conclusions, but we insist most earnestly, that this book and similar ones, bearing testimony to what the political and social thinkers of the day in Europe are revolving in their minds, should be read and reviewed under the light of American institutions and ideas.  The reader enjoys in the present book the great advantage of seeing the ideas of the Social Reformers discussed pro and contra,—­M.  Lourdoueix being their obstinate adversary.

Memoires de M. Joseph Prudhomme, par HENRI MONNIER. 2 vols.  Paris. 1857.

This is not what is commonly called memoires,—­to wit, historical recollections modified by the subjective impressions of eyewitnesses to the past; it is rather a novel or romance in the form of memoires, ridiculing the predominant bourgeoisie of the Old World, and sketching the whole life of a bourgeois, from infancy to green old age.  For readers, who, through travel in Europe and acquaintance with French literature and tastes, are enabled to understand the many nice allusions contained in this novel, it is a very entertaining book.

1. Kraft und Stoff.  By G. BUeCHNER.  Fourth edition. 1857.

2. Materie und Geist.  By the same. 1857.

It is certainly a remarkable sign of the times, that a book treating of purely scientific matters,—­physiological facts and ideas,—­like the first of these, of which the second is the complement, should in a very few years have attained to its fourth edition in Germany.  All those works on Natural Science, by Alexander von Humboldt, Oersted, Du Bois-Raymond, Cotta, Vogt, Moleschott, Buechner, Rossmaessler, Ule, Mueller, and others, which have appeared since the Revolution of 1848, uniting a more popular and intelligible style with a purely scientific treatment of the matter-of-fact, irrespective of the religious and political dogmas that conflict with the results of natural science, have met with decided success in Germany and France.  They are extensively read and appreciated, even by the less educated and learned classes.  Among these works, that of Buechner ranks high, and it is therefore strange that we have seen it hitherto reviewed in no American journal.  This may serve us as an excuse for noticing this fourth edition, though it is little improved over the former ones.  It exhibits the last results of the science of physiology, in a scientific, but rather popular method of exposition.  There is quite a hive of new ideas and intuitions contained in it,—­ideas conflicting, it is true, with many received dogmas, and irreconcilable with orthodoxy; but it is of no use to shut our eyes to these ideas, as though the danger threatening from this side could be averted by imitating the policy of the ostrich.  They should be faced and examined; the danger is far greater from ignoring them.  It is impossible that ideas, largely entertained and cultivated by a nation so expert in thinking, so versed in science and literature as the Germans, should have no interest for the great, intelligent American public.  Natural Science may be said to form, at present, an integral portion of the religion of the Germans.  It is, at least, a matter of ethnological and historical interest to learn in what regions of thought and speculation our German contemporaries are at home, and wherein they find their mental happiness and delight.