Town Geology. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley. (Strahan.)—Mr. Kingsley's lectures—the
volume contains the substance of lectures
delivered to the "Chester Natural History Society "—are as pleasant and instructive reading as any one could wish to meet with. He takes common objects with which the dwellers of towns must be familiar (Chester people are probably used to see "the soil of the field," but there are Londoners to whom it is almost as strange as diamonds), and discourses of their history. No man can describe an actual scene better than Mr. Kingsley —witness his pictures of West Indian landscapes in "At Last "—no man can call one up from the past with a more skilful magic. Here he puts geologic facts into very attractive form. Nothing can be better than the account of glacial action in "The Pebbles in the Street," or the description of the forests from which we get "The Coal in the Grate." Mr. Kingsley's science is, as far as we can
judge, thorough, and it is certainly expressed in forcible and even eloquent language. Bat with his preface, i.e., with the view which he takes of the functions of science, we cannot agree. He sings a great man over this last object of his devotion, as he has sung means over more than one thing before. Listen to this:—
"Do you wish to be great? Then be great with true greatness ; which is—knowing the facts of nature, and being able to use them. Do
you wish to be strong? Then be strong with true strength; which is—
knowing the facts of nature, and being able to use them. Do you wish to be wise ? Then be wise with true wisdom ; which is—knowing the facts of nature, and being able to use them. Do you wish to be free? Then be free with trite freedom ; which is, again,—kno wing the facts of nature, and being able to use them."
This seems to us very wild talk indeed. We do not find in history that the great, and strong, and wise, and free have been snob as could be included in this definition,—" those who know the facts of nature, and are able to use them." There have been such men, and the world owes
much to them, but it does not owe to them its moat precious possessions, political freedom, philosophy, poetry, art. What did the men who made Athens and Rome, and so made the modern world, know of the "facts of nature '? What—we do not know why we should hesitate to use the example—what did St. Paul ? Mr. Kingsley's simmer in the Chair of History at Cambridge was complaining the other day that English- men were not sufficiently educated to understand Colonial questions. That is a reproach, and doubtless a true reproach, against the old methods of training. But is there a rational hope that we shall get this kind of education, which is surely of supreme necessity to the citizens of this empire, by substituting for these methods a study of the "facts of nature '? We may have been studying the languages of men when we ought to have been studying their history, examining their forms of speech, rather than examining their thoughts. Shall we mend matters by throwing overboard language and history, forms of speech and thought? Whose judgment should we sooner trust on some ques- tion of our Colonial politios,—the man who could write an admirable monograph upon beetles, or the man who had mastered English history from 1773-1786?