ZSCHOKKE'S HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND * is used quite generally as a text book in the schools of the Swiss Republic, and furnishes a concise but readable sketch of the history of that very interesting country, from the time of the invasion of the Cymbri to the Sonderbund war of 1847. The relation of the Swiss to France, Germany, and Italy, has been so intimate for at least four hundred years, that the careful reading of this book will be found to throw much light on general European history for all that period. Mr. Albert Mason has published a new edition of the translation which was made some years ago by Mr. Francis George Shaw.

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE PROGRESS OF ASSYRIAN DISCOVERY.t-Year by year the wonder grows. Since the excavations by Botta and Layard, thirty years ago, began to uncover the buried architecture of Assyria, with its wealth of sculpture; especially since Rawlinson, Hincks, and others began to read and interpret the arrow-head inscriptions, there has been constant progress in the work of recovering the lost history of an empire that was carving on the rocks the names and victories of its kings, and covering the walls of its great palaces with its records, as long ago as when Egypt was building the pyramids. The wonderful revelations which the physical sciences have made, within the same period, are hardly more wonderful than the excavations which have brought out the long-entombed remains of Assyrian palaces and temples, and the decipherings which have extorted from mysterious letters on sculptured slabs, and on bricks and clay tablets, the secrets of a history and mythology that had dropped out of the world's memory almost two thousand years ago.

Mr. George Smith, one of the learned men connected with the British Museum, and already distinguished by his attainments in Assyriology, has made a new contribution to our knowledge of Nineveh, in a volume which will find not so many readers as it

*The History of Switzerland. By HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE, continued by EMIL ZSCHOKKE. Translated by FRANCIS GEORGE SHAW. New York: Albert Mason. 12mo, pp. 405.

+ Assyrian Discoveries. An Account of Explorations and Discoveries on the Site of Ninevah, during 1873 and 1874. By GEORGE SMITH, of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum, Author of "History of Assurbanipal," &c., &c. With Illustrations. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, & Co. 1875. 8vo, pp. xvi, 461.

might have found if the matter of it had been more thoroughly digested. In the year 1873, and again in 1874, he visited the region of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and made new excavations in the two localities where Layard made his memorable discoveries, Nimroud and Kouyunjik. He says of his two visits: "They were both of such short duration that they could not yield such complete or satisfactory results as I could have wished; but the great number of interesting inscriptions I discovered under such difficulties, and in so limited a space of time, ought to speak strongly in favor of completer and systematic excavations on these ancient sites." His operations at both sites, deducting time lost by the interference of Turkish officials, did not last four months in all. But he tells us, “So rich were these mines of antiquities that I obtained over 3000 inscriptions and fragments of inscriptions, beside many other objects. These in. scriptions and objects were not of slight interest, but included some texts and antiquities of first-class importance." He reports large additions from these researches to our knowledge of early Babylonian history, and gives a formidable, though imperfect, catalogue of Babylonian monarchs, whom he regards as historical, from "Izdubar (probably the Nimrod of the Bible)" down to Cyrus the conqueror, B. C. 539. How far back the records of Babylonia reach, he does not yet presume to know; but he is sure of a date as far back as the twenty-fourth century before Christ. He finds also "new and welcome material for estimating the progress of Assyria in early times," and concludes "that the country gained a prominent place in the world much earlier than some have supposed." New light is thrown upon "the period of Assyrian history contemporary with the kings of Judah and Israel," and the Assyrian legend of the flood, so strangely coincident in many points with the story in the book of Genesis, though partly known before, is now "much more complete."

HITTELL'S HISTORY OF CULTURE.*-This history is intended to be "a manual prepared for the multitude" and "adapted to the comprehension of the million." It treats first of "Savagism," then of "Barbarism; "-as barbarians he treats the Quichuans of Peru, the Aztecs of Mexico, the ancient Egyptians, Hindoo Aryans, and Persians; then of "semi-civilization," the Pheni

* A Brief History of Culture. By JOHN S. HITTELL. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 549 and 551 Broadway. 1875. 12mo, pp. 329.

cians, Carthaginians, Jews, and Chinese; then of "Pelasgian civilization," "the Middle Era," "the Press Age," and "the Steam Age." A history thus covering the whole progress of mankind from the savage state to civilization, and the varied development of civilization in all ages and nations, and involving the discussion of the multiplied and complicated causes affecting it, is too great a work for one human life. The attempt to present so immense a subject in a manual cannot accomplish more than a cursory mention of the most prominent events and characteristics already familiar, and must necessarily be superficial and unsatisfactory.

The author announces his purpose thus: "I have done my best to compress within a few hours' reading the chief lessons of historical philosophy, to show that man is a progressive animal; that his advancement has been constant; that, though his speed has sometimes been checked for a brief period, relatively, his career has never turned backward; that the useful arts have made the chief epochs in history and are the main bases of civilization; and that progress increases in geometrical ratio with the course of time, and tends, since the beginning of the Iron Age, to greater liberty and the emancipation of human nature from the restrictions imposed on it by barbarism."

The breadth of the author's views and his capacity to judge of the motives of human action and to appreciate the great movements of history, may be inferred from his account of the Protestant Reformation: "It was started by a man who had no idea when he began of the point at which he would end. He became involved in a dispute about a question of ecclesiastical discipline, and it led him on until he had renounced the authority of Rome, and had repudiated many of its dogmas. The fact that Luther as an Augustine monk may have stimulated him in his disposition to attack the sale of indulgences which had been intrusted to the rival order of the Dominicans, and in his district to an unpopular and disreputable fellow named Tetzel, who was charged with spending part of his gains in gross and notorious debauchery." Of Mohammedanism, he says: "Islam is a tolerant religion. Its followers do not regard infidelity or heresy as criminal, and persecution for theological opinions has not been their rule. They never had an inquisition or witnessed the burning of an unbeliever under authority of law. . . . . . No wars of compulsory conversion like those of Charlemagne, no expulsion of unbe

lievers, like that of the Moriscoes from Spain, stain the record of Mohammedanism."

TAINE'S NOTES ON PARIS.*-No one is better qualified to present one phase of life in the great French capital than M. Taine. He has given an additional piquancy to the present work by making it appear to be the result of the observations of a "Monsieur Frederic-Thomas Graindorge; a Frenchman by birth, who after receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Jena, spent over thirty years in the United States, where he acquired a fortune in the pork and petroleum business. M. Taine professes simply to have edited the notes of this keen-eyed cosmopolite, who had lived long enough to have had all illusions dispelled. The book is a terrible satire on the hollowness of fashionable life in Paris.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York City.

Hours in a Library. Leslie Stephen. 12mo.

pp. 311.

Hours of Christian Devotion. Translated from the German of A. Tholuck, D.D. By Robert Menzies, D.D. Second edition. 12mo. pp. 541.

The Life of Joseph Addison Alexander, D.D. By Henry Carrington Alexander. Two volumes in one. Cheap edition. 12mo. pp. 921.

Scribner, Welford, & Armstrong, New York City.

Pastoral Theology. A Treatise on the office and duties of the Christian Pastor. By the late Patrick Fairbairn, D.D., with a Biographical Sketch of the Author by Rev. James Dodds. Dunbar. 8vo. pp. 351.

The Year of Salvation. Words of Life for Every Day. A Book of Household Devotion. By J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D., Professor at Utrecht. Translated by C. Spence. 8vo. pp. 499.

G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York City.

The Maintenance of Health. A Medical Work for Lay Readers. By J. Milner Fothergill, M.D., M.R.C.P. 12mo. pp. 366.

On Teaching; its Ends and Means. By Henry Calderwood, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 12mo. pp. 114.

Protection and Free Trade. An inquiry whether protective duties can benefit the interests of a country in the aggregate, including an examination into the nature of value, and the agency of the natural forces in producing it. By Isaac Butts. 8vo. pp. 190.

*Notes on Paris. By H. TAINE. Translated, with notes, by JOHN AUSTIN STEVENS. New York: H. Holt & Co. 1875. 12mo, pp. 372.

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. CXXXII.

OCTOBER, 1875.

ARTICLE I-ON THE VALUE OF EMPIRICAL
GENERALIZATIONS.

Autobiography. By JOHN STUART MILL.

Three Essays on Religion. By JOHN STUART MILL.

ALL reasoning of whatever kinds has for its materials the contents of consciousness, and consists in the interpretation made of particular portions of them, or of the whole. What we deal with in any given process of thinking, whether the offhand, habitual thought of every-day life, or the wider and more cautious considerations of science, or the widest comprehensions of philosophy, is necessarily some one, or several, or all, of our feelings and the ideas which appear along with them or have grown up out of them.

The materials being common to all reasonings alike, what is distinctive of any one System of Thought must be the interpretation put upon the materials. The Intuitional Philosophy, which represents the intellectual activities, and more remotely the moral and emotional life of mankind from the earliest civilizations down to a period not very remote, is founded upon the conviction that the mind which we consult and make use