THEOLOGY.

Extracts from the Religious Works of Francois Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray. Translated from the Original French. By Miss Marshall.

8vo. 10s. bds.

Sacred Hours; chiefly designed to illus

trate the Offices and Doctrines of the Church of England. By J. Grant, M. D. 12mo. 7s.

Part 1. and 2, Price 5s. each, or the first $ Numbers, 1s. 3d. each, of the Reformers Bible, comprising the Old and New Testaments, with Notes, Marginal References, and Plates. The Notes on the Old Testa ment, by the learned and pious Reformers, Coverdale, Goodman, Gilby, Whittingham, Sampson, Cole, &c. Those on the New Testament, by the learned and venerable Theodore Beza. The whole printed by authority at the Time of the Reformation. This work will be comprised in one quarto volume, and completed within a year. It will be published in Weekly numbers, price 1s. 3d. each, and in Monthly parts, price 5s. each. The former will be ready for delivery every Saturday, and the latter on the first of each month. It will be elegant ly printed on fine demy paper; with a type east expressly for it. A small number of copies will be printed in a very superior manner on Royal Paper, with which the arliest impressions of the Plates will be given. This Edition will be published in monthly parts only, price 8s. each The Engravings (not less than 25 in number) will be executed in the very best manner; and each will be designed from some prominent subject in the Book to which it respectively belongs. It is calculated that the whole will be comprised in forty-four, numbers, or in eleven Parts. To accommodate those persons who are desirous of possessing the Apocrypha, printed uniform with this edition of the Holy Bible, some copies will be ready for delivery at the completion of the Book. This will forth an additional part, the purchase of which will

be entirely at the option of the Subscribers.

A Series of Letters, By the Rev. J. Newton, Rector of St. Mary, Woolnoth, to the Rev. J. Campbell, while residing in Scotland. 12mo. 3s. 6d.

Dr. Williams's Collection of Hymns for Public Worship, a new Edition 4s. bound. Maurice's Social Religion; a new Edition 12mo. 4s.

The Christian Pastor: a Poem. In three Books. Price 5s, extra boards.

Village Dialogues. By the Rev. Row Jand Hill. The sixth Edition. 2 vols. 12mo 10s. boards.

A Collection of Hymns for Public Wor ship By the Rev. Dr. Williams and Rev. Boden. Price 4s. bound.

/TOPOGRAPHY.

The Description of Britain: translated from Richard of Cirencester. With the original Treatise De Situ Britanniæ; and a Commentary on the Itinerary. Illustrated by Maps. 8vo. 18s. A few copies on Royal Paper, Price 11. 168:

Londina Illustrata, or a Collection of Plates, consisting of Engravings, from original Paintings and Drawings, and Facsimile Copies of Scarce Prints, displaying, the s State of the Metropolis, from the reign of Elizabeth to the Revolution. Part I. 15 plates, 4to. 1}. 12s.

Letters from Canada, written during a Residence there, in the years 1806, 1807; and 1808; shewing the Present State of Canada, its-Productions, Trade, Commercial Importance, and Political Relations. Illustrative of the Laws, the Manners of the People, and the Peculiarities of the Country and Climate. Exhibiting also, the Commercial Importance of Nova Scotia, New, Brunswick, and Cape Breton, and their increasing Ability, in Conjunction with Canada, to furnish the necessary Supplies of Lumber and Provisions to our West-India Islands. By Hugh Gray. Illustrated by a Map. 8vo. 129.

THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

For OCTOBER, 1809.

.

Art. I. The System of the World. By P. S. Laplace, Member of the National Institute of France. Translated from the French by J. Pond, F. R. S. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. xii. 706. Price 7. R. Phillips. 1809.

TO give general readers a familiar view of an abstruse sci

entific subject, is far from an easy task. The class of men who usually undertake it, are most of all unfit. They read works of science, not for instruction or delight, not because they wish to comprehend the whole or the parts of a subject, or have any peculiar turn for cultivating it; but because they must write: read till their memories are loaded to the utmost, and then sit down to unburden themselves by writing a book,-in which you are sure to find them superabundant in illustration where the topic carries its own evidence, while they run over a dark and intricate branch of the discussion with the rapidity of timid children through a gloomy churchyard, and leave the reader to get out of his difficulty as he can. Authors of this class are now very numerous in England; and indeed, to give Sir Richard Phillips his due, it is but fair to state that he has done more to en courage them than any other individual, and has consequently a pretty well fed and well clothed tribe of them constantly in his service. Another class of popular writers on abstruse subjects comprises those who have an extensive and correct, if not a profound, acquaintance with the science on which they treat; who can explore its dark paths, and penetrate its difficulties; who have considerable attainments, though perhaps little invention; and are distinguished for their knowledge, taste, and judgement, though not for their genius. This class is far less numerous than the former; though their labours are incomparably more useful. The knowledge they have acquired does not float loosely in their minds, so as easily to evaporate; nor is it lodged so deeply, as to be drawn up with difficulty. It is stored up for use, and it is ready for use. Authors of this description,

VOL. V. PART II.

3 U

remembering the comparative lights and obscurities, facilities and obstructions, that marked their own progress in the science, are not very likely to leave the student to grope in the dark, or to withhold from him the assistance of correct and definite illustration where it may be most needed. Unfortunately, there are fewer writers of this class on the science of astronomy, than on any other we recollect. Only two, perhaps, have an unexceptionable title to be included in it; Bonnycastle in England, and Biot in France. The works of Keill, Lacaille, Gregory, and Vince, though useful in their kind and degree, are too theoretic to come under the same denomination. Advancing considerably higher, we reach the class, to which the author of the treatise before us is so distinguished an ornament. It is constituted of the men of real genius, who have been enabled to make discoveries that would not disgrace angelic intelligences, but who, with a most laudable condescension, are endeavouring to bring the results, and indeed the nature of those discoveries, within the comprehension of ordinary students. In this class we may also place Newton, Euler, D'Alembert, and Lagrange; some of whose works are, strictly speaking, of the popular, familiar kind, and evince that they can stoop as well as soar--stoop, to augment the knowledge of others, and multiply their inlets to happiness;-soar, to make new dis coveries for themselves, and obtain a delight unknown to all but men of genius, and only to be excelled here by the joys imparted to good men in communion with God, If writers of this class do not generally succeed according to their wishes, it is, partly because the process of invention and discovery is widely different from the order of instruction,-partly because that expansion of intellect by which the whole of a vast subject is seen and comprehended at once, is apt to reduce to less than their real magnitude the minuter parts on which a common mind might be compelled to rest,-partly because it must require a stock of patience far greater than usually falls to the lot of man, to exhibit in many aspects what the inventor sees at once, with an intuitive glance, in every shape it can assume, and partly because some of the topics are really too abstruse and refined, to admit of being perspicuously stated in popular language.

The Exposition of the System of the World' by M. Laplace, excited so much attention, and furnished so much valuable instruction to all who read it, on its first publication in 1796, that we have often wondered it should so long remain an alien to the English language. It is therefore gratifying to see it naturalised, though far out of due time. For such a work is by no means unnecessary in this coup

X

try, where several of its discussions are still in a great measure unknown. Laplace offers himself as a familiar writer on Physical Astronomy, with peculiar claims to regard. With the exception of Newton, he has made more important discoveries in this most abstruse department of science, than any philosopher of any age; and some of those discoveries completely destroy the few plausible objections which had ever been advanced against the Newtonian system. Indeed, we do not scruple to say, that, next to Archimedes and Newton, no man ranks higher as an inventor, or has made more brilliant and important discoveries in mathematics, than Laplace and we may add, that Laplace, like Newton, does not more deserve celebrity for the depth of his penetration, the splendor of his genius, and the richness of his invention, than for his extreme modesty. One great peculiarity, and in fact one great excellence, of this treatise is, that its author is never tempted by the illusions of vanity and selflove to assign to those branches of the science, in the cultivation of which his labours have done almost every thing, a greater proportion in the general scale of the performance than they really deserve. Another excellence is manifested in the logical precision of the general arrangement, and the scrupulous care with which strong difficulties are overcome, and plausible obstacles removed. A third is, the chaste simplicity, the classical purity, freedom, and elegance of the style a quality of the work, which we regret to say is not transfused into the English edition. The principal defect arises from the difficulty found by a man of superlative talents in lowering himself to the task of familiar exhibition. Besides this, the prejudices of British mathematicians, from all of which we do not pretend to be entirely free ourselves, would induce us to lament, that some of the most abstruse disquisitions are not rendered a little easier of comprehen sion, by the friendly aid of a geometrical figure, or an algebraical formula. But it is time we should proceed to an analysis of the performance.

Laplace divides his exposition of the system of the world into five books, in which he treats of the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies, their real motion, the laws of motion, the theory of universal gravitation, and the history of astronomy. The first book, on the apparent motions of the celestial bodies, is subdivided into fourteen chapters, treating of the diurnal motion of the heavens, the sun and its proper motion, time and its measure, the moon's motion, phases, and eclipses, the planets and particularly Mercury and Venus, then Mars, Jupiter, and his satellites, Saturn, his satellites and ring, Uranus and his satellites, comets, fixed stars and

their motions, the figure of the earth and the variation of gravity at its surface, the ebbing and flowing of the sea, the terrestrial atmosphere, and astronomical refraction. The disquisitions in this book are delivered with much perspicuity: but, as it contains little that is altogether new, we shall quote only one short passage.

I ought, when speaking of the observations of the pendulum, to call the attention of natural philosophers to the two following circumstances: One is, the slight resistance which bodies, in changing their temperature, appear to me to oppose to their change of volume, nearly as water resists its conversion into ice, and can retain its form at several degrees below zero. It is then sufficient to agitate it to render it solid. In the numerous experiments on the dilatation of bodies, which I made with Lavoisier, we were sometimes obliged to give them a slight concussion to make them take the form proper to their temperature. The second object relates to the invariable pendulums which are used to determine the difference of gravity on various places of the earth. If the rod of the pendulum is of steel, its to be feared that the effect of terrestrial magnetism should become complicated with that of gravity; and as the object is to appreciate very small quantities in these experiments, it is important to be assured that this effect is insensible.' Vol. I. p. 150.

The second book, devoted to the real motions of the heavenly bodies, contains seven chapters, which treat of the rotatory motion of the earth, the motion of the planets round the sun, the motion of the earth round the sun, the appearances occasioned by the earth's motion, the figures of the planetary orbits and the law conformably to which they move round the sun, figures of the cometary orbits and the laws regulating their motion round the sun, the laws of the motions of the satellites about their respective primary pla nets. This book exhibits much luminous and forcible argumentation, on subjects, which, though they are generally admitted, have been often loosely treated. We select the following as a specimen.

Shall we now suppose the sun accompanied by the planets and satellites in motion round the earth, or shall we imagine the earth and other planets to revolve round the sun? The appearances of the heavenly motions are the same in the two hypotheses, but the second should be preferred, for the following considerations.

The masses of the sun and of several of the planets, are considerably greater than that of the earth; it is much more simple to make the latter revolve round the sun than to put the whole solar system in motion round the earth. What a complication in the heavenly motions would the immobility of the earth suppose! What a rapidity of motion, must be given to Jupiter, to Saturn, which is ten times farther from the sun than we are, and to Uranus which is still more remote, to make them every year revolve round us, at the same time they are revolving round the sun. This complication and this rapidity of motion disappear