BOOK REVIEWS. THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE AND OTHER ESSAYS. | By John Fiske, M.A., LL.B., Assistant Librarian, &c., at Harvard University. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. Mr. Fiske has won for himself a foremost place among American writers on physical science, and the present volume of essays bears testimony not only to his ability as a physicist, but to his versatility of mind and critical powers as well. The present collection of essays-fragments gathered up from reviews and magazines-ranges over a large variety of subjects, physical science, philosophy, theology, biblical and historical criticism, music, art in general, and sociology. As might be expected, the author is not equally profound or accurate in his treatment of so heterogeneous a list of topics. To the first two essays of the fourteen we must give the prior- | ity as to both ability and interest. Though they come first in the volume, they are probably, if not certainly, the latest in order of time, having first appeared in recent numbers of the Atlantic Monthly. Taken together, they constitute a masterly and suggestive review of the remarkable volume entitled "The Unseen Universe," which has received recent notice in this magazine, combined with very sound criticisms on the materialistic arguments which that volume was designed to combat. Mr. Fiske points out that however ingenious is the hypothesis defended by its authors, it is and must remain purely a hypothesis, without a shadow of tangible intellectual proof. But he shows, also, that the arguments adduced by materialists against immortality, from the absence of any scientific evidence in favour of the persistence of physical phenomena when the material conditions are wanting, are utterly worthless. For as we have "no organ or faculty for the perception of soul apart from the material structure and activities in which it has been manifested throughout the whole course of our experience," any such scientific evidence would be, in the nature of things, utterly impossible. And, as he truly remarks, "the entire absence of testimony does not raise a negative presumption except in cases where testimony is accessible." He therefore considers that science leaves this momentous question an entirely open one, to be decided rather by the moral and spiritual part of man's nature than by a scientific analysis which must fail utterly in such a sphere, or even by a scientific hypothesis which is by no means inconceivable, but which can never be proved. Mr. Fiske's criticisms of Scripture are by no means equal to his criticisms in science. He is troubled with the excessive tendency to analysis that besets many acute minds, leading them to reject everything that cannot be entirely understood, and to dissect spiritual truth till they destroy its vitality, and in consequence are led to throw away its empty shell-forgetful, as to the first, that when even external nature shows us glimpses of incomprehensible mystery, a Revelation proceeding from the same Source might surely be expected to do the same. He rejects Miracles and the Resurrection, with all the dogmatic truth which is linked with these. It is an instance of the extent to which criticism, even when apparently honest, can lead away even able and acute minds, that he should indulge in such daring assumptions as that the Apostle John (whom he believes to have written the Apocalypse, but not the Fourth Gospel) was "the most narrow and rigid of Judaizers,"" intensely hating Paul and his followers;' and that "the Epistle of Jude is solely a polemic directed against the innovations of Paul!" It may well be wondered how any careful and candid reading of this epistle could have permitted such an extraordinary misinterpretation of its aim. The individuals denounced by Jude are nameless men, who crept in unawares, who were Antinomians and Unitarians,not one of which characteristics applies to Paul, but all of which do apply to opponents of Paul repeatedly denounced by him. The following echo from Matthew Arnold is, however, profoundly true, and cannot be too strongly impressed :-"Faith, in Paul's apprehension, was not an intellectual assent to definitely prescribed dogmas, but, as Matthew Arnold has well pointed out, it was an emotional striving after righteousness, a developing consciousness of God in the soul, or in Paul's phraseology, a subjugation of the flesh by the spirit." This, at least, is one of those fundamental truths on which men of the most diverse schools of thought can find a common standing groundan earnest, let us hope, of a growing harmony of thought in the future. 66 The essay on Historical Difficulties" touches on some curious questions of history, as, for instance, whether the Caliph Omar really destroyed the Alexandrian library (it would ap pear that he did not), and as to whether Jeanne d'Arc was really burned at Rouen, or escaped, survived, and was married, like any ordinary maiden, as some old disinterred papers would seem to suggest. The reviews of Mr. Motley's continuation of the History of the Netherlands, and of M. Taine's Philosophy of Art, are both interesting; but more interesting than either is the essay entitled "Athenian and American Life,","—a consideration of the contrast between the joyous, leisurely, physically healthful, mentally tranquil life of the old Greeks, and the anxious, high-pressure, wealth-worshipping, health-sacrificing, nervously overstrained life of the modern Americans. Mr. Fiskę reads his countrymen some lessons which they need, would they only profit by them. "Industrial barbarism, by which I mean the inability of a community to direct a portion of its time to purposes of spiritual life, after providing for its physical maintenance, this kind of barbarism the modern world has by no means outgrown. To-day, the great work of life is to live; while the amount of labour consumed in living has throughout the present century been rapidly increasing. Nearly the whole of this American community toils from youth to old age in merely procuring the means for satisfying the transient wants of life. Our time and energies, our spirit and buoyancy, are quite used up in what is called 'getting on.' Success in life' has become synonymous with 'becoming wealthy.' A man who is successful in what he undertakes, is a man who makes his employment pay him in money." "We lack culture because we live in a hurry, and because our attention is given up to pursuits which call into activity and develop but one side of us. Our literary workers must work without co-operation, they must write in a hurry, and they must write for those who have no leisure for aught but hasty and superficial reading." "I believe enough has been said to show that the great complexity of modern life, with its multiplicity of demands upon our energy, has got us into a state of chronic hurry, the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the shape of less thorough workmanship and less rounded culture." That such thoughts need to be considered among our neighbours, no one will question. Are we not beginning to need to consider them in Canada also? ance of a collected edition of the half-dozen papers recently contributed to Harper's Magazine by Mr. Rau, under the above title, is consequently timely, and likely to fill, at least partially, a gap which needed closing up. Investigators in this fascinating branch of science have, as is well known, divided the period during which man has existed on the earth into three principal eras, known as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. This classification, though in the main accurate, is probably not complete for the whole earth. The use of copper must almost certainly have preceded that of bronze, and, accordingly, a Copper Age should be interposed between those of Bronze and Iron. Evidence of the use of copper at a time preceding that of bronze has, in fact, been found by General Cesnola, in Cyprus; by Schliemann, at Hissarlik, the presumed site of Troy; and also on this continent and elsewhere. Furthermore, the Stone Age itself is subdivided into two clearly marked periods: an earlier, when the stone implements were merely rudely chipped; and a later, when they were polished. These are known respectively as the Old Stone, or Palæolithic, Age, and the New Stone, or Neolithic. Some writers, among whom Mr. Rau is apparently to be classed, believe even that the Palæolithic Age, in Europe at least, includes two distinct periods, to the latter of which they give the name, Reindeer Epoch. The Iron Age corresponds tolerably accurately with historic times; the Bronze and Stone being prehistoric. Of course it is not pretended that each of the three divisions existed everywhere simultaneously. At the present day many savage tribes are yet in their Stone Age; and doubtless the ancient Egyptians were in their Age of Iron while yet the inhabitants of Europe were altogether unacquainted with the use of metals. . What anthropologists mean by this division into ages is, that man, in the earlier period of his existence on earth, being unable to work metal, was obliged to fashion his tools and weapons of stone, or bone and horn; that later on, the art of working in copper and bronze (the latter implying a knowledge of the art of smelting tin) was introduced; and still later, the smelting of iron. The evidence in proof of this theory, and of the immense remoteness of the Early Stone or Palæolithic Age, when man existed contemporaneously with animals now extinct, such as the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave bear, and the cave lion, is now so enormous in quantity and so unimpeachable in quality that it is hardly possible, in spite of the countervailing considerations urged by such writers as Mr. Southall, to fairly digest it without becoming a convert both to the theory and to the belief in the vast antiquity of the human race. The evidence comes from nearly every spot of land on the earth's surface. It has been found in every country in Europe; throughout the continent of America, from California, Lake Superior, and Newfoundland, to Tierra del Fuego; in Africa, from Egypt and Algiers to the Cape of Good Hope; and in various countries of Asia-including Palestine, Asia Minor, India, China, and Japan. As regards quantity, we may instance the fact given by Mr. Rau (p. 138), that the collections in Denmark are thought to contain about 30,000 articles of stone belonging to the Neolithic Age, found in that country alone, besides large numbers sent to museums in other countries. In glacial periods, thus lasting about 70,000 years. For ourselves, we have no doubt whatever that the years during which man has existed on the earth must be numbered, not by the thousand, but by the hundred thousand. We will even go so far as to venture a suspicion that before very many years have elapsed, indubitable proof will be discovered of the existence of man during the tertiary period; in which case the years of our race will have to be numbered by the million. To those wishing to investigate the interesting subject of the early life of man we can cordially recommend Mr. Rau's book, as being a cheap, excellent, and popular introduction to the more elaborate and costly works of Lyell, Lubbock, Wilson, Evans, Dawkins, Geikie, Croll, Tylor, Foster, and Southall. POETS AND NOVELISTS. By George Barnett As intimated above, Mr. Rau's exposition of the subject is only partial: he deals exclusively with the Stone Age, and, as the title of his book imports, confines his attention solely to Europe. Within the limits thus prescribed to himself, he has performed his task exceedingly well. the compass of six brief chapters he gives an accurate, tolerably full, and very interesting account of man as he existed in Europe during the Stone Age. He recounts briefly the researches in the caves of England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy; in the Kitchenmiddens (or refuse heaps) and tumuli of Den-literary studies of Thackeray, Mrs. Browning, mark and Scandinavia; and in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and the neighbouring regions. Descriptions are given of the various tools and weapons unearthed, and of the fossil remains of man and of the various animals, some of them extinct, and more formidable than any now existing, with which he was engaged in a ceaseless struggle for existence; and the author draws the natural inferences as to the mode of life and the grade of civilization attained by man in those far-off times. The descriptions are made clear by numerous excellent illustrations. It is perhaps to be regretted that Mr. Rau has not attempted any numerical estimate of the time that has elapsed since the men lived and died whose remains, after being buried for so many ages, rise up again and speak to us so eloquently. No doubt the investigation is a difficult one, and any solution hazarded must be merely tentative. Still, there is evidence in existence on which to base a conjectural estimate, and which has been dealt with for that purpose by Lyell. There seems to be no doubt that man existed in Europe in pre-glacial, or at least in inter-glacial times. Mr. Rau gives (p. 33) one item of evidence, from Switzerland, in proof of this fact; and another (the human thigh-bone discovered in 1873, in Victoria Cave, Yorkshire) is adduced by Mr. Geikie in his "Great Ice Age” (p. 510). Now, Mr. Croll seems to have definitively shown that the last glacial 'epoch (or rather series of epochs, for there were probably two or three in comparatively close connection) extended from about 150,000 years ago to about 80,000 years ago; the whole series, together with the warm inter Mr. Smith has here reprinted a series of Peacock, Hawthorne, the Brontes, Fielding, and Buchanan, with an additional notice of some English fugitive poets. He has expressed the accepted judgments of the day on the several writers whose works he discusses, and for people who are not familiar with the current critical literature, the book is not without value. But to others who may naturally expect an interesting book on such pregnant themes it is rather disappointing. Mr. Smith, in his remarks about Thomas Love Peacock, complains that modern criticism is deficient in vis. This is precisely the defect we are painfully conscious of in Mr. Smith's own critical essays. The vital force of originality is wanting, nor is its place supplied by the possession of any other remarkable virtues. We fear, indeed, that the unpardonable sin of dulness might be laid at his door, were it not for the quotations with which he illuminates his essays, and which are the part of the book we can conscientiously commend. Mr. Smith claims for his book the merit of "exhaustiveness. We fear it cannot be called exhaustive in any but an uncomplimentary sense, nor is it likely that the labour of many critics yet to come will exhaust such perennially interesting subjects as the genius and works of Fielding or Thackeray. Mr. Smith further claims to have been the first to recognise the merits of Thomas Love Peacock, and he evidently regards him with some of the enthusiasm of proprietorship. Peacock is most widely known as the author of a satirical novel called "Headlong Hall," in which he sets in a ridiculous light the popular theories of his time, under the form of dialogues between such transparent personages as Mr. Crotchet, Mr. MacQuedy (Mac Q. E. D.), the Rev. Dr. Folliott, &c. He did not possess much creative power, and his satire is not of the kind that lives. Among the objects of his sarcasm, clergymen occupy a conspicuous place, and Mr. Smith seems inclined himself to discharge a few shafts in the same direction. Mr. Smith's remarks on this topic will serve as a specimen of his style and discernment. The life of the parson of sixty years ago was, he tells us, passed between fox-hunting, card-playing, and drinking. Since then the muscular Christian and other excellent men have arisen. But there have also sprung up with them men almost of a more mischievous type than the old fox-hunter. There are too many pitiful shepherds left who, in quiet, out-of-the-way villages, make the life of the poor a burden to them. These continually enlarge on the duty of labourers to keep their proper stations, and to revere the clergy and the squirearchy, the former of whom are to provide for them their opinions and their spiritual food, the latter their temporal comforts. Many of the latter clergy are, in the eyes of sensible men, little less contemptible than the old; the venue of our con- | tempt has been changed, that is all." The good old parson who cared more for his dinner than his flock was a worthier subject of satire than the most conservative of his successors. Peacock's satire was no doubt relished when it first appeared, but it is not very entertaining now. His humour is lively enough, but it is wanting in depth. The advance of ages has brought with it certain new evils, and placed mankind in some respects in a worse position than our ancestors occupied; but we do not discern much truth or point in the following bit of satire : 66 Forsooth, this is the enlightened age. Not any how! Did our ancestors go peeping about with dark lanterns, and do we walk about at our ease in broad sunshine? What do we see by it which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing? We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We see five hundred transported where they saw one. We see scores of Bible Societies, where they saw none. We see men in stays, where they saw men in We see prisons, where they saw castles. In short, they saw true men where we see false knaves. They saw Milton, and we see Mr. Sackbut." armour. This work comprehends in an octavo volume of about 700 pages, the history of the Greeks from the earliest times to the death of Alexander the Great, with a sketch of the subsequent history down to the present decennium. The work is intended for the higher class of students, and is not a mere record of events and circumstances connected with the life of the Hellenic race; but the effort has been most successfully made to connect together these facts, so as to present them in their natural and philosophic sequence. Nor is the work in any sense a compilation, either from Grote or Thirlwall, or even from the author's larger history in four volumes, of which, in fact, but two have as yet been published. It is in every meaning of the word a new work, based upon an independent examination of the original authorities. Mr. Cox is a man of marvellous industry and enormous erudition, and he has made himself a thorough master of his subject; and he sometimes takes occasion to call in question the opinions of his predecessors, and to express views at variance with those generally received; and in these cases his presentation of the subject is well worthy of attention. Of course, in a volume of this kind, it would be absurd to look for that minute detail and those full discussions of moot points which one finds in the works of Grote and Thirlwall, and also in the larger history of Mr. Cox himself. But nevertheless, the author's style and manner,without any straining for effect, is so clear and pleasant, that the reader's interest is kept up in the story-a story full of poetic emotion, philosophic contemplation, tragic situation, and dramatic circumstance; and fruitful in lessons-social and political-even to us living in the light of the nineteenth century. In his preface, the author tells us that he has attempted to bring "the actors in this great drama before the reader as living persons with whom we may sympathise, while they must be submitted to the judgment of the moral tribunal to which we are all responsible." In the first half of this attempt the success of the author is unqualified but in submitting his various characters "to the judgment of the moral tribunal to which we are all responsible," it appears to us that the author's fervid moral feeling sometimes leads him to the practical unfairness of subjecting the ancient Greek to the criterion of the morality of the nineteenth century after Christ, instead of to that of the fourth and fifth centuries before Him, and that his judgments are, by consequence, sometimes unduly harsh. Á similar want of moral perspective was noticeable in the author's small work on "The Crusades." The error, if it be an error, is on the right side; and is, of course, one of which the author himself is unconscious. Mr. Cox is quite above the petty arts of the partisan historian, and never attempts to slur over or evade difficulties, or to snatch a verdict by means of a rhetorical flourish. On the contrary, opposing difficulties are resolutely met, and argued in the plain language of logic and critical enquiry. The work is very readable, and is in all respects suited to the requirements of the general student; and its numerous independent opinions will supply ample food for thought, even to the advanced scholar. The maps and chronological table are valuable, and the index is carefully compiled and sufficiently full. Altogether, the work is unquestionably the best history of Greece for students now in existence, and must in time supersede all others. HIDDEN PERILS: A Novel. By Mary Cecil Hay. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1876. Whether the title of this novel is intended to imply that the perils to which it refers are hidden from the readers of it, or its characters, we do not know; but we are inclined to adopt the latter interpretation; as the perusal of a very few pages brings fairly into view some of the "rocks ahead " upon which its personages are bound to split. We do not by any means urge that this is a fault. On the contrary, to allow the circumstances of a story to be to a great extent the given quantity, and their effect upon certain characters the unknown, presents to the novelist a problem to work out which brings into play much higher faculties than are required for the mere construction of an interesting plot. For the latter little more than ingenuity is necessary; but the former is in every sense a high art. We do not think that the author would fall under the category of novelists who devote more attention to characterstudy than to plot, nor can she be ranked among those who combine the two. She would seem to be a story-teller, purely and simply, and, as such, decidedly successful. In the present instance, as we have said, the leading features of her plot are very transparently veiled from the first; and her characters are different from those of a hundred other novels only as the familiar face of "stock" actors are different under each new "make up." Yet there is no doubt that she contrives to sustain our interest throughout the story. As "Hidden Perils" is essentially a modern novel, it is refreshing to have its scene laid in rural England, instead of in the capital, or backwards and forwards over thousands of miles with the restlessness so much in vogue now-a-days. We are at least spared, in a country story, the "fastness and the cynicism which seem inevitably to find their way into novels of town life of the present day, and which hold the mirror up to an artificiality of life which it would be pleasant to persuade ourselves had no actual existence. But we have in compensation the good old crime of murder committed with such frank impetuosity that the author evidently expects that no one will think much the worse of her hero, Rourke Trenham, for it. We had not the highest opinion of him before he made this little faux pas. Being engaged to Una Gaveston, a painfully gentle, limp young lady, who comes fairly under the description, 66 too good to live," he falls in love with her younger sister, Lorraine, passionately avows to her his affection, and yet marries poor Una with becoming resignation. She has so little life about her that the early transition into even less, is easy and natural. When it has taken place, Rourke loses no time in endeavouring to persuade Lorraine that it is "bigotry" which has rejected the bill to legalize marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and that love is stronger than all law. We have no wish to wrong the author by giving an abstract of her story, but as much of it as we have thus told, en passant, will serve to indicate that the present work may be justly classed among sensational" novels; and that epithet always implies the relation of very dubious conduct, reconciled by some unaccountable process with high-wrought moral sentiment. The early portion is the most pleasing. Towards the end there is a general change of disposition among the characters which is not for the better, and which is very insufficiently explained by their situations. Lorraine, as we are first introduced to her, is charming. She is an impulsive, warm-hearted child, held in check by a father who loves her little, and by an eccentric old aunt who represses every sally of her natural joyousness. Her attempt, in the strict loneliness and monotony of her aunt's house, to make a companion of a simple, awkward, countrified housemaid, is described with considerable feeling and humour. When we meet her again, after a supposed interval of seven years, she is the same girl only in name, and has certainly not improved. Similarly with Athol Vere, perhaps the best drawn, and certainly the most lovable character in the book. He is a young doctor, struggling to improve the res angustæ domi, and kept under by the extravagance of a selfish and thoughtless sister. His self-denial, uprightness, and perseverance enlist our sympathy, and it is to be regretted that he is finally metamorphosed into an ingenious plotter to defeat the ends of justice in sheltering his friend Rourke. There is at least something original in his plan to save Trenham from hanging; for a prominent feature of it is knocking him on the head so that he subsequently dies, as far as we can glean, from the effects of the blow! "Hidden Perils" does not in any respect rise above the average of the novels pouring |
