130 Remarks on Dr. Enfield's Institutes 



tical application, — these names, we say, scarcely once occur 

 in a work which embraces nearly the whole extent of the 

 philosophical studies in our systems of liberal education. — - 

 We are aware that the best selection of topics for such a 

 a work must often be a delicate task ; and that there will be 

 room for differences of taste and opinion concerning it. Not 

 every thing that is highly valuable will on this account be 

 admissible. Many of those details which are of high 

 importance in their applications to practice may possess 

 none of that elegance which would attract the attention of 

 the general scholar; and many investigations which com- 

 bine elegance with utihty may be inaccessible to him, from 

 involving mathematical principles with which he is not fa- 

 miliai-ized, or requiring an extent of discussion to render 

 them at all intelligible which would be inconsistent with the 

 claims of his other pursuits. Among the great variety of 

 theorems and principles which belong to the different branch- 

 es of Natural Philosophy, our own choice, in making a se- 

 lection for an elementary w^ork, would be determined by the 

 following requisites. 1. The theorem should possess, in a 

 purely mathematical point of view, a good degree of ele- 

 gance. 2. It should admit of satisfactory proof, either ex- 

 perimental or demonstrative : — if the latter, it should be 

 such as to exercise without fatiguing the learner, and should 

 as seldom as possible require a series of lemmas, or merely 

 subsidiary propositions. 3. It should be very nearly, if not 

 accurately conformable with fact, — or if otherwise, the mod- 

 ifications demanded by experiment should be capable of a 

 neat and simple explanation. 4. It should have some per- 

 ceptible bearing on what is practically useful, — or at least 

 form a link in a chain of investigations which terminates in 

 some practical result. 



If tried by the foregoing tests, the contents of Enfield's 

 Philosophy will be found extremely defective. We have 

 no hesitation in asserting that a work of the same size with 

 this, in which the selection was judiciously made, wouM 

 not have more than half its contents, in any form, common 

 with it, — and that, (vvithout increasing the difficulties or di- 

 minishing the interest of the study, by crowding in a multi- 

 tude of naked results unaccompanied by the necessary il- 

 lustrations,) it might be made to comprise more than twice 

 the amount of valuable facts and principles. To substan- 



