CURRENT LITERATURE.
The British Quarterly Review. July. (Hodder and Stoughton.)— There is a very able and seasonable article in this number on Public Health and Sanitary Reform," which takes for its text the "Act to Amend the Laws relating to Public Health" which was passed last Session. It is already sufficiently evident that the local authorities are not able—even if they had, as they seldom have, the will—to perform the great task which lies before them. They are notable, not from want of means, which, whether they are drawn from imperial or from local sources, will not fail to be forthcoming, but from want of knowledge. Isolated efforts, undertaken with but the faintest notion of what is wanted, mean simply so much waste of money. Already a vast expenditure has been incurred which is useless, or even worse than useless. The case of Richmond on the Thames is one in point. The vestry of that place has spent .E30,000 in carrying out a system of drainage recom- mended by the Metropolitan Sewers Commission, but the sewers fall into the Thames, and now a penalty of one hundred pounds per day is incurred by using them. Thus those parts of the community which have been most active in doing their duty have practically been punished for their energy, and the backward and supine find the best possible excuse for a continued inactivity. ITnder these circumstances, the duty of the central authority is plain. It must supply the local boards with a general plan of what is to be done, and to do this, it must first make, as the reviewer suggests, a great sanitary survey of ; the country. That is simply a matter of expense, which would indeed be but trifling, considering the utility of the work. Let tie other great question be solved—and this cannot surely be beyond the resources of science—as to the best means of utilising sewage, and we shall see light at last. The article on "The Gladstone Administration" is eloquently and forcibly written, and contains what is, on tho whole, a just appreciation of tho service which the Ministry has done for the Empire. This writer, anyhow, is not prepared to advise that the Non- conformist vote should be withheld from Mr. Gladstone and his friends, because the Elementary Education Act and its proposed amendment do not satisfy the demands of the Nonconformist leaders. The prophecies of the British Quarterly about the Disestablishment of the English Church do not call for observation, but it is worth while to notice an incidental indication of what the policy of the party of destruction is likely to be. The Trish Church Act is not to be a precedent, it seems, for the English Church Act of the future. Mr. Gladstone's "ninety millions" have terrified the Nonconformist imagination. The Irish I Church, by the voluntary action of its clergy in commuting, secured
half of its property in perpetuity. The English Church is not to be
allowed to follow so dangerous an example, nor must it expect to. retain the endowments given by private devotion. Our adversaries must be very confident of victory, when they thus set up in our sight the yoke under which we are to pass not only conquered, but stripped. The essay on "The Failure of the French Reformation" is interesting, but fragmentary. The biographical sketches of Marot, Dolet, and Des.
Periers are excellent; but we should like to see the thesis that the Refor- mation failed for want of religious earnestness in the Reformers worked out more fully. Incomplete also, as it could scarcely fail to be within the limits imposed, is the article on Miracles, Visions, and Revelations, Meffimval and Modern." The writer relies, for disposing of a number of _ inconvenient phenomena, on the theory, which has an ex post facto appearance, that "miracles, in the Christian revelation, are ever based on prophecy, and are never properly seen alone." Articles on "Catholicism and Papal Infallibility," " Mazzini and New Italy," and "Recent Travels and Explorations in Syria," make up a number of more than average interest.
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