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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dall, with his wife's aid, proposed to devote himself. With the exception of the investigations upon the aërial germs, which, though, strictly speaking, they might be continuations and amplifications of Pasteur's labors, yet had a very great effect in putting an end to the tough-lived speculations of the advocates of the so-called "spontaneous generation" hypothesis, Tyndall's later scientific labors do not lie within the competence of my judgment. On that point, I leave it to contemporary experts to speak; and to time to give the final verdict, which is not always such as contemporaries imagine.

Neither do I offer any remark about Tyndall's philosophical, religious, and political views; in respect of which my opinions might possibly be impartial; but nobody would believe that they were so.

All that I have proposed to myself, in writing these few pages, is to illustrate and emphasize the fact that, in Tyndall, we have all lost a man of rare and strong individuality; one who, by sheer force of character and intellect, without advantages of education or extraneous aid—perhaps, in spite of some peculiarities of that character—made his way to a position, in some ways unique; to a place in the front rank not only of scientific workers, but of writers and speakers. And, on my own account, I have desired to utter a few parting words of affection for the man of pure and high aims, whom I am the better for having known; for the friend, whose sympathy and support were sure, in all the trials and troubles of forty years' wandering through this wilderness of a world.—Nineteenth Century.

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE.

By AMHERST W. BARBER.

IT is a startling anachronism to an American reader of 1894 to stumble upon a large vellum-bound law-book of the last century, prescribing in minute detail all the rules and conditions that must attend the proper infliction of intense physical pain on persons merely accused of any offense, and containing an appendix full of engravings, given by royal authority as working drawings to govern every operation of legal torture. Such a relic of an almost forgotten system of law rests in obscurity at the national capital, intruding its grim savagery of language and its coldly fiendish pictures upon a few minds accustomed to the modern idea of gentleness to every living being.

This book, printed in obsolete and barbaric German, with marginal syllabus in monastic Latin, seizes on the mind with a grasp of horror, and brings back the reader again and again to