occur at sea, the daily observations for latitude and longitude not admitting the possibility of any material error in our actual place, and the ships being, in three instances out of four, either immoveably "beset" in the ice, or firmly attached to it, and therefore wholly independent of dead reckoning. 'Whether the circumstances I have above stated may have any reference to the well-known fact of the western shores of lands enjoying a climate considerably more temperate than the eastern ones in a corresponding latitue, I do not presume even to conjecture; nor indeed do I feel myself competent to offer any decided opinion as to the cause of the phenomena in question. Having stated the facts precisely as they have occurred to my notice, I shall only, therefore, add to these remarks by suggesting, for the consideration of others, whether such a tendency of the sea as that above noticed may not have some connexion with the motion of the earth on its axis.'-pp. 178, 179.

Another phenomenon which Captain Parry has more than once experienced in the polar regions, and which still remains to be explained, is the decrease of wind which invariably takes place in passing under the lee, not merely of a close and extensive body of high and heavy ice, but even of a stream of small pieces, so loose as almost to allow a ship to pass between them, and not one of them reaching a foot above the surface of the sea,' and this too without any perceptible change in the atmosphere at the time.

It affords us much gratificasion to find our intrepid navigator, at the close of his work, still as deeply impressed as ever with the practicability of effecting this long-desired passage, and still as ready as before to meet the dangers with which a fresh attempt may be attended.

"The question,' he observes, 'evidently rests nearly where it did before the equipment of the late expedition, and I have, therefore, little to offer respecting it, in addition to what I have already said at the close of my last narrative*. The views I then entertained on this subject, of the nature and practicability of the enterprise, of the means to be adopted, and the route to be pursued for its accomplishment, remain wholly unaltered at the present moment; except that some additional encouragement has been afforded by the favourable appearances of a navigable sea near the south-western extremity of Prince Regent's Inlet. To that point, therefore, I can, in the present state of our knowledge, have no hesitation in still recommending that any future attempt should be directed.

I feel confident that the undertaking, if it be deemed advisable at any future time to pursue it, will one day or other be accomplished; for, setting aside the accidents to which, from their very nature, such attempts must be liable, as well as other unfavourable circumstances which human foresight can never guard against, nor human power control, I cannot but believe it to be an enterprise well within the reasonable limits of practicability. It may be tried often, and often fail, for several favourable and fortunate circumstances must be combined for its accomplishment; but I believe, nevertheless, that it will ultimately be accomplished. That it is not to be undertaken lightly, nor without due attention to every precaution

* Pp. 487-491.

which past or future experience may suggest, our recent failures, under such advantages of equipment as no other expedition of any age or country ever before united, and we trust also our own endeavours to effect something worthy of so liberal an outfit, will at least serve to show. I am much mistaken, indeed, if the north-west passage ever becomes the business of a single summer; nay, I believe that nothing but a concurrence of very favourable circumstances is likely even to make a single winter in the ice sufficient for its accomplishment. But this is no argument against the possibility of final success; for we now know that a winter in the ice may be passed not only in safety, but in health and comfort. I would only, therefore, in conclusion, urge those who may at any future time be charged with this attempt, to omit no precaution that can in the slightest degree contribute to the strength of the ships, the duration of their resources, the wholesomeness and freshness of their provisions, the warmth, ventilation, and cleanliness of the inhabited apartments, and the comfort, cheerfulness, and moral discipline of their crews.

Happy as I should have considered myself in solving this interesting question, instead of still leaving it a matter of speculation and conjecture, happy shall I also be if any labours of mine, in the humble, though it would seem necessary office, of pioneer, should ultimately contribute to the success of some more fortunate individual; but most happy should I again be to be selected as that individual. May it still fall to England's lot to accomplish this undertaking, and may she ever continue to take the lead in enterprises intended to contribute to the advancement of science, and to promote, with her own, the welfare of mankind at large! Such enterprises, so disinterested as well as useful in their object, do honour to the country which undertakes them, even when they fail; they cannot but excite the admiration and respect of every liberal and cultivated mind; and the page of future history will undoubtedly record them as every way worthy of a powerful, a virtuous, and an enlightened nation.'-pp. 184—186.

It is hardly necessary to add, that Captain Hoppner, who, according to our maritime laws, was necessarily tried for the loss of the Fury by a court-martial on his arrival in England, was honourably acquitted. Indeed nothing was possible for man to effect which was not done to save the ship, so that the trial was rather an inquiry into the circumstances of the case than an accusation of that meritorious officer.

The appendix to the volume contains the usual abstract of the meteorological journal kept on board the Hecla, an account of the mean and daily rate of the chronometers on board, and several astronomical, botanical, zoological, and geological papers, which afford valuable contributions to our stock of science. The papers

on the magnetic needle are particularly interesting. We must add, that the plates and charts are all very creditably executed. The former appear to be engraved by Finden in his best style, from the masterly designs of Mr. Head, who was appointed to attend the expedition for the purpose.

70

ART. VIII. The Book of Nature. By John Mason Good, M.D., F.R.S. F. R.S.L., &c. 3 Vols. 8vo. 17. 168. Longman and Co. London. 1826.

WE presume that few of our readers will be able to form any precise notion of the contents of these volumes from the vague and indefinite title which Dr. Good has been pleased to prefix to them. The 'Book of Nature,' however, notwithstanding the affected quaintness of the term, is really a compilation of very considerable learning and value; and if its author had not already been favourably known to the philosophical world, the present publication would in itself establish the respectable reputation which he enjoys. When stripped of the universal pretension and needless conceit of its injudicious title, it may be described, in plain language, as containing the substance of three series of lectures on natural philosophy,—or physics, in the more enlarged sense of that word,-which Dr. Good read some years ago at the Surrey Institution.

As offering, in a popular and systematic compass, an ingenious survey of a great round of physical science, the work which has thus been composed is certainly the best philosophical digest of the kind which we have seen; and it is impossible to peruse it throughout without admiring the versatile ability, the various knowledge and learning, and, above all, the pious and humble application of both, which are exhibibited in the author's mind. Doubtless, in a succession of dissertations referring to so many and such diversified branches of science, his success is not every where equal; and his views are not always unclouded by error or prejudice. So, also, the space within which his lectures are necessarily confined is often insufficient for the multiplicity of his subjects; and this unavoidable inconvenience has consequently given a superficial air to some of his papers. But it would scarcely be fair to measure the author's ability by such partial results; for he has seldom enjoyed a free range for his powers; and every candid judge will remember, that the compiler of such treatises must be far more learned than his book. Dr. Good has not filled the compartments, much less exhausted the immeasurable materials of his theme; but he has compressed into his volumes a greater body of philosophy than is yet any where accessible to the general enquirer under the same easy and popular form.

To the language and style of Dr. Good's book, we are not disposed to offer any fastidious objections; but it must be confessed that the general tenor of both partakes too much of that loose and slovenly manner which lecturers in all countries and on all subjects seem to think themselves privileged to use. An opposite fault of more importance, since it involves a suspicion of corrupted taste, and might lay him open to much ridicule, is the ambitious effort to be brilliant at the termination of each discourse. This, too, looks like a touch of the theatrical art, to invite a full round of closing

applause from the fascinated auditory. The following may serve as one goodly specimen of pure taste and chaste metaphor !

To hunt down such vagaries would indeed be a thriftless employment; and I only mention them to show that philosophy has its dreams and romances as well as history or even poetry; and that the principles of physics are as liable to perversion as those of ethics. Philosophy is a pilgrim, for the most part, of honest heart, clear foresight, and unornamented dress and manners; the genuine bride to whom heaven has betrothed him is Reason, of celestial birth and spotless virginity; and the fair fruit of so holy a union is truth, virtue, sobriety, and order. But should ever the plain pilgrim play the truant, as unfortunately in the present corrupt state of things we have reason to fear has too frequently proved a fact, should ever Philosophy migrate from his proper hermitage, and in an hour of ebriety connect himself with the harlot Imagination, what can be the result of so unlicensed a dalliance but a spawn of monsters and miscreations; of hideous and unreal existences; of phantoms and will-o' the-wisps, equally abhorred by God and man; treacherously hanging up their dim wild-fire, in the pestilent bosom of mists and exhalations, and from their murky shades alluring the incautious enquirer to bogs, and sloughs, and quagmires of wreck and ruin?'-Vol. ii. pp. 206, 207.

As a companion to this rhapsody we shall only quote the following extravagant flight.

Why have not these monsters of the sky been appropriated to the use of man? How comes it that he who has subdued the ocean and cultivated the earth,-who has harnessed elephants, and even lions, to his chariot wheels, should never have availed himself of the wings of the eagle, the vulture, or the frigate pelican? That, having conquered the difficulty of ascending into the atmosphere, and ascertained the possibility of travelling at the rate of eighty miles an hour through its void regions, he should yet allow himself to be the mere sport of the whirlwind, and not tame to his use, and harness to his car, the winged strength of these aerial racers, and thus stamp with reality some of the boldest fictions of the heathen poets? The hint has indeed long been thrown out; and the perfection to which the art of falconry was carried in former times, sufficiently secures it against the charge of absurdity or extravagance.'-Vol. i. pp. 303, 304.

6

This is to mount a hobby with a vengeance, and returning, as he elsewhere declares of another speculation, (vol. iii. p. 187), to the prety prattle of the nursery,' to ride a cock horse to some purpose. But we gladly proclaim a truce with such trifling.

The first series of Dr. Good's lectures appropriately open with enquiries into the nature of matter, and the origin of the world around us; and he displays in these abstruse questions, which have mocked the wisdom of all ages, a sufficient acquaintance with the speculations of ancient and modern philosophers. He glances at the dogmas of the Grecian schools on the eternity of matter, and developes the various systems of Democritus, of Aristotle, Plato, and Epicurus; and he afterwards proceeds, with the genuine humility of a christian enquirer, to try the soundness of their theories by

such brief evidence as is to be found in the Mosaic history of the creation. It is indeed by a similar spirit, which cannot be too much applauded, that the whole course of his enquires, and the. formation of his opinions, are earnestly regulated; and it is this unvarying purpose to steer by the light of revelation, through enquiries that have too often betrayed the vain reasoner into scepticism and infidelity, which renders his book one of the safest that can be placed in the hands of young persons.

The whole of his second and third lectures on the elementary and constituent principles of bodies, is exceedingly ingenious and interesting. He has very well explained, and commented upon, the various hypotheses upon which the sages of antiquity endeavoured to account for the elementary constitution of matter: the systems of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus; and especially the Peripatetic and Atomic theories of the two latter. But we cannot admit his boast (p. 56) 'that he has dwelt upon them the rather, because, much as we still hear of them and find them. adverted to in books, he is not acquainted with any work whatever that gives anything like a clear and intelligible summary of their principles.' The opinions of the ancient philosophers on the nature of matter were certainly not previously to be found fully detailed in popular and elementary treatises of philosophy, and so far Dr. Good is right; but they are contained in Brucker's great work and even in Enfield's abridgement of it, and also in Dr. Geddes' notes to the early part of the Old Testament.

This portion of our author's lectures is followed up by a sketch of the speculations of the moderns in the same department of natural philosophy of Descartes, Newton, Locke, Leibnitz, Boscovich, &c. His two next lectures, the fourth and fifth, are ably employed in defining the properties of matter, essential and peculiar, in which he has chiefly followed the exposition of La Place. The sixth and seventh lectures are devoted to geology, and present us with as many of the first elements of that vast and disputable science as can possibly be taught in about two hours.

There is nothing that requires our observation in these geological lectures; though we may state that, after balancing the Huttonian and Wernerian theories, our author avowedly inclines to adhere to the latter from its general coincidence with the geology of the Scriptures;' and he proceeds to give, in connection with this opinion, a very ingenious and beautiful paraphrastic commentary (pp. 158170) on the Mosaic relation. That the Wernerian theory is less presumptuous and more carefully inductive than the Huttonian, less improbable and more consonant, as far as it goes, with the awful disclosures of revelation, we are ready to allow. But we think it must have been long since manifest to every impartial auditor of the controversy between the advocates for the paramount agency respectively of fire and water, that each party has brought forward abundance of evidence to overthrow the exclusive system