in Mr. Marsh's work, they seem to be these:
want of continuity in treatment, and disproportionate development of
some subjects in contrast with others. The book is, in fact, too large
for a popular treatise, and not large enough for a scientific exposition
of all it essays to discuss. It claims to be a popular work; but the
elaborate discussion of Forests is far beyond the wishes or needs of any
but a scientific reader. The broken, jagged, paragraph style is a
drawback to the pleasure of perusing it: the notion seems to impress the
author that people will not read anything elaborate, unless it be broken
up into labelled paragraphs. It is true of the newspaper: it is not true
of the octavo, to which they sit down expecting a different mode of
treatment, a broad, discursive style, flowing, redundant, and even
eloquent. Yet Mr. Marsh has in some instances transgressed, we think,
even in fulness: the great prominence given, for example, to the
drainage of Holland is untrue to the general tenor of the book and to
the prospective future of the world. It was a great historic deed, when
the relations of man to Nature were quite other than what they are
to-day; but now that man is master of the sea, regulates the price of
bread in London by the price of corn in Illinois, and of broadcloth in
Paris by the cost of wool in Australia, the recovery of a few hundred
thousand acres from the bottom of the North Sea is a great thing for
Holland, but a small thing for the world.

Yet we accept this book with grateful thanks to the accomplished author.
In the present transition-stage from metaphysical to physical studies,
it will be eagerly accepted, as showing, not openly nor yet covertly,
yet suggestively, the true connection of both. Few books give in quiet,
modest fashion so much theology as this, and yet few claim to give so
little. Few bear more strongly on the mooted points of Anthropology; few
strike so strong a blow at that Development-theory which makes man
merely king of the beasts, and superior to the ape and the gorilla only
in degree; and yet few proceed in such high argument with less
ostentation. This book leaves one great want unfulfilled: to take up the
mantle of Ritter and proceed carefully to the study of French, German,
Russian, English, Spanish, and Italian history, and indeed all great
nations' history, by the light of geography. The problem is stated; it
has now only to be wrought out. Perhaps Mr. Marsh, whose acquis