Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/869

Rh for matrimony, it matters very little to them. There is scope enough in this country for independent careers, and many of our "smart" girls fancy that on the whole an independent career is more desirable than marriage with its inevitable subordination of the woman. Fairly to present this subject to the American mind requires a careful study of the influences at home, at school, and on all sides, that are acting upon the minds of our girls and modifying their tastes and feelings, and, also, of those deeper biological characteristics which must remain essentially the same from age to age. It must be shown that from the beginning woman has been, and to the end she must remain, an emotional rather than an intellectual being—that much transient mischief and no good can come from a disturbance of this normal balance of thought and feeling in the mind of woman. It is high time that somebody in this country, be it novelist or essayist, should bring forward this view of the subject of "woman's rights." For the assumption of the identity of the minds of men and women is wide-spread. Hence the demand for identical education, and the opening to women of all our halls of learning. The fact that the emotional nature of woman has precedence at the present time is regarded as a principal reason for the educational movement. It is no education, or wrong education, we are told, that has deformed her true nature, and that her mind may assume right proportions she is called upon to cultivate intellect as a means of suppressing emotion.

This is precisely what Hiss Von Hillern's heroine had striven all her life to do, and she fancied at one time that she had gained the victory for intellect. But all her striving comes to nothing. At last we find her exclaiming: "What are learning and fame, what the pride of position, compared with the happiness of this moment? Away with them all! my choice is made, Johannes," and she sank upon his breast. And this, too, when the last words said to her by her lover were these: "True humility will teach you to yield your fate unquestioningly to the man who gives his life to you. Go from me and you may be great, but you can not be womanly, a*id what is such greatness attained at the cost of a heart? Give up the false pride that would seek fame beyond the bounds of a woman's sphere, and confess that there is nothing greater that you can do than to enrich and bless the man who loves you." But, in Germany, where all the forces of society conspired to Ernestine's defeat, our authoress had no difficult task in reaching this result. It is not so easy to imagine a discipline that would bring one of our learned girls to this humble pass.

The subject is one of profound importance, and we commend the work to thoughtful readers, as well as to those who read novels only for entertainment.

neatly printed and beautifully illustrated book before us is somewhat similar to Quekett's "Practical Treatise on the Use of the Microscope," but is a smaller and less costly book, and one that brings the subject down to the present time. The various parts of a microscope are briefly described from a practical stand point, no mathematical calculations being introduced, nor is any attempt made to explain the theory of the microscope, further than it is of practical value. Although intended for students and even beginners, some singular omissions occur, such as explanations of the oft-used term "air-angle," or of the principle of "immersion lenses." The various accessories of the microscope are fully illustrated and described. There is a chapter on the collection of objects, another on micro-dissections, also on section-cutting and microscopic measurements. One of the most valuable features of the book is its full and accurate directions for making photo-micrographs, with cuts of apparatus. Recipes are given for the developing and fixing solutions, the printing and toning baths, and other parts of the photographic operations are minutely described. The chapter on the polarizing microscope is more full than we usually meet with in books of this character. The micro-spectroscope, the most modern of all the adaptations of the microscope, here receives the