race who have preserved of the Jews chiefly their language and the form of their religion. We agree with him in his "last word," which is simply this: "Treat the Jew, if he is brought to you, as an ordinary man; grant him no advantages you would not give his Austrian, Polish, or German fellow-countrymen, no matter what his religion is. Make him an Englishman or an American, break up his old customs, his clannishness, his dirt, and his filth, or he will break you."
Outlines of Theoretical Chemistry. By Lothar Meyer. Translated by P. P. Bedson and W. C. Williams. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 232. Price, $2.50.
The present volume differs from the author's Modern Theories of Chemistry in being a smaller and less technical treatise. Being addressed not only to the student but also to the friend of science who wishes to keep informed as to the progress of chemical investigation, the book does not contain any great number of the numerical results of observations and measurements, nor any detailed descriptions of experimental methods. It is, therefore, a general review of the subject of chemical philosophy in which details have not been allowed to rise into prominence. The author, of course, needs no introduction or commendation to any one who is acquainted with modern chemistry.
In the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1888-89, the commissioner, Dr. William T. Harris, presents first a general statistical exhibit of education in the United States. From these statistics it appears that the enrollment is about ninety per cent of the number of children between six and sixteen years of age in the whole country, which is as large as could be expected. The South is manifesting a great and increasing interest in public schools, and in the past nineteen years has more than doubled its expenditure per capita for education. A prominent feature of this report are the accounts of education in various foreign countries, prepared by specialists of the bureau, and the comparisons with education in the United States for which these accounts furnish material. Dr. Harris calls attention to the fact that the French and German children devote much less time than the American to memorizing the spelling of words. "Mechanical memorizing," he continues, "is the much-lamented characteristic of our common schools. It is evident that such must remain their characteristic so long as English-speaking children memorize, like the Chinese, the arbitrary spelling of more than ten thousand words before they can write the language with readiness." The training of teachers is another subject to which much attention is given, the report embracing papers on The Inception and Progress of the Normal-school Curriculum, The Teaching Force of New England from 1866 to 1888, and Professional Work in the Normal Schools of the United States. Chapters on courses of study in city schools, manual and industrial training, compulsory attendance laws, State text-book laws, and miscellaneous educational questions are included in the first volume of the report. The second volume contains the usual statistics of schools and colleges, and of the education of special classes, and an alphabetical list of the publications of the Bureau of Education from 1867 to 1890.
The Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1889-90 contains an account of the progress that has been made in establishing the National Zoological Park at Washington, together with the usual information about the work of the Institution for the year. Appended to the report are some thirty papers on a wide variety of scientific subjects, a number of them being illustrated.
The Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Educational Association, for 1891, makes a handsome octavo volume of about nine hundred pages. Besides an account of the proceedings of the Association and reports of committees at the Toronto session, the Journal contains the papers read, together with abstracts of the discussions which they called forth. A wide variety of topics in all departments of educational work is treated in these papers.
A booklet which has attracted much attention and been read with interest in religious circles is entitled Not on Calvary: A Layman's Plea for Mediation in the Temptation in the Wilderness, and is published by Charles T. Dillingham, New York. It presents a new view of the life and office of Christ while on the earth, which the author
