Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/432

420 an early trait, and is marked throughout her career. She was sympathetic with advanced ideas, and, although neither philosophic nor hardly original in her bent of mind, she had an intuitive sympathy with the pioneers of liberal inquiry, and always spoke of their work with cordial and hearty appreciation. We congratulate the author of the book on the admirable performance of her agreeable task.

we may think of Mr. Mallock as a philosopher aiming to get at the valuation of life, or as a constructor of social hypotheses, we must grant that at any rate he is a brilliant critic and an effective controversialist. In this volume he overhauls the peculiar socialistic doctrines of Mr. Henry George and Mr. H. M. Hyndman, exposing their fallacies and characterizing their influence with much acuteness of reasoning and equal bluntness of speech. Those interested in these subjects will find the book more than readable. It consists of articles first contributed to the "Quarterly Review," and reprinted without substantial alteration. The writer's aim in the discussion is thus stated: "One of the principal features by which Continental politics have been, during modern times, distinguished from those of England, has, during the last few years, developed itself in England also. I refer to the attempts being now made by extreme radicals on the one hand, and avowed socialists on the other, to identify politics in the minds of the poorer classes with some wholesale seizure, in their behalf, on the property, or on part of the property of the richer; to represent the accomplishment of such a seizure as the main task incumbent on a really popular government, and to madden the people with a conviction that, until the seizure is made, they will be suffering a chronic wrong.

"When we consider the squalor and misery that exist in the heart of our civilization, it is not surprising that language of this kind should sound to many like a new social gospel. The aim of the present volume is to examine, accurately and calmly, into the exact amount of truth underlying this appeal to the sympathies, and to enable the reader to judge whether our contemporary social agitators are men of science, revealing to us new social possibilities, or merely quacks beguiling us with new delusions—whether, in other words, they are the best friends of the people, or whether they are practically their worst and their most insidious enemies."

history of the coup d'état, the great crime by which Louis Napoleon converted France from a republic into an empire, will ever be of memorable interest, from the character and consequences of the event; but the main interest of the present volume is derived from the fact that it is written by one who was not only himself in the affair, but one of its master-spirits. M. de Maupas was chief of the police in Paris, and as such had control of the operations by which the usurpation of Louis Napoleon was carried out. It may be that there is not much in the volume in the way of revelation, or that was not more or less known before, but it is an important contribution to the historic literature of that period, from its detailed, circumstantial, and systematic account of the transaction.

chart is an attempt, by means of graphic diagrams and an explanatory text, to make clear the difficult astronomical problem of the equation of time. It contains on one side six representations of the terrestrial and celestial sphere, intended to illustrate the relations of the ecliptic and the equator, motion in the ecliptic and in the equator, and mean and apparent time; and on the other side a section-view of the celestial sphere as regarded from the north pole of the ecliptic—the ellipticon—on which are given the position of the sun, the equation of time, and other elements of the problem, for each day of the year.