Revuii or Revieat, 1/10106. 



The Reviews Reviewed. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. 



The Xorth American Bci-itw for July has several 

 articles of more than average interest. 



WANTED— A FEDERAL DIVOKCE LAW! 



Mr. W. Larremore, writing on American Divorce 



Law, pleads for an amendment of the L'onstitution in 



order to enable Ckjngress to enact a uniform divorce 



law for the United States. Mr. Larremore says that — 



It would be a comparatively simple task to frame a 

 divorce law for operation throughout the United States, 

 which would conserve public morality and general happi- 

 ness and be acceptable to average sentiment. We need 

 look no farther than Massachusetts for its model, if not, 

 indeed, tor its final form. Its statutes prescribe, in addi- 

 tion to adultery, many other grounds for divorce— as, for 

 example, cruel and abusive treatment; utter desertion tor 

 three consecutive years next before the filing of the libel; 

 gross and confirmed habits of intoxication caused by volun- 

 tary and excessive use of intoxicating liquor, opium or 

 other drugs; on libel of the wife, that the husband, being 

 able, grossly or wantonly and cruelly refuses or neglects 

 to provide suitable maintenance for her; sentence to con- 

 finement at hard labour for life, or for five years or more. 

 After a divorce for the last catise no pardon restores con- 

 jugal rights. All divorces are absolute: either party may 

 marry again, but the guilty party not within two years 

 ftom the entry of the final decree. 



THE ALCHEMISTS VINDICATED. 

 Mr. Joseph H. Coates points out that radium, the 

 X and N rays, and other discoveries of the latter-day 

 chemists, are going far to vindicate the alchemiste, 

 their theories and their methods : — 



The belief of a few centuries ago in elementals and 

 demons, a crowd of living beings, invisible and impalpable 

 under ordinary conditions, some of them actively malig- 

 nant, ravening to do us injury, others as actively benevo- 

 lent and guarding us against their ravages, others still 

 merely impassive and indifferent — this speculation of those 

 old and discredited philosophers, which has been looked 

 upon as a crazy fancy, the microscope shows to be almost 

 literally true. Instead of spiritual beings, demons, and 

 guardian attendants, we call them microzoa. Some are 

 bitterly dangerous: some are protective, antagonising, and 

 preying upon those hostile to us: and some are simply 

 harmless. If the alchemist, or Hermetic philosopher, could 

 have been equipped with a pair of spectacles of very high 

 microscopic power, he might have actually seen very much 

 what he did see by the eye of his spiritual vision. 



THE DECAY OF THINKING. 

 That thinking is becoming a lost art in American 

 colleges appears to be feared by President Thwing. 

 He says : — 



There is some reason to believe that college men are tie- 

 coming, as a class, less eager to undertake and to carry 

 forward constantly and earnestly the labour of tliinking. 

 The use and enjoyment of material elegancies, the habit 

 of luxuriousness, are consumptive of intellectual force 

 which otherwise might be devoted to scholastic affairs. 

 The great interest of the undergraduates in athletic con- 

 cerns tends to dra,w away their interest from concerns 

 directly intellectual. 



The colleges are in peril of sacrificing the intellectual 

 power of thinking to the intellectual power of gaining 

 facts for the passing of examinations. 



THE PROPERTY RIGHTS OF MOSLEM WOMEN. 



According to Justice Batclieller, of the International 

 Court, Alexandria — 



The prevalent notion that Mohammedan women are very 

 materially restricted in their property relations— that, iii 

 fact, they are little better than slaves, possessed of few 



rights which man is bound to respect— is quite erroneous. 

 In general terms, ' woman's rights " in respect to property 

 and material possession of pecuniary value exist in the 

 largest sense among Mohammedan people, and have so pre- 

 vailed for manv centuries. In tact. Mohammedan women, 

 whether' single or married, are absolutely free in respect 

 to property relations. 



A TRIBUTE TO C.-B. AND HIS CABINET. 



The writer of the Political Chronique says: — 



No Government within my rfecoUection has ever done so 

 much in so short a time as C.-B.'s, and I am wholly out 

 of my reckoning it its record of performance is to be 

 ascribed merely to the energy of the new broom. If the 

 Colonial policy of the Government stood as high as its 

 foreign and domestic policies, all opposition except on the 

 Education Bill would have practically died out. Even as 

 it is. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has won for himself 

 and his colleagues in a remarkably short time an assured 

 position of mastery and trust. 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. 



Mr. Ray Morris contributes to the July number of 

 the Atiatiiic Monthly an article on British Railways 

 from the American point of view. 



HEDGE5 AND THE BOARD OF TRADE. 

 The characteristics which make British railways 

 most unlike American railways are, he says, hedges 

 and the Board of Trade: — 



Each of these terms is somewhat symbolic, as used. The 

 hedges, perfectly trimmed and laid out like the boundaries 

 of a model garden, suggest the neatness and careful exacti- 

 tude that pervade the service. They may fairly be made to 

 stand for the politeness of the employees, the " railway 

 servants," as well; lor one does not expect to find rude 

 servants in an old-fashioned garden. 



"The traveller does not see the Board of Trade, but he is 

 surrounded on all sides by its handiwork, and watched 

 over by its inspectors. Specifically, the Board of Trade as 

 a British railway characteristic, stands for the broad 

 masonry station platforms, the overhead bridges from the 

 up-line to the down-line, the absence of grade crossings, 

 the efficient system of block signalling, and the careful 

 inspection and report that follow even the most insignifi- 

 cant accident. More broadly, it denotes the great British 

 Public Opinion, that may be inefficient, but is always 

 honest and courageous. 



REFORMING POWER OP THE PRESS. 

 In another article. " Some Aspects of Journalism,' 

 Mr. Rollo Ogden points out that the responsibility for 

 the crying evils of journalisiii mitst be divided between 

 the press and its patrons. Advertisers and readers 

 can protest against vulgarity or immorality, or any- 

 thing else in a paper they are asked to patronise, for 

 a newspaper can only live by public approval or 

 tolerance. Of the manner in which public sentiment 

 speaks through the press Mr. O^den writes: — 



When you have some powerful robbers to invoke the 

 popular verdict upon, there is nothing like modern jour- 

 nalism for doing the job thoroughly. Those great names 

 in our business and political firmament which lately have 

 fallen like Lucifer, dreaded exposure in the press most of 

 all. Courts and juries they could have faced with equa- 

 nimity; or. rather, their lawyers would have done it for 

 them in the most beautiful illustration of the law's delay. 

 But the very clamour of newspaper publicity was like an 

 embodied public conscience pronouncing condemnation — 

 every headline an officer. 1 know of no other power on 

 earth that could have stripped away from these rogues 

 every shelter which their money could buy. and been to 

 them such an advance section of the Day of Judgment. 



