Three Hundred Years Hence. By W. D. Hay. (Newman and
Co,)—For a lazy person with a constructive imagination, books like Three Hundred Years Hence, which deal with the terrestrial future of mankind, have peculiar fascination. Mr. Hay's book is a good example of its class, though by reason of the limitations of imagina- tion, even in this department of literature, it has much resemblance in method to ita predecessors. In some places he reminds us very strongly of Mr. Maitland's "Now, and Then." His chief novelties are a now force, basilicity, a torrone exodus, and subterranean and submarine dwellings. The account of alirostation is particularly interesting to ns, as former owners of a flying-machine, which, during a private trial, literally and suddenly took unto itself wings, shot beyond ken of human vision, and is now probably gyrating in uncon- ditioned space. Mr. Hay has not attempted to explain the economic and financial practice of the period, nor has it occurred to him, any more than to most writers in this vein, that throe hundred years hence people will print in condensed phonography, and that their works, oven if published by anticipation, must bo unintelligible now- adays. One thing the advance of science seems certain to achieve, if Mr. Hay's book may be taken as an example, and that is the extinction of literary style.
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