18 APRIL 1896, Page 25

Punishment and Reformation. By Frederic Howard Wines, LL.D. (Swan Sonnenschein

and Co.)—Dr. Wines gives us here the re- sult of study and of experience. He has made himself acquainted with the history of human thought on the question of punishment, and he has seen modern systems at work. His book is interesting, and should be useful, stimulating that serious interest in crime and the criminal which is as salutary as the frivolous interest is noxious. We should like to have the reference to the passage in which Tacitus denounces the Christians for " teaching the dangerous and Utopian doctrine that all men are brothers." Tacitues groat charge against the Christians, whom he probably failed to distinguish from the Jews, was that they were actuated by the " odium bumani generis " (Ann. xv. 49).