LITERARY NOTICES. 



127 



lege presidents can say to the contrary, 

 on public attention. 



As regards Germany the opinion 

 which, as we have said, Prince Bis- 

 marck expressed years ago is strongly 

 confirmed by Mr. "William H. Dawson's 

 recent work on Germany. We take the 

 following summary of his observations 

 on this question from the London Satur- 

 day Review : 



" He draws a very gloomy picture 

 of the result of too many universities 

 and too much higher education. "We 

 should like to think he exaggerated here, 

 but we are forced to admit he does not. 

 Twenty-two seats of learning are yearly 

 ' turning out studied men in thousands,' 

 and the unfortunate ' studied men ' are 

 lucky if, at the age of thirty-five, they 

 are earning the wages of English bank 

 clerks. The paternal state finds money 

 for universities and looks to the qualifi- 

 cations for the professions and the civil 

 service ; but that paternal state can not 

 provide its carefully examined would- 

 be lawyers and doctors and civil serv- 

 ants and teachers with briefs and pa- 

 tients and posts and pupils ; and, as a 

 consequence, the educated unemployed 

 increase mightily in numbers year by 

 J ear. Still more formidable are the 

 'breakages' the horde of superficially 

 book-learned young fellows of the mid- 

 dle and lower middle ranks whom stu- 

 pidly ambitious fathers have sent to 

 universities (the state aiding) to fail in 

 examinations when they ought to be sell- 

 ing groceries or hoeing potatoes. These 

 undoubtedly form a ti'uly ' dangerous 

 class ' ; unfit for real intellectual efibrt, 

 they have just sufficient smattering of 

 letters, philosophy, economics, and sci- 

 ence to make them the readiest tools of 

 the agitator and the most permanent and 

 effective nuisances to society, against 

 which they have the very real griev- 

 ance that they are unable to serve it in 

 any useful way." 



We have the case here very suc- 

 cinctly stated. These are the men who 

 say that "the world owes them a liv- 



ing," the truth being that they have 

 contracted a debt both for previous liv- 

 ing and for education which they have 

 little prospect of ever being able to wipe 

 out. The sooner we recognize the fact 

 that our modern systems of education 

 are largely experimental, and that much 

 of the way we have gone may have to be 

 retraced, the better it will be for the 

 permanent peace of society. At pres- 

 ent we are using too much yeast of a 

 not very wholesome kind, and the re- 

 sult is an excessive and dangerous 

 amount of social fermentation. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Story of the Sun. By Sir Robert S. 

 Ball, F. R. S. Eleven Plates and Eighty- 

 two Illustrations. 8vo. New York : D. 

 Appleton & Co. Pp. 3*76. Price, $6. 



This great story, draped in its simple 

 yet eloquent diction, will perchance recall 

 to the reader's mind some bygone evening 

 when, by the shore of a sheltered and tran- 

 quil lake, he may have beheld reflected in 

 its depths the crumbling glories of a nation's 

 ancient structure, intermingling with the 

 pinnacles of the modern edifice, devoted to 

 the promotion of science in its latest reaches 

 of infinite research. In such a scene, what 

 food may not one find for reflection in a 

 mental as well as the physical sense ! The 

 simile drawn may stand as reverting to cer- 

 tain antique theories of the sun, when con- 

 trasted with our nowaday ascertainable data. 



Indeed, if this latest work of Sir Robert 

 S. Ball were presented to the student 

 stripped of all but the illustrations, it would, 

 we feel assured, be pronounced a uniformly 

 artistic and harmonious story without words. 

 In the author's preparation of the work he 

 gratefully acknowledges the assistance ren- 

 dered him by such marked names in astro- 

 nomical science as Prof. Pickering, of Har- 

 vard College Observatory ; the famous French 

 savant M. Flammarion ; Prof. Holden, of 

 Lick Observatory ; Prof. Janssen, and many 

 others. Even the reading of proofs was 

 consigned to the charge of four unquestion- 

 able authorities. In all these aids, the es- 

 sential purport of the volume, including 

 such pronounced care, purity of style, logic 



