which if established would have succeeded in preventing his condemnation. If, as seems quite possible, the Bishop be finally condemned and commanded to desist from these ritualistic ceremonies in question, the position of the Church of England may become very critical. The Bishop has the sympathy of a majority of the clergy, and of a large number of very vigorous and enthusiastic laymen, who desire to have freedom, as their leader, Lord Halifax, lately said, "to celebrate the Holy Communion, the Mass in English, in the old traditional way." This party claims that "it is impossible to dissociate ritual from doctrine." Consequently, if the Bishop of Lincoln is condemned for celebrating the "Mass" in the way which he deems absolutely essential, one cannot say how the position of the disestablishment question may not be altered or improved, possibly even by a large number of churchmen favoring freedom from state control as their only means of attaining what they consider essential truth.

Another question, semi-political and semi-ecclesiastical, which is a constant bone of contention, is the question of tithes. There is at present before Parliament a bill which aims at making the collection of tithes more easy for the clergy and other possessors of tithes. The bill is likely to be dropped before long; but discussion upon it has shown what a complicated and dangerous subject this is. Tithes are paid in England on the value of land at a rate varying with the average price of corn; in some places the land is tithe free; but in most parishes, especially in agricultural parts, it is a serious burden. Generally the tithes go to the clergyman of the parish, and in these cases the payment may be a grievance if the people are dissatisfied with their clergyman, or the tithepayer is not a member of the Established Church. In some parts the tithes go to persons or corporate bodies at a distance; for instance, some parishes in Wales pay their tithes to colleges of Oxford University, from which they derive no benefit whatever, or a very distant and uncertain benefit: here tithes are felt to be intolerable, and the demand is for a radical reform which shall hand over the tithes to local objects, such as educational institutions or relief of local taxation. The whole question is one of extraordinary complexity and difficulty, and time alone will decide whether it can be satisfactorily handled apart from, or in conjunction with, the disestablishment of the church.

-

During the last month a social event has excited interest among all classes, the betrothal and marriage of the eldest daughter of the Prince of Wales to the Earl (now the Duke) of Fife. Of course any event of this kind gives endless opportunities for gossip and rumor, and is a godsend to the illustrated papers. But it has also roused a political controversy, as the announcement of the betrothal was accompanied by a message from her Majesty the Queen to the House of Commons requesting that provision be made for the eldest son and eldest daughter of the heirapparent. As the total cost of the royal family is nearly one million. sterling per annum, some members of Parliament have been unwilling to sanction any further grant to the royal family, and considerably over one hundred members were willing to undergo the unpleasant reproach of want of loyalty by voting against any further grant. This is taken to show that, if at the beginning of another reign the Liberal party are in power, the present method of paying the royal family will be altered.

A large sum is now voted from the Consolidated Fund for what is called the Civil List, which provides for the cost of the court officials, the maintenance of the royal palaces, parks, yachts, etc. Besides this, the Queen has sixty thousand pounds (300,000 dollars) annually for her own privy purse, and sums over from the Civil List are transferred to the privy purse of the Crown. Owing largely to the comparative retirement in which Queen Victoria has lived for several years, large sums are known to have been so handed over to her privy purse, and it has been stated, and not denied, that her private savings amount to upwards of three millions. The secrecy which shrouds the actual truth, and the suggestions and suspicions thereby aroused, are no doubt unfortunate, and the cause of some discontent. This feeling has been aggravated by the fact that a number of the daughters and granddaughters of the Queen have married German princes, more or less impecunious, and have received through them allowances or dowries, which have come from the English tax-payer's pocket. All this may possibly be altered at the beginning of a new reign, when the money arrangements for the maintenance of the royal dignity are revised and determined afresh. Any objection to our monarchy on the mere ground of its expense is felt by all serious politicians to be of very little weight; but in a democracy, such as Britain is now more and more becoming, such objections may have a sinister influence. Open republican ideas are rarely expressed among us; and it is felt that a monarchical constitution is well adapted to preserve the sense of unity and solidarity, which is not readily understood in all parts of a vast empire on which the sun never sets, and which contains so many differences of climate, language, race, religion, and institutions.

Mention may be made of two books, which are both hopeful signs of the times, and which show the desire to understand the historical and political development of other countries as well as of our own. "The Swiss Confederation," by Sir F. O. Adams and C. D. Cunningham (London, Macmillan, 1889), describes the growth of the Swiss Republic and its present political and social life. An Englishman reading it longs for his own country to learn from the Swiss how the public services may be economically as well as efficiently carried out, and the lesson of a simple, harmonious, and most thorough system of national education. The study of Swiss politics ought to be of value to our statesmen, and the recent Swiss experiment of making the liquor traffic a Government monopoly, which is only just noted in this book, may be productive of very good results. Americans ought to find this work of value, if only because it contains a chapter on the comparison of Swiss and United States political institutions.

Dr. Sophie Bryant's "Celtic Ireland" (London, Kegan Paul, 1889) is a study of the Celtic racial element in the history and customs of the "sister isle," and indirectly suggests that a solution of the Irish Question in politics must start by recognizing the national sentiment of the Irish people. The book does not lay claim to original research, but is remarkable in connecting antiquarian and historical learning with the life and problems of to-day: as such it is a type of book not yet sufficiently Joseph King, Jr.

common.

HAMPSTEAD, LONDON.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

DARWINISM: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with some of its Applications. By ALFRED RUSSELL WALLace. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1889.

No one could discover from a perusal of this book that Mr. Wallace had come near to anticipating Darwin in the statement of the great theory to which the latter has given his name. Not only is Mr. Wallace silent as to his own part in the matter, but he declares that the whole educated public has come to accept the origin of species from other allied species by the ordinary process of natural birth as unquestionable, and that "this vast, this totally unprecedented change in public opinion has been the result of the work of one man." He maintains enthusiastically that Darwin is "the Newton of Natural History," and that his discovery has not only thrown a flood of light on the process of development of the whole organic world, but has also "established a firm foundation for all future study of nature." Such generous suppression of all personal jealousy under circumstances involving the most illustrious crown of fame that this generation has bestowed, strongly prepossess the reader in Mr. Wallace's favor.

The aim of his work is to restate the theory of the origin of species, supporting it by selections from the enormous mass of evidence that has accumulated since Darwin wrote, and to examine the attempts that have been made—not indeed to overthrow the theory, for that can hardly be said to have been seriously attempted - but to minimize the agency of natural selection and to subordinate it to laws of variation, of use and disuse, of intelligence and of heredity. Although many of the questions considered, such as the effect of isolation, the "swamping" results of intercrossing, the sterility of hybrids, and the extent to which variations exist, are of interest chiefly to professed naturalists, yet the facts that are brought forward as throwing light upon these questions are too striking to be uninteresting to any reader. On the other hand, the evidence for natural selection, as a principle, consists largely of matter with which naturalists are well acquainted, but which has a peculiar fascination for those who are not familiar with the subject, or who have not considered the significance of these facts. No one can read without delight the wonderful instances of adaptation related in the chapters upon "The Origin and Uses of Colour in Animals," and "Warning Coloration and Mimicry." In collections of evidence of this character there is a singular blending of the pleasure arising from the intrinsic charm of the facts with that arising from their aptness as proofs. As modern states rival one another in the assiduity with which they build armored vessels that can resist heavy ordnance, and then invent ordnance that can demolish these vessels, so throughout nature there is an incessant contrivance of defensive and offensive structures and faculties, a never-ending process of adaptation to the requirements of the struggle for existence. Although Mr. Wallace is not gifted with a particularly graphic style, his style is, indeed, to us nearly indistinguishable from that of Darwin, yet he develops his argument with such judgment and skill, and with such a wealth of knowledge, that its effect is overwhelming.

We shall select a single instance illustrating the theory of warning colors, which is instructive because the power of predicting what will

He

happen in a given case is a test of the truth of a theory. Mr. Belt found in Nicaragua a little frog "gorgeously dressed in a livery of red and blue, which did not attempt concealment, and was very abundant, a combination of characters which convinced him that it was uneatable. therefore took a few specimens home with him, and gave them to his fowls and ducks, but none would touch them. At last, by throwing down pieces of meat, for which there was a great competition among the poultry, he managed to entice a young duck into snatching up one of the little frogs. Instead of swallowing it, however, the duck instantly threw it out of its mouth, and went about jerking its head as if trying to get rid of some unpleasant taste."

On one point Mr. Wallace is more Darwinian than Darwin - the development of male ornament under the influence of female preference. He argues that in the struggle for existence any attempt to select mere ornament would be utterly nugatory, unless the most ornamented always coincide with "the fittest" in every other respect; while, if they do so coincide, then any selection of ornament is altogether superfluous. In fact, as he maintains, ornament is the natural product and direct outcome of superabundant health and vigor, and female selection is a superfluous explanation. We do not clearly see why it should not be at least a cooperating cause, nor how the many cases of unornamented males are to be accounted for; but this is a question for professed naturalists to deal with.

The principal value of this work for most readers lies in its lucid and succinct statements of Darwinian theory, and in its classification of facts according to their availability as evidence. On this account it will be found a convenient manual for the use of those who desire to be informed of the present state of scientific thought upon these important subjects. For a large class of readers, however, its interest will chiefly consist in the emphatic expression of the author's opinions upon certain collateral matters. Many writers have dwelt upon the struggle for existence as presenting so vast an amount of cruelty and pain as to be revolting to our humanity, and as rendering the belief in an all-wise and benevolent Ruler of the universe impossible. The author quotes the language of a brilliant writer, Mr. Winwood Reade :

"Pain, grief, disease, and death, are these the inventions of a loving God? That no animal shall rise to excellence except by being fatal to the life of others, is this the law of a kind Creator? It is useless to say that pain has its benevolence, that massacre has its mercy. Why is it so ordained that bad should be the raw material of good? Pain is not the less pain because it is useful; murder is not less murder because it is conducive to development. Here is blood upon the hand still, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it."

In opposition to this view, which has been recently advanced by Professor Huxley as fatal to the theory of the benevolent government of the world, Mr. Wallace boldly asserts that there is good reason to believe that the supposed torments and miseries of animals have been greatly exaggerated, being chiefly the reflection of the imagined sensations of cultivated men and women in similar circumstances, and that the amount of suffering caused by the struggle for existence among animals is altogether insignificant. His chief points are the freedom from the anticipation of death enjoyed by animals, resulting probably in the almost perpetual enjoyment of their lives; the absence of pain in cases of death by

violence; and the positive pleasures with which the lives of most animals are filled. For the development of this argument we must refer our readers to the book itself. The conclusion is that the struggle for existence really brings about the maximum of life and the enjoyment of life with the minimum of suffering and pain.

While Mr. Wallace fully accepts the descent of man from some ancestral form common to man and the anthropoid apes, he wholly repudiates the conclusion that the spiritual nature of man has been derived under the same laws of variation and natural selection. He claims that there are a number of mental faculties which either do not exist at all, or exist in a very rudimentary condition in savages, but appear almost suddenly and in perfect development in the higher civilized races. The characteristics of these faculties are inconsistent with the action of the law of natural selection in their production, and some other cause is necessary to account for them. This cause is man's spiritual nature; and to the objection that this is calling in a new cause, the reply is made that there are at least three stages in the development of the organic world when some new cause must have come into operation. These stages are: first, the change from inorganic to organic; second, the introduction of sensation or consciousness; and, third, the appearance of the moral nature in man. This view is summed up in a spirited passage, from which we extract a few sentences:

"Those who admit my interpretation of the evidence now adduced strictly scientific evidence in its appeal to facts which are clearly what ought not to be on the materialistic theory will be able to accept the spiritual nature of man as not in any way inconsistent with the theory of evolution, but as dependent on those fundamental laws and causes which furnish the very materials for evolution to work with. They will also be relieved from the crushing mental burthen imposed upon those who maintaining that we, in common with the rest of nature, are but products of the blind eternal forces of the universe . . . have to contemplate a not very distant future in which all this glorious earth which for untold millions of years has been slowly developing forms of life and beauty to culminate at last in man shall be as if it had never existed; who are compelled to suppose that all the slow growths of our race struggling towards a higher life, all the agony of martyrs, all the groans of victims, all the evil and misery and undeserved suffering of the ages, all the struggles for freedom, all the efforts towards justice, all the aspirations for virtue and the well-being of humanity, shall absolutely vanish, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack behind.'"

To Mr. Wallace and those who hold with him, the universe is a grand, consistent whole, adapted in all its parts to the development of spiritual beings capable of indefinite life and perfectibility. What is termed "evil" on the earth may be the most efficient means of this development, for we know that the noblest faculties of man are strengthened and perfected by struggle and effort. The warfare against physical evils in the midst of danger has developed courage and industry; by the battle with moral evil, in all its hydra-headed forms, the nobler qualities of justice and mercy and humanity and self-sacrifice have been steadily increasing in the world. Such having been man's development in the past, he has before him a still higher future.

NEW YORK.

.D. McG. Means.