garding immoral
publications in literature and art becomes every day more
manifest. There is required especially a precise definition of
what the statute is designed to prohibit. At present there is no
uniform criterion. It is just what the local Dogberry and the
scratch jury happen to find. Books that have had an established
place in literature for generations and are found in all the
great libraries of the world; pictures that represent the
highest skill attained in the leading schools of Europe;
reproductions of works that adorn the national and royal
galleries cherished as monuments of genius to reflect the glory
of the time,--these are quite likely to be brought up and
solemnly condemned by our tribunals as unfit for the
contemplation of our superior American virtue. But the real
injustice of the proceeding follows in the infliction of fines
or imprisonment on the unsuspecting vendors of the works, who
naturally imagine that merchandise current in all the other
markets of the civilized world would be current also here. The
most respectable houses, known throughout the length and breadth
of the country for their honorable dealings, are exposed to
legal prosecution any moment that an officious fanatic or
jealous rival pleases to bring a charge that certain works in
their store have an immoral tendency."

Judge Brady, of the Supreme Court, says, "If I had been a legislator I
would never have voted for this law.... It is evident that mere nudity
in painting and sculpture is not obscenity. It is a false delicacy and
mere prudery which would condemn and banish from sight all such
objects." Public opinion should be directed against the vice society
which employs and pays such a tool as Comstock. The prosecution which
he instigated against Mrs. Elmina Slenker, of Virginia, resulted in
her acquittal.

The _N. Y. Evening Post_ says, "If there is to be a prosecution in
this Knoedler case, and these prints should send some one to jail, we
for our part think Anthony Comstock should be the man."

HYGIENE.--Sir Spencer Wells, in an address to the Medico-Chirurgical
Society of Nottingham, England, referred to sanitary improvements
which had reduced the annual death rate from twenty-nine in a thousand
to nineteen, and said that it ought to be reduced to fifteen or
twelve. He then said, "And if we have--as we really have--seen the
average