To be on amiable terms with everybody is worth a sacrifice, and in our relief at escaping from the ferocious savagery of the Victorian controversialists we may well endure the minor discomforts of a reconciliation between science, philosophy and religion so effective as to render indistinguishable the separate persons of this trinity. The particular advantage of this amalgamation that concerns us here is the fact that it has brought a new branch of literature into existence. As is usual in an amalgamation, each member profits by the custom brought by the others, until finally a composite article is evolved which is, as it were, simultaneously buff and blue. That is how we get these very curious and interesting modern works on cosmical questions--works which seem to result from a close collaboration between, say, a professor of physics, an archdeacon and a Bond Street crystal-gazer. A very comprehensive _Weltanschauung_ is thereby afforded, and doubtless a truly “balanced” mind must result from the perusal of such works, but we may doubt whether each component, as it were, is presented in its purity. The advantages of association are only obtained by a certain loss of individuality. We cannot speak for the philosophy and religion of these works, but we are impelled to these reflections by detecting a certain quality which pervades the scientific part of the expositions. It is, as we have admitted, a good thing for science that it has been taken up in this way. It moves in an atmosphere of culture; it finds itself being described in chapters headed with Greek quotations; it is complimented on its strong vein of poetry; its peculiarities are explained, inaccurately but sympathetically, in columns of literary causerie, and the unexpected but gratifying discovery is made that it by no means lacks the bump of reverence and proper respect for constituted authority.