September 1, 1887.] 



KNOV^LEDGK 



259 



nial illustration of this. It is grown simpl_v because it costs 

 less trouble and work than any other. The occupier of a 

 wretched acre or two sticks his potatoes into the ground (or 

 rather his women-folk do for him), and leans against the 

 wall smoking until they come up. And he calls this farm- 

 ing I What inexhaustible resources Ireland possesses in the 

 shape of animal, vegetable, and mineral wealth, and how 

 easily they might be utilised, the reader must go to Mr. 

 Dennis's pages to discover. We cannot help feeling that the 

 circulation of this admirable book throughout the length and 

 breadth of Ireland might almost be a matter of State 

 policy. Certainly any patriot who wished to confer a lasting 

 benefit on the country might employ his money much more 

 unpi-ofitably than in promoting such circulation. It might 

 render impotent the gang who earn their American wages 

 by fomenting outi-age and strife. 



Eoinanci of the Wool Trade. By James Boxwick, 

 F.R.G.S. (London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden i Welsh. 

 1887.) — The words "the wool trade" scarcely appear to 

 lend themselves to romance, and yet, within the compass of 

 this book, Mr. Bonwick contrives to pack an amount of 

 information, much of it fresh and all of it interesting, of a 

 character which largely justifies his choice of a title. He 

 treats of the various sorts of sheep scattered over the face 

 of the globe, of their breeding and management, and of wool- 

 production as carried on here and in the Antipodes. He, 

 further, devotes considerable space to a description of wool- 

 manufacture, both as practised in the Britkh Islands and in 

 Australasia. His account of the pioneers of the wool trade 

 in Australia, and of the difficulties against which they per- 

 force had to struggle, might, in parts, almost be taken from 

 the pages of a novel. The perusal of the volume on our 

 table may be commended to everyone who is curious to 

 learn the history of the coat on his own back. 



The Kabbalah Unveiled. By S. L. MacGeegor Mathers. 

 (London : George Redway. 1887.) — Beyond a general idea 

 that the Kabbalah contains the esoteric philosophy of the 

 Jewish doctors, we venture to think that the acquaintance 

 of the average educated Englishman with the nature of this 

 curiously crazy book might almost be expressed algebraically 

 as a — quantity. Mr. Mathers, then, has rendered a certain 

 amount of service to the mystic and the inquirer into occult 

 methods of exegesis by his English rendering of Von Eozen- 

 roth's Latin version of the extraordinary intellectual vagaries 

 of the Hebrew commentators on their Scriptures. That so 

 wonderful a series of examples of misdirected ingenuity and, 

 in places, the most utter childishness should ever have been 

 held to have been taught by the Almighty Himself to a 

 select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school in 

 Paradise (1), affijrds tolerably strong indication of the intel- 

 lectual depth to which the recipients of such a creed must 

 have descended, or rather from which they had not emerged. 

 It is simply impossible within the limits of space accorded 

 to reWews in these columns to select illustrations in sui)port 

 of these allegations from the pages before us — even if it would 

 not be blasphemous to do so. It must suffice, then, to say 

 here that the Bible is interpreted by such expedients as 

 those of forming anagrams of the names which occur in it, 

 by assigning numerical values to letters, and so forth. To 

 have discovered that the letters forming the words *' Sir 

 Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne the Baronet " may be 

 transposed into " Yon horrid butcher Orton, the biggest 

 rascal here " ; or that the numbers equivalent to the Greek 

 letters rAaSo-ron/ (i.e., 3, 30, 1, i, 200, 300, 70, 50, and 8) 

 when added together give the number of the beast, 666, 

 would have rejoiced the heart of the Rabbi Simon Ben 

 Jochai, and probably been accepted by his followers as a 

 direct and immediate revelation from Heaven. Verily the 



Bible has been wounded in the house of its friends, who 

 have tried to read meanings into it of which its various 

 authors were utterly and absolutely innocent ; and from 

 Ben Jochai down to Kinns have onlj' obscured what was 

 clear enough to every ordinary intellect already. But 

 although we have said with perfect plainness what we think 

 of the matter of the Kabbalah, we may add that it is worthy 

 of perusal by all who, as students of psychology, care to 

 trace the struggles of the human mind, and to note its 

 passage from animalism through mysticism to the clearness 

 of logical light and that scientific mode of thought and 

 reasoning which can appraise the doting ramblings of the 

 Jewish fathers at their true value. 



The Religion of Socialism. By Ernest Bei.fort Bax. 

 (London : Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey &: Co.) — If anyone 

 wishes to see the dreary sophistry and platitudinarian rant 

 of Messrs. Hyndman and Co. presented with such in%-iting- 

 ness as an atithor possessing a certain amount of culture can 

 confer upon it, he may find it in this volume. Whether, 

 though, a thin electro-plating of grammatical, and even in 

 places polished, language really renders the monster of 

 Socialism any more attractive, or serves to conceal the 

 stupendous fallacies underlying its fundamental tenets, the 

 reader must judge for himself. 



Disease and Sin. By a Medical Muser. (London: 

 Wyman it Sons. 18S6.) — Here we have "a hap'orth of 

 bread to an intolerable quantity of sack " in the shape of a 

 very few useful comments on disease, but too sparsely scat- 

 tered in a very ocean of twaddle and preachee-preachee. 

 The '• Medical Muser " talks with a kind of pitying contempt 

 of Darwin I and condemns evolution toto ccelo ; believes that 

 the first chapter of Genesis really gives an account of the 

 creiition of the visible universe ; asserts that man was 

 created perfect (his knowledge of the prehistoric races being, 

 apparently, like the joint-stock companies, " limited ''), and 

 so on. His intimate acquaintance with physical science 

 may be gauged from the single sentence we propose to quote 

 from his book. '• Light," he says, " is the primary force, 

 for it is positively proved that it does not depend upon 

 vibi-ations of matter " ! But it is, of course, open to this un- 

 assuming author to assert that the medium filling all space 

 whose vibrations of certain orders do affect us as light is not 

 matter — and perhaps it doesn't matter mttch, after all. 



Labour Cajntalisation. By Wordsworth Doxisthorpe. 

 (London : Liberty and Property Defence League. 1887.) — 

 It is a long time since we have read a more able and 

 thoughtful work than that whose title heads this notice. 

 We will not weaken or spoil Mr. Donisthorpe's argument by 

 any attempt to summarise it here. It must be read in all its 

 logical sequence to be appreciated. Every one interested in 

 the progress of the working classes, and even in the stability 

 of the nation itself, should obtain and study this trenchant 

 brochure. He can scarcely rise from its attentive perusal 

 without being a wiser man. There is, by the wa}', one 

 misprint on p. 18, which makes nonsense of the sentence as 

 it stands. It consists in the omission of the words " is not" 

 after " diameter" and before =3-11:159. Even a microscopic 

 blunder like this is out of place in an essay of such unques- 

 tionable general merit as the one before us. 



The Cruise of the Land Yacht " Waiulerer." By Gordon 

 Stables, CM., M.D., R.N. (London: Hodder & 

 Stoughton. 1886.) — If enthusiasm in a cause were all that 

 is needful to make converts, then might we expect all the 

 pa.ssable roads in the kingdom to be thronged in future 

 with more or less luxurious caravans during spring, sum- 

 mer, and autumn : for surely never did man enter more 

 thoroughly, heart and soul, into a novel form of adventure 

 than does Dr. Stables appear to have done in his essay in 



