—Messrs. Hurd & Houghton are doing good service in reissuing the Riverside edition of the Waverley Novels.[P] The well-chosen proportion of page and type and the excellent work of the Riverside press have combined to make these volumes, what American books are too apt not to be—a thing of permanent beauty. The publishers intend to bring out the edition quite rapidly. Five volumes are ready, and the others will follow at the rate of one each month. The present is the great era of mediocre men. A horde of novel writers gain their living successfully enough, and we take them up and talk about what they are doing, and how their works compare with each other, as if their doings had real importance. But what are they to the enduring genius of Abbotsford? He has not only proved an inexhaustible source of delight to two generations of readers, but has founded an industry—the publication of his works—which is likely to be for scores of years to come a permanent source of livelihood to hundreds.
It is evident that we have not a new light of poetry in Mr. Voldo.[Q] He tells us that this is a first attempt, and it may well be the last, for he seems to have been led—and misled—into the practice of poetic expression by a certain gift, in his case fatal, of rhythm. The flow of his lines is far superior to the meaning or the expression. In fact the latter is so involved and farfetched, that the former is often entirely obscured. To find out what it is he tries to tell us would really be a painful process, and the few attempts we have made were too immediately fatiguing to produce any results. Two of his poems are worth reading, one because its versification is well managed, and the other because its story is simple and naturally told. It is a relief after so many pages of overstraining at words, and it shows that Mr. Voldo can be really pleasant, if he will only be simple. Well, two out of fifty is above the average!
It is only two years since a prominent American geologist wrote to a foreign scientific paper that he had been on the point of sending to Germany for two or three men to assist him in an important State survey.[R] His reason for this determination was that our country did not possess men competent to find and follow up intelligently the different strata; except those who were already engaged on other surveys. Luckily this discreditable act was prevented by the sudden abandonment of one of these other surveys, which released assistants enough to satisfy this extremely difficult gentleman. The truth is that, by some means, geological science has been pushed in this country with great vigor and with grand results. Within the last ten years there has been a revival of energy in that particular science which recalls the golden days of Hugh Miller, Murchison, Agassiz, and Lyell. The time when the very exacting gentleman, above alluded to, could not find helpers on this side of the Atlantic, was the middle point around which were grouped the surveys of Newberry and Andrews in Ohio, Clarence King in Nevada, Whitney in California, Wheeler and Powell south of the Pacific Railroad, and Hayden north of that line. Michigan was just finishing a partial, but extremely productive, survey of her mineral regions. Missouri had plunged hopefully into another. Pennsylvania was planning the comprehensive work in which Leslie and his aids are now engaged. Indiana, New Jersey, and other States had taken the great steps so much desired by the initiated all over the world, and had made the geologist a standing member of their government. All this had been done without the necessary importation of a foreigner. One or two foreigners had obtained employment on these surveys, but only because they came here and sought the work. Nearly every one of the young men who performed the work of assistants was an American. It is safe to say that in this revival of geological work from twenty to fifty young Americans have learned to be scientific men. As to the results of their activity, it is sufficient to read a report like that of Mr. Powell, to find how rapidly they are adding to our knowledge of the earth's history, and even altering the canons of scientific belief. Mr. Powell tells us that in his first expedition, eight years ago, and for three years after that, he tried hard to find in the west the equivalents of the State epochs and periods so well known as the basis of geological nomenclature, and nearly all taken from the exposures in New York and other Eastern and Southeastern States. It was not until this attempt was abandoned that he began to make progress. He had to study the western regions by themselves, and leave correspondences to the future. That was the experience of all the workers in the west, and it brings plainly to view the great fact, of which not all, even of our best known geologists, are yet fully persuaded, that the geological record, though doubtless a unit, is not uniform over the whole country. These shackles thrown off, the geology of the west leaped up with a vigor which is astonishing. It seemed to be pretty evident, from Prof. Huxley's lectures here, that he had not before imagined what results had been obtained in America. This is not surprising. Few foreigners are able to keep along with the work performed in this country, where there is such a direful supposed lack of workers! It is a fact that at present there is no part of the world where the discoveries made in this science are of so general importance as here. The Rocky mountains owe their name "to great and widely spread aridity," the mountains being "scantily clothed with vegetation and the indurated lithologic formations rarely masked with soils." But there are many systems of uplifts in this region, and Mr. Powell distinguishes three in the field covered by his report. They are the Park mountains ("the lofty mountains that stand as walls about the great parks of Southern Wyoming, Colorado, and Northern New Mexico"); the Basin Range system (named by Gilbert from the fact that many of them surround basins that have no drainage to the sea); and the Plateau Province. It is worth remarking that in the west the geologist precedes or accompanies the topographer, and accordingly has an opportunity to name the regions according to real peculiarities rather than chance suggestions. The future map will be significant of the past history as well as of the ocular features of the landscape. Mr. Powell gives careful sections of the strata in the Plateau Province, where they are about 46,000 feet thick. Few persons imagine the vast amount of work, exploration, and comparison which such drawings embody. The beds form a series of groups unlike those of the New York geologists, but the great geologic ages are as well defined as elsewhere. The synchronism remains to be fully established by palæontological proofs. He thinks he has been able to fix upon the true point of division between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic ages, and to prove that coal was deposited through about 7,000 feet of Cretaceous and about 4,500 feet of Cenozoic beds. Mr. Powell's literary style is excellent—not involved, but clear and energetic. He was wise to abandon the idea of publishing an itinerary, which would, as he says, "encumber geological literature with a mass of undigested facts of little value." Geology has enough of such meaningless reports. As it is, we follow him with confidence, and he gives us a story that is plain and comprehensible.
The publications of the Massachusetts Board of Health[S] have been of a superior character, and have given that organization decided prominence among similar American boards. The question of how to prevent river pollution in their State they think can best be solved by placing advisory power in the hands of some Government officer, upon whose conclusions legislative action for each case should be based. This officer would be paid by the parties in interest. Good results are to be obtained only by comparing and altering when necessary what is done. In this country too little is known about this subject, and the appointment of an official "with power" is the first step toward knowledge. The suggestions made as to the way to deal with sewage are also mostly good, but it is doubtful whether general purification can wisely be enforced in the present state of sanitary science. If there are any very bad cases of pollution, they may properly be provided for in the way suggested, and experience gained from them. The lack of experience here is partially corrected by studying the work accomplished abroad; but a rapid review of such work can never replace the slower results of individual experience. The report of Mr. Kirkwood, the engineer, adds to the abundant testimony we already have of the efficacy and power of Nature's quietest work. Analyses show that the water of Charles river above the Newton lower falls is, when filtered, fit, though barely fit, to drink, and yet it has received the refuse of forty-two mills and factories, with a population of 14,000 persons known to be sewering into the river, and a population in the basin of three times that number. The river has a dry-weather flow of only twenty million gallons in twenty-four hours. On the general subject of sewage utilization the secretary concludes that in this country the sewage has no value, but can in some places, at least, be utilized without loss. In the death rate of Massachusetts towns the village of Canton (4,192 population) carries the palm, with only 11.9 deaths per thousand. Holyoke, 56.5 per thousand, has the highest.
—The report that a city is to be built in England on strict sanitary principles, in which man may, if he will, live to a hundred and fifty years of age, will give additional interest to this address[T] in which Dr. Richardson develops the project. The address was delivered a year ago, when the Doctor was president of the Health Department of the Social Science Association. It deserves attention because it indicates, pretty nearly, the goal toward which all the conscious and unconscious improvement in our living for centuries has tended. Whether man can obtain such control over the duration of his life depends very largely upon whether he finds himself able to submit to the discipline and self-abnegation without which the mechanical improvements made will have only partial success. Perfect living is not merely a thing of appliances. These are necessary, but the subjection of the will to the requirements of orderly conduct is equally necessary. However, Dr. Richardson says that "Utopia is but another word for time," and it is certain that his ideal of public and private life will be at least approached by the slow progress of small improvements. Some people have objected that they don't want to live a century and a half, and that a city where men two hundred years of age might occasionally be seen walking about is just the place they would most carefully avoid. But we can none of us escape our fate. If society is progressing toward that end, let us accept it, and even allow the men of science to hurry up matters a century or two. It is, perhaps, significant that this change in man's estate comes just at the time when a reduction in the rate of interest is taking place, and it seems likely that a man will have to live to a hundred years in order to accumulate enough to buy him a house. When he has it, he will need another half century to enjoy it. At all events read this ideal, extraordinary, and learned exposition of the health of the future.
—The idea of collecting in one volume a concise statement of modern theories of the mode in which we receive impressions is excellent, and it has been well carried out by Prof. Bernstein.[U] Touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste are treated from an anatomical and experimental point of view, and the researches of Helmholtz, Weber, and the numerous band of investigators who have in late years devised so many ingenious modes of testing the operation of these senses are well represented. The book contains probably as much exact and accurate information, and as thorough a treatment of the subject, as can be contained in a volume of this size. It is an advanced treatise that places the reader in possession of the latest theories on these occult subjects. Of necessity it is not new; but this treatment and the facts here given will be found novel by most readers.