470 Notices respecting New Books. 



any future discoveries will reveal to us a succession of planets in- 

 termediate to the eight major planets ; and certainly they present 

 us with any thing but a continuous series of bodies, either in size or 

 density. 



The author describes the miscellaneous papers as containing 

 " something of suggestion .... which may not be altogether useless." 

 He has therefore published them along with his better-known 

 essays as " a last legacy." He tells us, in words which disclose 

 something like regret, of his finding it "necessary to the well- 

 being of others " to relinquish science for law. "We may perhaps 

 be allowed to think that the interests of the community were well 

 consulted when he devoted to the law powers which his high profes- 

 sional position proves to have found in the law a congenial employ- 

 ment, and at all events to say that few men have made science their 

 sole pursuit, who in the evening of life can give so good an account 

 of their occupations as that contained in the present volume. Nor 

 can we forbear to add that Sir W\ Grove's eminence in other pur- 

 suits gives an almost judicial character to the opinion pronounced 

 in the following words, with which we must end our notice : — 

 "Little can be achieved in scientific research without an acquaint- 

 ance with it in youth ; you will rarely find an instance of a man 

 who has attained any eminence in science who has not commenced 

 its study at a very early period of life. Nothing, again, can tend 

 more to the promotion of science than the exertions of those who 

 have early acquired the fidos resulting from a scientific education. 

 I desire to make no complaint of the tardiness with which science 

 has been received at our public schools, and, with some excep- 

 tions, at our Universities. These great establishments have their 

 roots in historical periods ; and long time and patient endeavour are 

 requisite before a new branch of thought can be grafted with suc- 

 cess on a stem to which it is exotic. Nor should I ever wish to see 

 the study of languages, of history, of all those refined associations 

 which the past has transmitted to us, neglected; but there is 

 room for both. It is sad to see the number of so-called educated 

 men who, travelling by railway, voyaging by steamboat, consult- 

 ing the almanac for the time of sunrise or full moon, have not the 

 most elementary knowledge of a steam-engine, a barometer, or a 

 quadrant, and who will listen with a half- confessed faith to the 

 most idle predictions as to weather or cometic influences, while 

 they are in a state of crass ignorance as to the cause of the trade- 

 winds or the form of a comet's path. May we hope that the slight 

 infiltration of scientific studies, now happily commenced, will ex- 

 tend till it occupies its fair space in the education of the young, and 

 that those who may be able learnedly to discourse on the Eolic di- 

 gamma will not be ashamed of knowing the principles on which 

 the action of an air-pump, an electrical machine, or a telescope 

 depends, and will not, as Bacon complained of his contemporaries, 

 despise such knowledge as something mean and mechanical?" 

 (p. 184). 



