January ii, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



25 



can institutions ; and he has written one which will rani< for years 

 to come as the most thoroughgoing examination of them. 



Professor Bryce's book will naturally be compared with the 

 work of De Tocqueville, and it merits such comparison ; yet it is in 

 some respects a greater book than that of the French student of 

 our public life. If De Tocqueville made a philosophical examina- 

 tion of American institutions, Professor Bryce has made a scientific 

 dissection of them. He enters into detail elaborately and accurate- 

 ly. He illustrates fully and freely. He rarely speculates. The 

 book falls into three divisions, corresponding to the volumes as 

 issued in the English edition. The first deals with our National 

 Government ; the second, with our State governments ; and the 

 third, with what, for want of a better term, we may call our 

 politico- social institutions. Under the latter head are included the 

 party system, public opinion, the bar and the bench, railroads, 

 universities, and allied topics. The book is too large to be con- 

 densed, and too detailed to be described within the limits of a re- 

 view : it must be read to be understood and appreciated, and it 

 should be read by all classes of our intelligent citizens. It will 

 serve to clarify the ideas of many people as to what our institutions 

 really are, and how they work. It will make plain for the first 

 time, to thousands of citizens who consider themselves intelligent, 

 how public opinion is formed — or, rather, grows — in this country, 

 how it finds expression, and how it rules. It will suggest to the 

 careless democratic enthusiast certain points of weakness in our 

 institutions, and certain dangers which we must sedulously strive 

 to avoid. 



Professor Bryce is unquestionably a democrat both by nature 

 and by conviction, and an ardent admirer of democracy. This is 

 perhaps the reason why some of the English critics have not been 

 able to fully appreciate his work. It is the reason, also, which will 

 serve to increase its popularity among our own people. It has 

 been criticised abroad as too large, too diffuse, repetitious. It may 

 be all of these; but these are merely defects of form, which the ex- 

 cellence of the matter more than counterbalances. That Professor 

 Bryce's book will be widely read goes without saying. We can 

 only add an expression of the hope that it may be intelligently read 

 and pondered over ; for it is a book that is meant to do good, and 

 which will do good if it is read in the spirit in which it is written. 

 We owe Professor Bryce a debt of gratitude for the time, the labor, 

 and the patience that he has bestowed upon our national life. 

 That his work will make us better known and better understood 

 abroad, and better known and better understood by ourselves, is, 

 we believe, a necessary result of its publication. 



Aspects of Education. By Oscar Browning, M.A. New York, 

 Industr. Educ. Assoc. 16*. 



The Slojd in the Service of the School. By Otto Salomon. 

 New York, Industr. Educ. Assoc. 16'^. 



Manual Training in Elementary Schools for Boys. Part. I. By 

 A. Sluys. New York, Industr. Educ. Assoc. 16°. 



These are the three latest issues in the admirable series of edu- 

 cational monographs published by the Industrial Education As- 

 sociation of New York City, the growing circulation and general 

 appreciation of which mark a gratifying public interest in matters 

 pertaining to education. Mr. Browning's paper on " Aspects of 

 Education " is known to readers of Science, inasmuch as its four 

 chapters appeared in these columns some months ago. They are 

 now rewritten and put together in a connected paper. As tren- 

 chant and accurate summaries of the movements apparent in mod- 

 ern educational thought, Mr. Browning's articles are not surpassed 

 anywhere, and we are glad to find them reproduced in this per- 

 manent form. 



Mr. Salomon, the author of the paper on " Slojd," is well known 

 as the director of the famous normal school at Naas in Sweden. As 

 the chief master of slojd (sloyd), he is fully competent to treat it in 

 its philosophic and pedagogic relations, as is done in the book be- 

 fore us. The translation by Dr. W. H. Carpenter of Columbia 

 College is pleasantly done. 



The third paper, by Professor Sluys of Brussels, is the most valu- 

 able and important yet issued, and we notice that Part II. of it will 

 follow in March. Professor Sluys was the Belgian commissioner to 



investigate and report on manual training, and his paper is full of 

 citations of facts actually seen and known. The book is free from 

 speculation, and is practical, complete, and unanswerable. We- 

 trust that it may fall under the eyes of such men as Superintend- 

 ents Dickinson of Massachusetts, Marble of Worcester, White of 

 Cincinnati, Gove of Denver, and Dr. Harris of Concord ; for it will; 

 show them, impartially and dispassionately, how crude and unscien- 

 tific their thinking on the subject of manual training is. We shall' 

 await the appearance of Part II. with interest. 



The Roman Catholic Church and the School Question. By Edwin 

 D. Mead. Boston, G. H. Ellis. 12°. 15 cents. 

 The substance of this pamphlet consists of a lecture delivered 

 before the Woman Suffrage League, Boston, but it has been ex- 

 panded and revised for publication. It is a discussion of the ques- 

 tion raised in Boston by the rejection, by the school committee, of 

 Swinton's " History " as a text-book, the ground of the rejection- 

 being the opposition of the Catholics to Swinton's treatment of the 

 sale of indulgences in the time of Luther. Mr. Mead here discusses, 

 the points at issue in an impartial spirit, and with a clear perception 

 of the merits of the case. His style is not always so clear as might 

 be wished, and shows marks of German influence ; but, on the- 

 whole, the form and temper of the work are excellent. The ad- 

 dress begins with a rebuke to the Protestants for some of the fool- 

 ish things they have said during the late dispute, and intimates that 

 their religion is not so decidedly superior to the Catholic as they 

 are apt to suppose. But on the actual question at issue he takes 

 strong ground against the Catholics, intimating pretty plainly that 

 they opposed the use of Swinton's work for the sole reason that it 

 tells the truth about the abuses once prevailing in their church. He 

 condemns the parochial schools, and indeed private schools gener- 

 ally, holding that all American citizens ought to send their children^ 

 to the schools maintained by the State. He then goes on to quote 

 from certain Catholic school-books, showing how false to historical 

 truth they are, not so much from actual misstatement as because of 

 omissions, evasions, and exaggerated representations of what Cath- 

 olics have done for the good of the world. To all persons interested' 

 in the questions at issue, and who realize the importance of correct 

 teaching, the pamphlet will be of interest. 



AMONG THE PUBLISHERS. 



Some of our readers may be interested in the second and third! 

 numbers of the new series of publications by the American Statis- 

 tical Association. The former, by E. R. L. Gould, is on the sub- 

 ject of " Park Areas and Open Spaces in American and European 

 Cities." Tables are given showing the number of open spaces in 

 all the leading cities, with the amount of space and other items 

 of interest. The author points out the importance of having many 

 small breathing-spaces scattered about the city, especially in the 

 quarters inhabited by the working-classes, and shows that many of 

 our principal towns are deficient in this respect. It appears that 

 some manufacturing cities have sadly failed of their duty, Pittsburgh 

 having only one and a third acres of open space, and Scranton and 

 some other towns none at all. Mr. Gould's general conclusion is, 

 that the policy of American cities in this important matter has been 

 very defective. The other paper is by Edward Clark Lunt, and is 

 a " Key to the Publications of the United States Census." It gives 

 a brief history of the taking of the various censuses, and then pre- 

 sents an epitome, or analysis, of all the census publications from 

 1790 to 1887. The different subjects dealt with in the census, 

 such as population, races, agriculture, and so on, are treated sepa- 

 rately ; and under each head reference is made to the volume and 

 page of each census report which gives information upon it. The 

 United States census is so complicated a thing, and yet so impor- 

 tant, that such help as Mr. Lunt gives must be of service to students 

 of statistics. 



— Professor Cleveland Abbe's " Treatise on Meteorological Ap- 

 paratus and Methods " forms the second part of the " Annual Re- 

 port of the Chief Signal Officer for the Year 1887," which has just 

 been published. This admirable work is a handbook equal in value 

 to Ferrel's theoretical meteorology and Hann's and Woeikof's cli- 



