358 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



de frais ombrages sous lesquels dansent de jeunes filles qui donneraient des 

 regrets a Raphael. Le premier age est charmant partout. II est ravissant en 

 Angleterre. C?est t.resque une rarete qu'une beaut 6 mediocre au-dessous de 

 seize ans." 



A great recommendation to the work is the addition of explanatory notes, 

 to which reference is made when any word or idiom occurs not ordinarily 

 familiar to the student. 



A TREATISE ON HEAT. CABINET CYCLOPAEDIA. VOL. 39. BY DR. LARD- 

 NER. LONGMAN AND Co. LONDON, 1833. 



THIS is the monthly volume of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, conducted by Dr. 

 Lardner and his scientific assistants, and we feel assured that no preceding 

 number of this popular and truly valuable work has presented so great a 

 body of information or greater beauties of composition than this Treatise 

 upon Heat. 



The work opens with a preface of very remarkable splendour of language 

 add sentiment. " Why," says the learned author, speaking of heat, " why 

 resort to the observations of the astronomer, or the laboratory of the chemist, 

 for examples of a principle which is in never ceasing operation around us ? 

 Sleeping or waking at home or abroad by night or by day at rest or in 

 motion in country or in town traversing the burning limits of the tropics, 

 or exploring the rigours of the pole we are ever under its influence. We 

 are at once its slaves and its masters. 



" We are its slaves. Without it we cannot for a moment live. It rules 

 our pleasures and our pains it lays us upon the bed of sickness and raises 

 us from it. It is our disease and our physician. In the ardour of summer 

 we languish under its excess, and in the rigours of winter we shiver under 

 its defect. Does it accumulate around us in undue quantity ? we burn with 

 fever. Does it depart from us with unwonted rapidity ? we shake with ague, 

 and writhe under the pangs of rheumatism and the host of maladies which 

 it leaves behind upon quitting us. 



" We are its masters. We subdue it to our will, and dispose it to our 

 purposes. Amidst arctic snows we confine it around our persons, and pre- 

 vent its escape by a clothing impervious to it. Under a tropical sun we ex- 

 clude it by like means. Do we traverse the sea? it lends wings to the ship, 

 and bids defiance to those natural opponents the winds and the tides. Do 

 we traverse the land ? it is harnessed to the chariot, and we outstrip the 

 flight of the swiftest bird, and equal the fury of the tempest." 



The work is a well-digested history of the properties, uses, forms, and 

 combinations of the great vital principle; containing a vast body of infor- 

 mation as to its application to the useful arts and manufactures. Upon the 

 subject of gasses, however, we regret to perceive that the work is not very 

 ample or conclusive. Thus we are informed that the temperature of the in- 

 flammable gasses has never yet been satisfactorily determined, though the 

 application of hydrogen gas to the purposes of cooking, and the great ad- 

 vantages which, in a national point of view, may result from its general sub- 

 stitution for mineral coal in its rough state, renders the subject one of 

 extreme importance. Accordingly, we should think it a useful suggestion to 

 the learned author of the work, that a set of experiments in continuation of 

 those of DeLaJBorde and Barard, would be a most desirable favour conferred 

 upon the scientific and commercial world. 



In addition to the other attractions of the work, it is embellished with a 

 very beautiful plate from the burin of Findeu, and numberless figures of 

 scientific apparatus scattered through the volume. We think it assuredly 

 the most entertaining and important of the whole series of the Cabinet Cy- 

 clopaedia ; and we trust that an increasing popularity will repay the learned 



