Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape.'
'But we are born to other things.'
Thoughts on Health and some of its Conditions. By James Hinton. Smith, Elder, and Co.
This volume contains by no means a dry discussion of the conditions of health. It hardly professes to be methodical or exhaustive in its treatment of the subject. It is rather the production of a man who is full of original ideas such as lie around the subject of health and life, and who has adopted this title in order to give them to the public. The details of the subject have evidently no charms for the author; nevertheless, those which are given or referred to show him to be quite abreast of the foremost file of the army of science. He is quite poetical in his similes, and is fascinated by sublime ideas, yet his chapter on 'Nursing as a Profession' shows him to be a practical reformer. The book will be read with interest by those whose mental bias leads them in that direction, while it gives vivid conceptions of abstruse ideas. The one fault of the book is, that the author allows his imagination to build up speculations upon a basis of known facts, which fresh facts yet unknown may very possibly show to be mere speculations. Thus the speculations about the functions of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus, when forming complex compounds in the organism derived and built up upon our knowledge of their properties as elements, are doubtless interesting, but they are not backed by chemical knowledge, and are opposed to the analogies of that science. This fault, however, is so allied to the virtues of freshness and force of thought which are everywhere found in the volume, that it ought not to prejudice the reader against the author, though he certainly ought to be on his guard against the seduction of that author's enthusiasm.
The American Colleges and the American Public. By Noah Porter, D.D., Professor in Yale College. New Haven, Conn. 1870.
This volume would be invaluable to us if we had a system of high-school and university education at all corresponding to that of the United States. No one is more competent than Dr. Noah Porter to describe the operation of the American system, to detect some of its weaknesses, to contrast it with English and German tuition, and to point out where America might learn something from England, and in what respect England might be benefited by following transatlantic customs. Far away from the circumstances and experimental innovations which have excited so much general interest in America, we can hardly enter into any minute criticism of the old customs or the recent changes. Some of the discussions—such, for instance, as that on the relative advantage of college lectures and text-book-recitations, on the system of private tutoring, on the propriety or otherwise of very frequent examinations, on the dormitory system, on the advantage of the resident and non-resident systems, and on the extent to which laws and supervision on the part of the college authorities should extend—will interest the supporters and professors of English colleges for the ministry, though many of the conditions under which we should have to apply them are so profoundly different that not much light would be attained for our guidance. The calm, candid, lucid manner in which our author has investigated the whole subject, and held the balances in all these discussions, is worthy of all respect. In advocating greater freedom from clerical influence, and more breadth in the relations between the authorities and the graduates in the government of the colleges, we presume that he is treading on delicate ground. In our smaller institutions we have long since adopted the principle he recommends. Our national universities will become before long the property of the nation, and not of a sect, and be governed in deference to law, by their own alumni, without any privilege but that which is earned by distinguished ability. This, however, is not the place to discuss a question like this.
The Ancient Geography of India; the Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang. By Alexander Cunningham, Major-General, Royal Engineers (Bengal, retired). With thirteen Maps. Trübner and Co. 1871.
The author of 'The Bhilsa Topes' has once more brought his great learning, and his rare advantages of travel and of residence to bear on the elucidation of the Buddhist period of Indian history and thought. On this occasion he has, however, shown his antiquarian, topographical, and etymological skill in deciphering and harmonizing the geography of the Greek historians and the Chinese pilgrims. Few things are more important to the comprehension of any history—sacred, classic, modern, or contemporary—than a clear exhibition of the physical features of the country on which the destinies of generations have been determined, and a sound identification of the sites of famous cities, fortresses, temples, and battle-fields. When the history of great nations covers thousands of years, the physical features may be recovered by personal inspection of sites that are distinctly described by early writers; but the confusing resemblance of neglected and buried cities to each other has been the fruitful source of false identifications, and when once on a wrong scent, the geography of large districts of country has often been thrown into hopeless entanglement. The geography of India, with its history, maybe conveniently divided into three periods. The Vedic or Brahmanic period would cover the entire prehistoric section of the history, and trace the extension of the Aryan race from their first occupation of the Punjab to the rise of Buddhism. The Buddhist period would extend from the era of Buddha—whensoever that may be determined, say between the fourth and sixth century b.c.—to Mahmoud of Ghizni; and the Mohammedan period will extend from the rise of the Mohammedan power to the battle of Plassy. Major-General Cunningham has devoted a volume of nearly six hundred pages to the investigation of the geography of India during the Buddhist period, which may be said to cover from fourteen to sixteen hundred years. He has personally travelled over the entire country, and carefully scanned its features with a curious, archæological eye, and has thus succeeded in fixing the line of Alexander's campaigns, and in bringing into geographical completeness and unity the itineraries and allusions of the Chinese pilgrims, Fah-pian, Chung-yun, and Hwen-Thsang. Though the campaigns of Alexander were confined to the valley of the Indus and its tributaries, yet the information collected by his companions, and the records of subsequent embassies between the Seleucidæ and the Maurya and other princes, include abundant references to the whole valley of the Ganges. We think we may confidently assert that no student of the works of Rémusat and Lassen, Stanislas Julien, or Vivien de St. Martin, will now be content without having General Cunningham's maps and expositions at his side. It would be difficult to do justice to such a work in a brief notice; still, some of the identifications are of general interest. The merest tyro in Buddhist lore knows something of the legend of Kunâla, the beautiful-eyed son of Asoka, the great Buddhist king, who was sent in his youth and unsuspecting innocence to quell a revolt in the great city of Taxasila, and who there suffered the loss of his lustrous eyes in consequence of the malicious designs of his stepmother. Everyone has heard that in the neighbourhood of this city, Buddha is fabled in a previous state of existence to have made the sacrifice of his head in alms, and to have offered himself in another existence to a dying tigress, having first fed her with his blood that she might be strong enough to devour him more effectually. The city was admired by Alexander himself; it was described by Pliny and Arrian; it was visited by Apollonius of Tyana, and referred to by his celebrated biographer, Philostratus. It was visited with enthusiasm by Fah-Hian 400 a.d., and by Hwen-Thsang in 630 and 643 a.d.; and a variety of particulars are mentioned which have enabled our author by personal inspection to identify the exact spot, to make out the ruins, the lines of walls and roads, and the site of the stupa placed by the great King Asoka over the scene of the act of self-sacrifice to which we have referred.
Our author identifies the celebrated city Srâvasti with the ruined city of Sâhet-Mâhet, where he discovered a colossal figure of Buddha, with an inscription having on it the name of this city, immortalized by Buddha's most successful preaching. He has shown that when Hwen-Thsang visited Srâvasti it must have been in utter decay, and that he mistook the ruins of the city for those of the palace; but Cunningham has brought the divergent statements of the Chinese pilgrims as to the distance of Srâvasti from other points into sufficient accord to be satisfactory, and he draws by a clever etymological manœuvre the modern name Sâhet-Mâhet into harmony with the Pali form Sâwatthi and the Chinese name She-wei. We have, moreover, in the volume strong reasons given for fixing the site of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, at Nagar, in the northern division of Oude; and the site of Nalanda, the monster Buddhist monastery, at Baragaon near Gaza; and so with hundreds of other places which are interesting from their mention in Buddhist legend or authentic Buddhist biography. We heartily thank General Cunningham for his elaborate work.