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126 THE GUARDIAN, JANUARY 25, 1899. where show, shaken himself lonte from the fascination and exclu- BIVO authority of Latin literature; he bad never, like Dante, learnt the powers which Waited only to bo awakened and used of his own mother tongue, We see this in the contemptuous tone which marks all his references to the vernacular. It is implied in his scorn, expressed in the same letter for popular the hoarse applause which our poet is speaking here of enjoys from the tavern-keepers, fullers, butchers, and others of that class, who dishonour those whom they praise." With all Petrarch's culture, his experience of life, his shrewdness, he is never moro than the man of letters. Perhaps his own candid estimate of himself sums up his character better than the words of others can My mind, he says, like my body, is characterised by a certain versatility and readiness, rather than by strength, so that litany tasks that wero easy of conception have been given up by reason of the difficulty of their execution." St. Thomas qf Canterbury: his Death and Miracles.

By EDWIN A. AWJOTT M.A., D.D. Two Yola. A. and C.

Black. 24s. Wo have long wanted a oritical examination of the most noteworthy meditcval miraolos. Save for a few suggestive words from Dr. Stubbs in one of his masterly prefaces, we have had no clue as to the way in which the modern critical school of historians regarded these important in the social, as well as the religious, life of the middlo ages.

The period of complete scepticism is certainly passed, and yet, beside tho robust faith which is displayed by some, at least, of Roman hagiologists, we have no theory to propound; It is high time that some compotonfc and critical ecclesiastical historian gave himself seriously to the task of investigating mcdiooval miracles. Dr. Abbott has not sot himsolf directly to oonstruot a theory. Ho has confined his examination almost entirely to tho miracles of Archbishop Becket, and his book seems to have grown up almost by accident. It is tho result of IUB investigation of tho authorities for tho life of our Lord.

In his own In the course of preparing a critical commentary on the Four Gospels it became necessary to consider other instances of documents relating the same fact in different language, as the Gospels relate in different language tho acts and words of Christ. A briof glance at tho Materials for tho History of Thomas published under the direction of the Master of tho Rolls, at onco suggested extracts likely to afford useful illustrations. But afterwards, whon more closoly studied, those volumes seemed to present parallelisms to problems of New Testament criticism BO exact and so helpful that, instead of forming a few paragraphs in tho proposed Work, the extracts and notes grew first into a chapter and then into a separate section. Up to this point, tho audienco in view being mainly students of theology, all extracts had been kept in their original Latin. But whon it became noodful to quote passages from the two books composed by Benedict and William of Canterbury on the 'Miracles of St.

many of the narratives seemed so fresh and interesting, so full of touches of perennial human nature, and often so instructive as to a past in danger of being forgotten, yet not to be forgotten without danger, that a change of front was made, eo as to give tho text in English as well as in Latin, thus throwing everything opon to tho general reader while retaining all that was of use for the student. It will bo readily understood that, in this enlarged and soparate form, tho work rarely touches on New Testament criticism. Nevertheless, the author is not without hope that it may be of some indirect service to theologians of all schools, in so far as all are, or ought to be, students of evidence." It will thus be soon that tho interest of the book does not lie chiefly in its contribution to tho olucidation of the history of Docket, but rathor in the view which is presented, in great aud oven tedious detail, of a remarkable series of alleged miracles. This viow, it is impossible to doubt, is presented always with an oyo to tho criticism of tho Gospol miracles. Tho important part of tho book for most readers will bo the last chapter, which is entitled "Tho Martyr and tho Saviour." Hore Dr.

Abbott describes a parallel in facts and a in documents, and then disoussos its bearing on tho criticism of the Now Testament Two men," ho says, put to death by tho powers of this world as disturbora of the peace; two men who after death immediately began to appear in visions, with the marks of martyrdom upon them, and to utter words of help or warning, and to work mighty works of healing, sometimes imparting to those who believed in them the power of instantaneously shaking off apparently incurable disease, sometimes imparting tho power or curing disease in others through appeal to the Saviour or tho martyr, sometimes reanimating the apparently lifeless in such circumstances as to suggest a veritable raising from the dead. Hore in itsolf is a parallel worth considering." To this Dr. Abbott adds as noteworthy tho gradual ceasing of miracles after tho lirst great outburst," and the fact that some of tho stories can bo explained from a confusion of the spiritual with tho material and from a misunderstanding of metaphor as literal." Ho observes that many of the Beokot miracles were written down, if not at onco, within live years of the events, whereas tho Gospels can hardly have boon written less than thirty or forty yo irs after tho death of Christ. To this he adds ,1 parallel in documents," which is superficial indeed. Aud then comes the summing up of the bearing of the elaborate investigation on the criticism of the New Testament.

There is so much to explain and that can bo oxplained in tho Booket literatxiro that there may bo much to bo explaiucd away in the hardly a wholly unfair account of this position as it will strike some readers. Natural causes count for much, linguistic and literalist error for much also. The raising of Jairus's daughter is natural; the raising of Lazarus is far moro credible than the raising at Nain." And so Dr. Abbott concludes The spirit of the Saviour will there be most vitally present with mankind when thoy refuse, with the fourth Gospel, to call His miracles by any other name than and when they recognise as His signs' of greatest might and wonder not those which He worked then, but those which He is working now." Miraolos, of course, to St. John are works as well as "signs," as Dr.

Abbott can hardly have forgotten; and we are ready enough to use the Evangelist's language, but it does not seem to us to lead where Dr. Abbott would take us. It were idle perhaps to argue the question to-day. Wo may wait till Dr. Abbott develops his criticism of the New Testament in detail.

We need only observe now that Dr. Abbott forgets that our Lord's miracles stand out from all contemporary wonders, that the Evangelists convinced the world of their reality when there was no primd facie prepossession in their favour. If our.Lord's miracles had not been believed, certainly St. Thomas Beeket's would never have existed. Their position iu the twelfth century makes any comparison with the first century, to our mind, misleading.

In its other aspect, as a very close study of a portion of medieval history, probably Br. Abbott's book will appeal to very few. It is extremely thorough and remarkably accurate: a little hypercritical, no doubt, but very acute and suggestive. But its elaboration will make it unattractive to many readers as Well as very attractive to a few. Catherine Gladstone: Life, Good Works, and Political Efforts.

By EDWIN A. PBATT Sampson Low. 6s. Mrs. Gladstone is one of the most remarkable women of her time, and she deserved a more attractive biographer than Mr.

Edwin A. Pratt. Mr. Pratt's style, like that of Elkanah Settle, is incorrigibly lewd." It is journalese of the basest sort. In his lurid page, the seeds of philanthropic work were planted largely as the result of an excellent example." That dreadful adverb largely crops up on every page.

He says "utilise" when he means Use, and "phenomenal" when he means Remarkable, baron for Lord, and quite a number for Many. He calls Westminster Abbey our national Valhalla." He does not scorn the split to cordially sympathise." He begins a statement with, "It is needless to say," indifferent to the obvious retort, Then why say it?" We may now turn from Mr. Pratt's style, which is his own, to his substance, which is Mrs. Gladstone's, for it is her life and work that supply his material. The book depicts the ideal wife, who, for close on sixty years, was the guiding-star of her husband's fortunes and the good angel of his house.

But she has not been only a wife. While supremo in the home, she extended her beneficent energies over a much wider area. All her life long she has been one of the most sympathetic, intelligent, and practical of the servants of the poor. All her work has been done on the lines of tho Church of England as applied by the leaders of the Oxford Movement, Long before philanthropy and slumming had become fashion- I able her personal contact with disease and destitution had fired her with a noble zeal for doing good. On the occasion of her Golden Wedding Cardinal Manning expressed his admiring sympathy with her works of charity for the people." These included the foundation of tho House of Charity, in Soho, for distressed persons of tho better classes; tho Newport Market Refuge, for the utterly destitute, and the industrial school connected with it; the Convalescent Homes at Woodford aud else- whore for people recovering from tho cholera of 18(56; the Orphanage at Hawarden; and the Home for tho Protection and Care of Young Girls at Notting-bill.

In this connection the lifelong interest taken both by Mr. and by Mrs. Gladstone in tho House of Mercy at Clewer deserves commemoration. These multiform endeavours for the spiritual and material benefit of her fellow-creatures, superadded, to the incessant duties of the home, and the social obligations which beset tho wife of a political leader, made a quite sufficient demand upon even Mrs. Gladstone's unusual energies.

And many of her warmest friends wero grieved when, in very old age, she followed tho multitude to do evil," and associated herself with the unlovely cohorts of political womankind. Devotion to her husband's cause drew her into new and uncongenial surroundings; and she even fell so far from her high ostatoas to bo "introduced" (to a public gathering) by a Mrs. Wreghitt a strange inversion of parts. Happily, tho close of Mr. Gladstone's political career brought emancipation from these distasteful necessities, and replaced Mrs.

Gladstone on that pedestal of quiet, domestic dignity, where those who love her best best love to seo her. Wo are glad to seo that Mr. Pratt reproduces Sir Francis Doyle's beautiful lines on The Sister Brides," Mrs. Gladstone and Lady Lyttelton. One sympathises with tho poet, who evidently wished to apostrophiso Mrs.

Gladstone as Elder flower," but remembered tho double significance, and wrote Oh! Eldest Flower," although thoro were only two. In spito of Lady Frederick Cavendish's good offices in revision, Mr. Pratt is not always accurate in his statement of facts. Mr. Gladstone's first book was not called Church and State," but Tho State in its Relations with the Church distinction on which the writer himself laid stress.

Mr. Pratt says that Mr. Gladstone and Hope Scott wero intimate friends at Christ Church, Oxford." (Is there a Christ Church, Cambridge?) But Mr, Gladstone says, At Christ Church wo wero acquaintances only, scarcely friends." A History qf Chemistry, from Earliest Times to the Present Day. By Professor E. von MEYER Translated by GEORGE MCGOWAN Ph.D.

Second Edition. Mac- raillans. 15s. net. On all sides it is acknowledged how important: a place in the teaching of chemistry the consideration of tho historical aspect of the sqience should occupy, and yet, although several historical works by English chemists have recently appeared, these have been limited to the consideration of special branches of the subject, and a modern systematic history of chemistry by an English writer, so far as we are aware, does not at present exist.

It is therefore not surprising that Dr. McGowan's translation of Professor E. von Meyer's admirable text-book should have met with so wide an appreciation as to have called for the production of the second edition now before us. It has been translated from the second German edition (1895), and has been further brought up to date by such additions and alterations as have been made necessary by tho advance of the science and the new facts brought to light by recent historical research. Among the more interesting of the new faots relating to the early history of chemistry, which have been introduced into the new edition, are the results of Berthelot's researches into tho chemical literature of the middle ages.

He has proved that the Latin treatises attributed to the celebrated Arabian chemist Geber, which exerted so great an influence upon the chemistry of that period, could not possibly have been written before the middle of the fourteenth century. Further, he has brought to light the true Arabic MSS. of Geber, and finds in them no indications that he possessed those opinions or that knowledge of chemical technique by which the mediaeval writings assigned to him were terised. Hence that state of chemical knowledge formerly attributed to the ninth and tenth centuries really belongs to a period later by four or five hundred years. With respect also to the great Swedish chemist Scheele much has been added that only became known on the publication of his laboratory notes and letters in 1892.

Not till then was it learnt how many of his discoveries were really of earlier date than those by which they were supposed to have been anticipated. For instance, Priestley had always been regarded as the first discoverer of oxygen; but it is now known that it was before 1773 (that is, at least a year before the date of Priestley's discovery) that Scheele obtained the gas by beating pyrolusite with sulphuric acid in the course of those researches on that mineral, which also led to the discovery of chlorine. The 200 pages devoted to the General History of Chemistry during the Most Recent Period" probably constitute the most successful portion of the book. They are mainly occupied with tracing through its successive stages the evolution of the modern conception qf chemical constitution. The great advances made during the ten years which have elapsed since the publication of the first German edition of the book have made necessary here also considerable additions, especially in connection with the stereo-chemical theory of Le Bel and Van't Hoff.

Not only has the original theory received the confirmation of an ever-increasing mass of experimental support, but that extension of it adopted by Wialicenus to explain the isomerism existing between structurally identical unsaturated acids, which in 1888 was not sufficiently mature for discussion, has during the ten succeeding years become established upon an ample experimental basis, and the corresponding hypothesis of Werner and Hantasch, which then had not even been propounded, now forms the most generally accepted theoretical basis of the stereo-chemistry of nitrogen. The remainder of the book deals with the special history of the various branches of chemistry. Here are recorded the facts and investigations which have contributed most to the advance of the science. Recent work has made necessary here especially many additions. Among much that is now in the section on physical chemistry we may mention the account of the ionic theory of solutions and a notipe of Dewar's recent brilliant achievement in the liquefaction of hydrogen.

In the history of inorganic chemistry full account has been taken of Rayleigh and Ramsay's remarkable discovery of argon, as well as of tho isolation by the latter of helium and the newly described krypton, metargon, and neon. Attention has also been drawn to the most important researches in organic chemistry during the last decade, and, though we should have expected here fuller accounts of recent work in certain important example, in the uric acid work has on the whole been well brought up to date, and easily maintains its place among the front rank of text-books of chemistry. Annals of Westminster School. By JOHN SARGEAUNT. Methuen.

7s. 6d. This learned and excellent book must by no means be put aside as likely to interest only that section of society which may chance to have been educated at Westminster. Mr. Sargeaunt himself, if we are rightly informed, does not belong to that section, and is the less likely to be suspected of prejudice if his book loads to the conclusion, as wo think it does, that it would be as easy to dispute the value of the English public school to the English nation as to deny that Westminster until the present century, until Westminster became London, was of all public schools the most distinguished and most important.

We are speaking, of course, about times when games wero regarded as recreation, and when cricket had yet, in Mr. Sargoaunt's words, to dispute the pre-eminence with pitch-farthing." Though younger than Winchester and Mr. Sargoaunt's account of Henry foundation shows that Elizabeth may be considered as unquestionably tho real a hundred years ago could show a longer roll of famous sons than either, whilo her situation gave her advantages of which she availed herself to an extent now hardly conceivable. Fow indeed of us, as Mr. Sargeaunt obsorves, have any idea of the prominent place which for more than a century and a half after the deal a of Elizabeth tho Westminster boy held in the nation's sight." That statesmen should have been in tho habit of turning in (o the school at odd hours, and troubling themselves to Jcnow what the school epigrammatists were writing about them, is indeed less surprising when one remembers how many statesmen had themselves then belonged to tho school; and lint, perhaps in consequence thereof, they could most of- them understand tho epigrams.

In Busby Westminster possessed, and possessed for nearly sixty years, one of the very few schoolmasters whoso fame has survived tho generation of their pupils, and fen- chapters of Mr. Sargoaunt's book arc moro interesting than those which show how much more this remarkable man, who held his post continuously from before tho Civil War till after the Revolution, was than the mere flogging pedagogue some have supposed him. But perhaps the most curious part of tho book that which shows what kind of schooling was thought proper for our ancestors of 300 years ago At eight boys got up at five and had as yet bad nothing to head master set a proposition or passage in Latin to bo translated by the fourth, varied or controverted by the fifth, and versified by the sixth and seventh, the custos' of each form doing it first." Tho custos," be it observed, was not the head boy. but the one who had come most to grief at the previous lesson. So, too, on Sundays, "after morning prayer the boys made a summary of the upper forms in Latin verse, the fourth and third in Latin prose, and the rest iu English." One cannot help thinking that, if all this really happened, the modern fourth-form boy is rather a degenerate specimen of his kind.

No doubt he still might vary his master's propositions, but not always in the sense that seems hero intended. If ancient scholastic methods really succeeded in getting these tasks adequately performed, it may be doubted whether any modern methods have made much advance upon them. Mr. Sargoaunt's account of the Westminster Play, the survival of which through the Puritan epoch he shows to be the result of a statutory obligation, leads him to speak of the traditional pronunciation of Latin, to undertake its defence, and to explain the rules which it obeys. This will be welcomo to many people of conservative tendencies, who, perhaps, like ourselves, had never realised that there were any such rules Altogether, Mr.

Sargoaunt's book is of great interest; we fancy that in some few cases, as in his interpretation of the mvstK expression quaeso," Westminster tradition will not support bis views, but it must not be forgotten that, as he himself points out, at schools not all tradition is ancient tradition. The book is well illustrated, some of the pictures being of themsolves enough to remind us that a hundred years ago Westminster was not yet in London. NOTICES. The Egyptian Soudan its Loss and Recovery, by Lieutenants Alford and Sword (Macmillans, 10s. is a book whi'-h is instructive than entertaining.

It contains none of the brilliant anecdotes aud dashing descriptions which we have bad from many sources, but it is a clear and sober narrative of all that has happened in the Soudan during the last score of years. It goes back-, indeed, further than this, for it opens with a rapid sketch of the couquest of the Soudan under tho first Khedives in the early part of the century, with the invaluable assistance of Sir Samuel Baker and Gordon. It tells the story of its loss under the assault of the Mahdi and Khalifa, and then proceeds at greater length to give the narrative of the two campaigns of Dongola in 1896 and Omdurman in the present year. In the former of these the two authors bore their share, and are able to describe what happened from their personal experience; in the latter they have had to trust to the ordinary sources of information, supplemented by such additional kuowledge as might be gathered from their own friends and comrades. The result is a very lucid account of the successive steps in the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest.

1S supplied with abundant statistics and lists of names, as well as a careful statement of dates and localities, and a concise account of the various strategic and tactical movements of the force. Above all it has a most admirable collection of maps and plaDS, derived from the Intelligence Department of the War-office, which enables.