648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dall, with his wife's aid, proposed to devote himself. With the 

 exception of the investigations upon the aerial germs, which, 

 though, strictly" speaking, they might be continuations and am- 

 plifications 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, re- 

 ligious, 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. 



Br AMHERST W. BAEBER. 



IT is a startling anachronism to an American reader of 1894 to 

 stumble upon a large vellum-bound law-book of the last cen- 

 tury, 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 appen- 

 dix full of engravings, given by royal authority as working draw- 

 ings to govern every operation of legal torture. Such a relic of 

 an almost forgotten system of law rests in obscurity at the na- 

 tional capital, intruding its grim savagery of language and its 

 coldly fiendish pictures upon a few minds accustomed to the mod- 

 ern 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 



