In the present state of education and intelligence, he must be a dull person who does not frequently find a question arising on some point connected with this range of studies.  The student will find in this dictionary an enormous collection of synonymes in various languages, brief accounts of almost everything medical ever heard of, and full notices of many of the more important subjects treated,—­such as Climate, Diet, Falsification of Drugs, Feigned Diseases, Muscles, Poisons, and many others.

Here and there we notice blemishes, as must be expected in so huge a collection of knowledge.  Thus, Bronchlemmitis is not Polypus bronchialis, but Croup.—­The accent of laryngeal and pharyngeal is incorrectly placed on the third syllable.  In this wilderness of words we look in vain for the New York provincialism “Sprue.”  The work has a right to some scores, perhaps hundreds, of such errors, without forfeiting its character.  If the Elzevirs could not print the “Corpus Juris Civilis” without a false heading to a chapter, we may excuse a dictionary-maker and his printer for an occasional slip.  But it is a most useful book, and scholars will find it immensely convenient.

Scenes of Clerical Life.  By GEORGE ELIOT.  Originally published in “Blackwood’s Magazine.”  New York:  Harper & Brothers. 1858.

Fiction represents the character of the age to which it belongs, not merely by actual delineations of its times, like those of “Tom Jones” and “The Newcomer,” but also in an indirect, though scarcely less positive manner, by its exhibition of the influence of the times upon its own form and general direction, whatever the scene or period it may have chosen for itself.  The story of “Hypatia” is laid in Alexandria almost two thousand years ago, but the book reflects the crudities of modern English thought; and even Mr. Thackeray, the greatest living master of costume, succeeds in making his “Esmond” only a joint-production of the Addisonian age and our own.  Thus the novels of the last few years exhibit very clearly the spirit that characterizes the period of regard for men and women as men and women, without reference to rank, beauty, fortune, or privilege.  Novelists recognize that Nature is a better romance-maker than the fancy, and the public is learning that men and women are better than heroes and heroines, not only to live with, but also to read of.  Now and then, therefore, we get a novel, like these “Scenes of Clerical Life,” in which the fictitious element is securely based upon a broad groundwork of actual truth, truth as well in detail as in general.

It is not often, however, even yet, that we find a writer wholly unembarrassed by and in revolt against the old theory of the necessity of perfection in some one at least of the characters of his story.  “Neither Luther nor John Bunyan,” says the author of this book, “would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is excellent, and does nothing but what is graceful.”