414 



MODE OF ARRANGEMENT, 



Abstract 

 fjieculations. 



Fnn'.ts o: 

 system. 



CHAPTER and of too abstract a character, to be readily reducible to 



a popular form. They are, moreover, advanced, in his 



most extensive works, in a form which adds considerably 

 to the difficulty of the ordinary student in attempting 

 to master them. A want of method has, indeed, been 

 complained of in all his works, pertaininc^ not to the ac- 

 curacy of his scientific observations, but to the absence 

 of any well defined system in their arrangement. Other 

 difficulties occur to the student who seeks to master liis 

 discoveries in the form in which they were originally 

 presented. One of the most practical of these is thus 

 referred to by Dr. Alison: "Akin to this is another 

 fault of a more irremediable kind, as it originates in the 

 varied excellences of the author, and the vast store of in- 

 formation on many different subjects which lie brings to 

 bear on the subject of his travels. He has so many 

 topics of which he is master himself, that he forgets with 

 how few, comparatively, his readers are familiar ; he 

 sees so many objects of inquiry — physical, moral, and 

 political — in the countries which he visits, that he be- 

 comes insensible to the fact that, though each probably 

 possesses a certain degree of interest to each reader, yet 

 it is scarcely possible to find one to whom, as to himself, 

 they are all alike the object of eager solicitude and 

 anxious investigation. Hence, notwithstanding his 

 attempt to detach his Personal Narrative from the 

 learned works which contain the result of his scientific 

 researches, he has by no means succeeded in effecting 

 their separation. The ordinary reader, who has been 

 fascinated by liis glowing description of trojjical scenery, 

 or his graphic picture of savage manners, is, a few pages 

 on, chilled by disquisitions on the height of the baro- 

 meter, the disc of the sun, or the electricity of the 

 atmosphere ; while the scientific student, who turns to 

 Jiis works for information on his favourite objects of 

 study, deems them strangely interspersed with rhap- 

 sodies on glowing sunsets, silent forests, and sounding 

 cataracts. It is scarcely possible to find a reader to 



Cnattractive 

 Biibjtcts. 



