cian; but which give to the unlearned the simpler conception of the first four prime numbers; in the beautiful varieties of leaves opposite, and leaves ternate, five pointed and seven pointed stars.

The laws of musical harmony are especially to be noted. When the waves of the air are perceived only as continuous musical tones, and the individual vibrations are not at all recognized, why should the ratio of four to five give us pleasure, and that of eight to eleven give us none? What process of education in our ancestry, what association of ideas, renders the effect of the one combination harmonious, of the other discordant? Any attempt to explain it will but strengthen the conclusion, that to the Builder of the ear the laws of number were known, and that the ear was constructed with reference to them.

The harmonies of light and heat are not sufficiently well understood to make the argument here so apparent. Yet there is, doubtless, in these departments also, an adaptation of the human sense to the perception of effects arising from simple numerical proportions in the frequency of vibrations. In the matter of geometric form, while the value of proportion has been felt by all artists, and all architects, the value of numbers in the proportions has not been universally conceded, nor its place assigned. Yet I have by experiments, upon unprejudiced persons of good taste, strengthened greatly my inclination to accept Hay's law, that angles, real or potential, are the essential elements of geometric beauty; and are beautiful in proportion to the numerical simplicity of their ratio to the right angle.

With these manifest indications that the divine thought, the ideals of the creation, include number as an essential element, we may well understand the enthusiasm of early thinkers over the properties of the smaller numbers. The sacredness of the number three has been made especially prominent in Christendom. The four elements of the ancients, and Erigena's fourfold division of nature, show the power of the points of the compass to impress their number on the human mind. The five digits of the hand, and the prevalence of fivefold divisions in the floral kingdom, give us the five-pointed star with its symbolism; point up, for manhood and virtue; point down, for beastliness and sin. The lily tribe gives us the six-pointed star; and six, a perfect number, in which

the sum of the factors equals the product, is fitting as a symbol of the descent of the divine into the human trinity, the indwelling of God in man; the Perfect perfecting his child. The seven notes of the diatonic scale, the seven distinct colors, and other natural examples, fall in with the seven days of the week, the quartering of the moon's period. Jew and Gentile alike have hallowed the number seven, and no other number occurs so frequently with sacred associations in Jewish and Christian literature. Higher primes than seven do not enter much into our human thought, nor appear to be embodied distinctly in any part of creation known to us. The weeks in the year are four times thirteen; that is, there are about thirteen moons in the year; the only example I remember of a prime number above seven prominently suggested by nature. The nine muses, the ten numerals, the twelve months, and twelve apostles are numbers not prime.

Music, painting, the coloring of nature and art; architecture, sculpture, drawing, the beauty of proportion and form; how large a portion of our earthly pleasure and spiritual culture depends on these; and these draw their charm in some mysterious way from the numbers two, three, five, seven. The number of prime numbers is unlimited; and since the first four give us, in the harmony of tones and colors, and in the proportions of form, such varied sources of high pleasure, such potent modes of spiritual expression, we may reverently hope, that in the immortal life, the same Beneficent Power which makes two, three, five, and seven, thus minister to our joys below, will open to us more of the infinite treasures which lie hidden in the boundless fields beyond.

6

Fire

THOMAS HILL.

DR. BARTOL'S DISCOURSES.*

DURING a visit to our army in the time of the rebellion, as we were returning one afternoon to a fortified post we encountered the net-work of obstacles which had been skillfully arranged around it to check a hostile approach. Telegraph wires were stretched along the bushes so as to trip the invader, and other similar contrivances had been ingeniously devised, so that although it was growing late and we were somewhat in haste, we found after stumbling a few times, that the speediest course was to go very cautiously, taking heed of every stake and wire and ditch that came in our way. We have experienced something of the same sensation, as with very little time before us we undertook to go hurriedly through this volume in order to prepare a notice of it for the previous number of this Review. After having been tripped up or made to lose our way a dozen times in as many pages by the subtleties of fancy and obscurities of style and intricacies of argument, we found that the only way was to dismiss our feeling of haste and give ourselves up patiently to the perusal; to put ourselves into sympathy with the author's mood, and without thinking chiefly of the end of the argument to get from each sentence its own meaning and suggestion.

Fortunately the book rewards such patient reading, and there are some who will at once become fascinated by these very peculiarities, but we fear that in this hurrying age some may be led to lay down the volume before they have realized the treasures of thought and sentiment it contains.

This individuality of style, which thus at the outset challenges our attention, is so marked a characteristic of the author that we cannot forbear considering it in any review of his writings. There are some writers who use language so simple that we hardly give heed to the words, which are only the clear, transparent medium of the thought or information they convey. There are others, and Dr. Bartol is one of them, with whom the form of expression

*The Rising Faith. By C. A. Bartol. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

is as important a feature as the gestures and tones of an impassioned orator are to his spoken words. We have no reason to set either class of writers as a model over against the other. There is no absolute standard of style, but language is so flexible that it can adapt itself to the humor and genius of every one who uses it. We should grow weary of a uniformity of style even if it were as pure as that of Addison. And how we should be surfeited if all our books were modelled on Macaulay. We like to have our Fra Angelicos. set in a frame which would not be suited to a Rubens or a Rosa Bonheur. And so in that certain quaintness which characterizes Dr. Bartol's writing we recognize a charm which fits well the richness of his fancy; and if sometimes we are compelled to stop and wrest the meaning from the half-riddles which the pithy sentences contain, there is a kind of added enjoyment in the morsels of thought we thus receive - just as children, when we give them nuts, relish most the bits of sweet kernel they have to pick out from the half-cracked shell by dint of tooth and pin.

Having thus made the amplest allowance for the author's liberty in the use of language, we shall not be misunderstood in the earnest expression of regret at some faults of style in Dr. Bartol for which we find no warrant. When he repeatedly and needlessly transgresses the rules of composition turning subject and predicate end for end, introducing Latin constructions and German constructions and constructions of his own he not only mars his book, but he does to literature a serious harm. The language of a people is one of the most precious portions of its inheritance, and every one who publishes a book has an obligation to respect it. The excellence of a writer, so far from giving him impunity in this regard, only increases his responsibility, because he inspires admiring imitators who are very apt to fancy they resemble him in genius when they are only copying his eccentricities.

We have always been the more troubled by this fault of style in Dr. Bartol, because to one not acquainted with his character and life, it might convey the impression of affectation, and this is so opposite to his nature that, in turning now from this outside criticism to consider more fully the intrinsic qualities of the volume before us, we note first of all a rare simplicity and sincerity.

"Sincerity" is the title of one of the chapters, and there is no

one of them in which he more evidently writes out of the fulness of his heart. He begins by saying that if the notion of the Devil is to be kept to designate anything, "he is simply insincerity. He is a lawyer making the worse appear the better reason, a swindler in trade, quack doctor, a minister saying one thing in his study and another in his desk." In analysing the quality he has especial eye to the dangers to which he and his own profession are particularly exposed:

"Many men who could never commit theft or adultery have unconscientious minds. . . . From the muddle of amiability to all opinions called liberality, with its monstrous cant, no matter what a man thinks if he lives right, will never come the sincerity like honey squeezed from the comb with no atom of wax to mar the sweetness or stain the hue."

He demands sincerity no matter how unpleasant the truth may

"Who can make the truth pleasant to a knave? soft as oil to the sound skin, cauterise disease. burns the proud flesh. there must be heat.

Certain substances Truth is a flame that For the fine work in the crucible or at the forge How can a reformer be other than hot to an oppressor, rumseller, woman wronger, man that steals a railroad, or that wants to steal a church? Christ's predicated baptism was fire as well as air."

He demands sincerity, too, no matter what it costs — and whatever sentiment may stand in its way:

"The clergyman is not sincere who holds forth authority he does not feel. One says all his instincts revolt from everlasting punishment, but Christ taught it and he must. I say to him. 'You do not believe and cannot honestly teach what your inmost sense recoils from. What is faith but interior persuasion and assent?'"

Yet he equally sees the possibility of making sincerity a hobby and giving the credit of it to what is only its counterfeit :

"Blurting out the spite, which is disturbance within and around, some piece of male or female humanity may call being sincere. The general jail-delivery of every crude notion of a foul imagination, like 'Vulcan's Stithy,' is not sincerity more than some people's atmosphere is the odor of sanctity. Stout assertion of a borrowed opinion is not sincerity more than paste is gem. We have in Boston a class of persons over-cultivated with excess of book, conversation, and society, pouring out affected convictions with loquacity as loud as the run from puncheons of adul