62 



Thp: Revie;w of Reviews. 



NANSEN IN PRAISE OF THE NORSEMEN: 

 Their Discovery of North America. 



The Gcog;raphicat Journal for December contains a 

 paper by Dr. Nansen on tlie Norsemen in America. 

 He says : — 



During early times the world appeared to mankind like a 

 fairy tale . , . Thus it reuiaineil during the early Middle Ages. 

 In those days, Northern England was near the border of the 

 known world. The great change was brought about by the 

 Norsemen. With tlieir remarkable power of expansion they 

 extendec) their wanderings over Western and .Southern Europe, 

 and penetrated the vast unknown solitudes in the north. They 

 found their way to the White Sea, and lands beyond ; they 

 discovered the wide ."Vrctic ocean and its lands ; they settled in 

 the Scotch islands, found and colonised the Faroes, Iceland, 

 Greenland, were the discoverers of the Atlantic Ocean and of 

 North America. 



Above all, they were the great pioneers in traversing the 

 ocean. Before them, all navigation had been more or less 

 coast navigation, the ships sailing chiefly along the coasts from 

 place to place, and never venturing very far from the known 

 land. Tile general idea of the world made it an island, 

 surrounded on all sides by the sea, beyond which was the 

 darkness of the unknown. The Norsemen destroyed, by their 

 <liscoveries, these learned ideas ; in their small undecked vessels 

 they s;iilel across the outer ocean, and found lands beyond. 

 Thus they taught humanity the art of oceanic navigation, which 

 marks in reality jierhaps the greatest discovery in the history of 

 exploration. 



He traces the account given in the Sagas of the 

 discovery of the Wineland, with its self-grown vines 

 and unsown wheat, to the description of the For- 

 tunate Isles in Isidorus Hispalensis, which reached 

 Iceland via Ireland : — 



The results of these investigations would then be that the 

 Norsemen have discovered America, and have had intercourse 

 with the land and its natives probably during some long period. 

 But the narratives of this discovery and of voyages to Wineland 

 are legendary. The Icelanders and the (Jreenlanders may have 

 transferred the ideas, especially of the Fortunate Isles, from the 

 legends to the discovered land. 



The pecuHar ball game of lacrosse played by 

 Indians of the north-east of North America is remark- 

 ably similar to the ancient Norse ball game, " knatt- 

 leikr." The Icelanders appear to have introduced 

 the same ball game to another American people — 

 the Eskimo of Greenland. Dr. Nansen describes 

 the Icelanders, in their masterly Sagas, as the creators 

 of the realistic novel. 



LORD JAMES OF HEREFORD. 



Sir Algernon West contributes to the January 

 CornhUl a very beautiful sketch of Lord James of 

 Hereford from the more intimate side 



ins GENEROSITY. 

 Mis generosity was great. I may illustrate it from the 

 memory of Lord Loreburn. While James w.as still a young 

 and a comparatively poor man he had made in his profes- 

 sion about ;£'i,5oo or /2,ooo ; hearing of the death of a 

 schoolfellow, who had left his widow in a state of destitution, 

 he at once made over to her the whole of his savings. On 

 another occasion he unexpectedly came into a considerable sum 

 of money, and said to .Sir Francis Mowalt : " I am going to 

 !.,ive myself a treat — I shall distribute it all in lots of /too 

 and /'200 each upon some poor fellows who I know will be the 

 happier for it." During periods of enormous legal and Par- 

 liamentary stress, a friend tells me, he has known him to write 



with his own hand seventy or eighty lett^-fi petitioning for 

 votes for a poor country clergyman — a friend of his early days 

 Munificence in every direction, presents of large sums of money 

 to those who had lost theirs, and infinite delight in assisting the 

 poor characterised his life. He felt an intense pleasure in doing 

 these things, and did them well and delicately. 



The writer quotes from Mr. Asquith as follows 

 concerning Lord James : — 



" From 1886 until Mr. Chamberlain started his Fiscal 

 crusade in 1903 we were in opposite political camps. But hi; 

 kindness to me and my attachment and gratitude to him never 

 suffered a day's disturbance, and to the end of his life he 

 remained one of my most honoured and valued friends. 



" He was very fond of young people, shared their interests, 

 delighted in their company, and when he thought he saw signs 

 of promise, he was unstinting in generosity and active help. To 

 those who worked for him, as I did for a time, he was not only 

 appreciative, but (what is much rarer) uniformly considerate." 



.'\lfred Lyttelton says : — 



" No gayer or more delightful companion out shooting could 

 be imagined." He began to play golf when he was seventy, 

 and learned quite enough of the game to laugh at the foozles 

 of his friends. 



THE SCHOOL OF TO-MORROW: 



More Action, Less Listening. 



In the American Educational Review for Decem- 

 ber Mr. S. L. Heeter, Superintendent of Schools, 

 makes very radical demands on the school of the 

 future. He says : — 



The boy and girl of to morrow, even in our common schools, 

 must be givefl work courses and play courses as well as 

 culture courses. Our common schools must become at one and 

 the same time schools of health, schools of occu|>alion, schools 

 of play, and schools of study. I venture the suggestion that the 

 kindergarten of to-d ly is the forerunner of a new form of 

 elementary school. Games and plays, arts and crafts, industries 

 and occupations, properly graduated and adapted lo the varying 

 needs and capacities of children, will constitute a larger and 

 larger part of the common programme. One course of training 

 at least will begin and end in the making of things, every thin^ 

 which a child can leain to make. The instincts of play, 

 curiosity, pride, imitation will be utilised under the leadership 

 of teachers who will work shoulder to shoulder with children. 

 The chasm between work and play will be bridged. Drudger\ 

 will be thrown to the winds. Play as well as work will be made 

 productive and educative, and the school will occupy more of the 

 daylight hours of the child. 



No child in the coming day will be strapped to a desk. He 

 will be given a locker for his books and his tools. He wil! 

 work in turn in the classroom and in the shop, at the study 

 table and at the bench, in the gymnasium or in the garden. 

 Our schools will be schools of activity. 



In brief, some of these days the eight years of our elementary 

 school education will be socialiseil, industrialised, vocation- 

 aliscd, institutionalised, and modernised along the lines no« 

 suggested by the kindergarten. Play and occupation will 

 become a basis for entrance into the simple pursuits of everyday 

 life. 



Train a child's intellect exclusively and he becomes a heart- 

 less villain ; train his heart exclusively and he becomes a reli- 

 gious zealot ; train his body exclusively and he becomes a daring 

 monsier ; train his hand exclusively and he becomes a human 

 machine. The world is too full of villains, zealots, monsters, 

 and human machines. It calls for the all-round education of 

 the school of to-morrow. 



In the " Babes of the Wild," a series by Charles 

 G. D. Roberts in CasscU's, the January paper recounts 

 the battles and triumphs of a young swordfish. 



