Monthly Review of Literature, 



198 



revolt of the Bees from the good old govern- 

 ment of their ancestors. The existence, or 

 the possibility of .such a society was scouted 

 it was unintelligible it was fantastic it 

 was ideal, and all the while it was, never- 

 theless, the very institution from which the 

 Bees had revolted. 



Every expedient failed, and a civil war 

 ensued, ol'the most deadly kind poor against 

 rich. And now suddenly to the contending 

 armies appeared an awful vision of Allan 

 Ramsay, whose happy valley between the 

 ridges of the Pentland Hills, had been the 

 scene of the Bee Society, and now of their 

 ware. The spirit of the poet undertakes to 

 cure all ills, and exhibits to their wondering 

 gaze the very society announced by the Bee 

 Owen ; and the rest of the book is occupied 

 in tracing the marvels of the new establish- 

 ment which new establishment, reader, 

 proves to be the co-operative one a reali- 

 zation, in short, of Mr. Owen's reveries on a 

 most magnificent, luxurious, enchanting, ir- 

 resistible scale. The object of the book, 

 then, is to contrast the vices of existing so- 

 ciety the competitive system, as it is, not 

 unaptly, termed, with the corrections and 

 virtues of the " new view" the co-ope- 

 rative system ; but this object is pursued in 

 a style of childish romance exhibiting the 

 effects of the system in an incompatible 

 union of passionless equanimity, and vo- 

 luptuous elegance fitted only to make ab- 

 surdity more absurd. 



That the vices of society are rapidly mul- 

 tiplying by inequalities of properly and se- 

 parations of ranks, cannot for one moment 

 be doubted ; nor can it be doubted by any 

 unbiassed person, that these inequalities are 

 augmenting by the acts ol'the legislature 

 the members looking mainly to their own 

 interests or that the economists are playing 

 blindly, or designedly, into the hands of 

 the great ; but that any removal of the real 

 evils of society can be accomplished by the 

 institution, general or partial, of co-ope- 

 rative societies ; or any good effected by 

 inculcating the belief that society could by 

 possibility be cut down into thousands of 

 little independent coteries, and all made to 

 act alike, as if men were made of pasteboard 

 instead of passion, and as if all were born 

 alike, instead of no two being so every 

 atom of experience warring against the 

 nonsense the very supposition of these 

 things, we say, proves the persons enter- 

 taining such puerilities neither know them- 

 selves, nor their fellows neither the stuff of 

 which society is made, nor the actual con- 

 dition of it. 



But it is not worth while to warm upon 

 it, and if we speak sharply of the book, 

 it is with reference to the pretended utility 

 O f itfor we believe the writer serious. He 

 is, we doubt not, a man of excellent feeling, 

 and obviously a person of no mean culti- 

 vationa man prompted by the sympathies 

 of his nature to deplore the evils of life, but 

 not destined to alleviate them. The writing 



[FEB. 



is carefully polished ; and through the whole 

 there runs, nevertheless, a sleepy slow- 

 winding flow, not unsuited, it may be 

 said, to the visionariness of the subject. 



Let the reader contemplate the beautiful 

 vignette in the title-page, drawn by Corbould, 

 and engraved by Wallis ; it is worth the 

 whole volume ten times over. 



The Fluximial Calculus : an elementary 

 Treatise, designed for the Students of the 

 Universities, and for those who desire to be 

 acquainted with the Principles of Analysis ; 

 by Thomas Jephson, B.D. Baldwin, London. 

 Partly from the effect of ancient preju- 

 dice, and partly from the want of elementary 

 books in our own language on the subject, 

 analytical science hus only of late been suc- 

 cessfully cultivated in this country. But, as 

 if during her protracted torpor from the 

 death of Newton, the genius of England had 

 been collecting strength for such an effort, 

 she at once attained a proud pre-eminence ; 

 and our philosophers do not yield to those of 

 the continent in the extent of their researches, 

 or in their ability in conducting them. Now 

 on no subject of human learning is a per- 

 fectly clear perception of first principles so 

 indispensable as in the mathematics ; and an 

 elementary work on any of the branches of 

 them requires not only clearness of demon- 

 stration and perspicuity of expression, but to 

 be as far as possible independent of every 

 other one, and complete in itself this is not 

 the case with Mr.Jephson's treatise, pre- 

 tending to require in "the student merely a 

 little previous knowledge in algebra and 

 geometry ; it is, in fact, unintelligible except 

 to those well versed in there sciences, while 

 the generally obscure and frequently equivo- 

 cal manner in which the author expresses 

 himself, renders his work unfit for a beginner 

 in the science of which it professes to treat. 

 Now, yielding Mr. Jephson full credit for a 

 perfect acquaintance with his subject, though 

 the value attached by him to the infinitesimal 

 method of Leibuitz, affording at best but a 

 compensation of errors, is almost unaccount- 

 able, we conceive that the sole purpose to 

 which his book can be applied is, to serve as 

 a magazine of the abstruse but useless ques- 

 tions which form so prominent a part of an 

 academical examination. For a thorough 

 knowledge of the calculus, as well as an ele- 

 mentary one, recourse must be had to the 

 work of Mr. Lardner, by far the best tbut 

 has appeared on the subject since analysis has 

 attracted the English mathematicians, who, 

 we may reflect with pride, have sedulously 

 avoided the error so prevalent on the conti- 

 nent, of rendering analysis a substitute for 

 geometry, instead of its assistant ; and have 

 not been misled by the illusion that a cnl- 

 culus can elicit new principles, and is not 

 confined to facilitating the combination of 

 those which already exist. 



Euclid's Elements of Geometry ; contain- 

 ing the whole twelve books': translated into 

 English from the edition of Peyvard. To 



