Dr. Martineau’s new book, “Types of Ethical Theory,” will be issued in a week or two by the Clarendon Press. The author seeks the ultimate basis of morals in the internal constitution of the human mind. He first vindicates the psychological method, then develops it, and finally guards it against partial applications, injurious to the autonomy of the conscience. He is thus led to pass under review at the outset some representative of each chief theory in which ethics emerge from metaphysical or physical assumptions, and at the close the several doctrines which psychologically deduce the moral sentiments from self-love, the sense of congruity, the perception of beauty, or other unmoral source. The part of the book intermediate between these two bodies of critical exposition is constructive.
The Spelling Reform Association of England have adopted, as a means of encouraging the progress of their cause, a new plan specially calculated to secure the adhesion of printers and publishers. They offer to supply experienced proof-readers free of cost, who are prepared to assist in producing books and pamphlets “in any degree of amended or fonetic spelling.”
Some interesting materials towards a memoir of the late Bishop Colenso have been derived from an unexpected source. A gentleman in Cornwall heard that a bookseller in Staffordshire had for sale a collection of the bishop’s letters. This coming to the knowledge of Mr. F. E. Colenso, the latter purchased them at once, and found that they consisted of letters ranging from 1830 to the middle of the bishop’s university career. The collection also includes two letters from the bishop’s college tutor which show the high estimation in which the young man was held by those who were brought into contact with him at Oxford.
It is understood that the late Henry G. Bohn’s collection of Art books, though comparatively few in number—said to be less than 800—forms a perfectly unique library of reference, and in many languages. We hear that it includes splendidly bound folio editions of engravings from the great masters in almost every known European gallery. Mr. Bohn’s general private library—a substantial but by no means extensive one considering his colossal dealings with books—is not likely to be sold. It may not be generally known that he lent nearly 1,400 volumes to the Crystal Palace Exhibition some years ago, and lost them all in the fire there.
Messrs. Tillotson and Son, of the Bolton Journal, who are the originators of the practice of publishing novels by eminent writers simultaneously in a number of newspapers in England, the United States, and in the colonies, announce that they intend shortly to publish, instead of a serial novel of the usual three-volume size, what they call an “Octave of Short Stories.” The first of these tales, “A Rainy June,” by “Ouida,” will appear on February 28th. The other seven writers of the “Octave” are Mr. William Black, Miss Braddon, Miss Rhoda Broughton, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Joseph Hatton, and Mrs. Oliphant.