1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



sas 



ings and constant indignities reached his own 

 country. The volumes add considerably to 

 our knowledge of Central Africa though 

 the absence of geographical precision is a sad 

 drawback. Of the 4,500 miles he traversed, 

 3,000 were almost untrodden ground. 



Family Library, vol. 12. Southey' l s Life 

 of 'Nelson, 1830. Mr. Southey's well-known 

 and spirited piece of biography perhaps the 

 very best of his prose performances is, we 

 believe, trusting to our recollections of it, 

 1 here simply reprinted. Though very largely 

 read, the cheapness of the present form will 

 cause it to be still more generally perused ; 

 and this is the advantage of cheap publishing, 

 for which we are indebted mainly to Mr. 

 Murray, whose example some have already 

 followed, and more will speedily do so. Of 

 course the bookseller calculates on gaining 

 at least as much as by the old and more ex- 

 pensive form ; but Murray has the merit, 

 notwithstanding a political, if not a per- 

 sonal one of breaking in upon an odious 

 monopoly. There still survive numbers who 

 would gladly confine all printing to costly 

 quartos. Nelson's dislike of the French rose 

 to thorough hatred and passion ; and Mr. 

 Southey could not, without so far detracting 

 from the full and fair view of his hero, 

 withhold altogether his coarse and revolting 

 phraseology when giving vent to the feeling ; 

 but while recording it, he might surely have 

 conveyed some disapprobation, if it had been 

 but a word. At all events there could be 

 no necessity for repeating Trowbridge's dis- 

 gusting Billingsgate. In his last moments 

 Nelson commanded the fleet to anchor ; and 

 Mr. Southey, in the former editions, in re- 

 cording the order, adds, " unhappily it -was not 

 attended 0," implying thus some censure of 

 his successor. Lord Collingwood's " Letters" 

 show the impossibility of executing this order, 

 and Mr. Southey, with a handsome and de- 

 served compliment to that publication, with- 

 draws the offensive expression. 



Cabinet Cyclopaedia, vol. 5; Mechanics 



This is the first of the scientific treatises ; and 

 we find it, on the slight glance we have been 

 able to give it, admirable in development 

 and clear in principle, and especially felicitous 

 in illustration from familiar subjects. An 

 attempt is made to exclude mathematical 

 symbols and technical phrases; and of course 

 awkward circumlocutions, if nothing worse, 

 occur, which might show its futility and un- 

 advisedncss. The truth is, such symbols and 

 phrases, used moderately, contribute mate- 

 rially to direct communication, and fix defi- 

 nite conceptions more deeply and firmly than 

 the vague and unspecific terms of colloquial 

 language. Nothing but a very slender ac- 

 quaintance with algebraic expression is re- 

 quisite ; and those who will not qualify by 

 acquiring this previous knowledge are pre- 

 cisely the persons who will make no use of 



books of this kind; they are people who turn 

 away from abstractions, whose minds are 

 wholly alien from science. It is superfluous 

 to provide for wants which they have not. 

 Take a specimen of what Dr. Lardner evi- 

 dently considers as a sort of chef-d'oeuvre, for 

 the dexterity with which he at once uses and 

 abuses technicality. He is talking of the de- 

 scent of heavy bodies. 



" The use of a few mathematical characters 

 will render these results more distinct, even 

 to students not conversant with mathematical 

 science. Let S express the height from 

 which the body falls, V the final velocity, 

 and T the time of the fall, and let the square 

 of any of these quantities, or rather of their 

 numerical expressions, be signified by placing 

 the figure 2 over them thus T' 2 or V 2 . The 

 sign X between two numbers signifies that 

 they are to be multiplied together. These 

 being premised, the results of the reasoning 

 in which we have just been engaged may be 

 expressed as follows : 



V increases proportionally with T (') 



S VxT (*) 



S T* (3) 



The theorems (3) and (4) follow from (') and 

 ( 2 ) ; for, since by ( J ) T is proportional to V, 

 it may be put for V in (*), and by this sub- 

 stitution VxT becomes T X T or T 2 . In 

 the same manner, and for the same reason, 

 V may be put for T, by which VxT becomes 

 VxVorV,"&c. 



Now, surely, an acquaintance with these 

 common symbols might have, very safely, 

 been supposed, or if not, more, much more 

 preliminary statement was requisite. Con- 

 fident we are, no person who has not alge- 

 braically considered the subject of " propor- 

 tion" and " variation" will understand the 

 ground of the "substitution." 



The volume is the production of Captain 

 Kater and Dr. Lardner. The editor mo- 

 destly gives his coadjutor precedence; but 

 the whole is Dr. Lardner's, except the chapter 

 on balances and pendulums. Captain Kater 

 is known to have made the pendulum his 

 particular study, but we doubt if he has been 

 equally successful with his colleague in his 

 popular communications. 



Manners of the Day, Svols. 12mo. 1830. 

 The manners of the very, very great, of 

 course, is all that is meant. The novel is 

 strictly a. fashionable one one, that is, which 

 professes to describe the conduct, tastes, and 

 sentiments of some five hundred persons, 

 more or less, about whom and whose u ways" 

 the world of novel readers are all agog, and 

 almost horn-mad. Where the appetite is so 

 furious, however perverted, there will be 

 found persons to minister to its perversions ; 

 and though none of the five hundred will 

 themselves communicate with the profanum 

 vulgus, numbers of necessity come occasion- 



