e and influence.

The first practical problem which confronts the intending historian of
an ideal, social, or political community is to determine the locality
in which it shall be placed. It may have no geographical limitations,
like Plato's "Republic," or Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia." Swift, in
his "Gulliver's Travels," appropriated the islands of the then unknown
seas, and the late Mr. Percy Greg boldly steered into space and
located a brilliant romance on the planet Mars. Mr. Haggard has placed
the scene of his romance "She" in the unexplored interior of Africa.
After all, if imagination be our fellow-traveller, we might well
discover El Dorados within easy reach of our own townships.

Other writers, like Ignatius Donnelly and Edward Bellamy, have solved
the problem by anticipating the future. Anything will do, so that it
be well done. The real question is as to the writer's ability to
interest his readers with supposed experiences that may develop mind
and heart almost as well as if real.

"The Goddess of Atvatabar," like the works already mentioned, is a
production of imagination and sentiment, the scene of action being
laid in the interior of the earth. It is true that the notion has
heretofore existed that the earth might be a hollow sphere. The early
geologists had a theory that the earth was a hollow globe, the shell
being no thicker in proportion to its size than that of an egg. This
idea was revived by Captain Symmes, with the addition of polar
openings. Jules Verne takes his readers, in one of his romances, to
the interior of a volcano, and Bulwer, in his "Coming Race," has
constructed a world of underground caverns. Mr. Bradshaw, however, has
swept aside each and all of these preliminary explorations, and has
kindled the fires of an interior sun, revealing an interior world of
striking magnificence. In view of the fact that we live on an exterior
world, lit by an exterior sun, he has supposed the possibility of
similar interior conditions, and the crudity of all former conceptions
of a hollow earth will be made vividly apparent to the reader of the
present volume. "The Goddess of Atvatabar" paints a picture of a new
world, and the author must be credited with an original conception. He
has written out of his own heart and brain, without reference to or
dependence upon the imaginings of others, and it is within the truth
to say that in boldness of design, in wealth and ingenuity of detail,
and in lofty p