Factors in Life. By H. G. Seeley, F.R.S. (S.P.C.K.)—This useful
little book consists of three lectures which Professor H. G. Seeley delivered before the Working-Men's Institute of Sevenoaks in 1884, on health, food, and education. But why should he indulge, more especially in the presence of working men, in Johnsonian state- ments like this ?—" Holidays have well been called a holy institution, for they take us away from the shadowed side of the world, where monotony induces intellectual or moral somnolence, to spots where the sun shines, leaves glisten, and the eye in moments of relaxation drinks in the moral sustenance which Nature offers in her beauty, calm, ceaseless work, and varied conditions." Sometimes, however, Mr. Seeley is more epigrammatic and telling, as in this differentiation between the effects of wine and tea :—" Wine and its allies give a fillip to the nervous system which enables exceptional work to be done, at the price of increased nervous exhaustion—draw a bill on the strength which must be met at a short date ; while tea and its allies enable increased work to be done by making the dormant strength available, or discount on favourable terms the bills on nervous energy which we hold." There is hardly a page of Mr. Seeley's book which does not contain one piece of advice worth taking, even although it may be clothed in somewhat too splendid language.
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