tion as will express precisely the degree of stability, dignity, and elegance which corresponds with the import of the acts to be expressed." The architecture of the past, the vague ideas of writers, and the aimless practices of the present, are reviewed and criticised in the light of these fundamental principles, and the conclusions are reached in the end that the dilettanteism of modern architecture must be rooted out before the art can revive and exercise a wholesome influence on society; it must be understood that "the road to architecture is long, tortuous, and thorny, and not a well-paved highway upon which man may amble into fame"; false taste has had its day, and style must also be cast off, when "nothing will be left but to pursue architecture pure and simple."
Dangers to Health: A Pictorial Guide to Domestic Sanitary Defects. By T. Pridgin Teale, M. A., Surgeon to the General Infirmary at Leeds. Third edition. Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston. Pp. 170. Price, $3.50.
The author, having discovered and rectified numerous defects in his own house, and having traced illness among his patients to carelessness and dishonesty in drain-work, became "indignantly alive to the fact that few houses are safe to live in." He was convinced also that a large fraction of the incidental illness suffered in England, including much childbed illness and some of the fatal results of surgical operations in hospitals and private houses, were the direct result of drainage defects. He then sought for the most impressive way of describing faults of this class to the public, and chose that of pictorial representation. The result is this work, which contains seventy plates representing nearly as many important faults to which domestic sanitary arrangements are liable, with letterpress explanations of the same, as well as of some other faults not so susceptible of pictorial representation. The illustrations are designed to give the most forcible expression possible of the fact to be told, and are clear and distinct as to their meaning. Three of the drawings arc designed as hints toward securing adequate ventilation and the exclusion of dust.
A Study of the Pentateuch, for Popular Reading. By Rufus P. Stebbins, D. D., formerly President, Lecturer on Hebrew Literature, and Professor of Theology, in the Meadville Theological School. Boston: George H. Ellis. Pp. 233. Price, $1.25.
This book embraces the substance of some articles which were published in the "Unitarian Review" in 1879 and 1880. The first paper is a review of the attacks of Dr. Kuenen, one of the most brilliant and reckless of the Dutch rationalistic critics on the authenticity of the Old Testament Scriptures. The other essays embody the author's own examination of the books of the Pentateuch, with reference to their authenticity, in respect to the external evidence, or that afforded by the references to them and quotations from them made by a succession of Hebrew writers from David to Josephus; and the internal evidences, or those afforded by the style and methods of expression of the books themselves, and the allusions contained in them as indicative of the time when they were composed. The definite conclusion is reached that the Pentateuch is substantially of the Mosaic age, and largely, either directly or indirectly, of Mosaic authorship.
The Opium-Habit and Alcoholism. A Treatise on the Habits of Opium and its Compounds, Alcohol, Chloral-Hydrate, Chloroform, Bromide of Potassium, and Cannabis-Indica. By Dr. Fred. Heman Hubbard. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 259. Price, $2.
It is believed that the opium-habit is increasing in the United States with frightful rapidity. It has spread much faster since the introduction of the hypodermic syringe, and has reached an extent which is partially represented by the payment of five million dollars annually for the drug, and by the estimate that there are now not less than 500,000 consumers in the country against 225,000 in 1870. The object of the author of this work has been to place in the hands of the profession a carefully arranged analysis of the peculiar physical condition induced by the indulgence of the habit, with descriptions of the symptoms that appear and the changes that take place under treatment. This is done by the presentation of accounts
