.

astonished at the sight of an Indian

Mahatmas' in Tibet.

Mr. Knight is essentially bon camarado is only what one would have guessed from his previous books. On his way out he met Mr. C. Spedding, of Kashmir fame, who at once took him in charge as far as that State was concerned. At Srinagar he was seized upon by the Settlement officer, Mr. Lawrence, who showed him the realities of life in the Maharaja's dominions. It is needless to say of such a man when he comes forward in the capacity of author that he has used his opportunities with equal loyalty and good taste." [The italics are ours.] A non-official Indian journalist writes: "The routes taken by Mr. Knight, as marked on the convenient if not very detailed map, prefixed to the work, although travelled over before and under much less favourable circumstances, are not so neck-breaking as would appear. We specially refer to the Indus route from Skardo to Astor. He did not make his way single-handed through a new or hostile country, as did some of his predecessors, but he strutted along, ever strongest on the stronger side that required a willing pen in order to justify the most suicidal of encroachments. We regret that his demeanour towards the natives seems to show that off-hand and contemptuous manner, which more than any Russian aggression weakens our hold on India. He admits on page 258 that he does not even know why Dardistan, on which he poses as an authority, is so called, and the 'unexplored' country in his map has been pretty well known for the last 28 years. He is Fakir, but, fortunately, finds no Mahatmas' in Tibet. None of these things, however, detracts from the interest of the book to the general reader, any more than does the fact, patent in its pages, that the author is as loud in the praise of his friends, as he is strong in his abuse of whatever does not commend itself to his approval. So far as his ignorance of the languages enabled him, he travelled with his eyes and ears wide open and he has much tell us which is decidedly worth reading regarding the Tibetan miracle-plays, or other matters which depend more on observation than judgment or knowledge. On the policy of further annexation in the fastnesses of Dardistan and of further construction of military roads we do not agree with Mr. Knight, any more than we do in his general contempt for the people and their ways, which he expresses sometimes with benign pity, oftener with savage condemnation. He repeats many stories to the discredit of some of these peoples, without allowing for the fact that they are inventions of their hereditary enemies. The recent invention of a certain Chief's descent from Alexander the Great is treated seriously. are we inclined to be too sympathetic with his descriptions of military operations, where disciplined and well-armed men defeated those who were the reverse. Still, we recommend the book to the general reader, in spite of its failures, or our differing from its conclusions, for it has the great merit of stimulating curiosity, of retaining the attention of the reader on subjects hitherto unfamiliar to him and of preparing the way for a more exhaustive and judicious work on regions which from every point of view offer the greatest interest to the scholar and the statesman." What the Hunzas think of us, and we of Mr. Knight, may be inferred from their pantomime in which they describe a rampant Anglo-Saxon who after failing to hit an ibex

Nor

within two inches of his gun, turns on his Shikari or native Gillie and kicks him! Mr. Knight sees the fun, but not the irony on our disregard of natives and our worship of red tape, when an anglicized Babu, a type to which we are reducing our subjects, evidently wishing to please his masters, suggests that some grain that he suspected of being poisoned might be given to the Balti coolies "and watch if they thrive on it," or when another Babu proposes that we might offer terms of peace to the enemy, take our native allies to the Conference, and then blow all up together by a Sahib inserting the famous gun-cotton and a lit fuse into the wall, who then "retires with careless slowness as if nothing was up," or to tie up a big batch of prisoners in a bunch and "slay them with shrapnell shell. I have carefully looked through the regulations, and find nothing to forbid this plan."

36. The second volume of "Entartung," (Degeneracy) by DR. MAX NORDAU (Berlin: Carl Duncker, 1893) on literary aberrations and eccentricities from a scientific standpoint, has just appeared. It is impossible within the limits of space at our disposal to give more than a general indication of this remarkable inquiry. Hosts of writers from various countries, with characteristic passages, are passed in review by Dr. Nordau, including many names that are not known to the English public and whose influence on their age is yet undoubted. We, therefore, reiterate the hope already expressed at the appearance of the first volume, that "Entartung" may be suitably translated into English. Starting with "egotism," as distinguished from "egoism" or selfishness, as the basis of the morbid developments of our Fin de siècle Literature, Dr. Nordau shows that mental disease can alone explain them. Its symptoms are compared with those of medical practice and we find the lunatic or the idiot, in various stages, in the monomaniac of whatever kind, the voluptuary all as frantic, the poetaster's eye rolling not in the fine frenzy of genius but in that of incipient or advanced madness, such as a physician would be bound to recognise. Typical words. and sentences, supposed to contain a thought, from modern writings are examined with the result of showing the vacuity, intellectual exhaustion or perversion, with which vice and hereditary degeneracy are identical. His analysis of Ibsen's plays similarly proves that their author, beyond a powerful grasp of their technical mise en scène, is a man of one-and that the poorest-idea (the revolt against the marriage-tie) which is repeated ad nauseam in ever-recurrent similar passages and names and thinly disguised reiterations of the same personages and plots. It is not merely greed and vanity that create a Zola, but disease. Dr. Nordau dissects his works and shows how largely they are indebted to his use of the judicial record of a criminal family. When the eye, the ear, the nose, the touch are vitiated in disease, then arise those literary peculiarities of bad or strange taste, that are the admiration of a public already debased by those national or social processes of decay which Dr. Nordau shows at work in our gangrened civilization. Thus he introduces us to the Psychology of Egotism, which is the exaggeration of the individualism that characterizes modern tendencies, but which is the destruction of Society that can only be maintained by altruism, ranging from sympathy to patriotism or other forms of conformity or selfabnegation for the common-weal. The egotist-reformer destroys for the

sake of destroying what may not please his passions or the narrow range of his conceptions; the altruistic reformer builds even where he reluctantly destroyed. Dr. Nordau then examines what is practically the School of the so-called Parnassians and Diabolists with Catulle Mendès and Gautier at their head, who sacrifice matter to manner, sense to sound and feeling to form or "impassibility," for which the English mannerism of nil admirari has much to answer. Baudelaire leads the "demoniacs" in singing of lust, crime, disease and corpses, but why add to the publicity of these decrepit specimens of humanity, unless it be to dissolve their following? The Chapter on "Decadence and Estheticism" deals with the inversion of the moral sense, of which Huysman's "à rebours" is typical. His hero stimulates crime in order to foster his own indignation with Society, but he lives in an artificial manner, which discloses to Dr. Nordau the secrets of his diseased imagination. We wonder what Oscar Wylde would say to finding himself among the egotists as well as æsthetics, but Dr. Nordau's criticism of his idiosyncrasies seem unanswerable. To Nietzche and his School in Germany Dr. Nordau assigns a special chapter and the lunatic asylum, to which, we hear, he has been consigned, whilst the Schools that follow Zola and the "young Germany" that also apes Realism before it is even emancipated from leading-strings are similarly dealt with critically, humorously and pathetically. Altogether we are in a bad way, but the twentieth century may see the revolt against the hysterical follies of our age which threaten to bury all the conquests of past culture.

How this is to be done by the association of physicians with high-minded literary men to make immoral popularities impossible and how far more probable is the gradual disuse of Railways, telegraphs, books and everything requiring attention by an exhausted and diseased generation, what is the lower deep in these depths and what the details of the added gloom of further degeneracy, are described in a masterly manner by Dr. Nordau, whose appeal in favour of the maintenance of ancient traditions in Art and Literature and of healthy conceptions of life and duty, will make his magnum opus" doubly acceptable to the Critic and the Philanthropist. 37. The Nine Circles; or, the Torture of the Innocent, being Records of Vivisection, English and Foreign. Compiled by G. M. RHODES. 2nd and revised Edition. With Introduction by EDWARD BERDOE, M.R.C.S., etc. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1893; 1s.)

We quote the following from its preface and are glad that the present edition has rendered the case unassailable for the anti-vivisection society by eliminating the mistakes of the previous edition. "The extracts of which this book is composed do not describe exceptional experiments, but are samples selected out of hundreds of similar character, showing the different kinds of vivisection practised in England and other countries and illustrating the mental attitude of the professional physiologists..

"That any immediate benefit to mankind is not contemplated by ordinary vivisection has, over and over again, been demonstrated. . .

"The justifiable impulse to demand some proof of the useful results to be derived therefrom, has recently been characterized by a leading vivisector as 'the miserable spirit of cui bono? Another has told us that science

1

must advance, and the question of the animal being sensitive, cannot alter the mode of investigation.' This book will sufficiently show that even where care is used, the infliction of pain amounting to torture is unavoidable in this method of research."

38. A Pargiánya, Inno di Vásista, per Guiseppe Turrini (Bologna: Regia Topografia, 1892; L. 4.) This short hymn of only 3 lines (27 words) is translated literally into Italian, preceded by two versions of its text. That, however, is the least part of this édition de luxe, splendidly produced by the Royal press of Bologna. The notes and Glossaries which form its greater part, prove (if proof were needed) the varied learning, the deep erudition, and the careful study of the learned Professor of Indo-European Philology in the University of Bologna. A good specimen of the style of his work is given at p. 49, in the word "putra," of which he traces the derivation through various languages to the root pû = cleanse, to purify. We understand that the learned professor has long been engaged on similar work, and that the fragment under review is only one of many translations already achieved.

FURTHER PUBLICATIONS OF THE ORIENTAL CONGRESS OF 1891.

39. Sommaire des études turques, par M. Clement Huart (Woking: The Oriental University Institute, 1893). M. Huart has revised and brought up to date (end of 1892) the statement which he prepared for the Statutory IXth International Congress of Orientalists of London 1891, of the work done in Turkish literature during the period 1886-91. It forms one of the excellent series of similar Summaries for which that congress was remarkable. M. Huart, whose position as Dragoman of the French Embassy at Constantinople gives him exceptional opportunity for such a work, has elaborated this summary with a care and diligence which leave nothing to be desired. This little work should be in the hands of all students of the Turkish language, who will find in it notices of many useful books which might otherwise escape their attention.

40. Aperçu des études philologiques des langues malaises, par J. J. Meyer (Woking: The Oriental University Institute, 1893) is another of the same series of summaries, and deals with the work done in the Malayan language during the years 1886-91. Its author, Mr. Meyer, who is an official in the Dutch East Indies, gives an exhaustive list of all the publications in this branch of linguistic studies.

41. Sommaire des travaux relatifs à l'Indo-Chine, par M. E. Aymonier (Woking: The Oriental University Institute, 1893) is another of the same series of Summaries,—the 3rd published during this quarter. The able pen of the Director of the Colonial School of Paris has treated his subject in the most thorough manner; and all the principal works and writings bearing on it, which have been published from 1886 to 1891, receive due notice in his pamphlet.

OUR LIBRARY TABLE.

We have to thank the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for having sent us their set of Chinese Religious Text Books, forming volumes XVI., XXVII.,

XXVIII., XXXIX. and XL. of the Series of the Sacred Books of the East, edited by Prof. Max Müller, and the Book of Enoch, translated from Prof. Dilmann's text, and edited by R. H. Charles (1893). We have received these valuable books too late to give, in this issue, as full a review as their importance deserves; but we hope to do them justice next quarter.

We have before us a fasciculus of Messrs. Funk and Wagnall's (New York, London and Toronto) Standard Dictionary of the English Language, consisting of specimen pages culled from the work. It is in three columns on each page,-size, and type similar to Messrs. George Bell and Sons' Webster's Dictionary. On comparison we find p. 309 of the latter corresponds to p. 384 of the former, which shows how much more matter has been incorporated in the later work. The illustrations are very good; and under its very efficient staff of Editors, including a great number of names well known on both sides of the Atlantic, it promises to be a very useful adjunct to all good libraries.

We have to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of: 1. The Contemporary Review (Isbister and Co.); 2. El Boletin de la Sociedad Geografica de Madrid (1st Quarter of 1893), which contains a good article on the Cabots; 3. La Minerva (Roma, Società Laziale), a good monthly specilegium from many English and other reviews; 4. The Polybiblion (Paris: Rue St. Simon); 5. Biblia, a New York monthly magazine of Biblical and Oriental research; 6. The Review of Reviews; 7. The Strand Magazine, always fresh and interesting; 8, and The Picture Magazine, the beautiful companion of The Strand; 9. The Religious Review of Reviews ; 10. The Missionary Review of Reviews (Funk and Wagnall's, New York); 11. La Revue des Revues (Paris); 12. La Revue Générale (Bruxelles: Société Belge de Librairie); 13. The Library Review (Hutchinson and Co.); 14. The Indian Magazine and Review (Archibald Constable); 15. Tung Pão, the bimonthly publication of the learned Professors G. Schlegel and H. Cordier (E. J. Bril); 16. Journal of the East India Association; 17. La Civiltà Cattolica, which maintains its reputation as the leading Catholic Periodical occasionally rather occasionally rather bitter in tone (Rome, A. Beffani); 18. Comptes Rendus de la Société de Geographie de Paris; 19. Lucifer; 20. Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien; 21. The Antiquary (Elliot Stock); 22. The American Journal of Philology (Baltimore, U.S.A); 23. The Scottish Geographical Society's Magazine (Edinburgh); 24. Le Bulletin des Sommaires; 25. The Journal of the Society of Arts; 26. Public Opinion (Washington and New York); 26. Ueber Land und Meer; 27. India, the organ of the Indian National Congress.