CURRENT LITERATURE.
Twelve Lectures on Primitive Civilizations. By John P. Machaffy, A.M., Trinity College, Dublin. (Longmans.)—These lectures seem well adapted for the purpose for which they were delivered, the instruction of an average class of students. They do not pretend to be learned, for learning would have been out of place ; but they are summarized with considerable care and, we may add, with not a little liveliness from ordinary sources of information; and besides giving immediate instruc- tion, may well stimulate a hearer or reader to pursue his inquiries for himself. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Semitic, and Greek civilizations are successively discussed, and generally on sound principles and in lucid language. The only thing that puzzles us about Mr. Maohaffy is to know when he is joking. Is this a joke, for instance, when we read that the Greenlander lives "not on vegetables thrown up by the soil, but, as Mr. Buckle most poetically remarks, on the fat, the blubber, and
the oil of powerful and ferocious animals ' "? Or this,—"If a country be really prosperous, everybody gets married "? England es fairly prosper- ous, but mothers of daughters declare that "nobody" gets married. His wit is more evident when he tells us his audience (ladies, we pre- sume, as the lectures were delivered at an "Alexandra College "), among other proofs of Egyptian civilization, that the hair of the ladies ." was dressed with an intricacy exceeding even that of the present day, except, perhaps, among certain tribes in the interior of Africa."
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