a refuge for rats and bats. Look at that ancient society in another State, established, or rather buried, in a pleasant country town, with its fine buildings and splendid endowment! What has it done for antiquarian science during the last half-century?" Somehow Anthropology has, during its very brief existence, proved itself a very belligerent science. The late Anthropological Society of London, which has recently been merged in the new Institute, could by no means be called a roost for owls. It rather resembled a bear-garden, in which half-schooled philosophers and vague theorists played fantastic enough tricks at times. It is evident that the amenities of American science are to be ministered in a somewhat Anthropological sense, under the new regime at New York. There will be no want of life, at any rate, and that is to be welcomed with all heartiness. If, indeed, the new Institute will resolutely employ the trenchant pugnacity already manifest in its inception, in putting down crude philosophers and vague theorists with their inconsequential rubbish; and, in lieu ot these, accumulate facts in physical anthropology, in archæology and philology, it will win credit to itself, and do a work of real service to American science.

Dr. M. Paul Broca's Parisian address on Anthropology, which has already done similar service in other Anthropological Journals, furnishes a useful resume of aims and work in the selected field of research. Another selection from the "Journal of the Anthropological Society of Paris," entitled "Trepanning among the Incas," gives a very curious illustration of primitive American surgery. The operation of trepanning is as old as the days of Hippocrates; and then, as now, it was performed by means of a circular saw, through a rotatory motion, but Mr. Squier, who has devoted great attention to the antiquities of Peru, forwarded to M. Broca of Paris, a skull taken from an Inca cemetery in the valley of Yucay, on which the process of trepanning has been performed, apparently with a gouge or bronze graver, or, as Dr. Draper suggests, with a quartz knife. With the aid of some such rude surgical instrument, a rectangular portion of bone has been removed, with very nearly the same practical results as those produced by the circular trephines of the modern surgeon. A well-executed wood-cut furnishes a front view of the skull, and supplies an exceedingly interesting illustration of this novel disclosure of the independent civilization of the

Incas.

Among the original papers, well illustrated with wood-engravings, may be noted, one on "Antiquities from the Guano Islands of Peru." These islands were frequented by the inhabitants of the adjacent coasts, long prior to the days of Columbus or Pizarro;

and many aboriginal relics, of gold, silver, bronze, earthenware. &c., have been found, in the course of excavating the precious huana, as the Quicua designation is. Mr. Squier has brought together the most interesting accessible information on the subject, letting explorers and observers tell their own tales, as in the case of Mr. J. P. Davis, of Massachusetts, Government Engineer of Peru. His narrative is described by Mr. Squier as "perhaps the best, and only exact account of the discovery of relics in the huana." One of these is a wooden idol, a little over a foot high, representing a squatting female, "found on the South Guanape Island, at an elevation of about 450 feet above the sea, and on the edge of a precipice. The idol," he adds, "is somewhat decayed;" as it well may be, from the further statement, made seemingly in all gravity, that it "has the appearance of having been carved about the time of the flood. It has a benignant countenance, an ample belly, and an atrocious smell."

Mr. Squier discusses the credibility of the various accounts, and discriminates between the various narrators; not hesitating to characterize one by name, as an impostor; and describing other accounts as too vague to be made the basis of rational speculation.

A paper, by Mr. J. W. Ward, on "Sculptured Rocks, Belmont Co., Ohio;" we recognize as one which has already appeared elsewhere. The sculptures are curious intaglio representations of human and animal footprints, which have been the subjects of extravagant description by previous writers. They are here well illustrated by means of woodcuts, and their true value and significance discussed. A brief paper by Mr. C. C. Jones, on a canoe found in Savannah River Swamp, a few miles from the city of Savannah, discusses its age, and thus sums up the induction:-"All that we know is, that this Indian canoe is old-older than the barge which conveyed Oglethorpe up the Savannah, when he first selected the home of the Yamacraws as a site for the future commercial metropolis of the Colony of Georgia ;--more ancient, probably, than the statelier craft which carried the fortunes of the discoverer of this Western Continent;"-in fact, quite as old, probably, as the huana idol "carved about the time of the flood."

The indefatigable president, Mr. Squier, completes the first instalment of "Anthropological Papers" with one on 66 'The Arch in America;" for by the free-or, shall we say, the loose-interpretation of their title Anthropologists claim a right to absorb philology, ethnology, archæology, and we know not how many more ologies, within their domain. They are undisguised annexationists. In the case of their

late London confrères, indeed, gyneology, hagiology, martyrology, mythology and theology were all taken in hand, in such a slashing, buccaneering fashion,and clergy in general, and missions and missionaries in particular were assailed with such indiscriminate pertinacity, that sober inquirers after truth were scandalized, and hastened to withdraw from the combative arena of disputatious savans. We trust their American brethren will take warning by their experience. What is wanted at present, is a careful accumulation of accurate, well-authenticated facts. The vexed questions of the unity of the human race, the development theory, and all else, up to our supposed Ascidian ancestry, may safely be left to the eliminating development of time. We welcome the journal of the new Institute, and trust that by its judicious management, it may accumulate the materials on which, alone, any sound theories in reference to American Anthropology can be based; that it will deal temperately with the controversies hat are, we fear, inevitable; and modestly with the theories which our modern savans of the Anthropological type construct so admirably, after the model of an inverted pyramid; their basis an infinitesimal point, but crowned with a broad and ample summit, looming in the haze of its sublime altitude.

believes on the whole to have rendered to humanity great services which have hitherto been misunderstood or imperfectly recognized. An historical name once prominently identified with a movement or a system is sure, in our present stage of historical philosophy, to bring with it an entanglement of feelings and prejudices from which even so independent a thinker as Mr. Morley cannot entirely shake himself free.

One passage in the essay has for us a peculiar and touching interest of its own. It is idle to hide from ourselves the sad fact that there are now in the world many men-even good and conscientious men-who have ceased to be satisfied not only with the evidences of Christianity but with the proofs of Natural Religion; and the terrible question thus practically arises what man can be—where he can find a rule of life or comfort in death-without a belief in God. So far as we know, the question is nowhere so frankly met as in these words :

"Above all, it is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive need of a coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct.

"There are new solutions for him if the old are fallen dumb. If he no longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God's justice but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter; the

Mr. Morley is unquestionably a power in the intellectual and moral world, at least in that part of it which does not altogether refuse to near the teaching of a very extreme liberal. His knowledge is great, his grasp of it firm, his style vigorous though peculiar, his moral judgment strong, and if often based on principles to which most people would not assent, always consistent with his principles and thoroughly honest. An extreme liberal he is and something more, especially in religious questions; but his literary sympathies are catholic and have embraced Burke as well as Voltaire. His present essay is one of great power and very instructive to the student of history. It throws much light on the nature and extent of the work done (for good or evil or for both) by Voltaire, and at the same time on the better parts of Voltaire's character, such as the sincere and energetic hatred of injustice which he manifested in the affair of Calas. At the same time it does not conceal either his personal weaknesses or those of his system. That the estimate should on the whole appear too high to an ordinary reader is perhaps the inevitable fate of any special treatise on the life of a man whom the writer

of his pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of re morse will be stronger not weaker when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and cor. rupting the future of his brothers; and he will be less effectually raised from inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hear ing full in the ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her children. swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may still remain, for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law? And a man will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive a constant augmentation, and

That

each good cause yet find worthy defenders when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever."

That to a man of high intellect and one capable by his range of thought and knowledge of really taking in the idea and sentiment of humanity, such a substitute for religion and its hope, may be or appear satisfactory, we know from the case before us. But what will it be to the mass of mankind?

THE ABOMINATIONS OF MODERN SOCIETY. By Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, author of "Crumbs Swept Up," New York: Adams, Victor & Co.

It may have been a stroke of policy on the part of the writer of this book to select a title which, as it seems to promise leprous revelations, is likely to attract readers of the class for whose benefit the book is designed. No such revelations, however, will be found in the work. It is simply a series of vehement, and if vehemence of style is any proof of earnestness, earnest sermons against the vices of great cities in general, and of New York in particular. If we cannot quite endorse the statement in the preface that "the book is not more for men than for women," we may at least say that there is nothing in it which is not in spirit, and, as far as the subject will admit, in expression perfectly moral. Possibly such preaching may do good. But even those, who are least inclined to acquiesce in the debilitating theory that morality is entirely dependent on circumstances, have begun to be aware that to alter the conduct of large masses of men it is necessary to alter the conditions under which they live. From Tyre and Sidon to London and New York, great commercial cities have presented the same moral features; though at New York the case is aggravated by a constant influx of half-civilized immigration and by the unsettled and shifting character of the population generally, which is adverse to the steady influence of a wholesome public opinion. A great aggregation of young men as clerks, without homes, and in the midst of all the temptations of a great city, is almost as certain to lead to vice as the liquor which they drink is to produce intoxication. Mr. Talmage is no doubt right in designating the

winter nights as the trying season for most young men; not that young men are more immorally disposed between the autumnal and the vernal equinox, but that in the winter nights the want of amusement is most felt and the sense of loneliness is most oppressive. This source of evil is augmented in the United States by the increasing tendency of American youth to desert farming for city pursuits, which is altogether one of the great social and economical dangers of the United States. The special evil de nounced by Mr. Talmage, under the name of "The Power of Clothes," that is social extravagance, with its attendant vices and meannesses, may be in some degree mitigated by the events which, though in themselves calamitous, have a tendency to diminish the social influence of Paris, which New York has hitherto servilely copied in its extravagance and vices. The fall of the Ring may also check the propensities which lead to swindling under various names and in various degrees of turpitude; at least if condign personal punishment is inflicted on the malefactors, for their political discomfiture and the loss of a portion of their immense booty would be insufficient to counteract in the minds of greedy and unscrupulous youth the influence of their dazzling example.

We trust we shall not aggravate any international difficulty by mentioning that Mr. Talmage's style is American. Instead of saying that, if anything in his book can do good, he will be glad that it was printed, he must say he will be glad "that the manuscript was caught up between the sharp teeth of the type;" and he abounds in such flowers as these:"God once in a while hitches up the fiery team of vengeance and ploughs up the splendid libertinism, and we stand aghast as the waters (of the Red Sea) whelm the pursuing foe, the swift-fingered winds on the white keys of the foam play the grand march of Israel delivered and the awful dirge of Egyptian overthrow"-" they call it Cognac or Hock, or Heidsick, or Schnapps, or Old Bourbon, or Brandy, or Champagne; but they tell not that in the ruddy glow there is the blood of sacrifice, and in its flash the eye of uncoiled adders, and in the foam the mouth-froth of eternal death." Without putting taste in the balance against morality, we must say that if Mr. Talmage were to teach the New York clerks to talk in this style, we should regard it as a serious set-off against any moral improvement which such tropes are likely to effect.