est exponent in Mr. Cook, and his lectures will afford genuine help to many a mind that has been confused and troubled by the evidence supposed to have been furnished by science in favor of materialistic views of life.

The lectures as here given are the steno. graphic reports of those actually delivered, and though they have been carefully revised, retain many of the defects of platform oratory. It will always be a debated question whether an argument is most impressive when poured forth with all the ardor of spontaneous speech, or when clad in the calmer and more precise language of the study; but those who entertain the highest opinion of Mr. Cook's powers will be most earnest in the hope that he will give us a more systematic and complete exposition of his views than he can venture to offer before popular and miscellaneous audiences.

HISTORY OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS, FROM THE ORIGIN OF THEIR EMPIRE TO THE PRESENT TIME. By Sir Edward Creasy, M.A. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

In our August number we took occasion to review and commend Mr. Freeman's historical brochure on "The Ottoman Power in Europe." Readers of that work should feel it a sort of duty to possess themselves of Sir Edward Creasy's "History of the Ottoman Turks," which not only complements it by giving in extenso the facts which Mr. Freeman briefly summarizes, but furnishes a more or less effective antidote to Mr. Freeman's fierce denunciations of the "barbarous Turk." Sir Edward Creasy represents the average English opinion on the subject, such as was entertained prior to the shock of the Bulgarian massacres and the zealous efforts of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Freeman, Thomas Carlyle, and others. Whatever England has done or felt in regard to the Turk and his affairs, Sir Edward sympathizes with and attempts to justify; whatever can blacken the character of the perfidious and grasping Russian he parades with evident gusto. That curious perversity of judgment by which the most politically enlightened nation of the world has been brought to champion and uphold one of the worst despotisms that ever degraded mankind is strikingly illustrated in his work; and also the convenient evasions and subterfuges by which men of more than ordinarily sober judgment will vindicate to themselves a sentiment which took its origin in the most sordid self-interest.

It must be said in justice, however, that this bias is perceptible only in the later chapters of the volume, and that Sir Edward's work is far less political and partisan in tone

than that of Mr. Freeman. It aims, in fact, at being a methodical and impartial history; and for the period prior to 1770, in which he closely follows Von Hammer's great and authoritative work, no fault can be found with either the tone or the trustworthiness of his narrative. Taken as a whole, it may be fairly said that no equally satisfactory history of the Ottoman Turks has been produced in popular form in any language, and that a deeply interesting and romantic story has been rendered fascinating by the manner in which it is told. A writer who is famous for his descriptions of battles and campaigns has found a congenial subject in the career of "a nation of warriors," as the Turks have been called; and as we read of the splendid achievements of Mahomet the Conqueror, Solyman the Magnificent, and the other martial princes of the House of Othman, we are apt to overlook, as the author himself does, the misery and degradation that lie beneath the glittering surface of military glory.

Creasy's history has already obtained the position of a standard work, the first edition having been published many years ago in England, and received the endorsement of scholars. The American edition is a reprint of the new English edition which, besides being thoroughly revised throughout with the

aid of the literature that more recent times have produced, has received additional matter which brings the narrative down to the accession of the present Sultan and the very eve of the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war. CHOICE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES. Edited by W. D. Howells. Boston: 7. R. Osgood & Co. No other literary enterprise of the day promises a greater amount of enjoyable reading than this series of Mr. Howells'. Next to good biography, autobiography is the most charming species of literature, possessing in its best representatives a perennial interest and value; and a collection which promises to include in a compact and uniform edition the famous autobiographies of all languages will be a distinct and permanent addition to the resources of intelligent readers.

The four volumes of the series that have already appeared exhibit at once the richness of the material from which Mr. Howells will be enabled to draw, and the refined taste and discrimination with which he will perform his editorial work. The two first volumes contain the "Memoirs of the Margravine of Baireuth," a book which made a wonderful sensation on its first appearance sixty or seventy years ago, and which has retained its fascination for three generations of readers. The unhappy princess who wrote it was a

Napoleon; but it comes sufficiently near the present to include all the great names among living or recently dead French authors-Thiers, Mignet, Guizot, Michelet, Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Gautier, De Tocqueville, Comte, Balzac, George Sand, and the two Dumas. There is less to regret in the premature close of the narrative, for the reason that the Second Empire, like the First, acted as a sort of blight upon literature and men of letters, and seemed to paralyze the national intellect.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

SIR HENRY HAVELOCKE, M.P., intends to write a book on the campaign in Bulgaria.

MR. GLADSTONE will contribute a Preface to Dr. Schliemann's account of his excavations at Mycenæ.

IT is rumored in Paris that Victor Hugo has in his portfolio a poem of 2000 lines, entitled "Le Pape," which will appear after the decease of Pius IX.

M. THIERS, it is asserted, kept a personal diary from the year 1830 onwards. The portion relating to the history of his presidency of the Republic is written with continuity and considerable detail.

THE "Annals of Sennacherib,” which were nearly completed by the late Mr. George Smith, will be brought out this year under the direction of a well-known English Assyriologist.

WE understand that the new three-volume edition of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," edited by Dr. Birch, will be published shortly by Mr. Murray.

MR. GLADSTONE has in the press a collection of "Essays, Letters, and Addresses." They will be divided into the following sections: Personal and Literary, Ecclesiastical and Theological, European and Historical.

THE Abbé Laffetay, the custodian of the library at Bayeux, has just published a "travail définitif" on the celebrated tapestry of Queen Matilda. He desires to prove that this beautiful art of needlework had its origin in Normandy.

Two important deeds have recently been discovered in the Public Record Office, bearing on the family history of Geoffry Chaucer. They are written in Law Latin, and to one of them there is appended a seal unique of its kind.

MR. R. H. SHEPHERD is editing the new edition of "Poetry for Children," by Charles and Mary Lamb, together with "Prince Dorus," a fairy tale in verse, by Charles Lamb, and other poems from his pen not included in previous editions of his works.

THE members of the Hungarian Historical Society are stated to have discovered in Count Erdödy's library, at Freistadt, four ancient Turkish works, containing a rhymed history. of the progenitors of the Turkish nation. These volumes are supposed to have belonged to the library of Thomas Bakács, and to be four centuries old.

MR. H. A. PAGE has in the press a small volume titled Thoreau, his Life and Aims: a Study. Thoreau, the author of Waldon Pond, and one of Emerson's early friends, is among the most refined and charming of the New England contemplative writers. In England, beyond an occasional quotation, he is almost unknown. The object of Mr. Page's book is to exhibit Thoreau's love of nature in its relation to his anti-slavery agitation. It will contain many anecdotes of Thoreau's wonderful ways with animals, here first brought together. The Academy.

THE title of M. Victor Hugo's new work, which is, in fact, a history of the coup d'état, will be 'Histoire d'un Crime: Déposition d'un Témoin.' It was written at Brussels in December, 1851, and January and February, 1852. M. Hugo was, as is well known, President of the Conseil de Résistance, and he here describes all that he did with his friends, and everything he saw day by day and hour by hour. It is said to be one of the most interesting and important works ever written by the distinguished author-as dramatic as a romance, and as startling as the reality it describes.

MR. RUSKIN declares that the chief of all the curses of this unhappy age is the universal gabble of its fools and of the flocks that follow them, rendering the quiet voices of the wise men of all past time inaudible. "This is, first, the result of the invention of printing, and of the easy power and extreme pleasure to vain persons of seeing themselves in print. This has been my main work from my youth up-not caring to speak my own words, but to discern, whether in painting or sculpture, what is eternally good and vital, and to strike away from it pitilessly what is worthless and venomous. So that now, being old, and thoroughly practised in this trade, I know either of a picture-a book-or a speech quite. securely whether it is good or not, as a cheesemonger knows cheese; and I have not the

least mind to try to make wise men out of fools, but my own swift business is to brand them of base quality, and get them out of the way, and I do not care a cobweb's weight whether I hurt the followers of these men or not, totally ignoring them, and caring only to get the facts concerning the men themselves fairly and roundly stated, for the people whom I have real power to teach."

SCIENCE AND ART.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.-Our readers will remember that the controversy on this subject between M. Pasteur and Dr. Bastian was narrowed down, some months ago, to a very definite issue. The same experiment, performed by the two observers, yielded precisely opposite results. M. Pasteur then requested that a Commission should be appointed by the Academy of Sciences to decide between Dr. Bastian and himself, not of course on the question of spontaneous generation, but only in reference to the particular experiments with urine and liquor potassæ. MM. Dumas, Milne-Edwards, and Boussingault were appointed for the purpose; the last-named member having been compelled, for private reasons, to withdraw, his place was taken by M. Van Tieghem. Dr. Bas

tian went to Paris in the middle of last month to meet the Commission. His preliminary stipulation that the enquiry should be limited to the mere question of fact, without entering on its interpretation or on its bearings upon the doctrine of spontaneous generation, appears to have been accepted by M. Dumas without consultation with his colleagues. On learning what had been done, M. MilneEdwards summarily declined to take part in any Academy Commission which had not full power to vary the experiments at discre'tion. No attempt seems to have been made to arrive at a mutual understanding, and the Commission melted away without doing anything. The close of the proceedings, as described by Dr. Bastian (British Medical Journal, August 4), reads like a perfect comedy of errors, and is certainly in need of further explanation.

THE SOCIETY OF AMERICANISTS.-Special associations for special objects are a characteristic of the present century, so it seems quite natural that there should be a "Society of Americanists," whose object is to gather information about America. They meet once in two years; their next meeting is to be held next month at Luxemburg; and we learn from their programme that their inquiries are to apply to the times anterior to the discovery

of America by Columbus. Thus the picturewriting of the Mexicans, their civil legislation under the Aztecs as compared with that of the Peruvians under the Incas; the inscriptions in the ancient cities of Central America, the ancient use of copper, the works of the mysterious mound-builders, the comparison of the Eskimo language with the languages of Southern America; traditions of the Deluge especially in Mexico; the discovery of Brazil, and other ethnographical and palæographical subjects. If this scheme be wisely and diligently followed out, there is reason to hope that some light will be thrown into the obscurity of early American history.

SEAMEN'S REMEDY AGAINST SEASICKNESS.Professor Xavier Landerer, of Athens, says (according to the London Medical Record), that a very popular remedy against this ailment, in common use among mariners in the Levant, is the daily internal use of iron. This is obtained in a very primitive way-a portion of the ironrust adhering to the anchor and anchor-chain At the same is scraped off and administered. time a small pouch, containing roasted salt and flowers of thyme, is tied upon the region of the navel as firmly as can be borne. This is said to lessen and gradually to subdue the antiperistaltic motions of the stomach caused by the rolling of the vessel. This preparation was already known to the ancient Greeks as "thymian salt." M. Landerer says that he knows several seamen who have been cured by this treatment.

ACTION OF TOBACCO ON THE SYSTEM.Some years ago the French Government directed the Academy of Medicine to inquire into the influence of tobacco on the human system. The report of the commission appointed by the Academy states that a large number of the diseases of the nervous system and of the heart, noticed in the cases of those affected with paralysis or insanity, were to be regarded as the sequence of excessive indulgence in the use of this article; and it is remarked that tobacco seems primarily to act upon the organic nervous system, depressing the faculties and influencing the nutrition of the body, the circulation of the blood, and the number of red corpuscles in the blood. Attention is also called to the bad digestion, benumbed intelligence, and clouded memory

of those who use tobacco to excess.

MORE PERFECT GALVANIC BATTERIES.-In spite of all the progress that has been made in electric science since first Volta put together his "crown of cups," a perfect galvanic battery is yet to seek. M., Onimus has done something toward this in availing himself of the virtues of the new, tough, and supple ma

terial which bears the name of parchmentpaper. Every electrician knows that the great theoretical merits of Professor Daniell's "constant" battery are counterbalanced by the trouble, care, and annoyance which it entails. All double liquid batteries have hitherto proved bulky, vexatious, and expensive; but M. Onimus simplifies matters by using parchmentpaper instead of a porous cell, the copper spiral encircling the parchment, which is wrapped around the cylinder of zinc, and the pair of elements being simply plunged into a solution of sulphate of copper.

SUN-SPOTS AND STORMS.-Mr. Henry Jeula, of Lloyd's, has lately written to the Times indicating that there appears to be some connection between the prevalence of sun-spots and the number of wrecks posted annually in Lloyd's "Loss Book," and that this may constitute a further link in the evidence connecting sun-spots with the phenomena of weather. He derives his data from two complete cycles of eleven years each, extending from 1855 to 1876. He divides each series of eleven years into three periods, and finds that there are two minimum periods of four years at the beginning and end of each cycle, having between them a minimum period of three years.

POLARISATION OF DIFFRACTED LIGHT.-The change of polarisation which light undergoes when diffracted by an edge or a grating has been subjected to investigation by many distinguished physicists, notably by Stokes, Holtzmann, Lorenz, and Mascart. Prof. Stokes obtained from theoretical considerations a formula which connected together the direction of vibration of the ether particles in the incident beam, the direction of vibration in the diffracted beam, and the angle of diffraction. The experiments with a grating on glass, made with a view to verify this formula, led to irregular results, but seemed to confirm Fresnel's hypothesis that in plane polarised light the direction of vibration is perpendicular to the plane of polarisation. Holtzmann, however, and other physicists, have deduced from their experiments a different conclusion -viz., that the ether particles vibrate in a direction parallel to the plane of polarisation. The recent experiments of Dr. Fröhlich, of Buda-Pesth (Annalen der Physik und Chemie, neue Folge, i., 321), lead to the following conclusions among others: (1) Confirmation of the result already found by earlier observers that in plane polarised light the direction of vibration is perpendicular to the plane of polarisation. (2) The direction of vibration in a ray of light proceeding from a centre in any direction is perpendicular to the direction of propagation. (3) The direction of vibration

in the diffracted ray is a function of the nature of the reflecting surface (of the grating), of the angle of incidence, and of the angle of diffrac tion; but is entirely independent, on the other hand, of the intervals between successive lines of the grating, of the refrangibility of the light, and of the order of spectrum, and is also unaltered when rays of different refrangibilities and different orders of spectra are superposed.

DISINFECTANT FOR THE SICK ROOM.-Ozone, the newest and the least stable of the gases, has recently been made to do good service in the sick-room. It makes short work with those miasmata and organic impurities of vitiated air which the Italians describe by the expressive name of malaria, and which every physician knows to be among the most baneful influences with which the convalescent patient, whose tenure of life is not yet quite assured, has to contend. A mixture should be made of permanganate of potash, peroxide of manganese, and oxalic acid, in equal parts, and two large spoonfuls with some water put into a plate and placed on the floor of the sick-chamber. Care should be taken, however, to remove steel fenders and fire-irons, and to cover up brass door-handles, since ozone will rust all metals meaner than gold and silver.

VARIETIES.

A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT'S OUTFIT.-The special correspondent of the Paris Temps communicates to his paper the following list of articles with which war correspondents accompanying the Russian army in Asia must be supplied: 1. A passport from the general Staff, with which, immediately upon his arrival, the correspondent has to present himself to the Chief of the Corps or detachment which he means to accompany. By means of it he is, for instance, to have each telegram and letter acknowledged by the general Staff. 2. A number of photographs of himself for the chiefs of the different corps and detachments. One of them he is to keep in doubtful cases as to his identity, to compare with the rest. 3. An emblem in the form of a shield, in the centre of which the letter K is affixed to a black and yellow ribbon. This mark is worn in the button hole, to serve as a passport that he may walk about without being molested. 4. A "Padorojna," or march route of the Government, whereby the correspondent may secure post-horses at each relay, except in cases of vis major. 5. An "Atkoiti List," entitling him to an escort, he being obliged to have with him a Cossack or Tshapar for safety's sake. 6. A private servant, versed, if possible, in several languages. 7. A doublebarrelled gun, for casual hunting, the right'