seriousness of its issues, the excuse must be that they were written with perfect freedom, most of them as anonymous contributions to popular journals, and that an a liniment may not be the less sound or an exposition less effective for being playful."
No apology, however, is needed, and it would be well if scientific writers having the capacity of humor would imitate the example of Dr. Gray in giving it freer expression in works designed for popular reading.
Transcendentalism in New England: A History. By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 395. Price, $2.50.
The general purpose of the author in the preparation of this volume is thus happily stated by himself: "While we are gathering up for exhibition before other nations the results of a century of American life, with a purpose to show the issues thus far of our experiment in free institutions, it is fitting that some report should be made of the influences that have shaped the national mind, and determined in any important degree or respect its intellectual and moral character. A well-considered account of these influences would be of very great value to the student of history, the statesman, and philosopher, not merely as throwing light on our own social problem, but as illustrating the general law of human progress. This book is offered as a modest contribution to that knowledge."
The modern philosophic movement known as "transcendentalism," and the beginnings of which Mr. Frothingham traces to Germany, France, and England, has had a marked development in this country, and he has done a much-needed service to the students of the drifts and currents of modern thought by working out this historical delineation of it. No man was better prepared to do this useful work than Mr. Frothingham. By his wide, scholarly preparation, by his personal acquaintance with the leading characters who have had a share in it, by his sympathy with its influence, his observation of its results, and his attitude of an independant critic, he was qualified to deal with it on its various sides, and he has accordingly given us a book in a high degree readable and entertaining, instructive and valuable. Its merits as a study in philosophy are only equaled by the skill and attractiveness of its personal sketches of the men and women who have been prominent as representatives of transcendental thought. And, although Mr. Frothingham's reputation in the theological world will be regarded by many as dubious, yet his treatment of the historic bearings of transcendentalism upon religion is most suggestive, and may be read with profit by all interested in this class of questions.
The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. By G Otto Trevelyan. Harper & Brothers. Vol. I., pp. 416; Vol. II., pp. 406. Price, $5.
This biography has made a decided and unexpected impression upon the public mind; it is, in fact, a sort of revelation. Of Macaulay's outer life as essayist, historian, orator, and politician, everything was known, his career having been a conspicuous one. But as to his private life little was known except that he was supposed to be haughty and cold, and an everlasting talker, who harangued the company at dinner until everybody was tired of him. Very little was understood of his kindly and loving nature, and his tender and heroic devotion to his father's family from youth to age, as so admirably narrated in these volumes. We have not in a long time been so enchained by a biographical work as by this of Mr. Trevelyan. We have not space to give any analysis of it, or to make extracts from its pages, but it is proper that we should refer to one feature in Macaulay's education which the reviews thus far seen quite fail to notice. Macaulay went to the University of Cambridge and took early and powerfully to the purely literary aspects of culture. The sciences and mathematics he despised, and hated, and ridiculed. But mathematics is the great thing at Cambridge. Macaulay might have neglected and abused the physical sciences to almost any extent, but if he had paid a decent respect to mathematics all would have been well. As it was, he incurred the disapprobation of the authorities, and failed to reach the position he sought, and to which he was unquestionably entitled by the brilliancy of his scholarship. It was exactly in the field where he was strongest that the ex-
