Eastern Counties Asylum for Idiots, Essex Hall, Colchester.— This institution, which is still under the assiduous care of Mr. Millard, is being enlarged, the demand for admission being much greater than the accommodation could supply. Provision is, or is about to be, made for about 50 more cases; a new steam laundry; a gymnastic and recreation hall combined; bath rooms, lavatories and water-closets; the outlay being estimated at about £12,000. At the last annual meeting a powerful appeal was made for funds. Dr. Bateman stated that there are in the Eastern Counties 3,000 idiots, of whom at least 1,000 needed the benefit of such an asylum, whereas there was accommodation for only 99, and he justly describes the inmates of the cottages where an idiot dwells as doomed to constant association with the most repulsive features of humanity, and obliged to breathe an atmosphere of moral miasma. No doubt the appeal of the committee will be responded to, but doubtless the efforts required to obtain subscriptions and donations involve much labour and anxiety.

During the long period embraced in the present Retrospect, the most important incident that has happened in the philosophical circles of this country is the death of Professor T. H. Green, of Oxford—a man who for many years had been silently acquiring, not only by his power of thinking but by his strong and blameless personal character, a marked position and a unique influence among the leaders of thought in England. His philosophical position would perhaps best be defined by saying that he became the chief of that small, but notable, band of speculative students, centred mainly in Oxford, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, who are reviving the spirit of the systems of Kant and Hegel, in its application to the new scientific, political, and religious problems of the day. His distinguishing characteristics were his modesty and his earnest sense of duty—qualities perhaps not so conspicuous as they might be amongst the better known of modern psychologists. His modesty was such that he never assumed that he had mastered the secret of any writer, until he had bestowed the most extravagant labour and thought in exploring difficulties and obscurities on which the man himself had probably never bestowed a second thought. His earnestness was so thorough that he believed it to be merely his duty to struggle with the fundamental questions of the Sphinx of modern criticism, and find for himself and others not a negative but a constructive answer, no matter what toil and trouble it might cost. For he held that those who contribute, as we all in some way do, to the formation of public opinion upon the vital subjects of life and conduct, are under a terrible responsibility if they mislead their neighbours, or even if they refuse by sloth or vanity or cynicism that healthy guidance which their own attainments would enable them to give. These remarks are suggested by the fact that the first article of the April number of “Mind” is from Prof. Green's pen. Indeed it is one of the last pieces of work he ever personally sent to press; although we are glad to know that the groat Ethical work on which he had long been engaged is left with his philosophical friends in so complete a form that it will be published immediately. The April article is the second of three essays on the question, “Can there be a natural science of man?” of which the third holds the leading place in the July number. The scope of the essays, as well as of the “Prolegomena to Ethics,” to which they were in a sense introductory, will be best indicated if we quote a note added in the July number by Prof. Green's literary executor, Mr. A. C. Bradley.

Johann Ranke, of Munich (cited in the “Centralblatt für Nerven-heilkunde,” 1 Juni, 1882), has studied the relative size of the crania of the inhabitants of the town and country, upon a hundred males and a hundred females from villages, and two hundred skulls from the city of Munich. He finds that, though the size and stature of the country people are greater, the cranial capacity is less in both sexes. The mean capacity of 200 skulls of both sexes was

Want of space compels us to deal this year in a somewhat summary manner with these publications. We are not conscious that anything really important has been omitted, but we have made the extracts and the remarks thereon as short as possible; indeed we have avoided making the latter except where really necessary.

1. Beretninger om den Kjöbenhavnske, den Nörrejyske, Ostifternes og den Viborgske Sindssygeanstalt i 1880.