■JUy 13, 1
��409
��Some similar phrase would be llic lic^l formula fbr Charles Kingslt'3s book, noiv reprinted aa one of Macmilian'a ' Globe readings from standni'd authors.' The stjlc il rtpresenls is not, to be sure, the old plaio-denling man- ner of Mra. Mai-eet and her ' C'onvtTBntiona about eommou tbiugs,' where John and Wil- liam demurely put hard queatious, and Mr. A. or Mr. B. sedately answers; but it is the modern, rollickiog, galvanized form of the same thing, where the preceptor calls bimseir ' Daddv.' where the pupil is addressed as ' My dear child' on almost every page, aud ' My pretty boy ' occasionally, where the plain facts about rocks or fishes must be gar- nished with all manner of metaphor and rhetoilc, and where every chapter must wind up with a high-Ilown rhythmical passage com|>osed of Uusk in- made-easy. To those who like that sort of book, it may be said, bon-owiug the ' words of President Lincoln, that ' tliis is Just tbe sort of book they will like.' But we con- fess ourselves not to be of that opinion.
Unless we greatly mistake, the taste, even of children, has now changed for the better. It is not now thought necessary to write down to ihem ; to pet them, so to speak, in printer's ink ! to remind them in every other sentence of the fact they know beat, namely, that tbey are not grown iip. It has been discovered that what they need is merely the straightforward simplicity of language which even grown peo- ple like best. It is nut necessary to take everj' common fact and turn it vivaciously into a metaphor ; to personify two new intermediate agencies in the universe under the names of 'Madam How' and "Lady Wliy," aud then to provide them with two grandsons. ■ Analy- sis ' and ' Synthesis ' (p. 158); all these per- sonifications being, aller all, so inelfectuul that the author has to l>ring in at last a higher creative power (p. Id), called the 'Master,' whom they all obey, and the refeience to whom makes this labored mythol<^- very su|)erfluous. This is the head and front of our objection to the book, — that it is not tnily scientific, be- cause it is not simple. It tends to impair, not to foster, the ajjontaneous love that children have for the fascinating truths of out-door nature : it is an attempt to make sandwidies with sugar-plums, and to flavor bread and cheese with vanilla.
This fundamental defect |K>inted out, it must undonbtedl}' be admitted that this little book contains a gi-eat deal of valuable and interest- ing knowledge conveyed often in an exceeding- ly graphic way, Kven here, however, there are two drawbacks. One lies in the cliaracter of
��Canon Kingsley's mind, which was dashing, imjietuous, aud always ready for too sweeping conclusions. To say, for instance, almost at the beginning. " I never saw a valley however deep, or a clitT however high, which had not been scooped out by water" (p. 25) ; and to reiterate again and again that ' water, and nothing else,' has done all these things, with- out a word of reference to volcanic action, or upheaval, or subsidence, or lateral pi'essure, — is certainly a very loose and unguanled way of writing. Again : there is the minor objection that the book, being prepared specifically for English children, is very properly ftitl of local references and illustrations that will mislead and perplex young Americans, just as the older men among us used to be perplexed in childhood by trj ing to identify the hii-ds and plants around us with the very dilTcrent species described in the English manuals. Many of the author's most important ilhislrnlious of the formation of mountains and valleys, for in- stance, are drawn from the features of those miniature canons on the J-^uglisb coast — in tlic Isle of Wight, fur instance — known as 'chines' (pp. lS-22). But what American child knows, or how many American teachers, indeed, know, what a -cbine' is? The word does not even ap|icar in Worcester's ' Diction- ary.' except as meaning a piece of an animal, or part of a vessel.
��With the present a|)|>endix (vol. v. part iii.) a monumental work has been brought to a dose. The labors of 'I'homas Davidson, F.R.S., need no introduction to paleontologists of any part of the world. The quiet distribu- tion of the concluding fasciculi of the ' British fossil Brachiopoda ' should not be allowed to pass without notice.
Thirty years have passed since the pnhltcatiou of the general introduction to the first volume of this monograph. Coincidently with, and largely induced by, its progress, a vast amount of precise knowledge has been acquired and made public, in regaitl to all that I'elates to the history and distribution of the braehiopods. Indeed, our knowledge of them, in any suf- ficient sense, may be almost said to date from about the time when the learned author began his labors ; and the earliest known reference to them in any printed work dates only from IfiOli. The present appendix closes a series of researches, begun just half a century ago.
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