veritable panorama of the development under consideration. The works of Huygens, Descartes, Hooke, Newton, Faraday, and many others, far more rare, have also been exploited by the authors and publisher in lavish and commendable manner; and it is our only regret that we cannot give more space to the notice of the important phases of human thought which they represent. Certainly, to many readers this book will prove an inspiring one. T. J. MCCORMACK. ASPIRATION. A SONNET. 'Tis the afterglow of sunset! and a mist Of molten gold, at the bidding of the breeze, Borne on the untrammelled wings of Joy, it flees On! on! it hastens; all its heart athirst With love unspeakable, to touch with love That lovely light which glimmers now in grey: On! on! until in Hesper's arms, where erst Night's palsy stills the last faint pulse of Day. F. J. P. AN AMERICAN ANTHOLOGY. The task of compiling an anthology of American verse1 could not have been entrusted to a more sympathetic critic than Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, the author of the admirable Victorian Anthology, and himself a poet of no mean merit. He has performed his work with true American breadth and in a democratic spirit that few would have had the courage to exhibit, but which has shown the development of our national versification in all its varied phases, in its highest as well as its lowest sources, demonstrating it to be a genuine utterance of the national heart, "of import in the past and to the future,' -a powerful stimulant to the nation's growth. By his wide inclusiveness of selection he has put it beyond a doubt that "if our native anthology yields to a foreign one in wealth of choice production," it is still "from an equally vital point of view the more significant of the two." Throughout the years resulting in the Civil War, literature was with us really a force; and a generous foreign critic, Mr. William Archer, has in Mr. Stedman's judgment truly said: "The whole world will one day come to hold Vicksburg and Gettysburg names of larger historic import than Waterloo or Sedan." "If this be so," Mr. Stedman continues, "the significance of a literature 1 An American Anthology, 1787-1899. Selections Illustrating the Editor's Critical Review of American Poetry in the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1900. Pages, lxvii, 878. Price, large crown 8vo, $3.00; full gilt, $3 50; half calf, $5.00. "of all kinds that led up to the 'sudden making' of those 'splendid names' is not to be gainsaid. Mr. Howells aptly has pointed out that war does not often add "to great art or poetry, but the white heat of lyric utterance has preceded many a 'campaign, and never more effectively than in the years before our fight for what 'Mr. Archer calls 'the preservation of the national idea. Therefore an American "does not seem to me a laudable reader who does not estimate the present collection in the full light of all that his country has been, is, and is to be." Yet the influence of the great names of American literature, Longfellow, Bryant, Emerson, Lowell, and Whittier, has not been wholly restricted to our own nationality. 'Emerson presented such a union of spiritual and civic insight with "dithyrambic genius as may not be seen again. His thought is now congenital 'throughout vast reaches, among new peoples scarcely conscious of its derivation. The transcendentalists, as a whole, for all their lapses into didacticism, made "and left an impress. Longfellow and his pupils, for their part, excited for our "people the old-world sense of beauty and romance, until they sought for a beauty "of their own and developed a new literary manner, -touched by that of the motherland, yet with a difference; the counterpart of that 'national likeness' so "elusive, yet so instantly recognised when chanced upon abroad. In Bryant, "'often pronounced cold and granitic by readers bred to the copious-worded verse **of modern times, is found the large imagination that befits a progenitor. It was 'stirred, as that of no future American can be, by his observation of primeval "'nature. He saw her virgin mountains, rivers, forests, prairies, broadly; and his ' vocabulary, scant and doric as it was, proved sufficient-in fact the best-for "nature's elemental bard. His master may have been Wordsworth, but the differ"'ence between the two is that of the prairie and the moor, Ontario and Winder"mere, the Hudson and the Wye. From Thanatopsis in his youth to The Flood "of Years in his hoary age, Bryant was conscious of the overstress of Nature un' modified by human occupation and training." And as for Poe: "He gave a saving grace of melody and illusion to French 'classicism, to English didactics, -to the romance of Europe from Italy to Scan"dinavia. It is now pretty clear, notwithstanding the popularity of Longfellow in his day, that Emerson, Poe, and Whitman were those of our poets from whom "the old world had most to learn; such is the worth, let the young writer note, of "seeking inspiration from within, instead of copying the exquisite achievements of masters to whom we all resort for edification,—that is, for our own delight, which "'is not the chief end of the artist's throes. Our three most individual minstrels "are now the most alive, resembling one another only in having each possessed the genius that originates. Years from now, it will be matter of fact that their "'influences were as lasting as those of any poets of this century." With the poetry of these men we are all familiar, and however much we may be indebted to Mr. Stedman for his careful selection of their choicest lyric productions, it is not in this that the greatest worth of the present volume lies for the ordinary reader. This is contained in the vast mass of occasional verse that has emanated from lesser pens, but is of no less enjoyable quality, and that the majority of us would doubtless have missed had it not been here made accessible to us in a single volume. Holmes and Bayard Taylor (not to mention our earlier poets like Drake and Halleck); the stately elegance of Parsons"; Stoddard, Read, and Story; that "sheaf of popular war-songs, Northern and Southern"; the poets of the Middle West, Field and Riley; Emma Lazarus and Sidney Lanier; the negro melodies and folksongs; and an innumerable host of recent and more fugitive efforts typifying every phase of our national life, endeavors, and humor,-all here find their representation, which we should elsewhere long seek in vain. The volume is a vast one (covering nearly nine hundred pages). Mr. Stedman would gladly have made it more eclectic,-a genuine Treasury of American Song, such as Palgrave gave of English lyrics, if that were possible with our one century of chaotic and youthful endeavor. But he has had a different purpose in view, namely, that of supplying "a breviary of our national poetical legacies from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries," from which the critic or historian may derive whatever conclusions he wishes. And in this he has admirably succeeded, making it a volume which every American should be proud, and will be profited, to possess. The biographical notices, the indices of names, titles, and first lines, and the slight pictorial adornment, are also to be commended in the work. T. J. MCCORMACK. A NEW EXPERIMENTAL GEOGRAPHY. Something novel in the way of American geography-making has been attempted by Professor Tarr of Cornell University and Professor McMurry of Columbia University, in their Home Geography. The book resembles, as to its exterior form, the geographical school-books of Europe, which are divided into text and atlases separately, rather than the large, flat, and unwieldy text-books in use in American schools. But it is its internal features that most attract attention, and the most prominent of these is the emphasis which is laid upon the necessity of gaining by actual experience in the home environment the basis for geographical study. Even in the acquisition of basal notions not suggested by home environment, the inductive and experimental method is followed and indications given for much interesting practical work in simple physiography. "The average pupil who has pursued geography for a year, has little notion of the great importance of soil, of what a mountain or a river really is, of the value of good trade routes, and why a vessel cannot find harbor wherever it will cast anchor along the coast. Yet such ideas are the proper basis for the study of geography in the higher grades. The fact that they are so often wanting is proof that our geography still lacks foundation." The first 110 pages of the book have accordingly been devoted by the authors to supplying this foundation by treating first such common things as soil, hills, valleys, industries, climate, and government, which are part of every child's environment, and secondly other features, as mountains, rivers, lakes, and the ocean, which, although absent from many localities, are still necessary as a preparation for later study." This part of their work has been done very practically and skilfully. The photographic illustrations, which show the origin and formation of the soil, the contour, setting, function, etc., of rivers, hills, mountains, and valleys, the methods, mechanism, and conditions of industry, commerce, and government, 1 Tarr & McMurry's Geographies. First Book: Home Geography and the Earth as a Whole, By Ralph S. Tarr, B. S., F. G. S. A., Professor of Dynamic Geology and Physical Geography at Cornell University, and F. M. McMurry, Ph.D., Professor of Theory and Practice of Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. With many colored maps and numerous illustrations, chiefly photographs of actual scenes. New York: The Macmillan Company. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1900. Pages, xiii, 279. have all been well selected. The paragraphs on the meaning of maps also are good. The second part of the work treats in brief manner of the earth as a whole, by like fruitful methods. The illustrations in this part are in the main physiographic, biological, and ethnological. They form a very essential part of the book, and carry with them as much instruction as the text itself. The maps, while small, are clear and well conceived; they are not overloaded by useless details, and while all persons will not be inclined to concede to them the superlative merit which the authors claim, they are certainly for practical purposes an improvement on the traditional cartographical products. In the statistics given in the appendix, there is a discrepancy between the figures representing the area of North America in square miles and those representing the total area of its component states. The area of North America is given as only six and one half million square miles, while the total area of the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Central America by actual addition foots up to more than eight million square miles. T. J. MCC. BOOK NOTICES. By Wilhelm Bölsche. Dresden and Leipsic : ERNST HAEckel, ein Lebensbild. Wilhelm Bölsche's excellent biography of Ernst Haeckel is one of the volumes of a series of biographical portraitures called Men of the Period. Krupp, Nansen, Nietzsche, Liszt, Windthorst, Forschenbeck, and Stephan form the other numbers of the series. Each volume is provided with a good portrait. Haeckel's career is exceedingly interesting from a human as well as from a scientific point of view; is has been spent in the very thick of the great intellectual contests of the period, and is representative and characteristic in every way. And as to Mr. Bölsche's portrayal of his achievements, it may be said to be in every respect satisfactory, and quite worthy of its subject. It seems rather odd that a mathematical text-book written by a native of India should possess such merits as to entitle it when introduced into England with suitable modifications and additions to a unique position among English schoolbooks"; yet such is the case, say Mr. William Briggs and Mr. G. H. Bryan, editors of the University Tutorial Series, which has for its purpose tuition by correspondence and preparation for the examinations of the University of London. These gentlemen, who are the authors or editors of several practical scientific and mathematical school-books, have taken the Algebra of an Indian professor, Radhakrishnan, which has been characterised as "a Chrystal for beginners," and by the addition of chapters on logarithms, interest, graphical representation, continued fractions, etc., have adapted the same to instruction in English and American schools. The work, which consists of two volumes, is particularly fitted for the purpose of independent study. The text is ample, the explanations and examples are full, the typography is clear. In Part II., The Advanced Course, which we now have before us, modern ideas of algebraic form have been sufficiently interwoven with the prevailing method of presentation to make the work superior to the ordinary run of algebraical text-books. The essential elements of Chrystal's work have been reproduced in the chapters treating of zero and infinity, maxima and minima, imaginary and complex quantities, the notion of functions, graphs, etc., permutations and combinations. While Professor Chrystal has himself recently written an Introduction to Algebra, it will be admitted, we think, by all who have ever used the book that his presentation, despite its practical aims, is in the majority of the chapters too abstract for the ordinary young student,—a fact which, added to the annoying compactness of the typographical setting of the work, renders it in places even more difficult of comprehension than his larger treatise. The independent student, therefore, is likely to gain much more from such digests of Chrystal's work as the present than he would even from Chrystal's Introduction itself. (The Tutorial Algebra. Part II., Advanced Course. By William Briggs, M. A., F.C.S., F.R.A. S. and G. H. Bryan, Sc. D., F.R.S. New York: Hinds and Noble, 4 Cooper Institute. London W. B. Clive, 13 Booksellers Row, Strand, W. C. 1898. Pages, viii, 596. Price, 6s. 6d.) The attention of the readers of The Open Court should be called to the elementary scientific and educational publications of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. These publications embrace several series, bearing such titles as "The Romance of Science," "Manuals of Elementary Science," "Natural History Rambles," Ancient History from the Monuments," "The People's Library," etc., etc. "The Romance of Science" and "Ancient History" series particularly claim our attention. The former contains some excellent little books by men quite eminent in their way, as The Birth and Growth of Worlds, by Prof. A. H. Green; Soap-Bubbles, and the Forces which Mould Them, by C. V. Boys; Spinning Tops, by Prof. J. Perry; Diseases of Plants, by Prof. Marshall Ward; The Story of a Tinder-Box, by Charles Meymott Tidy; Time and Tide, by Sir Robert S. Ball. We have recently received two practical educational books from these series; viz., (1) Simple Experiments for Science Teaching, by J. A. Bower, and (2) How to Make Common Things, by the same author. The first book is a detailed descriptive manual of physical and chemical experiments which can easily be performed without expensive scientific apparatus, by means at every person's disposal. The second is a composite of modern ideas of manual training, with the older theory and practice of carpentry-work for boys. It gives directions for making many useful and ornamental objects, such as shelves, desks, stands, brackets, picture frames, models of sailing vessels, etc., for wood-carving, metal-working, copying of medals and casts, and the construction of useful electrical appliances. "The Ancient History" series contains volumes on Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, and Persia, by such authorities as the late George Smith, the Rev. A. H. Sayce, Dr. S. Birch, and Mr. W. S. W. Vaux. For details readers are referred to the catalogues, which will be supplied on request by the publishers. (New York: E. & J. B. Young & Co. London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.) |