CURRENT LITERATURE.
Thunder and Lightning. By W. do Fonvielle. Translated from the French, and edited by T. L. Phipson. (Lo v, Son, and Maraton.)—We have often heard of popularizing science, but in this book it is made sensational. The pictures are peculiarly melodramatic. Murderers struck by lightning in desolate forests. brigands interrupted in the midst of swearing and revolt by the same avenging flash, bellringers finding electric death conveyed to them down the rope which it was their pious exercise to pull, stand out vividly as we turn the pages. The text is not unworthy to be associated with such images. M. de Fonvielle has collected a strange number of cases, and has made the most of them for the general readers of his nation. Amongst a mass of old and new stories, the omens which were bestowed on the Prussians by a peal of thunder after the battle of,Langensalza, and on the Austrians by drenching rain on the eve of:the battle of Sadowa, are tempting to a writer of popular science. This translator is duly im- pressed with the merits of the original work, and laments that he has not done it complete justice. " The:poetical brilliancy of the lightning flash in M. de Fonvielle's hands is such as to cause a northerner to close his eyes." This is not a classical nor oven a very sensible style of remark, but the book has better things in it than this.
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