. and 37.63
deg. From the latter epoch the heat gradually lowers, to rise again with
the first approach of old age. Thus childhood shows the highest
temperature, old age the next, and middle life the lowest. We may add
that the greatest variations in the temperature of the body between
health and sickness are only a few tenths of a degree, according to this
measurement; for, the normal condition being 37.2 deg. or 37.3 deg., an
increase to 38 deg. would mark a burning fever, and a decrease to 36
deg. would note the icy approach of death. Hereafter, though we may
graciously excuse to poetic license the assertion that

Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together,

we must yet sternly protest that the reason assigned--namely, that
"youth is hot and age is cold"--is contradicted by the facts of science.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Life of Charles Dickens. By John Forster. Vol. II. Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott & Co.

Beginning with Dickens's return from America in 1842, this volume covers
a period of less than ten years, the most productive, and apparently the
happiest, of his life. It brings out in even stronger relief than the
preceding volume his strong individuality, a trait which, whether it
attracts or repels--and on most persons we think it produces alternately
each of these effects--is full of interest, worthy of study and fruitful
of suggestions. Its superabundant energy seemed to create demands in
order that it might expend itself in satisfying them. Its persistence
was toughened by failure as much as by success. Its vivacity, verging
upon boisterousness, was incapable of being chilled. Its strenuousness
knew no lassitude, and needed no repose. In play as in work, in physical
exercise as in mental labor, in all his projects, purposes and
performances, Dickens seems to have been in a perpetual state of tension
that allowed of no reaction. His was a mind not morbidly self-conscious,
but ever aglow with the consciousness of power and the ardor of its
achievement, in-sensible of waste and undisturbed by critical
introspection.

The excitement into which he was thrown by the composition of his books
exceeds anything of the kind recorded in literary history, and stands in
strong contrast with the self-contained tranquillity with which Scott
performed an equal or greater amount of labor. Yet it does not, like
similar ebullitions in other men, suggest any notion of weakness or of a
talent strained