NOTES ON THE CHIEF BOOKS OF THE DAY.

251

or in some other way, which is fruitful bottling up. I
ask permission to use these incongruous metaphors, one
on the top of the other. Every grown-up person in the
kingdom can bottle up labour and invest it; and, as a
matter of fact, there are few who at one time or another
in their lives do not. Some do it to such an enormous
amount that they might, with the accumulated store,
build a pyramid greater than that of Cheops. It is
indeed with the labour that has been bottled up by pri-
vate individuals that we have constructed all our railways,
docks, and gas-works, and with which we carry outall our
undertakings, great and small, in this country. There
is no limit to our capacity for bottling up labour. It is
one of our greatest exports; we send it all over the
world—to Russia, to America, to India, and to Egypt it-
self. Itis estimated that we store up nearly 100,000,000/.
worth every year. But in the time of Cheops nothing
of this kind was done, nor could it have been. It is true
that the nation could then produce a great deal more food
than it needed for consumption, but, at the end of the
year, it was none the richer. Its surplus labour had not
been fixed and preserved in a reconvertible form for
future needs. Its surplus production had not been thus
stored up for future uses...... They might spend
much of it in excavating, sculpturing, and painting acres
of tombs; or in piling up pyramids, or in building
incredible numbers of magnificent temples. This explains
the magnitude and costliness of many of the works and
undertakings of the old world elsewhere, as well as in
Egypt. The point which it is essential to see is, that they
could not bottle up their surplus labour of any kind in
the time of Cheops.” This is smart, pleasant writing,
but somehow it is not quite the tone of mind that suits
Egyptology. At the same time, for busy men or rapid
readers, this is just the kind of book to give an insight
into, and a liking of, the subject. There is much thought-
ful writing, and many fine bits of light and colour.

We are glad to notice a second series of Lord Lyttelton’s
thoughtful and suggestive papers entitled “ Ephemera.”
There is much in them that is by no means ephemeral.
Their contents are religious, educational, and miscellaneous,
with some specimens of Greek and Latin verse, in which
he is so great a master. In the miscellaneous papers is
a very interesting account of a journey he made to New
Zealand, to see the working of the Canterbury colony,
which, more than any other, may be called a Church colony.
The book abounds with thoughts on the more important
questions of the day. We just give one brief extract :—
Boys commonly begin by disliking all work; and
unless this tendency is vigorously counteracted, so they
will continue. An able witness said to us of boys who
have never got their minds under complete weigh on any
subject, that they ‘ regard all study with perfectly impar-
tial loathing.’ And then, if good hard work is necessary,
which I assume, I do not see how we can avoid imposing
on the boy what he, as a general rule, dislikes. I once
heard one of the ablest men of our time, a marvel of
industry and knowledge, the late Sir James Stephen, say
that every one should have distasteful work to do. That
of course must not be taken literally; what he meant
was, that it must be hard work. The analogy here is
perfect between the mind and the body. No one questions
that for full bodily use and efficiency, athletic exer-
cises should be as hard as the health will bear. I may
illustrate this from the ancient game of tennis, a game

which, alone among athletic exercises, might be played by
a one-armed man; the left arm does nothing. At Cam-
bridge I once happened to see the arms of a tennis-player,
the present Sir Henry Sutton, stripped after he had
played every day at the game for several weeks. The
right arm was about double the size of the left.” Lord
Lyttelton has a great deal to say about education, and all
classes will hear his views with respect. Education is,
indeed, the absorbing question of the present time, and
any one who has any thing valuable to say on sucha
subject may ensure a hearing. Myr. Hepworth Dixon, a
member of the London School Board, claims to be such a
one. It may at once be said that in his new work, “ The
Switzers,” he has made a valuable contribution to the
literature of the subject. Many people admire Mr.
Dixon’s style exceedingly, but, with the exception of his
descriptions, which, though gaudy, are always vigorous and
eloquent, it is by no means a style which we would hold
up to imitation; still the Switzers have very much to
teach us in matters of education, and they teach us through
My. Dixon. To this popular author it is a regular
pursuit in life to visit country after country, and to
observe, and store up, whatever may seem most likely to
strike the attention of people at home. There is no
country so well known as Switzerland in its scenery, or
so little studied in its institutions. Yet Mr. Dixon says
truly that the people are as well worth study as their
alps and lakes. In Switzerland every man is educated,
and every man is a soldier. Thus is solved the great
problem of civil and military affairs. This happy people
spend more money on their schoolmasters than we do in
comparison upon our army and navy. Nowhere else is
property more evenly distributed. Nowhere is the poor
man better off, comparatively speaking. Education is
compulsory in all the cantons except Geneva, beginning
at the age of six or seven, and extending to fifteen or
sixteen. The hours of school attendance are gradually
abridged, to give children an opportunity of earning some-
thing. Nor does the care of the State for the intellectual
good of the people terminate with the school. By libraries,
museums, lectures, and by careful attention even to the
amusements and leisure pursuits of the people, it does much
to promote health of body andmind. From such a people
we may find useful hints, and Mr. Dixon shows us many
things worthy of admiration. His rhetorical and semi- |
poetical accounts of scenes and people are not so valuable
as the more substantial portion of his volume.

A very interesting work is that of the “ Letters of Ed-
ward Denison ;” both from his noble exemplar life, and also |
from his contributions to the elucidation of those difficult
questions touching the well-being of the poor, to which
that life was dedicated. A young man of fortune and
family, he went down to the east of London, where he
lived for some time, working in every good work for the
happiness and elevation of the masses around him. He
built and endowed a school, he taught in it himself, he
gave lectures to workmen; he afterwards visited Scot-
land, to work out the complete problems of the Poor-law
question. It was in the time of the great Kast-end dis- |
tress that he established himself at Stepney, in order to |
see with his own eyes, and take an actual share in the
terrible struggle that was being enacted there. He
found that it was impossible to work satisfactorily with-
out being on the spot, and here he continued until he
was elected member for Newark. His speeches in the

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