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definition and explanation which implies this idea. He says: "Taking tins view of illusion, we may provisionally define it as any species of error which counterfeits the form of immediate, self-evident, or intuitive knowledge, whether as sense-perception or otherwise. Whenever a thing is believed on its own evidence and not as a conclusion from something else, and the thing then believed is demonstrably wrong, there is an illusion. The term would thus appear to cover all varieties of error which are not recognized as fallacies or false inferences. If for the present we roughly divide all our knowledge into the two regions of primary or intuitive, and secondary or inferential knowledge, we see that illusion is false or spurious knowledge of the first kind, fallacy false or spurious knowledge of the second kind. At the same time, it is to be remembered that this division is only a very rough one. As will appear in the course of our investigation, the same error may be called either a fallacy or an illusion, according as we are thinking of its original mode of production or of the form which it finally assumes; and a thorough-going psychological analysis of error may discover that these two classes are at bottom very similar."

It will be obvious that this is not a technical work, but one of wide popular interest, in the principles and results of which every one is concerned. The illusions of perception of the senses and of dreams are first considered, and then the author passes to the illusions of introspection, errors of insight, illusions of memory, and illusions of belief. The work is a noteworthy contribution to the original progress of thought, and may be relied upon as representing the present state of knowledge on the important subject to which it is devoted.

Literary Style and other Essays. By William Mathews, LL. D. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 345. Price, $1.50.

A most readable volume, full of common sense and practical wisdom on a great number of important and interesting subjects. The author is evidently an omnivorous and careful reader, and has well cultivated the art of turning his varied studies to good literary account. His pages are loaded, we might almost say overloaded, with references to the best writers, and quotations of their trenchant and suggestive sayings. The first paper, on "Literary Style," from which the volume takes its name, is not a scientific or philosophical analysis of the subject, but is a formidable array of arguments, illustrations, and authorities to prove that literary form is the main thing in the art of authorship. Dr. Mathews shows that, in literature, ideas, facts, and the substance of thought go for next to nothing, while the style of verbal dress determines the place and permanence of literary productions. The following passage on Carlyle will exemplify the fundamental idea of the essay, and illustrate also the author's lively and earnest style of discussion:

Perhaps no other writer of the day has more powerfully influenced the English-speaking race than Carlyle. Beyond all other living men he has, in certain important respects, shaped and colored the thought of bis time. As an historian, he may be almost said to have revolutionized the French Revolution, so different is the picture which other writers have given us from that which blazes upon us under the lurid torch-light of his genius. To those who have. read his great prose epic, it will be henceforth impossible to remember the scenes he has described through any other medium. As Helvellyn and Skiddaw are seen now only through the glamour of Wordsworth's genius—as Jura and Mont Blanc are transfigured, even to the tourist, by the magic of Byron and Coleridge—so to Carlyle's readers Danton and Robespierre, Mirabeau and Tlnville, will be for ever what he has painted them. No other writer equals the great Scotchman in the Rembrandt like lights and shadows of his style. While, as Mr. McCarthy says, he is endowed with a marvelous power of depicting stormy scenes and rugged, daring natures, yet, at times. strange, wild, piercing notes of the pathetic are heard through his fierce bursts of eloquence like the wail of a clarion thrilling beneath the blasts of a storm. His pages abound in pictures of human misery sadder than poet ever drew, more vivid and startling than artist ever painted. In his conflict with shams and quackeries he has dealt yeomen's blows, and made the bankrupt institutions of England ring with their own hollowness. What is the secret of his power? Is it the absolute novelty of his thoughts? In no great writer of equal power shall we find such an absolute dearth of new ideas. The gospel of noble manhood, which he so passionately preaches, is as old as Solomon. Its cardinal ideas have been echoed and reechoed through the ages till they have become the stalest of truisms. That brains are the measure of worth; that duty, without reward, is the end of life;