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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



man of profound sensibility to his human 

 environment, and of irrepressible sympathy 

 with the weakness, the difficulties, the er- 

 rors, and the miseries of his fellow-beings. 

 His book has the double object of pointing 

 out the more common and fruitful sources 

 of those debilities and infirmities from 

 which people suffer through their preju- 

 dices, ignorance, unhealthy habits, and un- 

 natural practices, and of arousing them to 

 more earnest, hearty, and determined effort 

 at amendment. 



It is just at this point that criticism in- 

 tervenes with its accusation that our author 

 writes with exaggeration and extravagance. 

 If this objection implies that facts are dis- 

 torted or truth overstrained in Dr. Oswald's 

 pages, we believe it will be found to have a 

 very slender basis ; if it is a mere matter 

 of taste, the use of superlatives is certainly 

 excusable here if anywhere. Dr. Oswald is 

 inspired with the hope of mending things ; 

 and, in writing for the people, he does not 

 believe that non-committal under-statements 

 are best suited to answer that purpose. 

 With feeble conventional protests which 

 arouse no indignation and provoke no ac- 

 tion Dr. Oswald has little patience. He 

 writes both to divert and to convert his 

 readers, and his essays are therefore doubly 

 contrasted with the subdued regulation 

 monographs of a scientific period that is 

 cultivated out of half its life. To produce 

 any salutary and permanent reform, the 

 evils to be corrected require to be presented 

 in a very strong light and vividly realized. 

 " Cool indifference, whatever subjective ad- 

 vantages it may have, will never set a rub- 

 bish-heap of old shams and errors afire." 



There is but one thing worse, in the 

 view of Dr. Oswald, than the injurious prac- 

 tices which undermine the stamina and 

 lower the health and life of a people, and 

 that is the dull, conventional acquiescence 

 in a confessedly vicious state of things. 

 Holding that this wide-spread and culpable 

 torpor is due largely to the preaching of an 

 ancient gospel of anti-naturalism, he main- 

 tains that its only possible counteraction is 

 the vigorous and vehement inculcation of the 

 gospel of nature, and his book is animated 

 throughout with this preaching. The mere 

 lazy indifference of those who are comfort- 

 able in prevailing customs, and content with 



the decorous rule of Mrs. Grundy, is suffi- 

 ciently intolerable ; but when these fall back 

 upon a philosophy of life which maligns 

 the natural instincts, libels the world we 

 live in, and promises another to compensate 

 for the breakdown of this, he has only hot 

 denunciation of the doctrine and all who 

 teach it. However we may object to pun- 

 gency of speech, Dr. Oswald may at any 

 rate plead the abundant example of his 

 adversaries in the use of it. 



The " Physical Education " is one of the 

 most wholesome and valuable books that 

 have emanated from the American press in 

 many a day. Not only can everybody un- 

 derstand it, and, what is more, feel it, but 

 everybody that gets it will be certain to 

 read and re-read it. We have known of the 

 positive and most salutary influence of the 

 papers as they appeared in the " Monthly," 

 and the extensive demand for their publi- 

 cation in a separate form shows how they 

 have been appreciated. Let those who are 

 able and wish to do good buy it wholesale 

 and give it to those less able to obtain it. 

 It will be a boon to benighted multitudes. 



The Voyage of the Yega round Asia and 

 Europe, with a Historical Review of 

 Previous Journeys along the North 

 Coast of the Old World. By A. E. 

 Nordenskiold. Translated by Alexan- 

 der Leslie. With five Steel Portraits, 

 numerous Maps, and Illustrations. New 

 York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 741. Price, 

 86. 



The frequent references which have been 

 made within the last two years to the enter- 

 prise of which this work gives the first full 

 and detailed account, attest the value which 

 the world attaches to the problem which it 

 was designed, if possible, to solve, that of 

 forcing a northeast passage to China and 

 Japan a problem which, the author re- 

 marks, "for more than three hundred years 

 had been a subject of competition between 

 the world's foremost commercial states and 

 most daring navigators, and which, if we 

 view it in the light of a circumnavigation of 

 the Old World, had, for thousands of years 

 back, been' an object of desire to naviga- 

 tors." Professor Nordenskiold was led to 

 undertake this voyage by the success of his 

 previous voyages, in which he had reached 

 the mouth of the Yenisei River by sea from 



