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strong opinions as to what was due by the govern- personage; but after the first chapter, in which he is ment to men of letters :

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In 1850 he wrote a letter to "The Morning Chronicle," which has since been republished, in which he alludes to certain opinions which had been put forth in "The Examiner.' "I don't see," he says, 'why men of letters should not very cheerfully coincide with Mr. Examiner in accepting all the honors, places, and prizes which they can get. The amount of such as will be awarded to them will not, we may be pretty sure, impoverish the country much; and if it is the custom of the state to reward by money, or titles of honor, or stars and garters of any sort, individuals who do the country service-and if individuals are gratified at having 'Sir' or 'My Lord' appended to their names, or stars and ribbons hooked on to their coats and waistcoats, as men most undoubtedly are, and as their wives, families, and relations are there can be no reason why men of letters should not have the chance, as well as men of the robe or the sword; or why, if honor and money are good for one profession, they should not be good for another. No man in other callings thinks himself degraded by receiving a reward from his Government; nor, surely, need the literary man be more squeamish about pensions, and ribbons, and titles, than the ambassador, or general, or judge. Every European state but ours rewards its men of letters. The American Government gives them their full share of its small patronage; and if Americans, why not Englishmen ?"

In this a great subject is discussed which would be too long for these pages; but I think that there now exists a feeling that literature can herself, for herself, produce a rank as effective as any that a Queen's minister can bestow. Surely it would be a repainting of the lily, an adding a flavor to the rose, a gilding of refined gold to create to-morrow a Lord Viscount Tennyson, a Baron Carlyle, or a Right Honorable Sir Robert Browning. And as for pay and pension, the less the better of it for any profession, unless so far as it may be payment made for work done. Then the higher the payment the better, in literature as in all other trades. It may be doubted even whether a special rank of its own be good for literature, such as that which is achieved by the happy possessors of the forty chairs of the Academy in France. Even though they had an angel to make the choice-which they have not-that angel would do more harm to the excluded than good to the selected. (Page 36.)

We have already spoken of the felicity and animation of Mr. Trollope's style, but it would be less than justice not to call attention in closing to the readableness of the book, apart from its interest in other respects. Though composed chiefly of literary criticism, the effort of reading it is as that involved in what the scientists have agreed to call " scious cerebration."

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THE characteristic which is most likely to impress one in reading the "Impressions of Theophrastus Such "* is its complete dissimilarity to anything that George Eliot has previously written. A thin veil of fiction is attempted to be thrown over it by attributing the lucubrations to an imaginary * Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By George Eliot. New York: Harper & Brothers. 16mo. Pp. 234.

outlined for us, we catch no further glimpse of Theo

phrastus Such, and he simply takes his place in the gallery of character-types which the author has endeavored to portray for us. In the later essays, in particular, the standpoint is frankly and undisguisedly that of a woman and of George Eliot, and we are under no obligation to distinguish between what she herself really thinks and feels and what she imagines that a given character under certain circumstances would think and feel. The opinions and the mental attitude are those of George Eliot in propria persona, and for this reason the book will probably have a greater biographical value than any other of her

works.

In attempting to define the character of the work we can get some help, perhaps, by borrowing a familiar analogy from another art. Our idea is, that these detached and independent essays are substantially identical with the sketches or "studies" which painters make as memoranda of passing impressions or scenic effects, with the design at some time of using them as material for a picture. In other words, we have here some neat and finished specimens of the raw material out of which George Eliot constructs her novels; and it is difficult to avoid the feeling in contemplating them that it was either the original design to present them to us in quite another stage of elaboration and development, or that they are what the scientists would call "arrested growths "— types which were not found adapted for working into a general scheme of life, but which are worth study as isolated phenomena. They are the better worth attention, moreover, because there are unmistakable signs that the "studies" are from nature that the sketches are really portraits, and not merely the creatures of the author's imagination. The several characters portrayed with such keenness and penetration number of individuals, but because each is repreare typical not because they are generalized from a sentative of an entire class and represents it so accurately that to describe an individual is to describe the class.

The relation which these sketches bear to the au

thor's more customary work is curiously exemplified, we think, in the chapter entitled "The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!" This, the longest, most earnest, and most labored essay in the book, simply presents argumentatively the proposition which was worked out dramatically in the Jewish sections of "Daniel Deronda"; it is the rationale, so to speak, of the seer, poet, and enthusiast, Mordecai. Both the essay and the novel are an attempt to discredit the hereditary and wellnigh universal antipathy to domestic life; and to show that they have exhibited Jews; to vindicate them on the side of history and through long ages of contumely and persecution those very qualities-patriotism, pride of race, and persistent memory of a glorious past-which distinThe idea of a restored Jewish nationality—a reësguish all the most advanced peoples of the world. tablished Judea-pervades the essay as well as the novel; and it is evident that the conception is one

which was not used dramatically to give a touch of ideal completeness to the imaginary figure of a Jewish enthusiast, but has really taken vital hold upon George Eliot's own sympathies. Whether the essay or the novel was written first, the relation between the two is unmistakable; and this, we think, throws light upon the original intent or purpose of the other essays.

It is probably superfluous to say that even in these sketches George Eliot does not content herself with surface traits and resemblances, but penetrates very deeply into the innermost recesses of character, particularly when she is tracing out some elusive and chameleon-like vice or frailty. Indeed, there would be something terrible and repellent in the relentlessness of her analysis were it not for a certain largeness of vision which enables her to see life steadily and see it whole," and thus seeing it to perceive that man, as Sir Thomas Browne said, is a bundle of contradictions, and that a man with a bad quality, however obtrusive and offensive, is not necessarily a bad man. "None all good, but good in all," may be said to be the moral and summary of the "Impressions of Theophrastus Such," and one who looks out upon the world around him with a like keenness of penetration will be apt to find ample confirmation of it.

Two books on color appear upon our table this month, and may conveniently be noticed together, though in aim and method of treatment they are quite distinct. Professor Ogden Rood's "Modern Chromatics" is a contribution to the International Scientific Series, and attempts to present in a popular and easily intelligible but strictly scientific

manner the fundamental facts connected with our perception of color. The nature of light is first carefully explained; then the different methods of its reflection and transmission; then the way in which it is broken up or subdivided in the spectrum; and, finally, the manner in which it acts upon the eye so as to produce the sensation of color. Many curious facts discovered by other observers are brought out, and a degree of exactness not previously attained has been secured by numerous and careful experiments devised and conducted by the author himself. The more important of these experiments are described in such detail and illustrated so copiously with charts and diagrams that they can easily be repeated or verified by those possessed of the necessary apparatus. But the most distinctive feature of the book is, that the author has not confined himself to the scientific aspects of his subject, but devotes a large share of his attention to its æsthetic or artistic side. For more than twenty years Professor Rood has enjoyed the privilege of familiar intercourse with artists, and during that period has devoted a good deal of leisure time to the practical study of drawing

* Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry. By Professor Ogden N. Rood. International Scientific Series. Volume xxvi. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12m0, pp. 329.

and painting, so that he is more successful than a mere scientist would be in endeavoring to present in a simple and comprehensible manner the underlying facts upon which the artistic use of color necessarily depends. The possession of these facts," he says, "will not enable people to become artists; but it may to some extent prevent ordinary persons, critics, and even painters, from talking and writing about color in a loose, inaccurate, and not always rational manner." It would be difficult, indeed, to say to which class the treatise will be most useful it will be very near the truth, perhaps, to say that it contains about as much science as the art-student will find serviceable, and about as much art as will enable the student of science to appreciate the full meaning of the facts with which he deals.

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One chapter of Professor Rood's work is devoted to the abnormal perception of color, or "Color-Blindness," and this forms the subject of a somewhat elaborate volume by Dr. B. Joy Jeffries, of Boston.* The subject has only very recently attained prominence, Dr. Jeffries's being the third monograph upon it yet published; but its importance may be realized when it is stated that experiments made on a large scale in three or four of the leading countries of Europe, and confirmed by the investigations of Dr. Jeffries in America, show that about one person in every twentyfive is partially or completely color-blind. The obvious and great dangers arising from the defect in railway employees, pilots, mariners, etc., where the safety of human life depends upon their correct interpretation of colored signals, are what give the matter its practical importance; and these dangers are so great as to demand the immediate attention of

the community. Dr. Jeffries thinks that many railway and marine accidents, otherwise inexplicable, are to be referred to color-blindness; and as the defect, if congenital (as it usually is), is incurable, there is no adequate protection but "the elimination from the personnel of railways and vessels of all persons whose position requires perfect color-perception, and who fail to possess this." He urges, therefore, that, "through a law of the Legislature, orders from State railroad commissioners, or by the rules and regulations of the railroad corporations themselves, each and every employee should be carefully tested for color-blindness by an expert competent to detect it. The test and the method of application should be uniform. All deficient should be removed from their posts of danger. Every person offering himself as an employee should be tested for color-blindness and refused if he has it. Every employee who has had any severe illness, or who has been injured, should be tested again for color-blindness before he is allowed to resume his duties. Periodic examinations of the whole personnel should also be required."

Dr. Jeffries's treatise is detailed and exhaustive, explaining (as does Professor Rood) the nature of our color-perception, pointing out the apparent cause

* Color-Blindness: Its Dangers and its Detection. By B. Joy Jeffries, A. M., M. D. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. 12mo, pp. 312.

of color-blindness and the different forms which it takes-commonly red-blindness or green-blindness, more rarely violet-blindness-discussing the various methods which have been devised for its detection, and furnishing a series of tests which are at once simple and conclusive. A considerable portion of his book is a translation from the work of Professor Holmgren, whose theory and system he adopts; but he has summarized all the facts gathered by all previous investigators, and has added to them the results of some twelve thousand independent examinations of his own. His book, in fact, is a complete recensus of the existing knowledge of its subject; and, as the subject concerns wellnigh every one, so the style of treating it is such as to make the book attractive to the general reader.

THE plan upon which Mr. Russell has constructed his "Library Notes "* is very simple, and, in view of its somewhat daring simplicity, the result is surprisingly good. He is apparently an omnivorous reader, and he has had the patience to copy out or note down all the passages which for any reason struck him as being impressive. These passages, touching upon an infinite variety of subjects, he has strung together, sometimes upon a very tenuous connecting thread, and sometimes with no connecting thread at all that can be discovered by the casual reader. There is an attempt at classification, it is true; but the several heads selected-Insufficiency, Extremes, Disguises, Standards, Rewards, Limits, Incongruity, Mutations, Paradoxes, Contrasts, Types, Conduct, Religion-show that the compiler adopted them for the special purpose of avoiding the limitations of any definitive theme. The chapters on Mutations, Paradoxes, and Religion, are fairly homogeneous and systematic; but the remainder are, as we have said, little more than an aggregation of passages from various sources which the compiler considered for one or another reason noteworthy.

Such being the case, the question naturally arises, How comes it that the book is so readable? As a general thing, nothing could be more dreary than collections of " elegant extracts"; yet Mr. Russell's book, though even more heterogeneous and helterskelter than usual, is in a remarkable degree readable and appetizing. The reason is not obvious, but it is to be found, we think, in the fact that Mr. Russell's taste is at once catholic and cultivated, that he knows just where to begin and where to end his quotations, and that he obtrudes himself upon the reader's attention no more than is absolutely neces

sary.

We have found scarcely a single one among the thousands of excerpts in his book which is not really worth preservation, and there are a neatness and precision about them which are very exceptional in such compilations. Disraeli is so anxious to lose

* Library Notes. By A. P. Russell. New edition, revised and enlarged. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. 12m0, pp. 402.

nothing that is good, that he fatigues by his diffuse. ness; Mr. Russell is well aware that he can not include all, and so contents himself with taking the kernel.

Aside from its readableness, "Library Notes" is a very convenient book to have at hand when the delinquent memory refuses to yield up those neat quotations or illustrative anecdotes which may be introduced so happily in writing or conversation. There is scarcely a conceivable topic about which there are not one or more passages, and what there is, is certain to be pointed, apposite, and suggestive. A copious analytical index furnishes an easy key to the treasures of the volume.

PROFESSOR HAECKEL, perhaps the most eminent among living German biologists, has set himself the difficult and important task of rendering the elementary principles and facts of evolution intelligible, not merely to special students of science, but to that wider circle of educated readers who, without any special training or acquirements, yet feel an enlightened interest in the vital questions of the time. In his "Natural History of Creation," published several years ago and recently reproduced in English, he traces in broad, general outlines the development of the whole animal and vegetable kingdom. In the "Evolution of Man," which he describes as a second and more detailed part of the previous work, he attempts to render in a like degree intelligible the entire history of man's development, both as an individual from the parental germ, and as an animal species (or "tribe," as he calls it) from the most rudimentary form of animal life. This stupendous pedigree, Professor Haeckel claims, can now be traced out by science with a degree of probability which amounts to substantial certainty; and he attempts to make each of its successive stages intelligible to the non-scientific reader, together with the double evidence in support of it drawn from the study of man's development as an individual (anthropogeny) and as a race or tribe" (phylogeny). The difficulty of such a task, as he admits, is very great, "because the defective natural scientific instruction in our schools, even in the present day, leaves educated men quite or nearly ignorant of the structure and arrangement of their bodies"; but there are few obstacles which attentive reading will not surmount, and of the work as a whole, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace says, "There is probably no book in any language which gives so full, so clear, and so perfectly intelligible an account of the earlier stages of the development of animals." The present translation is from the third German edition, which has been carefully revised by the author, and provided with a preface in which he meets the objections of various critics.

* The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny. From the German of Professor Ernst Haeckel. In Two Volumes. With Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo, pp. 467, 504.

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E loves me," murmurs Jeanne-"a little tion XV. Theorem: If two straight lines cut -not at all. He loves me."

The sun's rays, setting, transmute the dusk expanses of the Schwarzwald into gold; they turn to fire the pointed roofs and lozenged windows of Schloss Egmont; they kiss with softest bronze the head of Jeanne Dempster, as she stands, idly dreaming the dreams of seventeen, in one of the rose-shadowed, weed-grown terraces of the old Schloss garden.

A half-demolished daisy is between the little maid's fingers; a lesson-book, face downward, lies on the gravel at her feet.

"Er liebt mich." Despite her English birth, Jeanne speaks German like a true child of the Wald-sweet, incorrect, rippling German, deliciously unlike the classic Hanoverian dialect of suburban boarding-schools. “Ein wenig-nicht. Er liebt mich-"

"Deep, as usual, in Euclid!" says a man's voice, close behind her shoulder. “Neither Mamselle Ange nor Fräulein Jeanne being visible, I have brought the implements of study out of doors. But I would on no account disturb you. It were pity to break the thread of mathematical calculation so profound. Choose your own time to begin."

And, depositing three or four dingy-looking schoolbooks, a pewter inkstand, some quill pens, and a sand-box upon the balustrade of the terrace, Jeanne's master takes his place on the stone bench beside which the girl is standing, and proceeds quietly to light his meerschaum.

VOL. VII.-13

one another, the vertical or opposite angles shall be equal.' Then why try to prove it? Why need we go on with these hideous angles and right angles? Why do you insist-yes, Mr. Wolfgang, insist-on teaching me things that have no use and no beauty?"

"For the same reason that, were I Mamselle Ange, I would insist upon your learning to ride or dance," says Wolfgang coolly; "to promote the growth of muscle-mental muscle in the case of Euclid. If all girls were taught mathematics-"

"They would turn out beings as superior as all men?" interrupts Jeanne, lifting her dark eyes to the master's face. "The thought encourages me, Mr. Wolfgang. I will try my best to see the meaning of Proposition XV., theorem and all, by next lesson."

A smile, quickly suppressed, comes round the master's lips.

"The sarcasm, Miss Dempster, is somewhat personal, considering that I am the only man of education higher than a woodcutter's who as yet has crossed your path."

"The only man higher than a woodcutter? Du lieber, and what kind of life do you suppose that we have led, then, Ange and I? We spend a week in Freiburg every summer, sir, and we have gone through the Kur at Autogast; and once we went to Baden-Baden and saw the Emperor start for the Oos races-four black horses he had, and outriders. And I was so near, his Majesty

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took off his hat to me! And we went to hear 'Faust' in the evening, among a crowd of princes and royal dukes and HochwohlgeboMamselle Ange says I shall be taken to a ball at the Residenz next year; and we know old Baron von Katzenellenbogen, and—and the English chaplain's son at Freiburg," cries Jeanne, desperately seeking to swell the list of her male acquaintance by every available item that memory or imagination can supply.

"Emperors, royal dukes, Hochwohlgeborens, and the English chaplain's son at Freiburg!" repeats Wolfgang gravely. "I retract my observation. Your experience of life and of men has been vastly wider than I gave you credit for, especially in matters operatic." He glances with meaning at the petals that strew the terrace pavement. "You were rehearsing Marguerite's soliloquy when I interrupted you just now-satisfactorily, I hope?"

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"No, it is not sweeter," cries little Jeanne stoutly. "Purpur-wange' is hideous, positively hideous, to my ears. You pronounce English better than I do, sir-except the b's and p's. But, for all that, you are German at heart. You

His tone is one of banter, and the quick blood have not the English instinct as I have." springs to little Jeanne's cheek.

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"Horrible disillusionment! To bring you still more thoroughly from pleasant dreams to distasteful reality, and, as this is the last lesson you will have for a week to come, suppose we proceed to serious work. You are not in a humor for Euclid, it seems, so I will begin by correcting your Latin exercise. 'Est finctimus oritoris poëta'"-opening the page at which, with all the conscientiousness that is in her, his pupil has been working. "Oritoris !' An error of the gravest nature at starting. Perhaps you will give me your attention while I try, once more, to explain the use of the dative case after the adjective."

The "serious work" proceeds upon its usual pattern. After an hour's torture over Latin and mathematics, the master produces a well-used volume from his pocket, and begins to read aloud. Is not English elocution included among the arts which he has engaged himself (at one mark seventy-five pfennigs the lesson) to teach? The book chosen to-night is Shakespeare; the play, "Twelfth Night"; and Jeanne, hopelessly obtuse in the higher sciences, is moved to sighs, tears, laughter, at the reader's will. By and by it pleases Wolfgang to hear such crude judgments as the girl can offer upon the play "Shakespeare," as he says, "annotated by Miss

"English instinct! Shakespeare was only first unearthed, dug up out of the mold of British indifference by Lessing. Without Wieland, Herder, Goethe, what would the world know of Shakespeare? Why, this very play, this character of Viola, were never so divinely interpreted as in our own century, by Heine."

For a minute or more Jeanne is silent; her delicate, grave face rapt in thought, her eyes fixed on the cloudlets of amethyst and gold that float, like seraph-heads, above the gradually darkening Wald.

"In real life Viola would be a poor kind of creature," she remarks with an air of conviction. "No girl with a grain of sense in her head would fall in love with a man, duke or no duke, unless he asked her to marry him first."

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Exactly the criticism I should expect to hear from you," says Wolfgang. Girls of seventeen are simply the most prosaic, heartless, matter-offact section of humanity. Talk of youthful imagination, fine feeling, the age of romance! Not one woman in a hundred has a spark of romance belonging to her under thirty! Why, Mamselle Ange-laugh at me as you like, I mean what I say-Mamselle Ange would be a thousand times more alive to the pathos of Viola's character than you are."

"Remember the narrowness of my experience, sir. You told me, a minute ago, that I had never known a man better educated than a woodcutter, save yourself."

A just perceptible shade of red crosses Wolfgang's dark cheek.

"That puts every question of romance or sentiment on one side, does it not? But your experience is soon to be widened. Paul von Egmont and his sister, I hear, after a dozen years'

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