Dr Turner's Elements of Chemistry. 339 



capable of understanding their doctrines. The press literally teems with 

 treatises on natural philosophy and chemistry of all varieties of pretension, 

 some insinuating themselves by their evanescent size ; others by the num- 

 ber of letters which they can compress into a page ; others by the slight 

 demand which they make upon our pockets ; while a fourth class with a 

 magic wand points out to us short and royal roads through all the myste- 

 ries of science. The authors of these works are as various as their pre- 

 tensions : Some are ushered into the world without any acknowledging 

 parent ; others are hatched beneath the expanded wings of learned com- 

 mittees and associations ; and others are ornamented with the fictitious 

 names of clergymen and foreigners, — while all of them are the mere exuviae 

 of our own classical writers, prematurely detached by the instrumentality 

 of a pair of scissors. When the cultivators of letters erected their com- 

 munity into a republic, their sole care was to exclude a throne and a so- 

 vereign, but they unfortunately forgot to provide against the irruption of 

 the mob.* 



In making these observations, we trust it will not be supposed that we 

 are unfriendly to the extension of science among all classes of society. On 

 the contrary, our most ardent wish is, that knowledge should be as free as 

 the air which we breathe, for we believe it to be as salubrious : We wish 

 to see it glowing in the cottage, as well as dazzling on the throne, because 

 we know that it will render happier the tenant of the one, and the posses- 

 sor of the other : We wish to see it wherever there is a human form to re- 

 ceive it, and clasping in its wide and gentle embrace our universal spe- 

 cies, because we know that it will be the precursor of those nobler truths, 

 to which it is but the handmaid ; and that it is essential to the develope- 

 ment of that spiritual nature which must always be viewed as our highest 

 and latest attainment. 



The knowledge, however, which can produce such effects is very differ- 

 ent from that with which we are now so copiously supplied. It must be 

 elaborated by genius, — it must be refined by taste and sentiment, — it must 

 be exalted by piety, — and it must be administered to us by men of edu- 

 cation and experience. We have no objections to be instructed by the mul- 

 titude in the useful arts — in that which they have studied and practised ; 

 but we protest against their becoming our teachers in what they do not 

 know, and what they can never comprehend — the refinements and appli- 

 cations of science. We do not object to their acquiring all that they can; 

 but we demur against their returning it again to us. Let them study po- 

 litical economy, since they choose it, or medicine, or even controversial 

 theology ; but God forbid that they should either legislate for us, or bleed 

 us, or preach to us. 



Under impressions like these it is most agreeable to see an elementary 

 work on one of the most important of the sciences, from the pen of a gen- 



* Opinions, analogous to these, have been given in able reviews of some of the 

 works above referred to in the Journal of the Royal Institution, the Annals of Phi- 

 losophy, and the Dublin Philosophical Journal ; and we believe there is only one 

 opinion on the subject among all well educated men of science. 



