THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
Progress of Science in the Century. By J. Arthur Thomson.— Progress of Art in the Century. By William Sharp and Elizabeth A. Sharp.—Discoveries and Explorations in the Century. By Charles G. D. Roberts. "Nineteenth Century Series." (W. and R. Chambers. 5s. net per vol.)—There has been an unaccountable delay in the publication of the latter volumes of the somewhat unequal " Nineteenth Century Series," edited by Mr. Justin McCarthy, and published by a Canadian firm. Professor Thomson, of Aberdeen, tells us, for instance, that his book was completed in 1902, and was already in type when the discovery of radium and its properties arrived to modify some of the statements in his sections on physics and chemistry. This seems rather a pity. However, it is better to have such excellent volumes as these three late than never. They are quite among the best which have appeared in this series. Professor Thomson has written a most lucid and charming account of the progress of science in the nineteenth century,—a true fairy-tale. It is only natural that the section on biology, which is his own subject, should be better done than the rest of the volume. There are few writers on biology who have so simple and direct a method of exposition as Professor Thomson. The late William Sharp, with the aid of Mrs. Sharp, has left us one of his most readable books in his narrative of the progress of painting in the nineteenth century, which he rightly begins with Constable, the father of the modern French school. One may at times dissent from Mr. Sharp's critical opinions, but his work is always suggestive and to be read with pleasure. It is rather a pity that the scheme of the work forced him to huddle up the history of music into a rather inadequate concluding section of the same book. Mr. Charles G. D. Roberts, one of the most gifted of Canadian authors, has written the history of exploration in the right romantic vein, and no better book of the kind could be put into the hands of the adventurously
minded boy.
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