Book Reviews [pp. 447-448]

Book Reviews.
BOOK REVIEWS.
A Code of Morals.'
A N FLW edition has been put forth of the little book
which its author tells us is the result of stan ling on
the shoulers of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and
by putting himself in harmony with the great social,
industrial, political, and religious changes of the
last seventeen centuries, endeavoring to do for his
age what they did for theirs.
The book is strong, mianly, wholesome, an helpful, but in its construction is a curious example of
alternating egos. Now the conservative man, the
disciple of Wayland and Adam Smith, speaks, and
now the modern spirit of the age (the renaissance of
a far-back pagan philosophy) speaks through him.
As an example of the latter, take his opinion that
children borni blind, deaf, idiotic, or seriously deformed, should not be permitted to live; and that
the habitual drunkard, the sturdy beggar, and the
hopelessly insane, should be promptly exterminated.
This is shocking, but agrees with the convictions
of many calm thinkers, in view of the ever denser
peopling of a planet whose area is fixed.
Strangely enough, this implied teaching of the
heredity of crime and disease is all we get in the
b)ook. Mr. Ilittell might have spared a little space
to warn us that much over-exercise of any physical
function in the parent tends to become debility, insanity, or crime, in the descendant.
But the striking inconsistencies of the hook occur
in those sections devoted to political duties, where
he adjures us to "resist communism," to "advance
by small steps," to believe that "the ruling classes
are alway)s trying to better the condition of the
masses," not to' believe any one who tells us the rich
are growing richer and the poor poorer," and to
" emigrate" if we cannot submit to our governmental
institutions "without chafing." How does this
agree with the advice to "be in readiness to start or
aid any reformatory movement that has a fair chance
of success," (either for the present generation or for
posterity, we take it), or to "resist injustice whenever you can effectually"? or again, to "help the
tendency towards equality" and "against those distinctions which serve to separate the rich from the
poor?'
In touching upon the history of communsim his
researches end at I870. Does Mr. Hittell not think
much has happened since I870? There have been
experiments and failures he could use as illustrations
of his statement that "much of our immorality is
the result of defective social, political, industrial, and
1A Code of Morals. By John S. Hittell. San Francisco: I89o: The Bancroft Company.
ecclesiastical institutions," and that would help him
to admit not only (what he does admit) that "communism is right as to its purposes," but that even its
methods, when they stop short of actual violence,
and invasion of vested rights, are the methods that
have throughout historic time wrung reforms from
reluctant governments.
A Book on Voice Culture and Elocution.2
The author of this book, WVm. T. Ross, has issued
a painstaking and creditable work; all the more
creditable because he has to deal with a subject that
is shamefully neglected in most of our schools, pablic
and private. Not but what the pupils are freely
called upon to declaim on grand occasions, though
even then with little careful preparation; but the
same pupils are seldom taught that the most imnportant branch of elocution is the colloquial, and after
that the art of reading aloud.
In the book before us we find many valuable explanatory chapters upon the whole subject, accompanied by plates illustrative of the position and nature of the vocal organs, together with numerous
suggestive hints as to the treatment of those organs.
There is also an excellent table of exercises upon
difficult combinations of syllables and words. We
cannot but think, however, that a judicious course
of lessons in vocal music by the Italian method is a
more thorough, and certainly a pleasanter, mode of
vocal culture than any other. When this method is
impracticable, the teacher can easily select from Mr.
Ross's examples such as would suit the individual
pupil, and not weary him by their multiplicity.
In the author's praiseworthy desire to represent
Californian poetry among his selections, he has
hardly done justice to the subject. There are five
selections from the writings of Mr. Emerson Brooks,
and not one from those of Bret HIarte or of Professor
Sill; to say nothing of other worthy if less brilliant
names.
Story's Conversations in a Studio.3
Two delightful volumes of chats on a great variety
of subjects are the gathering into book form of
Story's Conversations in a Studtio, from Blackwood.
So large is the variety that it takes twenty-three
2Voice Culture and Elocution. By Wm. T. Ross.
New York: I890: The Baker & Taylor Company. For
sale in San Francisco by Payot, Upham, & Co.
a Conversations in a Studio. By William Wetmore
Story. Vols. 2. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
1890. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson &
Co.
1890.]
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