316 HUMBOLDT'S COSMOS : 



tiously with a work which comes out under the auspices of a 

 great name, we cannot refrain from repeating our conviction 

 that it is embarrassed by a title of needless abstraction that 

 the principle and plan of execution have never been clearly 

 denned and that the publication by instalments has led to 

 a repetition and disproportion of parts, in what professes to 

 be a simple and connected whole.* The attempt, in fact, is 

 one above the power of present fulfilment; and peculiarly 

 inappropriate at a time when physical science is every year 

 changing its aspects and enlarging its dominion. There is 

 value, indeed, in every work which clearly expounds the 

 stages of this progress, or so associates them as to suggest 

 new objects of enquiry. But, out of the domain of mathe- 

 matical methods, nothing must yet be regarded as certain or 

 complete; and the Cosmos of Humboldt, in assuming a 

 character which even he fails to realise, involves both omis- 

 sions and redundancies, which in the fairest spirit of criticism 

 it is impossible not to recognise and regret. 

 !. Proceeding now to analyse these two volumes in detail, we 

 find the first part directed to the consideration of the ' In- 

 citements to the Study of Nature ; ' and distributed under the 

 three heads of * Poetic Descriptions of Nature,' ( Landscape 

 Painting,' and ( Culture of Characteristic Exotic Plants.' 

 This disquisition if indeed admissible at all into a physical 

 description of the Universe is strangely placed between 



* Without incurring any charge of national partiality, we may be allowed to 

 refer here to the volume of our distinguished countrywoman, Mrs. Somerville, 

 ' On the Connection of the Physical Sciences,' as including, under a lucid 

 arrangement, all the essential parts of the Cosmos. Her title is less as- 

 suming ; but it embodies a much clearer and more important conception ; that 

 mutual relation and inter-dependence of the sciences, the knowledge of which is 

 the highest end and aim of physical philosophy. The comparison of this work 

 with that of M. Humboldt offers certain contrasts, curiously expressing the 

 intellectual differences which produce them ; the more curiously, because these 

 differences are not such as might be looked for from the respective sex of the 

 writers. 



