men are failures and not a success, and that they were created but a few years ago, should comprehend the character and place of Jesus in history." In the next chapter the workability of the golden rule is inquired into, with the conclusion that it is sure to be approximated, but never absolutely attained; in the next, is considered the future of evolution, which "has to do with a fact larger than man, even with life itself"; in the next, ethics is presented as the aim of evolution. The author next looks for "the self that is higher than ourselves," and finds, not a final cause or God outside of and apart from Nature, but that "the magnificent reign of life and law that is unfolding year by year and age by age is but the pulsating presence of Him who is over all, through all, interpenetrating all." The final chapter relates to "that last enemy, death," and the question of immortality.
Three Good Giants, whose Famous Deeds are recorded in the ancient chronicles of François Rabelais. By John Dimitry. Boston: Ticknor & Co. Pp. 246. Price, $1.50.
Unclean as Rabelais is, and wandering seemingly without method around the sphere of thought and coarse wit, the world has agreed that there abound in him gems of thought worth the having—if some one else will dig them out. Mr. Dimitry finds in his great work, too, three admirable characters, whose lives and adventures constitute a wondrous story; and this he has dug out, and presents to young readers free from all that is gross, and untrammeled by philosophical and other disquisitions that do not help it along; or, as he himself expresses it, has placed the famous trio, Grandgousier, Gargantua, and Pantagruel, "high and dry above the scum which had so long clogged their rare good-fellowship, and which had made men of judgment blind to the genuine worth that was in them." He finds a kind of evolutionary development going on in his heroes as the generation proceeds from grandfather to grandson. To these colossal creatures, he says, « fashioned in ridicule of the old fantastico-chivalric deeds of their age, as they come down more and more from the clouds, are more and more given the feelings common to this earth's creatures. All three bear, from their birth, a sturdy human sympathy not natural to their kind, as medieval superstition classed it. Two of them, in being brought to the level of humanity, join with this a simple Christian manliness and a childlike faith under all emergencies, not set on their own massive strength, but fixed on God. . . . From Grandgousier, the good-hearted guzzler, through Gargantua, through his heady youth and wise old age, to 'the noble Pantagruel,' the gain in purity and Christian manhood is steady." The justification of this conclusion may be sought in the story as the author has picked it out and arranged it. The presentation is most attractive, in bright pages and clear type, with illustrations by Gustave Doré and A. Robida,
The Relative Proportions of the Steam-Engine. By William Dennis Marks, C. E. Third edition, revised and enlarged. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp. 295. Price, $3.
In the first edition of this book the author expressed regret at the failure of all writers upon mechanics or the steam-engine to give, in a simple and practical form, rules and formulas for the determination of the relative proportions of the component parts of the engine. In this was the reason for his own effort, the lectures which comprise it having been written with the feeling that a rational and practical method of determination was yet a desideratum in the English literature of the subject. In preparing the lectures, he omitted the consideration of such topics as had already been overwritten, and considered only those which seemed not to have received the attention which their importance demanded. The additions made in the third edition are principally concerning the limitations of the expansion of steam. The importance of taking into account the condensation of steam by the walls of the cylinder is insisted upon. Keeping this point in view, the author has endeavored to formulate the hitherto unknown law of condensation inside of the cylinder. He claims to have shown that the wide differences in experimental results of tests of different types and sizes of engines are not irreconcilable; and it has been sought by quantitative weighing of results to define the limitations of the various expedients which engineers have made in the effort to
