collect his ideas sufficiently to see the drift of twenty-one observations each with a long commentary, of which the following is a fair specimen: "On the whole, certain kinds of particles affect certain parts of the spectrum;" and, although he will infallibly give up his attempt to understand what definite light spectroscopic researches throw on atoms and molecules, and fail to participate in the author's sense of the beautiful, which is much gratified every here and there by some intricate experimental arrangement, yet he will be rewarded by many curious facts, and amused also in many places. For instance, he will learn that it is almost certain that since the year 1860 a new metal has either made its appearance in the sun, or at any rate exists now in enormously greater quantities in the sun's atmosphere than it did eighteen years ago. This metal is one which gives a brilliant red colour to flame when heated, and is called Strontium.

He will learn also the surprising fact that the greatest modern improvement in telescopes is the production of one through which it is impossible to see anything; indeed, that this is the "telescope of the future," as far as spectroscopy is concerned.

The fact is that the rays that are most effective in producing a photographic image are not those which, when they impinge on the retina, produce the sensation of light, but ones which lie beyond the last visible rays towards the violet end of the spectrum. They can only be brought to a focus so as to give a clear image available for photographing, by grinding a lens purposely adapted for this one object; and the other rays of light are therefore left out of consideration altogether.

The latter part of the book is

taken up with an account of experiments on the more obscure parts of this new science, and, if more difficult in itself, is written with more interest. The whole work is most instructive, not only to those who have an interest in the subject itself, but to those also who feel an interest in tracing the progress of a science. Perpetual illustrations will be found in it of how facts run counter to expectations; and yet how essential the habit of forming and testing expectations is to the advance of knowledge.

The sentence with which the work opens we question in several points, though it expresses quite the ordinary view:

"The work of the true man of Science is a perpetual striving after a better and closer knowledge of the planet on which his lot is cast, and of the universe in the vastness of which that planet is lost. The only way of doing this effectually is to proceed as gradually, and therefore as surely as possible, along the dim untrodden ground lying beyond the known. Such is scientific work. There is no magic, no fetish in it. There is no special class of men to whom it is given to become more familiar with the beauties and secrets of nature than another. Each of us by his own work and thought, if he so choose, may enlarge the circle of his own knowledge at least, and thus make the universe more and more beautiful, to himself at all events, if not to others."

By science we understand studied and proven knowledge of facts, but "true can see no reason why the man should be confined to the study of what is external to himself, that is, of what is but his dwellingplace. "The proper study of mankind is man,' was said long ago: there is no reason, so far as we can see, why psychic anthropology

should not be included among the objects of scientific study. Furthermore, it is stated by Mr. Lockyer that there is no class of men to whom more than another it is given to become familiar with the beauties and secrets of nature. This is inaccurate. As, with regard to the psychic and artistic revelations which the world possesses, they are invariably due to persons of rare and unusual temperament; so it is with the discoveries known as science. The discoverers are men of refined faculty, rare patience, and accurate habit quite beyond the average qualities of men. No set of boors, no barbarian race, no crowd of heavy bucolic louts, no men of unopened and untrained minds would be at all competent to perform the delicate processes of scientific investigation. Because a gaping crowd will laugh at an explosion produced by a popularising lecturer, it would be altogether idle to affirm that they are capable of scientific work." There is magic in science as much as in any other way into the unknown. And there is fetish in it, inasmuch as a scientific worker would find it as hopeless to put average stupidity into an appreciative position like his own, as a priest or seer of the old days found it to communicate to undeveloped minds a consciousness of the depth and greatness of truths that became manifest to himself.

66

tive quality in English art. But the imaginative faculty of the Prime Minister is not that which Mr. Goschen would have us cultivate.

To Johnson's Dictionary we are referred for the true meaning of imagination. The first definition given Mr. Goschen is quite willing to uphold: Imagination is "the power of forming ideal pictures." With the second he also agrees; but with a little ironic intensification of accent on one word this definition might suit Lord Beaconsfield's academic imagination as well Imagination is "the power of representing absent things to ourselves and to others."

:

Imagination is image-forming, and to be truly imaginative is to form honest images of what we see.. There is historic imagination by which we call up pictures of great epochs, moving dramas of men. There is the imagination of memory, by which we recall scenes that we have visited, and regild them with the sunshine in which we saw them. There is poetic imagination unto which thoughts and feelings come, not as abstract and remote, but instinct with life and firm in ideal form and beauty. There is spiritual imagination, through which the things not seen crowd upon the mirror of the inner eye.

Mr. Goschen, a successful business man, strives to open out the vistas of imagination to such as have narrow careers and stunted lives. He seeks to enlarge sympathy, and to expand the untrained mind into the faculty of deriving pleasure from mental change of scene. The business man of the smaller order is apt to deride all but the strictly utilitarian, because he thinks he would lose money by dreaming. Probably he would, but he would as probably gain by a controlled faculty of dream, a

power of rapid review, and clear marshalling of circumstances in their varied aspects. When a shopkeeper sees a picture of himself grown poor and gentlemanly through growth of ideal power and diminution of the hard grip upon solid realities, he is then indulging in imagination of a fervid kind. We all possess imagination in different degree; with some, however, the faculty, if we may coin an ugly word, should rather be described as imagunculation.

Mr. Goschen does not decline the challenge of the nature to whom the cultivation of the "main chance" is the sole imaginable heaven. But he first enters a protest against the over-estimation of that which claims the name of "practical." He says, "Its marketable use is not the only test, or even the chief test, to which we ought to look in education; and I decline to have these courses of studies simply tried by the bearing they may have on the means of gaining a livelihood." Mr. Goschen, it should be named, is addressing the Liverpool Institute. In responding to the practicalist's challenge, his main point is as follows:

"Do not believe for one moment -I am rather anxious on this point -that the cultivation of this faculty will disgust you or disqualify you for your daily tasks. I hold a very contrary view. I spoke just now of mental change of scene, and as the body is better for a change of scene and a change of air, so I believe that the mind is also better for occasional changes of mental atmosphere. I do not believe that it is good either for men or women always to be breathing the atmosphere of the business in which they are themselves engaged. You know how a visit to the seaside sometimes brings colour to the cheeks

A very happy instance, too, is the following:

"Some eight years ago I met a distinguished modern poet, calling at the same house where I was calling, and he asked, 'What becomes of all the Senior Wranglers and of all the Oxford first-class men? One does not hear of them in after-life.' I ventured very modestly to say in reply that, not being a Cambridge man, I could not speak on behalf of Cambridge men; but as to Oxford I was able to inform him that eight of her first-class men were at that moment in Her Majesty's Cabinet."

Turning to the "general roughand-tumble of business life," Mr. Goschen instances the case of his own father, who came to England saturated with German literature, and with very little money; yet he founded a firm whose business Mr. Goschen has reason to appreciate highly.

There are many points in this brief and terse essay that we have not space to touch upon. One is the necessity in this important little island of political responsibility and capable public opinion. We turn away with regret from Mr. Goschen's excellent counterblast to narrowmindedness.

Tent Work in Palestine: a record of discovery and adventure. By Claude Regnier Conder, R.E., officer in command of the Survey Expedition. Published by the Committee of the Palestine Ex

ploration Fund. 2 vols. London: Bentley, 1878.

This modest title hardly does justice to the book; for, though intended as a popular account of the Palestine Exploration Survey, it is a not inadequate instalment of the record itself, and is certainly a very competent account of its results. The Survey, now in preparation, will be given in twenty-six sheets of map, on a scale one inch to the mile, with memoirs, one to every sheet; showing "towns, villages, ruins, roads, tombs, caves, cisterns, well springs, rock-cut winepresses;" as well as "cultivation and wild growth;" every relic of antiquity, the heights of the hills, and the levels of the two seas, fixed to within a foot. For the first time then, and as the reward of these efforts, Palestine is brought home to England. The committee, while preserving to themselves in their preface the disclaimer of their chairman as to responsibility for his conclusions, commissioned Lieutenant Conder to write this account of the work carried out by him, and of the results which to him seemed of most general interest. This is the book now before us. Topography, archæology, and the study of the people may be considered as the three heads under which its subject is treated. The author's remarks on identification apply to all new discoveries in an ancient country, but are in an especial manner applicable

to

Palestine, and yet more to what is put forward as the main object of the Survey-Biblical elucidation. "Identification," that is, the recovery of an ancient historic site, "requires, says Lieutenant Conder, "first, the suitability of the position to all the known accounts of the place," itself a large requirement; "second, the preservation of all the radical parts of the name"; "third, in case of the loss of

the name, definite indications," such as measured distances, or some connection with existing buildings or relative position to known sites; still, further, "the site," we afterwards find," must show traces of antiquity, and the name must be placed beyond suspicion of being of recent or spurious origin: the correspondence of modern and ancient titles must be not merely apparent, but radically exact." It is a well-defined rule; and, "failing these requirements, no identification will stand" is the rigorous penalty of its infringement.

From

this we may judge the standard applied by Lieutenant Conder to his own work of discovery, and the challenge he offers to his critics. Another point of great importance is the application of tradition, and in particular of Christian tradition, to identification, especially as affecting the authenticity of the Holy Places. Except as to the Grotto of Bethlehem, no Christian tradition can be traced to a period earlier than the fourth century. and, even with that restriction, though offering valuable indications, can hardly be taken as authoritative at that date; but Christian sites are often fixed, or at least corroborated, by Jewish tradition, and in such a case as these history is thus carried back to an earlier source, and the character of the tradition is enhanced. Another source of corroboration is to be found in the Moslem tradition. Of this, indeed, Mr Conder does not seem to have made much use; but, when Jewish, Christian, and Moslem tradition, and veneration also, as evidenced by pilgrimage, concur, authenticity may well be considered as presumptively established. The site of the sepulchres of the Patriarchs, for instance, pointed out by Jew, Christian, and Moslem, may reasonably be taken as agreeable to very ancient tradi

tion. If the space at our disposal had allowed, we should gladly have here added a quotation of exceeding pertinence on this subject from M. Renan, who will at least be allowed to be an unexceptionable witness in favour of traditions. We should have done so all the more readily that his name is not among the list of writers Mr. Conder gives as those whom he quotes or to whom he refers. The wild theories of the medieval chroniclers-contradictions alike of

Biblical

accounts and of the earlier Pilgrims-very properly find scant notice in these volumes. Tobler's "Palestrinæ Descriptiones" is the repertory for everything in the way of information upon everything of early date relative to the subject. We are fairly told, at p. xxi. of the preface, that "the main object of the Survey of Palestine may be said to have been to collect materials in illustration of the Bible." This no doubt is so, and very properly; none the less has that been kept in view by Mr. Conder himself, while at the same time allied subjects have been duly investigated and carried forward.

One of the most generally interesting parts of the work is the 8th chapter, p. 204, vol. ii., on the origin of the Fellahin; and this should be read in conjunction with the second and third chapters on the Samaritans and the Survey of Samaria. The result of Mr. Conder's investigation is shortly this: that the Fellahin are the descendants of the old inhabitants of Palestine, and that those are the natives of the land. He terms them "the Syrians, for want of a better title." They are, in fact, the present peasantry of the land, forming, with Jews and Arabs, the inhabitants of the country plus the admixture of foreign residents, the German, the Turk, and the mon

grel Levantine. Mr. Conder's opportunities for observations on the Fellahin were peculiar, for he lived amongst them. His "Tent Work" was a tent life amidst them; and he has in his 9th chapter amply described their way of life and habits, with due discrimination as with a view to elucidate the problem of their origin. We think he has quite established his position that the Fellahin of to-day are the actual descendants and the real representatives of the ancient inhabitants of the land, and that they carry with them evidence of this in their character, their language, and their religion, the three fundamental characteristics of nationality from which their origin may be rightly conjectured, and their peculiarities accounted for. We refer to Mr. Conder's pages for details, only remarking that he gives quite examples enough to connect the present peasant dialect with the old Aramaic, which St. Jerome tells us was the language of the natives of Palestine in the fourth century. In regard to the other subjects of comparisoncharacter and religion-it is to be borne in mind that this is a Semitic and not an Aryan people that is treated of, and that the investigation is to be dealt with from a Semitic point of view. This settled population of the villages in Palestine is nowise to be confounded with the nomadic tribes, the Bedouin, as they term themselves, the Arabs as they are called by the Fellahin. We cannot but notice too, while speaking of the inhabitants, the accidental testimony to the tolerance of the Turkish rule, which again receives testimony in an unexpected manner at p. 139, vol. i: "Twenty years ago Nazareth was a poor village ; now it is a flourishing town. freedom given to religious worship by the Turks has been remarkable:

The