of lower charge. If, therefore, it be possible to keep the potential uniform within a certain region, no discharge can take place between bodies within it. This may readily be done by connecting all the bodies in the region by a metallic conductor. In the case of the powder-mill, the building should be enclosed in a network of some good conductor, say a copper wire, No. 4 of the Birmingham wire gauge. This should be carried round the foundation, up each of the corners and gables, and along the ridges. It may be built into the wall to prevent theft, but should be connected to all outside surfaces of metal. If there are water or gas pipes, they should be put in contact with the wire; but if there are none, it is not necessary to facilitate in any way the escape of the electricity into the earth. The New Elements Gallium and Neptunium. Two additions have recently been made to the list of chemical elements. The first of these, the metal Gallium,-called so from Gallia, was observed by M. Boisbandran in a zinc blende from the Pyrenees. He recognized it as new by the peculiarities of its spectrum, which consists of two bright lines only, situated in the violet, the more refrangible of which lies beyond even the violet line of potassium. Their wave-lengths are 417 and 403 ten-millionths of a millimetre respectively. The metal itself is grayishwhite and lustrous, but tarnishes in moist air. It liquefies at 30.15° C., and may therefore be melted by the heat of the hand. When melted it exhibits the property of suffusion to a remarkable degree, remaining liquid for weeks even at temperatures near zero. In the solid form, which is obtained readily by touching the fused mass with a fragment of solid gallium, the metal is hard and resistant, though it may be cut, and is flexible and malleable. It is not volatile, and has a density of 5.956. Its atomic weight has not yet been fixed, owing to the small quantity thus far prepared; but as it forms a well-defined alum, its chemical relations would seem to ally it to aluminum. The second new element was discovered in the mineral columbite, from Haddam, by M. Hermann. It is called Neptunium, and belongs to the group which already contains tantalum, columbium, and ilmenium. Its chemical reactions sharply distinguish it from the other members of the group, as also does its atomic weight, which M. Hermann finds to be 118. ART. XI.-CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 1.- Russia. BY D. MACKENZIE WALLACE. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1877. pp. 620. BEFORE the publication of Mackenzie Wallace's book no exhaustive and authentic account of Russia as it is since the reforms instituted by the present ruler was accessible in the English language. Indeed, we may say that no adequate information on the subject was extant in any language of Western Europe, since Haxthausen's work describes Russia as it was, and although a remarkable series of studies by Leroy-Beaulieu has been running through the "Revue des Deux Mondes" during the last twelvemonth, their appearance in book form may be regarded as simultaneous with Mr. Wallace's exposition. It is, of course, impossible, within the limits of this notice, to mark even in outline the answers here presented to the hundred intricate and pregnant questions connected with the social economy of the great Northern Empire. We may note, however, the main branches into which the inquiry naturally divides itself, and indicate some points where Mr. Wallace's work may be profitably supplemented with another's researches. The distribution of the Russian people into classes, which, until recently, had almost the rigidity of castes, is, of course, a preliminary topic; and here Mr. Wallace points out the wide difference between the semi-independent landed aristocracy which grew up in feudal Europe and the official nobility of Russia, which since the era of Czar Peter, at all events, has been the mere creature of the imperial pleasure. The truth is that a French noble in the Middle Ages differed from a Muscovite noble in the last three centuries precisely as earl and thane differed in Anglo-Saxon England, the former being his own man and the latter the king's man. Our attention is also directed to a significant feature of Russian society, the almost total absence of a genuine middle class. The number of persons engaged in trade and manufactures is shown to be surprisingly small, and indeed all the privileged classes taken together constitute but a very slight percentage of the total population. The changes introduced by the new law making military service compulsory for all subjects of the Czar, and the method of recruiting the Russian navy, are explained at length by Mr. Wallace; but in spite of the equalization of burdens in some directions, the weight of taxation still falls on those least able to bear it, the peasant class. The revenues of the state are chiefly fed by the poll-tax and the impost on alcohol, by far the most profitable of the indirect contributions, and both of these are mainly sustained by the agricultural laborer. This book shows us how considerably these exactions are enhanced by the necessity of meeting the annual instalments of purchase-money for the land which the manumitted serf now owns in fee, and we are made to see that the full fruits of emancipation cannot be looked for before 1910, when the mowjik will be relieved of this part of his burdens. Another subject which might well engross a volume to itself, and which necessarily absorbs much space in Mr. Wallace's work, is the diversity of land tenures obtaining in the Northern Empire, and particularly the system of collective ownership which exists in the vast central belt known as Muscovy proper, or Great Russia. The account of the Russian commune given in this book is unquestionably the best in English, but it is neither so full nor so lucid as M. LeroyBeaulieu's. Neither is Mr. Wallace's description of the moujik's moral and intellectual status of the patriarchal manners engendered by the communal life and of the deplorable condition of women in the peasant class so effective as the French author's, although the former had apparently better opportunities of observation, having lived for some years in a Russian village. On the other hand, the portrayal of the ecclesiastical system, of the relations between the "white" and the “black” clergy, and of the various schismatic movements, is less complete and satisfactory in the papers communicated to the "Revue des Deux Mondes" than in the English book. Mr. Wallace exhibits the precise relation of the church to the sovereign, and points out that the ecclesiastics and the nobility are linked by none of those ties of interest and sympathy which bound the two orders together under the French ancien régime. About the internal economy of the monasteries he has little to say, for he does not appear to have had facilities for studying them in detail. Neither do we find much information in this volume about the actual state of the higher education in Russia, about the appliances and scope of the universities and academies established in the large cities. We miss, too, a comprehensive, discriminating view of Russian literature as it exists at the present time, such a view as would enable us to judge whether it ought to be treated as a mature, substantial outgrowth, or with the patronizing indulgence due to incipient effort. A Russian book of tolerable cleverness is too apt to be regarded in Western Europe as a kind of miracle, and hitherto has rarely been submitted to the normal standards. Two other points to which our author allots considerable space deserve notice. One is the Imperial Code and the administration of justice by the courts of law. Under this head we are reminded that in Russia statute legislation is but a crust superimposed upon a structure of folk-law, which presents wide discrepancies in different parts of the Empire. The system of communal ownership, for example, which is traditional with forty millions of the Czar's subjects, is not prescribed but only tolerated by the Imperial Code, and may be discarded by a given community with the concurrence of two thirds of its members. We may add that the popular impression regarding the corruption of the judicial administration and of all departments of the Russian civil service seems to be confirmed by this observer. The other topic of special interest here discussed is the extent to which the Russian people has been intrusted with self-government by the present ruler. The exact functions assigned to the local assemblies and the questionable results of the present partial experiments are set forth at length. We can only note that neither Mr. Wallace nor M. Leroy-Beaulieu considers Russia yet ripe for a parliamentary system. Such are some of the questions suggested by the study of New Russia, and we repeat that to these the present volume supplies the only adequate answers attainable in the English language. 2. Joan: A Tale. By RHODA BROUGHTON, author of "Cometh up as a Flower," etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. pp. 216. If we had not the Earl of Beaconsfield's word for it, we might infer from the works of certain female novelists that the social atmosphere of England is not free from a certain taint of animalism. We suppose, for instance, that the irrepressible person who signs herself "Ouida" never got anything but animadversion from the censors of the press, yet she goes on writing, and very nice people continue to buy her books. This could hardly be the case if the principles and motives which in her books shape the relations of men and women were honestly believed to be a libel on society. In her case it seems clear that the reviewer is more strait-laced than the public to which he ministers, and that the English middle-class is not at heart indisposed to accept notions of life which we should think neither rational nor wholesome. There is another author, who belongs to what ought to be described as the fleshly school, but who, we are told on the covers of her last novel, is with one exception the most popular writer of fiction of her sex. It would be unfair to ignore the positive merits which Miss Broughton's books obviously possess, although it may be doubted whether these fully account for her success. She has, for instance, a few types of character, which do duty in all her stories, but which are sufficiently clear-cut conceptions; and she has the art of making a figure winning without endowing it with too much perfection, or perhaps we should say that she shares with the author of "Guy Livingstone" the art of making a figure winning in spite of too many imperfections. Her dialogue, too, is brisk and sometimes witty, and her style for the most part crisp and unconventional. A plot she cannot construct, but this is a point in which most English novelists are weak as compared with the French, and it may be said of Miss Broughton's situations and incidents, that they are adapted skilfully enough to the evolution of character, and are sufficiently connected for her purpose, which is not dramatic, like Charles Reade's, but biographical, like Thackeray's. In all these respects, however, Hardy's books are much superior; must be placed, indeed, on a very different plane as works of art, yet it is certain that they do not find so many readers. We cannot but think that the remarkable vogue which the writings of Lawrence, "Ouida," and Miss Broughton have had in England attests a certain obliquity of the public taste, which of course is promptly disavowed when the source of the pungent flavor characteristic of those productions is pointed out. Good people are said to be mildly curious about the lives and thoughts of persons whose acquaintance they do not court, and there is no doubt that the authors we have named contrive in a more or less overt way to satisfy that curiosity. A stock character, for example, in Miss Broughton's books, and one therefore, we must presume, in which the interest of her readers is unflagging, is the athletic, good-looking, well-mannered young man, good-natured, but thoroughly selfish and indolent, whose one purpose in life is the gratification of the appetites, and whose only creed is a misty recognition of certain gentlemanlike modes of doing it, the sort of hero, in short, who, if he happens to hold a commission in a regiment stationed in a provincial town, is spoken of by the young women of the neighborhood as "delightfully naughty." Having brought this stereotyped favorite on the stage, the author is careful to inform us what species of attractiveness the "captain" or "colonel" most values in the other sex, and to invest one or more of her heroines with the requisite attributes. In her latest novel, "Joan," the rock of offence to the masculine intellect, but loadstone to the feminine affections, is a "colonel," who thus naïvely explains to one young lady how he came to marry another woman. "You know," he tells her, "the sort of power that she always had over me, the domination over all that is base in me, before I well knew it, honor, that is godfather to half the dishonorable actions in the world, had manacled me for life." We are not left in doubt as to the specific fascinations of the successful candidate. Her name is Lalage, which in a sober moment the "colonel" admits conveys the idea of a "tipsy, demoralized Bacchic," and she has "taken that earliest step toward a man's - |