maps of the delta of the Mississippi, the bifurcation of the Orinoco, etc.

The third division of the work, assigned to meteorology and magnetism, consists of six maps, with descriptive letter-press. First, a chart showing the distribution of heat over the globe, or the lines of equal temperature, as originally suggested by Humboldt. Second, -a map of the winds and storms, defining by colors the regions of the constant or trade-winds; of the periodic wind or monsoons; of the local winds; of cyclones or revolving hurricanes, and, indeed, of the aërial currents generally, illustrated by three folio pages of letterpress, with chronological table of the principal hurricanes. Third,--a rain map, or hyetographic chart of the world, with two pages of notes explaining the distribution of rain over the globe in the different seasons, and showing the zone of periodical rains; the vast regions which receive no rain, and the equatorial limits of the fall of snow. There are also special tables of the average annual rain-fall at different places, etc. Fourth, a rain-map of Europe, showing the influence of mountains and centrul continental tracts, in diminishing rain; it displays also the seasons of most rain, the proportion of rain in different districts, the number of rainy and of snowy days in the year, and the rainy winds of different countries, besides a special rain-map of the British Islands.

All the four last-mentioned charts, with their essays, are by A. K. John

ston.

Fifth,- —a chart of the polarizing structure of the atmosphere. This is a chart and essay on the polarization of light by the atmosphere, by the very eminent discover of many remarkable facts in the science of light, and other departments of physics, Sir David Brewster. Sixth,-terrestrial magnetism. The great facts or laws of terrestrial magnetism are here explained, in an admirable chart and essay, by Colonel Sabine, one of the ablest cultivators to

physical science in Europe. The chart embraces maps of magnetic declination, inclination, and force at various epochs. There is also a magnetic chart of the British Islands.

The fourth division, or that of botanical geography, includes, First,-an exreedingly beautiful plate, illustrating the geographical distribution of the

most important plants yielding food. This and the explanatory essay, of two folio pages, are by the well-known botanist, Arthur Henfry. The climatal conditions influencing the principal fruits are laid down, and there are enlarged maps of the distribution of the chief food-plants of western and central Europe, also of tea, spices, dyes. etc. Second,-a clear and finely-tinted map and drawings, explanatory of the geographical distribution of indigenous vegetation, with four compactlywritten folio pages of illustrative text, by Arthur Henfry and A. K. Johnston. On the plate are maps of the perpendicular distribution of plants of Schouw's phytogeographic regions,

etc.

The fifth division of the "Atlas," or that devoted to the geography of animals, embraces six maps and essays. First,a map of the geographical distribution of mammalia of the orders quadrumana, edentata, marsupialia, and pachydermata, illustrated by tables and notes on the classification of animals. This interesting chart defines the limits within which the different families of these orders occur, and their intensity or the relative number of their species in different regions. As in the vegetable world, each class of animals has its appropriate climate, and many instructive phenomena connected with the distribution of life are here made palpable to the eye. Second.-a chart and full essay of six pages of descriptive notes, exhibiting the geographical distribution of mammalia of the order carnivora. This includes a map of the district of the fur-bearing animals, and the regions of the seal and whale-fisheries. Both the above are chiefly by A. K. Johnston, and constructed from the latest authorities. Third,- —a map with descriptive Essay in four folio pages, containing extensive tables, presenting the geographical division and distribution of mammalia of the orders rodentia and ruminantia. The chart is by A. K. Johnston, the text by G. R. Waterhouse. Fourth, a beautiful plate, treating of the geographical division and distribution of birds, with an enlarged map of the distribution of the birds of Europe, etc., illustrated by pictures of the species, and by two pages of letterpress by A. K. Johnston. Fifth,-a chart with two pages of descriptive notes, showing the geographical divi

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The sixth, and final division of the

'Atlas,” or that devoted to ethnology and statistics, embraces, First,-an ethnographic map of Europe, illustrated by an admirably-condensed and instructive essay, of six folio pages of letter-press, by Dr. Gustaf Kombst. The map is, we think, the most distinctly-drawn, tastefully-colored ethnographic chart ever executed, while the essay is a model of method, clearness, condensation, and learning. This latter includes a beautiful little ethnographic map of the present distribution of man upon the earth. Second,-an ethnographic map of Great Britain and Ireland, with two pages of descriptive letter-press, by Dr. Gustaf Kombst and A. K. Johnston. A work similar in style and equally commendable with the previous. Third,-a moral and statistical chart, accompanied by six pages of illustrative and descriptive notes, by A. K. Johnston. This valuable contribution to the present edition of the "Physical Atlas" is one of the most attractive of all its treatises, and does the author great credit. The map, which is a singularly tasteful production, exhibits the distribution of man according to religious belief, and for comparison shows, upon two enlarged VOL. IX.-41

maps of equal scale, the geography of language and the geography of religious belief in Europe. There are, also, little maps of missionary stations in India, Africa, America, etc., also diagrams illustrating the relative education of different countries. Fourth,-the concluding subject is the geographical distribution of health and disease, in connection chiefly with natural phenomena. For the illustration of this very important subject, there is a beautifully. tinted general map of the world, and a special map of the fever-districts of the United States and West Indies. The subject is ably treated in an essay of six folio pages of letter-press, containing much valuable statistics. Upon this branch of his work Mr. Johnston seems to have expended much faithful labor.

After the above description, concise as it is, of the contents of this important encyclopædic body of physical geography, and after the mention wo have made of the eminent authors who have contributed their learning and skill to its pages and plates, we need add no formal encomium to impress our readers with its high value as a most attractive work of elevated and useful science. Of its artistic execution, we can convey no just conception through verbal language; for no language but that of the eye is adequate to showing the extent of exquisite art embodied in the series of tinted maps and drawings, which make the basis of this great folio. It has the merit, too, of coming from the always-accurate and tasteful press of the Messrs. Blackwood, the eminent publishers of Edinburgh.

We hope that, as a work abounding in valuable information, and tending in the direction of the higher education of the age, it may be extensively consulted and studied.

As stands the city before the rural philosopher, so stands the theatre before the urban preacher. The theatre is a fact of city life which demands to be dealt with as a fact, as well by those who condemn as by those who uphold it. To use the words with which Mr. Webster apostrophized that very plain and palpable fact, the Bunker Hill Monument: "There it stands!" Six theatres, at least, are constantly open in this single city of New York, and, it is quite safe to say, that between five and seven thousand people, belonging to the most prosperous sections of the middle and upper classes of the metropolitan population, are to be found on any night, of almost any week of the year, in attendance upon dramatic entertainments and spectacles of one or another kind and degree of dramatic merit. And this, be it observed, is not the whim of a season. For years, the habit of going to the theatre, when the theatre offered anything worth going for, has been becoming moro and more common, in the most enlightened and respectable circles of American society, as well as among the technically lower orders" of the land. Have we not, then, some reason to be surprised at the vehemence of the interest which has been recently excited, not in New York alone, but in many parts of the country, by the simple circumstance that a clergyman, consecrated, by the very virtue of his office, to a close and earnest examination of the 46 facts" of the world in which he lives and works, should have come forward to deal with the theatre as a recognized institution of modern life, and to speak of it as a fit theme for the attention, and a proper field for the active influence of the most religious, and moral, and earnest, of our citizens?

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One might be led to suppose that the spectacle of a clergyman handling realities with manly directness was the rarest, and not the most gratifying of phenomena in the eyes of a large proportion of the public. Of course, we waive all consideration, or criticism, of the particular way in which the particular clergyman in question chose to approach his subject, or to treat it. That was his own affair, and we have no doubt that he considers himself quite equal to the task of defending, explaining, and justifying the course which he thought it best to adopt, whenever defense, explanation, and justification

may be legitimately required of him. At all events, neither we nor our readers have any concern with that matter. We are simply to consider whether the theatre is a noble, or an ignoble, necessity of our civilization; whether its existence is, or is not, an absolute calamity; whether its condition is, or is not, susceptible of improvement.

The rationale of the theatre, of course, determines all these points. "Wherefore" is the master of what"-and the color of the motive decides the complexion of the deed.

If we look into history, we find that the first grand establishments of the theatre in Europe had their origin in religion. The magnificent machinery of the Grecian stage served the priesthood and the state; and the theatres of Athens were schools, at once, of theology and of patriotism. The theatres of Rome were adininistered more loosely, indeed, and with less of diguity; for imperial Rome degraded every art which she adopted, and stamped the materialism of her nature on every idea which she appropriated, as she set the sea of her dominion on the character of every people whom she absorbed. Yet, even in Rome, the ancient theatre did not wholly lose the impress of the Gre cian system; and the fierce hostility which was manifested to the theatre by the early fathers of the Christian Church, and which has transmitted itself so vividly through so inany generations, may be clearly traced, in a great measure, to the fact, that the theologies of pagan Rome-the follies and falsehoods of the pagan religion—were continually incarnated in the most gorgeous shows and spectacles, while the same buildings were consecrated to the punishment of the impious and vexatious martyrs" who persisted in denouncing Jupiter and Venus, and all the array of Olympus.

Moreover, the theatrical entertainmeats of imperial Rome, in the later days of her history, reflected the life of imperial Rome; and what that life was we all know too well not to understand how much the Christian community must have revolted from the scenes in which its spirit triumphed and ran riot. When the Roman Christian gazed upon the stately walls of the Coliseum, or passed beneath the splendid porticoes of the Theatre of Marcellus, his heart and brain grew hot with fiery memories of

noble saints and holy bishops, "butchered to make a Roman holiday;" and his soul grew sick with the thought of such nameless pollutions, such shameless abominations, as the pages of Apuleius only permit us to guess at. Natural enough, then, was it, that, as the cross advanced, the prostituted and debased drama should disappear throughout the empire. In the deluge of barbarism which followed so soon after the establishment of Christianity, the art theatrical, of course, was swallowed up with all other arts.

When it was again revived, it was in the interest of religion that its first essays were made. The drama of the middle ages, with all its imperfections, was the work of mediæval Christianity. The "Fraternity of the Passion" set on foot throughout Europe such dramatic representations of the mysteries and sanctities of the faith as were thought likely to appeal, with peculiar power, to the rude imaginations and uncultivated instincts of the medieval populations. Nor did the Church officially disown the earliest attempts that were made to restore the more purely artistic drama of antiquity. The first modern theatre ever erected in Europe was built within the precincts of the papal palace of the Vatican, and by the marvelous architect who first planned, on a scale approaching the magnificence of the final realization, that chief temple of the Catholic Church, which has taken its place, with the Pyramids and the Parthenon, among the wonders of art which nature

"Adopts into her race,

And grants to them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."

In Italy, in Spain, and in France, the modern theatre, in its first developments, never lost the character of seriousness and purpose impressed upon it by the traditions of the best antiquity, and by the customs of the medieval world. Why, then, it may be asked, did the profession of the actor undergo -as in all these countries it unquestionably did the ban which still rests on it throughout Catholic Christendom? Mainly because, in all these countries, the traditional customs of imperial Rome continued to influence the popular mind, to a degree of which the more purely Germanic races of the north have no adequate conception. The histrionic profession had been chiefly practiced in

imperial Rome by slaves or freedmen. Every schoolboy remembers, with a kind of personal indignation, the insult put upon a noble and venerable Roman knight, who was compelled by Tiberius to appear upon the stage. Indisposed as the Roman was to concede the least respect to any of the arts which adorn and soothe existence, he was particularly unwilling to look with any feeling but the deepest disdain upon the mimetic talent which divested its possessor, for the nonce, of all personality, and clothed him with a fictitious being for the amusement of his superiors. Add to this transmitted sentiment the kindred feeling generated by the customs of feudalism, and it will not be difficult for us to understand how Latin Christendom came to commit the anomaly of encouraging the drama into prosperity, without elevating its professors into respectability. Nor must we forget that the clergy, very soon after the Reformation, became particularly jealous of the hold which the drama began to acquire over the society of Catholic Europe, as an instrumentality of intellectual and moral influence. It was not possible that a hierarchical class, which desired to monopolize the spiritual training of the community, should look with indifference upon such a power as the stage became when its machinery was wielded by the genius of a Calderon and a Lope, a Racine and a Mobère. The furious conflict which was excited by the representation of "Tartuffe," may give us some measure of the emotion excited in the clerical mind by the consciousness that a proscribed order, armed with no other weapons than those of fidelity to facts and force of satire, could make even the hypocrites of the Church ridiculous.

Judged historically, then, by the facts of the work which it has done in the world-by the power which it has developed for controlling and directing the public mind of different nations and of different ages-it must be conIceded that the theatre is an institution which mankind cannot and will not let die. In ancient Greece, the drama of Eschylus and Euripides, of Sophocles and Aristophanes, fostered the public faith in the national religion and in the religion of nationality; it bred a deeper reverence for the supreme laws of morality and the awful conceptions of piety; it fed the flame of patriotism; it chas