94 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 264 



•vious experience as member of Congress and mayor of Boston had 

 eminently fitted him for the work. Dr. Peabody gives many inter- 

 esting accounts of the modes of teaching and lecturing pursued by 

 the professors of whom he speal<s, some of which are full of sug- 

 gestiveness even now. He gives his personal recollections of nearly 

 seventy men who held offices in the college, with excellent sketches 

 of character and interesting anecdotes ; and, though some of those 

 of whom he speaks were hardly known outside the college, not a 

 few had a national reputation. It is hardly necessary to add that 

 the venerable author writes, as always, clearly and with hearty 

 nterest in his subject. 



The National Sin of Literary Piracy. By HENRY Van Dyke. 

 New York, Scribner. i6°. 5 cents. 

 This pamphlet is a vigorous protest against the absence in this 

 country of an international copyright law, and against the unwill- 

 ingness of our people up to this time to enact such a law. There 

 is nothing in the author's argument that is specially new; but the 

 moral principles involved in the subject have seldom been exhibited 

 with greater force and clearness than they are here. Mr. Van 

 Dyke's essay was originally a sermon, and the mere fact that a 

 sermon on the subject could be preached to a popular audience is 

 proof that public interest in the question is already awakened. The 

 author treats the subject from a moral standpoint, maintaining that 

 we have no more right to take a foreign author's work without pay- 

 ing him for it than we have to take any other man's work, literary 

 or otherwise, in the same way. He treats as irrelevant the argu- 

 ment, sometimes adduced by the opponents of international copy- 

 right, that the American people want cheap literature. "The 

 question is," he remarks, " how do they propose to gratify that 

 desire, fairly or feloniously.' My neighbor's passionate love of light 

 has nothing to do with his right to carry off my candles. The 

 first point to be determined is one of righteousness." He holds, 

 however, that the republication of foreign works is not only wrong, 

 but injurious to our own people, both by hindering the growth of 

 our national literature, and by helping to weaken the national con- 

 science. The book will be found interesting by all who are inter- 

 ested in the subject, and, if read by the right persons, can hardly 

 fail to have some effect on public opinion. 



Chemistry, Inorganic ■ and Organic. By CHARLES LoUDON 

 Bloxam. 6th ed. Philadelphia, Blakiston. 8°. $4.50. 



The appearance of the sixth edition of Professor Bloxam's well- 

 known work follows closely upon the announcement of the death 

 of the author. The general character of the work, its elaborate 

 display of experiment, and practical intent, are the same as in pre- 

 vious editions ; but much of the text has been re-written, and the 

 whole revised and passed through the press under the author's own 

 supervision. Much new matter has been incorporated (some of 

 date even so late as the recent isolation of fluorine), and the part 

 which deals with organic chemistry has been recast with a view to 

 bringing theoretical relations more clearly to light. The technolog- 

 ical applications of organic chemistry receive considerable atten- 

 tion, and the subject of explosives. In the previous editions, the 

 work has been a favorite, particularly with practical men and stu- 

 dents of applied chemistry. The present edition is an improve- 

 ment upon its predecessors, and a litting memorial of its lamented 

 author. 



Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters. By JOHN BaCH Mc- 

 Master. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. 16°. $1.25. 



Franklin's name has always stood side by side with that of 

 Washington ; and there are no other Americans, except perhaps 

 Lincoln and Grant, whose deeds and character are equally well 

 known to the mass of their countrymen. But Franklin's greatness 

 was chiefly in the fields of politics and science, and it is chiefly as 

 politician and scientist that he is generally known ; while his strictly 

 literary works, except the autobiography, are much less read than 

 those of many men who, on the whole, are his inferiors. Yet his 

 literary merits are not slight, and the influence of his writings on 

 the opinions and tastes of his contemporaries was great. He was 

 not only the author of the autobiography and of several scientific 

 papers, but he was also the first great American journalist ; and in 



all these capacities he deser\'es grateful remembrance. It was 

 necessary, therefore, that in a series of works devoted to American 

 men of letters he should have a prominent place, and the sketch of 

 his literary work which Mr. McMaster has written is in most re- 

 spects worthy of its theme. It gives, perhaps, too little space to 

 the political papers which Franklin wrote so abundantly, and which 

 often had great influence on public opinion and on the course of 

 events. Many paragraphs, too, of Mr. McMaster's work are filled 

 with mere lists of articles that Franklin wrote; and these passages 

 could well have been spared in favor of something more important. 

 Nor do we find so good an account of the development of Frank- 

 lin's mind and character as we could have wished. Yet, in spite of 

 these defects, the book gives an interesting account of Franklin's 

 writings, with a mass of details relating to his life, his business, his 

 associates, and, in short, ever)' thingconnected with his literary work. 

 The result is a work which, as an account of Franklin's place in 

 literature, is not likely to be surpassed. 



Franklin's career has always been an example and an incentive 

 to boys and young men that have had to struggle upward from 

 humble beginnings, and deservedly so ; for, considering the times in 

 which he lived, his success in politics and science and literature, as 

 well as in acquiring a fortune, was indeed surprising. Mr. McMas- 

 ter, however, agrees with all other good judges, that Franklin's 

 morality was not of a high order, and that in this respect his life 

 and his philosophy are not what might be wished. " His philos- 

 ophy," our author remarks, " was the philosophy of the useful ; the 

 philosophy whose aim it is to increase the power, to ameliorate the 

 condition, to supply the vulgar wants, of mankind. . . . Morality 

 he never taught, and he was not fit to teach it " (pp. 277, 278). 

 With regard to his electrical discoveries, Mr. McMaster expresses 

 the opinion that Franklin was considerably indebted for valuable 

 hints to his friend Ebenezer Kinnersley ; but he does not specify 

 the particular contributions that Kinnersley made to the subject. 

 The author points out, too, in another place, that the plan for a 

 union of the Colonies, which Franklin proposed at Albany at the 

 beginning of the French and Indian war, was borrowed from Daniel 

 Coxe, who had proposed the same plan many years before, when 

 Franklin was a boy. Mr. McMaster's judgment on Franklin con- 

 sidered as a writer only is likely to be generally accepted, and is in 

 brief as follows : " The place to be allotted Franklin among Ameri- 

 can men of letters is hard to determine. He founded no school of 

 literature. He gave no impetus to letters. He put his name to no 

 great work of history, of poetry, of fiction. Till after his day no 

 such thing as American literature existed. . . . His place is 

 among that giant race of pamphleteers and essayists most of 

 whom went before, but a few of whom came immediately after, the 

 war for independence. And among them he is easily first " (pp. 

 272, 273). 



A Text-Book of Inorganic Chemistry. By VICTOR voN RlCH- 

 ter. Tr. by Edgar F. Smith. Philadelphia, Blakiston. 12°. 



It is not surprising, however much to be deprecated, that the 

 elementary literature of branches of knowledge like chemistry, 

 which, constantly expanding, are frequently brought to public 

 notice, and so made attractive to the popular imagination, should be 

 perennially deluged by the products of the misguided passion for 

 authorship ; nor ought it to be unexpected that the great majority 

 of the many text-books of chemistry, general and applied, which 

 come to the light, should shortly disappear utterly from the notice 

 of an intelligent public. The occasional varying of the usual 

 monotony by the appearance of a work of real value to student and 

 instructor, which proves its claim to appreciation by survival in the 

 competition with its fellows, is refreshing. Richter's text-books are 

 of this sort, and the volume before us represents the third Ameri- 

 can edition, based upon the fifth edition of the German original. 



The scheme of development follows the order of the ' periodic 

 law,' and the introduction of theory is gradual and opportune. 

 Thus the reader is brought directly into contact with the laws of 

 definite and multiple proportions and the conception of atoms and 

 molecules only when the demonstration of the properties of the 

 halogens leads to the point. So, also, the questions of valence and 

 structure wait the presentation of facts with sufficient fulness to 



