olist.
He also speaks of an electroscope that will telegraph rays of light
(!) and enable us thereby to see our most distant friends, and of
stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army.
This imaginative ignoramus adds, "Give to our present biped
acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash,
added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at
will and in safety beneath the ocean waves, and he would depopulate
the earth." The writer gives much more of this Munchausen stuff which
is not worthy of notice except as an illustration of the feeble
scientific intelligence with which many newspapers are edited. The
editor of a really scientific journal referred to this article in the
_Open Court_ "as a proof of the danger of a little knowledge."[1]

[1] The air is certainly yet to be navigated when a
sufficient amount of power can be concentrated in the
machine, but at present we can do little more than float
with the wind. It is probable that an engine sufficiently
strong, built of the best steel, and propelled by the
explosive power of gun cotton, or some similar explosive,
would overcome the difficulty. If I were to construct such
an engine I would substitute for the lifting power of a
balloon that of a sail acting as a kite.

REVIEW OF THE NEW EDUCATION.

BY SAMUEL EADON, M.A., M.D., PH.D., F.S.A., ETC.

I have read very carefully the third edition of the "New Education,"
and feel impelled, in order to satisfy my conscientiousness, to write
a short article relative to the impressions which the reading of the
book produced in my mind.

It is a work of extraordinary merit. Like George Combe's "Constitution
of Man," it is highly suggestive; the fascination of the author was
such that I could not help but write. To know its value and appreciate
its lofty moral outpourings, people must buy the book and read for
themselves. The first thought would be that it is the production of an
original thinker who had the courage to utter opinions fearless of
results, however antagonistic to the common-herd notions.

In all ages, the human understanding, the reasoning faculties, have
ever been considered to hold the supremacy in the scale of
development, of culture, and of advance toward a higher form of
civilization; the moral faculties were thought next in order, and then
the propensities co