of Lessing's honoured and saddened life. Mr. Sime paints not how Lessing lived under what our author calls the two noblest passions of our nature,' but what we should prefer calling the two greatest principles of Christian life, a love of truth for its own sake, and an undying love of man.' Mr. Sime's entire reasoning on the revolutionary and destructive tendencies of Lessing's mind both demands and repays great attention. Mr. Sime has done most careful and painstaking work, though perhaps with a scarcity of what the Latin author of the dialogue on oratory terms sententiæ et lumina, and has earned his place in the foremost rank of our philosophical Radicals. Lessing achieved for Germany her literary empire in much the same way that Frederick laid the foundations of her military empire. A librarianship at last became Lessing's permanent position in this world, only it was much to be desired that it should be better endowed and in a better locality. It was at Wolfenbüttel-to be for ever associated with the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, which may be said to have laid the foundations of German neologianism-within the shadow of the Hartz Mountains, and within nine miles of the capital of Brunswick, that Lessing became librarian to the Duke. It was a flat uninteresting town, however—an unfortunate circumstance for Lessing, who delighted in society, and looked upon each of his fellow-creatures as a book of the great living library. Through his connection with the Duke of Brunswick he accompanied his son in an Italian journey, which had been an old aspiration of his; but as he was waiting to be married, he became very restive and uneasy in his prolonged tour. The lady whom,

at the age of forty-seven, he married was a widow of forty, with several children; but he loved the children as his own, and the happiest year of his unhappy life was the single year of wedlock.

Out of the variety of works of fiction which have appeared we may select a few for special notice, which seem to have the merit, supreme in the eyes of novel-readers, of being thoroughly able to sustain the interest and making it difficult to lay the work down. The first of these shall be Mrs. Chapman's Constant Heart.* We have been never more 'taken in,' though we hardly wish to use the phrase in an unfavourable sense, in our lives. The commencement of the book is simple, pastoral, idyllic. We were reminded, and by no means unfavourably, of Mary Powell. We were considerably surprised when, in progressing with the story, we found ourselves concerned with the romantic details of an abduction case. We have all the details of a 'penny dreadful' illustrated with the warnings and consolations of true religion. The result is a somewhat tesselated mixture. Mrs. Chapman lays her story more than a century ago. It is quite possible that she may be deriving her narrative from facts. To those who search the records of crime it is quite conceivable that such a plot as that disclosed in these volumes may have actually been revealed. The authoress appears to have studied her period, and certainly contrives to give a remarkable degree of vraisemblance to her story. But we are not so sure that her story justifies her title. She kills off the heroine's true love, which we hold to be, artistically, a mistake; but in the last two pages we find

*A Constant Heart. By the Hon. Mrs. E. W. Chapman. (Henry S. King & Co.)

her married, and with a baby who is named after her first sweetheart. It is not every husband who would be so magnanimous as to allow this. If a heroine claims the appellation of a 'Constant Heart,' she ought to give the conventional justification by never marrying another person. A certain Mrs. Fleming is almost Mrs. Poyserlike in the story, which is sufficiently adventurous and attractive.

Then as an Irish story, one of several attractive Irish stories which have lately appeared, we have Mr. Thynne's novel, For this Cause. Mr. Thynne portrays Irish scenes and characters with undoubted realism. He succeeds rather in this direction than in his plot, which is better conceived than executed. An Irish squire has misappropriated trustmoney, and to postpone the time of payment he encourages litigation respecting a will.

He has a

brother, however, a rich Australian squatter, who makes things square, but insists, nevertheless, that his brother should go out to Australia, and he himself should become an

Irish squire. Further than this it would hardly be fair to anticipate the plot. The Australian is of opinion that he is as well informed respecting various subjects as if he had lived in Cornwall, and that all his political opinions have a peculiar ripeness and value of their own. We believe that this opinion is not at all an uncommon one among the colonists, and it is here forcibly stated by one of them to another: 'WeI, you, and others who have had a European birth and a European culture up to manhood-continue to watch the issues of those subjects on which we have expended youthful thought and even enthusiasm. Further, we are removed

For this Cause. A novel. By Robert Thynne. (Sampson Low & Co.)

to a distance from the din, the turmoil, the obscuring smoke of the battle itself. More than all, I believe we do not get our information by infinitesimally fragmentary instalments day by day, the instalments of to-day contradicting or upsetting those of yesterday, but in larger and more continuous portions. Say we miss some of the pettier details; all the more we see the grand movements, and whither they ultimately tend.' It will be perceived that Mr. Thynne writes in a vigorous thoughtful way, and his pictures of Dublin life, whether in Merrion-square or in the slums, are exceedingly effective.

Mr. Jenkins is a novelist who always writes with a purpose, and what he gains in purpose he frequently loses in the construction of his story. But we never read him without pleasure, though we often think him exaggerated, and perhaps never more exaggerated than upon the present occasion.* Mr. Jenkins is trying to do in a novel what before now he has attempted in a pamphlet— to expose the evils of exporting Hindoo and Coolie labour into British Guiana and the West Indies. It is not that he objects altogether to a Coolie system, which he thinks might be made a system of incalculable blessing to Asiatics. It is his weakness, looking at his work as a political pamphlet, that he bases his conclusions on facts which he explains to be fictions. The wrongs which he enumerates are not practically found in British Guiana; they are collected from many sides, and all deposited there 'at one fell swoop.' But he knows the country, and writes pictorially and energetically; there are many

Lutchmee and Dilloo: a Story of West Indian Life. By E. Jenkins, M.P. (W. Mullan & Son.)

scenes of pathos and eloquence, and his work may tend to abolish or modify various existing evils.

A good sea novel is always a great treat. A social history of the British navy might be constructed from a combination of such novels as Smollett's, Marryat's, and Hannay's. Of late the merchant marine has been more employed by novelists than the royal navy, because the roughest points of real life are salient, and Mr. Plimsoll has shown how a vein of 'purpose' might be introduced into them. The narrative* of the fate of the Grosvenor is a very appalling one, and the author certainly contrives to rivet the attention of the reader. In the first volume we have an evil captain cheating his crew out of their proper provisions, a smack is run down and sunk, a wreck is left unaided, there is a storm, and mutiny and murder. Further than this it would hardly be fair to trace the narrative. It is marked throughout by capital sea description and an incessant variety of incident.

The Handbook to the Picture Galleries of Europe (Macmillan & Co.), by Miss Kate Thompson (daughter of Sir Henry Thompson), is invaluable to the lover of art in his rambles over foreign collections. Compact and clear in its form and arrangement, the brief sketches of the various schools of painting, the careful chronological tables, and the numbered references to famous pictures, make it at once a most serviceable guide and remembrancer.

Mr. Ballingall's Edinburgh: its Past and its Present (William Oliphant & Co.), is a handsome illustrated volume on the associa

tions and surroundings of the old gray city-dedicated to its citizens and to all who love its beauties and its memories.' The engravings are numerous and interesting. The book altogether is a pleasant souvenir of the Scottish capital and its romantic environs.

Our Trip to Blunderland, by Jean Jambon (William Blackwood & Sons), is a jeu d'esprit, we understand, from the pen of a distinguished legal functionary of the North. It belongs to the class of pleasantries which Alice in Wonderland has made popular. The sixty illustrations from the pencil of Mr. Charles A. Doyle show the power of an artist whom we hope to see coming more to the front one of these days. The 'extension motions,' pp. 172 and 206, are very clever.

Messrs. Griffith & Farran maintain their ancient fame at the Christmas season by a variety of bright wholesome books, from which, at the moment, we select three: Wilton of Cuthbert's, by the Rev. H. C. Adams, is a tale of undergraduate life thirty years ago. To those who know university and to those who do not, it is an agreeable book; perhaps also a useful one to place in the hands of a young man before he goes up. The Three Admirals, and the Adventures of their Young Followers, by W. H. G. Kingston, has all the old fire and dash of this veteran writer for boys. The woodcut of the shark, where ‘each dealt him a blow across the tail,' is the sort of drawing which suits all thorough boys. Those Unlucky Twins, by Annette Lyster, although a little book, deserves special notice. It is a charming text; and there are ten illustrations, by John Proctor, far above the average of juvenile books.

Another of the fresh, attractive,

liberally-illustrated books which we owe to Dr. Manning and the Religious Tract Society is English Pictures drawn with Pen and Pencil. Beginning with the Thames and ending with the Isle of Wight, we have a series of skilfully-grouped rambles over England, introducing Shakespeare's Country,' 'The Country of Bunyan and Cowper,' 'The Peak,' 'The Lakes,' &c. It is a volume which will foster the desire to know the beauties of our own country, and help to point out what is best worth seeing. The Home Naturalist, by Harland Coultas, from the same Society, gives practical instructions for collecting, arranging, and preserving natural objects. There are plain directions to the young naturalist concerning all kinds of collections, caterpillars, beetles butterflies, plants, woods, and animals, as well as the aquarium and insectarium - altogether a good and comprehensive book of its class.

Two groups from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge deserve a word of hearty commendation. These are: 1. Ancient History from the Monuments-Babylonia, Greek cities, &c.; 2. Non-Secular Religious Systems-Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam and its founder. These able, well-condensed, and lowpriced little volumes, by such authors as Professor Monier Williams, Mr. Rhys Davids, and the late George Smith, are really valuable contributions to popular literature.

MUSICAL PITCH.

It is well known to musicians that during the last century there has been a gradual rise in the pitch of musical notes: that is, the note which formerly used to be regarded, say as A, has gra

dually become considered flatter and flatter; so that the sound produced by a given key on a modern instrument is sensibly sharper and more acute than that given by the corresponding key on an older instrument. To so great an extent has this variation now arrived, that the highest concert pitches of the present day are at least a tone above those in use in 1750: that is, the note which now would be regarded as B flat, or even almost A natural, was considered to be C natural or close to it in the first half of last century, whilst even during the last fifty years there has been a rise of from a semitone to a semitone and a half in pitch. One effect of this is that the music of the older composers as now played produces an entirely different effect from that which it was intended to do; it sounds as though it were transposed into a higher key; whilst music originally written for fair average tenors and sopranos can now be efficiently sung only by exceptional voices, the highest notes, which formerly were fairly in reach of ordinary cultivated voices, being now made so high through the raising of the pitch as to be expressed only as screeches and notes unpleasant through their too great shrillness, and consequent deficiency in richness and fulness of tone. This difference of pitch is acoustically expressed by saying that the number of vibrations per second required to give a certain note is now considerably greater than was formerly the case. A number of exact comparative measurements of pitches in use at various dates and in different places has been recently made by Mr. Alexander Ellis, the materials for the investigation being derived from standard organ-pipes, tuningforks, &c., carefully preserved by their various owners. Thus, for

instance, the high modern pitches of the last twenty years, such as those of Chappell, Collard, Broadwood, Albert Hall (Wagner's Concerts), Crystal Palace (March 1877), Brussels, Philharmonic, Dresden, Kneller Hall, Leipsic (Gewandhaus), the army regulation, and the Society of Arts (Allen's, Griesbach's, and Cramer's C's), give to the C a number of vibrations varying from 538 to 546; whilst medium pitches, such as Broadwood's medium, St. Paul's (March 1877), Gotha and Brunswick (1859), Hullah (1843), Dresden (1859), low pitch Dresden (1869), Paris Opera (1826), give from 527 to 537 vibrations. Most of the older pitches, however, are considerably lower than these : thus the Berlin (1834), Vienna (1834), French normal (1859), Broadwood's low pitch (instrumental), Broadwood's vocal pitch, the Westminster Abbey organ (1877), Sir George Smart's Philharmonic (1826), Gaud's Paris pitch (1834), and Petitbout's Paris pitch (1834), give only 516 to 526 vibrations per second. The 'Handel pitches' are lower still, the Berlin (1806-14), Philharmonic (1813), Mozart's, Handel's (1751, taken from Handel's own fork), and the Plymouth Theatre pitch (1800), giving only 507 to 512 vibrations, Handel's fork being the lowest; whilst Glück's pitch gave only 491, Father Schmidt's (Hampton Court organ) 479, and Trinity College, Cambridge (1755), as measured by Dr. R. Smith, the low number of 467, or a note scarcely any higher than the A natural of the high modern pitches. A long and exhaustive paper on this subject was read before the Society of Arts some little time ago, and caused considerable criticism on the mode of measurement adopted by Mr. Ellis, whose results as to the

absolute pitch of certain standards adopted by different makers of musical instruments differed somewhat (by three or four vibrations) from those ascertained by other experimentalists. But even admitting that an error of this magnitude attached to Mr. Ellis's measurements, it would be but small as compared with the great differences noticed; whilst, on the other hand, it appears by no means unlikely that the error, whatever its cause, attaches at least equally to the other measurements; the question turning on the possibility of measuring accurately by the ear the number of musical beats in twenty seconds, and depending on whether eighty or seventy-nine and a quarter beats were accurately given in this period of time by the instrument (known as Appunn's tonometer) employed by Mr. Ellis. This tonometer was exhibited in the Loan Exhibition of scientific apparatus at South Kensington. It consists of a series of harmonium reeds made to sound in a perfectly uniform manner by directing on them an equable blast of wind from an air-chest of special construction; sixty-five of these reeds are arranged somewhat as in a harmonium, so that any one or more can be made to sound by opening the appropriate valves by a 'pull' like a door-bell or like the 'stop' of an organ, the sound continuing until the wind-chest is empty. No bellows-blowing is performed during the comparison of two notes, as that would introduce a variation in pressure in the blast, and slightly alter the notes. The reeds are so tuned that each onebeats' four times in a second with either of the adjacent reeds, and therefore differs therefrom in rate of vibration by four vibrations per second in excess or defect. The sixty-fifth reed is exactly the octave of the first, and conse