164 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



ble and systematic ; his deductions assume all the force of reason 

 and conviction ; and mysticism is a cloak which he disdains to use as 

 a covering for imperfect knowledge and untenable positions. 



The impression w T hich the natural and uneducated mind re- 

 ceives from the loveliest landscape-scenes of nature is but a dull suc- 

 cession of beginnings and endings ; and the life of man mingles 

 with the feeling, and deepens the anguish of the whole. Hence it 

 is that they who inhabit the most lovely places in nature are gene- 

 rally the most dead to the sensibility of natural beauties, and they 

 who tenant the sublime parts of the earth, for the most part, have 

 no perception of sublimity. Either the actual observation of man- 

 kind, or the careful study of their authenticated history, will esta- 

 blish the truth of these remarks, and tend to prove that, in order 

 to bring home nature to the mind with that full effect which shall 

 arouse and devote it to the proper consideration of the immensity and 

 the goodness of Nature's Author, and the great bounty which He 

 has graciously bestowed on man in his works, there must mingle 

 with the thought some element which has less of the heaviness of 

 the dust about it, and suggests more forcibly the idea of motion 

 which never ceases — of life that shall never die. Some such feel- 

 ing as this necessarily arises from the contemplation both of the at- 

 mospheric air and of the heavenly bodies ; and a very little reflec- 

 tion will shew that the sea is eminently calculated to produce this 

 effect. It is a substance palpable to observation in all states ; and 

 while it is in continual motion and action, it possesses in itself such 

 a power of returning to its general and average state, that, though 

 it is ever active, it is never fatigued — though it is ever changing, 

 there is no stamp of age upon it, but at all times it appears as young 

 and fresh as it could have done at the moment of its creation. 



Mr. Mudie has selected a few of those characters of the sea, taken 

 simply as a subject of contemplation, which are best suited for prov- 

 ing that in such a study there is an abundant harvest to be reaped, 

 which is alike rich in instruction, in pleasure, and in practical useful- 

 ness. He has endeavoured, and very successfully, to estimate the 

 quantity, and point out the composition of the sea, in such a man- 

 ner as to demonstrate the knowledge of its capacities as an element, 

 both in respect to its great quantity of matter and to the peculiar 

 powers with which this matter is endowed. In his brief outline of 

 the distribution of the ocean waters, he refers the examiner to the 

 map for the filling up of this sketch, with which, and a due inspec- 

 tion of the works of the best voyagers, he maintains a course of read- 

 ing will be found, and a volume of knowledge acquired, which will 

 be most gratifying in its results. The author has also entered very 

 copiously into the motion and action of the ocean, and espe- 

 cially into the phenomena of the tides, both as they are primarily 

 produced and modified by the attractive influences and varying an- 

 gular distances of the sun and the moon ; and in the secondary mo- 

 difications, as depending upon the distribution of sea and land, of 

 the characters of the bed of the former, and the coasts of the latter. 



