214 Notices respecting New Books. 



those motives of encouragement which could have led an accomplished 

 mind, for so long a period, to devote its best energies to an inquiry, 

 which by the greater part of mankind is looked upon in a pre-eminent 

 degree as most tedious and uninviting. The English people too, with 

 a feeling almost peculiar to themselves, regard all statistical inquiries 

 with a singularly jealous eye ; and the sight of a parish officer at the 

 door is apt to awaken all the disagreeable feelings connected with tax- 

 ation and tithes. Nor is the parochial overseer himself a willing agent 

 in any undertaking of the sort; since he shrewdly suspects, notwith- 

 standing the clear and explicit nature of the instructions he receives, 

 that the Government may have some dark and mysterious purposes 

 in reserve, for wishing so exactly to know the precise amount of 

 males above twenty years of age, — what houses are inhabited and 

 building, how many are unoccupied, or inhabited only by " the spider 

 and the owl "; — how many labourers are employed in the quiet and 

 tranquil pursuits of agriculture; — how the different grades of the whole 

 living community of man are distributed throughout the great social 

 edifice, — and what are the measures of the great springs of human 

 activity ; — all these he thinks are wanted in order that future ministers 

 may draw from them the sinews and materiel of war. 



With the great amount of these difficulties and prejudices, drawn 

 together from the Orkneys to the Land's End, and in all the intensity 

 and extent of the varied feelings which can possibly influence a busy 

 and inquiring community like that which peoples the soil of Great 

 Britain, Mr. Rickman must have had to contend, during the long 

 course of years in which he has been following up, in all their gene- 

 rality, the tedious and varied details of this complicated inquiry ; and 

 return after return must have been sent back for correction into the 

 Wapentakes of York, the Rapes of Sussex, or the Hundreds of Devon, 

 before accuracy was completely obtained ; nor have our own Scottish 

 schoolmasters been entirely exempted from the very grave charge of 

 carelessness and blunder. Now where, it may be asked, can a mind 

 fitted by nature to grapple with higher and far loftier pursuits, seek 

 for its proper reward when pursuing a subject of this nature, but in 

 the elevated consciousness of devoting its energies to its country's 

 good ? The philosopher who loves to dwell on causes and efl^ects, — 

 to trace the deep processes of thought by which the great purposes of 

 nature have been revealed, both in the heavens above, and in the phy- 

 sical structure of the earth on which he treads ; — or who endeavours to 

 deduce from incongruous masses of figures results closely interwoven 

 with the social destiny of man, and the mysterious laws which seem to 

 regulate his progression here, — cannot undervalue labours like these. 

 He will appreciate, and that highly, that ardent and profound devotion 

 to one inquiry, which has disclosed during the lapse of thirty eventful 

 years so many beautiful and important results, tending to illustrate 

 more perfectly the statistics of his own great country. He will mark 

 also with peculiar satisfaction, — and he will not fail, in the deep and 

 durable feelings of his heart, to congratulate Mr. Rickman upon 

 the fact, — how each succeeding census has become more accurate 

 than its predecessor ; and what high prob'^.bililies have been opened 

 of our eventually obtaining a grecit^r and far more accurate body of 



