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Book Notices.

An Introduction to the Study of Society.

By ALBION W. SMALL, PH.D., Head
Professor of Sociology in the Univer-
sity of Chicago, and GEORGE E. VIN-
CENT, Vice-Chancellor of the Chautau-
qua System of Education. New York:
American Book Company.
Toronto:
William Briggs.

Long ago Pope said, "The proper study of mankind is man." With a larger meaning than that of the poet is this being realized every day. The great problem of the age is, not the scientific problem, nor even the religious nor the economic problem, but the social problem. This is being more and more discussed in the pulpit, on the platform and in the press. The Sunday-school Times even has a department for the sociological study of the Sunday-school lessons. Bishop Vincent has given it special prominence at Chautauqua and in the Itinerant Clubs of Methodist preachers. Most of the colleges have departments of sociology on their curricula. But the volume before us is the first text-book on the study of society that we know.

And a very admirably constructed textbook it is. The position of its authors, Prof. Small and Dr. Vincent, as instructors in this new science gives an authoritative value to the volume. The first book treats of the origin and scope of sociology, its relation to special social science and social reforms. The second book illustrates the evolution of organized society from its simplest elements, a single family on a farm, through the rural and village group to the fully developed town and city. This is illustrated with maps and diagrams and a chart showing the distribution of functions with their many bifurcations and ramifications in complex modern life.

By a stroke of genius, as we think, the three remaining books discuss the social anatomy, social physiology and pathology and social psychology of modern civilization. The book on social physiology and pathology is largely a discussion of morbid pathology, the characteristics of social disease, while the last book is on what may be called social therapeutics, the reconstruction of society in accordance with morality and law-on the eternal basis of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.

The book is of fascinating interest and will be exceedingly helpful to this important study.

The Catholic Church in the Niagara Peninsula, 1686-1895. By DEAN HARRIS. Illustrated. Toronto: William Briggs. Octavo. Pp. 352. Price, $2.00.

It is an evidence of the growing popularity of the Methodist Publishing House and of the growing liberality of our Roman Catholic friends that a distinguished Catholic priest should choose for his publisher an uncompromisingly Protestant institution. This is as it should be. We are fellow-citizens of a common country. It is part of true loyalty and true Christianity to recognize one another as allies in the war against intemperance, infidelity and vice. It is wiser to promote peace and good-will than to foment strife and ill-will.

Dean Harris' ably-written volume is the most valuable contribution that we know upon the early history of the Niagara peninsula. He describes the heroic achievements of the French and English pioneers, the explorers and path-finders of empire, who laid broad and deep the foundations of the Canadian commonweal. He records the stirring adventures and severe privations of the early settlers.

"The true history of Canada," says Goldwin Smith, "is written on the gravestones of the pilgrim fathers of the country.' To them the accomplished Dean renders a due meed of praise. Of course, he gives special prominence to the labours of the clergy of his own Church from the time of the pioneer missionary fathers to the present. The book is exceedingly well manufactured, is illustrated with excellent cuts of Indian relics, with copies of rare old engravings and with some handsome full-page plates.

The Innuits of our Arctic Coast. By His HONOUR J. C. SCHULTZ, LL. D., F.R.S.C., M.D., Lieut.-Governor of Manitoba.

In this admirable paper, read before the Royal Society of Canada, LieutenantGovernor Schultz gives an exceedingly interesting account of the little-known denizens of Canada, the Eskimo of our Arctic coast. These diminutive but hardy people have many admirable moral qualities, much physical courage, and show great ingenuity and skill in the construction of their dwellings, preparation of their clothing, and the capture of their food supplies. The monograph is of exceeding interest. Bishop Bompas, of Moosimee, has done much for the evangelization and religious training of the Canadian Innuits.

NEW YORK MIC LIBRARY

ASTOR LENOX AND TI.CONCUNSATIONS.

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THE METHODIST MAGAZINE.

SEPTEMBER, 1895.

SAVONAROLA, THE MARTYR MONK OF FLORENCE.

BY THE EDITOR.

GEROLAMO SAVONA ROLA.

ON a bright July day I stood in the vast and shadowy Duomo of Florence, where, four hundred years ago, the great Savonarola proclaimed, like a new Elijah, to awe-struck thousands, the impending judgments of Heaven upon their guilty city. I went thence to the famous Monastery of San Marco, of which he was prior. I paced the frescoed cloisters where he was wont to con his breviary, and the long corridors lined on either side with the prisonlike cells of the cowled brotherhood. I stood in the bare, bleak chamber VOL. XLII. No. 3.

of the martyr-monk, in which he used to weep and watch and write and pray. I sat in his chair. I saw his eagle-visaged portrait, his robes, his rosary, his crucifix, his Biblerichly annotated in his own fine clear hand-and his MS. sermons which so shook the Papacy. The same day I stood in the dungeon vaults of the fortress-like Palazzo del Podesta, lurid with crimson memories, where the great Reformer was imprisoned; and in the great square whence his brave soul ascended in a chariot of flame from the martyr's funeral pyre; and I seemed brought nearer to that heroic spirit who, amid these memoryhaunted scenes, four centuries ago spoke brave words for God and truth and liberty, that thrill our souls to-day.

The age in which Savonarola lived was one of the most splendid in the history of European art and literature. Even during the darkness of the middle ages, the lamp of learning was fanned into a flickering flame in many a lonely monkish cell, and the love of liberty was cherished in the free cities of the Italian Peninsula. But with the dawn of the Renaissance came a sunburst of light that banished the night of ages. The fall of Constantinople scattered throughout Western Europe the scholars who still spoke the language of Homer and of Chrysostom, and taught the

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