The author of this volume became known to the public of New York a little over twenty years ago through a hand-book of chemistry, written at a time when that science was emerging into its present maturity. Almost simultaneously appeared from his pen a treatise on _Human Physiology_, when it likewise was running a swift race to its splendid proportions of to-day, impelled by the labors of Claude Bernard, Beaumont, and Bichat. Those works were received at the time with much favor by American teachers of both named sciences as being clear and succinct compilations of the labors of European investigators, while containing some original observations of undoubted scientific merit. Thus, the perception of the influence of endosmosis and exosmosis on the functions of respiration and circulation, and the reference of pitch, quality, and intensity of sound to different portions of the anatomical structure of the ear, constitute a valid claim, on Draper’s part, as a contributor to modern physiology. As a chemist, though painstaking and observant, he failed to keep pace with European researches, and so his book has been superseded in our schools and colleges by later and more thorough productions. Indeed, it may be said that his work on physiology likewise is rapidly becoming obsolete, its popularity having ceded place to the excellent treatises of Dalton and Austin Flint, Jr. Had he in time recognized his exclusive fitness for experimental chemistry and physiology, his name might rank to-day with those of Liebig and Lehmann; but some disturbing idiosyncrasy or malevolent influence inspired him with the belief that he was destined for higher pursuits, and he burned to emulate Gibbon and Buckle. On the heels of the late civil war, accordingly, appeared from his ambitious pen a book with the pretentious title of _History of the American Civil War_, in which he strove to prove that the agencies which precipitated that sad quarrel dated back a thousand years; that thermal bands having separated the North from the South, the two sections could not agree; that the conflict is not yet over, and will be ended only when both sides recognize the East as the home of science, and make their salam to the rising sun. We speak not in jest; the book, we believe, is still extant, and may be consulted by the curious in such matters. Though the _History of the American Civil War_ did not meet with flattering success, the new apostle of Islamism was not discouraged. No more trustworthy as a historian than Macaulay, he lacked the _verve_ and eloquence of that brilliant essayist, and his bantling fell into an early decline.