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author of this book published, two or three years since, a little volume entitled "The Childhood of the World," in which he presented, in a familiar way, designed for perusal by the young, the modern doctrine of the antiquity of the world, and something of that which is now regarded as known concerning the primitive condition of man. The success that attended his former undertaking has led him to break into another and a kindred field, and to present, in a popular and readable form, what is considered to be known in relation to primitive religions. The author regards the two works as but parts of one argument, and the present volume as the natural and necessary outgrowth of the former. Of the need and purpose of such an exposition he remarks, at the opening:

The book is very plainly written, and gives a great deal of interesting information about myths and legends of the creation, religious beliefs of the Aryan or Indo-European nations, the religion of the ancient and modern Hindoos, Buddhism, and the ancient religions of Persia, China, and the Semitic nations. Much is said upon these subjects nowadays by learned men, and Mr. Clodd's volume is a good popular introduction to this field of literature.

volume is an intrepid attempt to establish the doctrine of personal immortality on the scientific basis of modern physical theories. The indestructibility of matter and force, and the existence of atoms or units, are the principles Mrs. Blackwell employs as the foundation of her argument. We cannot here analyze it, but will give the author's standpoint in her own words:

have long waited for a life of Dr. Whewell, and although we have not found it in these volumes, in the usual sense of the biography, yet we have here what may be called a history of his intellectual life, as disclosed in the informal and fragmentary passages of an extensive correspondence. Sir John Herschel has said of Dr. Whewell that "a more wonderful variety and amount of knowledge in almost every department of human inquiry was perhaps never in the same interval of time accumulated by any man." Of this, his numerous and learned publications bear ample witness, and it is of course from these that