrifices of the men who ventured all for the country's safety and deliverance. It brings to light also the fact that without woman's co operation, without her philanthropy and patriotism, without the uprising of the home against the rebellion, the victory over it would have been delayed, and perhaps never secured. To the heroic women of the land, as well as to the soldiers in the field and the statesmen at the head of affairs, does the united country owe an imperishable debt of gratitude and love. Mrs. Livermore writes as one speaking with authority. Intimately related to the Sanitary Commission, her husband a journalist, she herself a nurse in camp and on the field, having access to the official documents required to verify her statements, and personally acquainted with President Lincoln and the prominent generals of the war, besides having a thorough knowledge of the hospital service and of the Northern spirit of sympathy with the suffering, she was abundantly qualified to prepare the book now issued by the house herein named. On their own account the publishers have introduced many battle-flag plates into the volume, giving the reader an idea of the flags captured from the Confederates as well as of the flags that floated over and cheered the armies of the North. It is sufficient to say that he who is still interested in the method of his country's salvation from slavery and disunion will linger over these pages with tears and a renewed devotion to the cause of human liberty and progress.

The Chief Periods of European History. Six Lectures Read in the University of Oxford in Trinity Term, 1885. With an Essay on Greek Cities Under Roman Rule. By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M. A., Honorary D.C.L., and LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History, Fellow of Oriel College, Honorary Fellow of Trinity College. 8vo, pp. 250. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. Price, cloth, $2 50.

While Europe may be observed with an intellectual opera-glass from many stand-points, the distinguished lecturer was fortunate in choosing the Roman power as the center of his inquiry, first considering Europe prior to Roman influence in its affairs, then recognizing the sovereignty of that influence, and afterward tracing its downfall and extinction. The student will be profoundly impressed with the contrast drawn between Roman pre-eminence in Lecture II and the Romeless world in Lecture VI, án illustration of the rise and fall of the greatest national power in history. As a repository of facts the book is superior and trustworthy; in the grouping of facts in their historical relations and in the political and moral lessons the events are made to teach, or at least suggest, the