LITERARY NOTICES. 



269 



of meteorology and astronomy are con- 

 cerned, are bending their attention upon 

 the as yet unsolved problems of terres- 

 trial pbysics ; and how very unlikely it 

 is that any great laws should elude their 

 keenest research and most vigilant ob- 

 servation, and yet reveal themselves to 

 an individual of absolutely no scientific 

 standing, and, so far as any one can 

 judge, a mere sensation-monger. A 

 sketch of the history of science, of the 

 order in which its leading discoveries 

 have been made, and of its present re- 

 sources for the further prosecution of 

 truth, could, we doubt not, be rendered 

 interesting to boys and girls of average 

 school age. The sketch would have to 

 be boldly drawn, in few and simple and 

 striking lines ; but this might be done 

 without any sacrifice of accuracy. In 

 this way respect for science as science 

 would be created ; and the rising gen- 

 eration would be made not only to feel 

 that it is a power in the world, but to 

 understand what kind of a power it 

 is, and what kind of men its ministers 

 ought to be. The lesson would have 

 moral implications, for the methods of 

 science are simply the best methods of 

 every-day life, methods of patience, of 

 perseverance, of honesty, of reason. To 

 know science as an embodied power, as 

 a personality, so to speak, would be to 

 know that which one would necessarily 

 be the better for knowing, and to be 

 furnished with an ideal of life which, 

 if not complete at all points, would 

 embrace very much that is essential to 

 integrity of intellectual and moral char- 

 acter. Thus, too, would public opinion 

 be steadied and the credulity that is 

 still the reproach of our civilization be 

 reduced within much narrower limits. 

 If Mr. "Wiggins should, without intend- 

 ing it, be the means of so drawing atten- 

 tion to our educational deficiencies on 

 the scientific side as to lead to vigorous 

 efforts at reform and improvement, we 

 shall be able hereafter to recall his name 

 with feelings of less unmitigated scorn 

 than would otherwise certainly be his 

 due. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jev- 

 ons. Edited by his Wife. London and 

 New York : Macmillan &; Co. Pp. 473. 

 Price, £4. 



It is a most enjoyable treat to get a clear 

 insight into the personality of a man who 

 has made himself in any way distinguished, 

 and to realize how like he, whom we have 

 had to regard at a distance and as a kind of 

 abstraction of the cause he is associated 

 with, is to other men, and how fully he is 

 in sympathy with all that is human. The 

 enjoyableness is complete if the man's life 

 has been happy and free from reproach. 

 Such is the case with Professor Jevons as 

 he presents himself in his letters and jour- 

 nal, in which his wife, supplying only such 

 connecting links as were necessary, has 

 wisely decided to give an account of his 

 life in his own words as much as possible. 

 They present him as a man of ordinary sus- 

 ceptibilities, with no extravagant or partic- 

 ularly marked tendencies in any direction, 

 heartily enjoying his family life and his 

 friends, fond of his baths, relishing active 

 sports, entering enthusiastically into the vol- 

 unteering movement which absorbed Eng- 

 lish attention while the world was waiting 

 upon Louis Xapoleon's nod, showing the mu- 

 sical as his strongest aesthetical taste, and 

 patiently and persistently pursuing the work 

 with which he gave life to the driest statis- 

 tics and made the most abstruse social and 

 economical facts luminous. The letters are 

 full of good points, and show throughout 

 the keen observer of men, facts, and events, 

 of which the writer says but little, but that 

 little going to the heart of the matter. Af- 

 ter a residence of five years in Australia, 

 Mr. Jevons visited the United States in 

 1859, two years before the beginning of the 

 war. At Washington he " scrambled over 

 the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the 

 Smithsonian Institution, Lafayette Square, 

 with Mr. Sickles's residence," and saw noth- 

 ing more of the least interest in the Ameri- 

 can capital. New York he found a great 

 but not very amusing city, while he admired 

 the extreme convenience of the American 

 hotels. Pittsburg was an intolerably smoky 

 manufacturing town, and the great American 

 towns generally were described as "mere col- 

 lections of great warehouses, shops, wharves, 



