The Transit of Civilization from England to America in the,
Seventeenth Century. By Edward Eggleston. (Hirschfeld Brothers. 6s. net.)—The book to which this not very intelligible title is given is intended to correct popular notions about the mental and moral condition of the founders of the great American Republic. Mr. Eggleston found it necessary, he says," to build a description from the ground,"—i.e., he found little help from either American or English sources. Our impression is that we have seen before most of what he tells us, but that he is original in his treatment of his materials. We might say, perhaps, that his countrymen have never been spoken to quite so plainly about their ancestors. "The emigrants," he writes, "had no consider. able part in the higher intellectual life of the age ; the great artistic passions of Shakespeare and Milton touched them not at any point. Bacon's contribution to the art of finding truth did not belong to thsm. Men may live at the same time without being intellectual contemporaries." This theme Mr. Eggleston works out with much care and industry. He brings together a quite surprising amount of information gathered from New England, Virginian, and Maryland sources. We cannot help feeling that he is somewhat too contemptuous of the men about whom he writes. One stage of development has to go be" another. A frog may be justly conscious of being an improve' ment on a tadpole, but he should remember that the tadpole had to be what he was. Where religion is concerned our seems to be peculiarly unsympathetic. The doginatismswble.11 seem even repulsive to us did their share in building up a solid foundation of character. Nevertheless, the- book may be Te?4 . with much profit. It is certainly the outcome of wide readIng. Mr. Eggleston's classics seem a little shaky. "A couplet of the time". is credited with the thought that " God gave to Man an
'Prig ht face that he might view the thinking of Ovid'i fine lines :—
" Os homini sublime debt, caelumone tceri itieSit et erectos ad alders toilers vultus " ?
It was not Ovid who said that it was "known by experience" that eeiee fa decomposition produced honey bees." Virgil describes the process in the Fourth Georgic, where it forms the introduc- tion to the magnificent episode of Orpheus and Eurydice. Virgil seems to have got it from Varro, and Varro, possibly, from one of the Alexandrian writers.
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