Cappello to distinguish her from any uncrowned

courtesan.

Is it this sensuous neutrality, this want of any heroic or princely quality, that has made history treat her with a sort of contemptuous indulgence? She is not named with Messalinas and Catherines. She seems rather a splendid and poisonous flower, blooming without will of its own, in the hot air of that magical Medicean garden of all evil delights, and so she must be drawn in fiction, not as an unsexed monster, wickedly grand, but as a very woman, rarely endowed by nature with beauty and guile, and rotted through by the element of refined depravity in which she lived. The subject is not an inviting one. It is the kind of theme which, if treated by a man, would suit the voluptuous frenzy of Swinburne's verse, or the subtlety with which Browning melts down some crude mass of evil into a solution of human contradictions. As treated by the author, it is managed in a woman's best way, with all the grace and tenderness that the subject can possibly admit, yet with some loss of force under the compulsion to avoid coarseness. The study of Bianca's character unfolding from the cankered germ into full-blown corruption, is thoroughly womanly. Mere passion is not alluded to, mere ambition just glanced at. Her childish regret for lost luxuries passes into an unreasoning wish for revenge on her enemies. The love she feels for Pietro seems love for the sake of loving, not for the sake of its object, and does not lose all the quality of love when it attaches itself to a higher one. In the scene of her triumph, when Venice sends gifts and congratulations on her marriage with the Duke, she cares less for them than for the delight of humiliating another woman. And in the last hour, when by a fatal exchange the Duke drinks the poison prepared for another, love is still stronger than disappointed revenge, and makes her bold to follow him.

It may be pardoned to the author if, for the sake of symmetrical construction, she has assumed Bianca's guilt as to the crimes that are least clearly proved among those of which she was suspected, and has left out of view others that rest on historic certainty. Whether she really intended to poison the Cardinal, her brother-in-law, is a doubtful ques.

The introduction of the Archduchess Jeanne gives occasion for some of the best passages in the poem, full of pathos, and of that pity which is the more manageable element in tragedy. The vacillating, impressible character of the Duke is well sustained, and Serguidi's pliant selfishness, equally serviceable to the prince's passion, and his brother's craft, gives a carefully-drawn picture of the Italian courtier. But the repulsiveness of the subject takes it out of the range of that delicacy and simplicity that characterize the author's other poems. We feel that she shrinks from the depths of that horrible history. There is a pantomime of bad acts, but no sufficient analysis of bad motives. Any study of these would have laid bare mere groveling and sensual instincts, unwelcome to refined taste. Therefore the author's treatment of the course and catastrophes of her theme betrays her hesitation, indicating that she has not put forth all her powers in full sympathy with the demand upon them, and inspiring regret that they were not devoted to some subject of more human and natural interest.

Mrs. Somerville's “Recollections."*

It is impossible to read this charming book and not contrast it with the melancholy biography of Mill. In spite of the disadvantage of her sex and her struggle for education, long thwarted by relations and hampered by want of means and teachers, Mrs. Somerville seems to have enjoyed knowledge more thoroughly, besides getting a great deal more out of life, than the philosopher did, with his relentless training and cold self-control. Her personal recollections extend over nearly a century. During this time she saw and knew most of the men in English society and many of those on the continent, who contributed to the mental growth of that long period. From Byron to Browning, from Davy to Tyndall, from the theological onslaught on geology to Darwin and evolution, she took note of everything new in literature and science. Not as a curious inquirer only, but as an originator, and in her sphere of investigation the acknowledged peer of the highest contemporary minds, she deserves to be called, in Mill's own words addressed to her, one who has rendered inestimable service to the cause of women by

of their intellectual capabilities.

ing and assassination were hereditary, anything

monstrous might be possible, but it has never been proved that she was obliged to murder into it in order to marry into it. What is really established,

is that crime, or series of crimes, less fit for poetic representation, which she instigated in causing the death of her accomplices in the attempt to impose on the Duke the child of another woman as her own, and his heir.

The book is simply introduced as the life of a woman entirely devoted to her family duties and to scientific pursuits. It is made up of detached recol

lections, noted down by herself in her later years, with a few letters from her eminent correspondents. It tells with a charming reserve, yet with animated distinctness, her quiet life in and near Edinburgh, generations ago. Her early attempts at study were among the simple pleasures and strict fashions of two disheartening enough, for her friends thought such

*Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville. By her daughter, Martha Somerville. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1874.

notions of improvement foolish and unwomanly, and her first husband had no sympathy with her pursuits and a low opinion of her sex's powers. Fortunately he misunderstood and repressed her for three years only, and in her second marriage she found generous admiration and enthusiastic aid in her studies. In London she became known to the leaders of the intellectual world in science, art, and politics. The request of Brougham that she would write for the Society for diffusing Useful Knowledge some account of Laplace's Mécanique Céleste and of Newton's Principia, suddenly changed the whole character and course of her life. The work was completed under the title of The Mechanism of the Heavens, and its publication placed the author at once on a footing of equality and of friendship with the first astronomers and mathematicians of the day.

Living much on the continent in later years, she was constantly adding to her acquirements and enlarging her acquaintance among men of science and men of the world. Her account of her own work and of its appreciation by them is presented with admirable modesty. Indeed too little is told to satisfy the reader of what she did, and by no means enough of what she saw and enjoyed. With no regular narrative of her course of living and working, these detached recollections take the form of sprightly anecdotes and lively descriptions written almost as if her existence had been a mere pleasure-journey. And to Mrs. Somerville, with her great powers and untiring cultivation of them, her feminine tastes and accomplishments, and the friendly regard she attracted from the select ones of the earth, life must have been full of the purest delight. It was governed, too, by kindness and sincerity, and sustained by a fervor of religious feel ing after she had shaken off all that was dark and narrow in the creed of her first instructors for a purer and a happier faith. There are not many men but might well exchange all they are likely to gain from supposed preeminence of sex for the possibility of such an autobiography, and few women who will not be strengthened and encouraged and guided by reading it.

Sara Coleridge.*

LOOKING at the Coleridges from the moral point of view, Sara is the only one of the family whom we can thoroughly respect. We may admire her famous father, and her gifted brother, but it is impossible not to feel a little contempt for the one, and a great deal of pity for the other. She was scarcely a woman of genius, but her talents were remarkable, and of a kind not common among women. She was a good reasoner, and an admirable critic. No one had a more thorough appreciation of the Lake poets among whom she was brought up, and no one un

Memoir and letters of Sara Coleridge. Edited by her Daughter. Harper & Brothers.

derstood their foibles so well. Setting aside her reverence for her father, which was natural, she never erred in her judgments of them. She was the first to notice the marked falling off of excellence in the later poems of Wordsworth, and the first, so far as we know, to detect what we have always considered the blemish of his "Laodamia,"—its inherent coarseness. She worshiped Wordsworth, but, unlike most of her sex, she worshiped him intelligently. It is curious to contrast her letters with those of Miss Mitford, who was ten times the woman she was, as far as flesh and blood went, and not one-tenth as thoughtful or learned. Miss Mitford's letters are full of every day life and enjoy. ment, redolent of fresh fields, and sparkling with gossip; hers are as cold and unsubstantial as a lecture on metaphysics. Miss Mitford blunders over and over again in her criticisms; she is so impartial that we almost think she has no likings and no dislikings. She has no sense of humor, and whatever sympathies she has are rather of the head than heart. We know that she was a good woman, but we are sure that we should have liked a much faultier woman more. We look at the portrait of her that faces the title page, and think-Here is a pure, refined woman, who should be the wife of a saint. She is much too good

"For human nature's daily food."

The impression is deepened as we read her letters, which, from being delightfully critical at first, become tediously theological at last.

Self Culture.*

PROFESSOR BLACKIE sets about his work in a plain, hearty, old-fashioned way that commands respect, and attracts liking. The book, though compendious, is not a mere hoard of maxims, and, while generalizing and illustrating largely, the author never quits his subject, nor misses the pith of it. The usual division into mental, physical, and moral culture is further carried out by a separation of each topic into sections, naturally fitting each other, and clearly arranged and elucidated. The tone is fresh and manly, perhaps in parts a trifle Scotch-manly. Out of Edinburgh the rest of the world will hardly accept oatmeal and pottage for the best possible physical food, nor content itself with Plutarch and the Proverbs as a mental aliment altogether free from the risk of nourishing prigs. The section on men of science, who reject religion, is a little hurriedly put together. It makes the mistake of confounding all men of science alike who discard theology with atheists. Is there much or any difference between the unknown supreme law which scientific men confess they can never reach, and the "energizing reason" which the author calls Life, and asserts to be the same as God? Indeed the rigidly

*On Self Culture. By John Stuart Blackie, Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh. New York, Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1874.

orthodox might see occasion in this very passage for a charge of pantheism. The section on the use and training of imagination is admirable, and the more didactically arranged chapter on the study of language contains excellent rules and suggestions. If the author goes a little out of his way to speak slightingly of the pages of Thackeray, and other popular novelists, he only unconsciously confirms Sidney Smith's fancy that nothing short of a surgical operation can introduce humor into a Scotch brain.

No doubt, however, from the professor's point of view, he is right in not allowing any novels whatever to interrupt more serious early training. For the grander minds and works of poets and philosophers, irrespective of their faith, he demands the sympathy and admiration of his readers, and nothing can be more liberal and manly, at the same time that it is reverent, than his whole treatment of the mean:: of attaining moral excellence, and his assertion of its absolute dependence on truthfulness and energy.

Prof. Moffat's "Comparative History of Religions."

THE method of comparison has yielded such ample fruit, both in enlarging and simplifying knowledge, and has conducted so many subjects from vague twilight into the clear light of science, that we are the less surprised, now-a-days, to hear of the "Science of Religion" and the "Comparative History of Religions." Of course, there could be no true comparative anatomy without a previous knowledge of the anatomy of species of animals; so there could be no real comparative history of religions, unless there were first a scientific knowledge of the books which professedly contain and teach them. That knowledge has been acquired within a very recent period, and we may say that a scientific comparison of results is only now possible to scholars. The labors of Oriental scholars, from Sir William Jones to our own Whitney, have only now culminated in opening the treasures of the Vedas of the Hindoos, the Zend-Avesta of the Persians, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the monuments of Egypt, the canonical and philosophical writings of China, and has only now permitted a critical comparison of all these with the Hebrew Scriptures, and of the respective evolution in historical races of the doctrines and tendencies of these books.

Professor Moffat modestly disclaims an original scholarship co-extensive with the subject he handles. He must of necessity depend on the materials gathered by a host of the foremost toilers of the world in this field. Yet his own life-long studies in both sacred and profane history, his well-known linguistic attainments, his broad and judicial cast of mind, and his very wide and versatile culture, prepare us to find, as we do in his work, a sin

A Comparative History of Religions: by James Moffatt, D. D., Professor in the Theological Seminary in Princeton, New York: Dodd & Mead.

gularly impartial and comprehensive grasp, and a luminous exposition.

The work itself consists of an examination, first, of ancient, then of later, Scriptures, and then of the progress, development and revolutions of faith in the province of history. Scholars and thinkers will be glad to get so much in so brief a space, relating, as it all does, to religion not only, but also to philosophy, sociology, ethics and race-development. And the mass of reading men, who have heard so much that is crude and false in regard to the socalled "Bibles of the World," will thank Professor Moffat for an invaluable service to them, in his fair and full comparison of these books, by which any plain man is enabled to see the principles they teach in common, and precisely where the Hebrew Scriptures tower above the products of human reason.

Two Volumes of Poems.*

WHILE the modestly presented Poems of Mrs. Johnson are obviously lacking in many particulars, they yet are the sincere, sometimes musical utterances of a refined and cultured mind-a nature alive to all manner of natural and artistic beauty, and of very wide sympathies.

The verses of E. D. R. are much less in number, but of a firmer texture than those first noticed. They are all pervaded by a tender religiousness; and some of them, besides having a graceful movement, are almost perfect in expression.

"Central Asia."

THE new volume in the "Illustrated Library of Travel and Adventure," edited by Bayard Taylor, and published by Scribner, Armstrong & Co., deals with Cashmere, Little Thibet and Central Asia-a region not hackneyed and of most curious interest. The volume is very attractively illustrated, is accompanied by a map, and has a postscript giving a succinct account of the recent conquest of Khiva.

"The Norwich Memorial."

THE first condition we make with a book is that it shall be an acquisition either to knowledge or letters. In the first-named department, at least, none can fail to recognize the value of those local histories which are becoming such a feature upon the pages of American bibliography. Of these the latest is a handsome quarto published by J. H. Jewett & Co., of Norwich, Conn., which records in print the "annals" of that ancient and picturesque town "in the great Rebellion of 1861-65."

The importance of an enduring record of the patriotism of this characteristic New England township, both to the historian and to the descendants of those who figure in its pages, can scarcely be overestimated. Nobly, as almost every northern

*Poems of Twenty Years, by Laura Winthrop Johnson. New York: De Witt C. Lent.

A Quiet Life. Poems. By E. D. R. New York: Anson D. T. Randolph & Co.

with fine steel portraits of Governor Buckingham, Admiral Lanman, Generals Birge, Harland, Ely, Dennis, Coit, and other gallant officers from Norwich who rose to distinction in the progress of the war. The compiler, Rev. M. McG. Dana, has taken pains with his work, which is, in the main, creditably done. He "drops into poetry," however, upon slight temptation and at short notice, and is inclined to err in the direction of over-detail, rather than by too rigid scrutiny of the material submitted to his hands.

Formation of Coal Deposits.

FROM a lecture delivered by Professor Williamson, before the British Association at Bradford, we extract the following interesting account of the formation of coal beds: It must be understood that, although the earth was popularly regarded as the type of everything that was staple and immovable, this was a very erroneous idea, for old Mother Earth was about one of the most fickle and inconstant of all the jades with which men have to deal. She was never still. It happens that at the present day there are certain regions, such as the volcanic dis- | tricts, which are always moving upwards, while there were others, like the coral regions, which were steadily going downwards. So it had been in the olden time. The coal beds appeared to have accumulated in the latter class of areas-the areas of depression, geographical areas-in which the earth had a tendency to sink below the level of the ocean. Upon such areas mud and silt had accumulated until the deposit thus formed had reached the level of the water, and then came what appears to have been highly necessary as a preliminary to the growth of the coal material-viz., a bed of blue mud. It was not known why that blue mud was there, or whence it came; but it was as certain as that garden plants required favorable soils for their development, that whatever its origin, the blue mud was the soil which seemed to have been preferred by the great majority of plants constituting the forests of the carboniferous era. In it the minute spores, or seeds, of the vegetables which afterwards became coal, germinated and struck root, until eventually the muddy soil was converted into a magnificent and almost tropical forest. As the forest grew, the spores fell from the trees, the half-dead leaves and decayed branches also dropped, and the stems themselves gave way; and thus an immense amount of vegetable matter was accumulated. This, in the progress of time, sank below the water level, and more mud being deposited on the coal, the new formation, in turn, underwent the same pro

cesses as its predecessors, until at length a new forest was formed, to share the same fate as that which had gone before it. This process was repeated again and again, until at length the various materials spoken of formed accumulations of rock and coal, varying from three, four and five, to as much as eight or ten thousand feet.

Specialization of Science.

THERE can be no question that the increasing specialization of the sciences, which appears to be inevitable at the present time, does, nevertheless, constitute one great source of danger to the future progress of human knowledge. This specialization is inevitable, because the further the boundaries of knowledge are extended in any direction, the more laborious and time-absorbing a process does it become to travel to the frontier; and thus the mind has neither time nor energy to spare for the purpose of acquainting itself with regions that lie far away from the tract over which it is forced to travel. And yet the disadvantages of excessive specialization are no less evident, because in natural philosophy as indeed in all things on which the mind of man can be employed, a certain wideness of view is essential to the achievement of any great result, or to the discovery of anything really new. The twofold caution, so often given by Lord Bacon, against over-generalization on the one hand, and over-specialization on the other, is still as deserving as ever of the attention of mankind. But in our time, when vague generalities and empty metaphysics have been beaten once, and, we may hope, for ever, out of the domain of exact science, there can be but little doubt on which side the danger of the natural philosopher at present lies. (Prof. Henry J. S. Smith.)

Sensation in the Spinal Cord.

GOLTZ observed that a frog, when placed in water the temperature of which is slowly raised towards boiling, manifests uneasiness as soon as the tem

perature reaches 25° C., and becomes more and more agitated as the heat inereases, vainly struggling to get out, and finally, at 44° C., dies in a state of rigid tetanus. If, on the contrary, the brain is removed, the creature sits quietly through the rise of temperature without manifesting any uneasiness and without making any attempt to escape, and finally expires at about 56° C. in a tetanic state. Goltz, thereupon, concludes that the spinal cord is not a center of sensation.

To this, George Henry Lewes objects that the brainless frog is not insensible to the heat, unless the insensibility is gradually produced; and even granting that there is insensibility, it is to temperature alone.

The Todas.

THIS pastoral hill-tribe of Southern India is thus described in a recent work by Col. Marshall: The general type of the Toda character is most unvarying; singularly frank, affable and self-possessed, cheerful yet staid. Theft and violence are almost unknown, and their quiet, domestic life is undisturbed by the wrongs of grasping, vindictive, overbearing natures. Their engagements to support their wives and children, though resting on mere promises, are kept through utter guilelessness and want of talent to plot. Toda society is simply held together by the strength of family affection.

A curious feature in the moral code of these people is the practice of infanticide, as regards the female children, rarely more than one or two girls in a family being permitted to survive. As a natural result of this, polyandry becomes a necessary sequence, and it is no uncommon thing for a Toda woman to rejoice in the possession of many husbands.

Milk and Well Water.

THE dangers of bad milk are engrossing so much attention just now, that there is reason to fear lest the far greater danger of bad waters should, for the time, be overlooked. We trust this serious error will not be committed. For one sample of dangerous milk, a thousand of dangerous water could be obtained in almost any part of the country. Let it never be forgotten that very few rivers or wells are safe sources of water supply, and that many are as unsafe as loaded fire-arms. The shallow wells of villages are among the worst pests of the country; and it is high time that a zealous and well-organized crusade should be brought to bear upon them. It is sickening, in most country places, to observe the uniformity with which the cesspool and well are made to stand side by side, as though each was necessary to the other; and to think of the twenty feet or so of foul, sewage-reeking soil through which the water percolates to its fetid bed. It is always possible to provide a city or town with good water, but in a village, where houses are few, money scarce, and intelligence scarcer, it is often a matter of exceeding difficulty. (Lancet.)

Pneumatic Dispatch.

THE pneumatic tube in London extends from Euston Square to the Post-Office, a distance of 4,738 yards. The machinery for operating the line is at Holborn, which is about one-third of the distance from the Post-office to Euston. The tube is five feet high and four feet six inches high. The wagons are ten feet long, and constructed to fit the tube closely by means of an india-rubber flange, and so form a sort of piston, upon which the air may act to the greatest advantage. The machinery consists of an engine having two twenty-four inch cylinders, with twenty inches stroke. The fan is twenty-two feet six inches in diameter, and makes two revolutions for each stroke of the engine. The trains are drawn from the extremities of the line by exhaustion, and propelled thereto by compression.

Physiology among the Chinese.

THE Mirror of Medicine, a well-known Chinese medical work, contains the following statements regarding the functions of various organs:

The spleen rubs against the stomach, and grinds the food; it also keeps up the proper degree of heat in the five tsang. It moves the muscles and the lips, and thus regulates the opening of the mouth; moreover, it directs our secret ideas, so that they become known to us.

The liver regulates the tendons, and ornaments the nails of the hands and feet.

The heart regulates the blood-vessels, beautifies the complexion, and by its means we are enabled to open the ears and move the tongue.

The kidneys govern the bones, beautify the hair of the head and open the orifices of the two yin.

The diaphragm being spread out like a membrane beneath the heart, and being intimately joined all round to the ribs and spine, thus covers over the thick vapor, so that the foul air cannot arise.

Memoranda.

MICROSCOPIC examinations of thin sections of various rocks is attracting a great deal of attention in Germany, and every mineralogist now supplies himself with a miscroscope and a cutting or rubbing machine for the manufacture of sections. A recent work, by H. Rosenbusch, on this subject, shows the varieties and peculiarities of the internal structure of rocks, as revealed by the microscope and polariscope.

A Paladilhe relates that foxes are tormented by fleas, and when the infliction becomes unbearable, they gather a mouthful of moss, and slowly walk backwards into the nearest stream until only the mouth is left above the surface of the water. The fleas meanwhile take refuge on the little island of moss, and when the fox is satisfied that they have all embarked, he opens his mouth, and the moss drifting away with its freight, the wily animal re