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taste, in the widest sense of it, from the beginning of life on our globe to the present moment," but mainly " to note the wiclenening and growing intensity of a love for the beauty and grandeur of the outward material world as distinguished from man and his works " ; and having done this, to consider " various other questions with relation to beauty which should be of interest to all, but especially to inquirers in philosophy and theology". In chapters i.-vi. he traces the development of the sense of beauty in exter- nal nature from its earliest manifestations ; pointing out the evidences, that the Greeks and Romans were not so much inferior to the moderns in love of nature and sense of the picturesque as is often supposed, but at the same time contending that the love of nature has been greatly developed through the influence of Christianity, and that the feeling of security given by modern civilisation has developed the sense of the picturesque. In cc. vii.-xiv. " the standard of taste," the association-theories of Alison and Jeffrey and of more modern writers, the " reality," the distinctive characters and the " universality " of beauty are discussed. Of the " association- theory " the writer says " It has done well in arguing for a mental origin for beauty, and in insisting, by implication at least, that there is nothing beautiful apart from mind or spirit. For in that it is at one with all high idealistic speculations from Plato onwards, and with the old belief in which . we have all been brought up that the universe is the work and creation of God " (p. 193-4). But beauty " is not a creature simply of association ". "It is objective as well as subjective ; real as well as ideal ; a quality of things material as well as of things mental " (p. 248). Chapter xiv. is in- tended to lead to the conclusion that " all is supremely beautiful". There is an " apparent contradiction between such a conclusion and the view that many things are ugly" ; bat the contradiction is "only apparent". The ugly is " necessary in reality as in thought for the perception of the beau- tiful ". This theory is " essentially optimistic " ; postulating that, as Hegel says, "the real is * the rational". " The Hegelian philosophy," however, " is wide enough to embrace the truth in any rational pessimistic theory that may be formed. In fact, it has embraced it from the first ; for it is an ' optimism on the basis of pessimism,' and the two terms, like all other opposites, are held by it in reconciliation " (p. 355). In the last chapter (xv.) the author discusses the theory of colour, arriving at the conclusion that colour, like beauty, is not merely subjective, but is a real "quality in things around us ". Contributions to the Science of Education. By WILLIAM H. PAYNE, A.M., Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan, &c. London : Blackie & Son. Pp. 358. The note of these Contributions to the Science of Education is insistence on the scientific character of the "art of teaching" that already exists, and on the importance of the history of educational theory for guidance in the present. The author holds with Prof. Bain, that if there is a science of mind there must be an "applied science of teaching" dependent on it as medicine is dependent on the sciences of life ; and he contends that actually " there is a larger body of valid scientific truth within the reach of the teacher than within the reach of the physician ". Teachers, then, ought to- receive instruction in this body of knowledge : and instruction ought to be given first of all in the University ; for the character of the higher educa- tion determines the character of all the rest. As with the teacher, so with the learner, knowing should precede doing. The attempt to make the edu- cation of the individual child a repetition of the education of the race is a mistaken one. Each generation has the accumulated experience of its pre- decessors ; and it does best in giving the new generation the advantage of