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answer that purpose, as it brings together several of the most useful statements published on the subject.

Art. 28. A Treatise on Profits, Discounts, and Interest; explaining how to compute the gross Amount of any net Sum to secure a certain net Profit, after a Discount has been allowed therefrom; and to compute, by short Rules, Interest of Money; with many Tables. By John Lowe, Birmingham. 8vo. pp. 16 12s. 6d. Boards. Walker. 1816.

Mr. L. is a stationer in Birmingham, and perhaps calculates that to enroll himself among the fraternity of authors will be an effectual method of raising his own repute in the eyes of his customers, as well as of giving additional briskness to the debit of his atlases, globes, ledgers, day-books, &c. We shall not dispute the effect of the experiment in a mercantile point of view: but Mr. L. must pardon us if we do not exactly join in the general approbation which he seems to expect, or in giving him credit for the patriotism of the motives stated in his preface as stimulating him to the publication in question. His interest-tables are sufficiently convenient, and will be found to supply the wants of those who do not require a more extended statement: but his discount-tables are unnecessarily multiplied, being carried, in certain cases, to allowances (40, 45, 47 and even 50 per cent.) which ought not to have and cannot have existence in any well regulated community. Occasionally we find (as in p. 12.) an useful observation in aid of arithmetical operations: but the general character of the tract is want of simplicity, with a needless accumulation of rules and examples.

Art. 29. A Treatise on the Breeding, Training, and Management of Horses, with practical Remarks and Observations on Farriery, &c. To which is prefixed, the Natural History of Horses in general, and the Antiquity of Hore-racing in England: together with an Appendix, containing the whole Law relating to Horses. By W. Flint, an old Sportsman, well known on the Turf and in the Chase. 12mo. pp. 144. Longman and Co.

We are so little acquainted either with the turf or the chase, that we are not able to speak with much confidence respecting Mr. Flint's merits; and our difficulty is increased by a kind of mysticism which pervades the subject, and which makes the terms in a great degree unintelligible: thus presenting to the uninitiated a barrier which it is almost impossible to surmount. As a specimen of the manner of the author, we quote a passage from the chapter on Faults and Defects.'

< A horse's shoulder should not be loaded; if he has a heavy shoulder, he can never move well; and a very thin shoulder, with narrow breast or chest, though he will have good action, is generally weak and more liable to be shook in those parts: a narrow chested horse turns his toes out, crosses his legs, and frequently cuts; by his unsteady motion he is as liable to stumble as a thick shouldered one, though not so liable to fall. If a horse is lame forward, it is generally said to be in the shoulder; but in my opi

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nion, he is less liable to be lame there than any other part. Always examine the coffin-joint and feet: but horses are more subject to be lame in their hinder limbs. The most certain rule to discover disease or lameness in the shoulder, is the motion of the fore arm. A horse may be hurt on the withers, at the point of the shoulders, or really shook in his shoulders; swim him frequently in very deep water; afterwards keep rowels in him to prevent humours from fixing, and turn him out, as rest is most essential for his cure.

The principal colours of horses are the black, the brown, the bay, the chesnut, the grey, the roan, and the cream colour. Not any one can judge their perfections by colour; the choice is governed by the eye without any rule; for it is a very true saying, A good horse cannot be of a bad colour, though I think dark bays and browns with black muzzles, legs, and feet, are certainly the most hardy. White legs and feet are a great denial.'

In the above paragraph, our readers will perceive that certain peculiarity of expression which, we suppose, belongs to the equine science, and is deemed essential to it: but we have a chapter towards the conclusion, in which Mr. Flint, inspired by his subject, becomes quite poetical, and launches out into what will perhaps pass under the denomination of fine writing. It relates to the hydrophobia, and thus commences: When Sirius reigns, and the sun's parching beams bake the gaping surface,' &c. &c, If this be very fine, we fear that it is not very correct; because it is now generally agreed by the sober prose writers on this subject, that Sirius has very little to do with the matter.

CORRESPONDENCE.

From some accidental circumstances, we are obliged to postpone an answer to our fair Correspondent who dates from a Royal · village in Surrey; and, to say the truth, we do not perfectly comprehend the import of the intimation with which she concludes.

The anonymous letter respecting a novel, probably coming from the author himself, does not appear to require any particular

notice.

** The APPENDIX to this Volume of the Review will be published with the Number for September, on the First of October.

In the last Number, p. 227. 1. 10. from bott. for 'those'

read that.

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ART. I. Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne, &c.; i. e. A History of Modern Philosophy, from the Revival of Letters down to the System of Kant; preceded by an Abridgment of antient Philosophy, from the time of Thales to the Fourteenth Century. By JOHN GOTTLIEB BUHLE, Professor of Philosophy at Göttingen. Translated from the German by A. J.L. Jourdan, Knight of the Order of Réunion. 8vo. Six Vols. About 720 pp. in each. Paris. 1816. Imported by De Boffe, London. Price 31. 3s. THE Germans have written much on the history of philo

sophy. Brucker, in his Institutions, and Faber, in his Treasury of Scholastic Erudition, have provided the learned of Europe with Latin books of reference in this line of reading; and in our twentieth volume, N. S. p. 573., and twenty-fourth volume, p. 521., we gave some account of a vernacular work of great merit by Tiedemann, intitled The Spirit of Speculative Philosophy, which contains a luminous and comprehensive view of both antient and modern metaphysicians. A similar publication by Tennemann has since appeared, and is yet more highly prized for research, especially into the obscurer archives of scholastic philosophy. Both these writers survey the entire history of metaphysical speculation: while M. BUHLE, on the contrary, has confined himself to the ideology of the moderns. He is one of those lecturers at Göttingen who, under the direction of Professor Eichhorn, have assisted in a general APP. REV. VOL. LXXXIII. G g history

history of arts and sciences from the revival of letters to the present time; and, undertaking the department of modern philosophy, he duly availed himself of the labours of eminent predecessors, and has supplied by personal research and assiduity the deficiencies of their collection of materials. We have now before us a French translation, not an abridgment, of his book; which has in it something of excessive detail, of tedious completeness; and in which the list of writers analyzed is less select than numerous, and the train of arguments condensed is copious even to repetition, when the peculiar and the characteristic might have sufficed. In reviewing an epitome of a part of M. Bouterweck's History of Poetry, (M. R. vol. lxx. p. 449.) we had occasion to praise the good taste of the Parisian translator, for reducing into a convenient compass the essence of the work: but the present segment of the same enterprize has not undergone so judicious a curtailment.

A history of art and science has much attraction for all who wish to trace the origin of those successive discoveries, which have founded and ennobled the prosperity of civilized states: but the History of Philosophy has a yet stronger claim on our interest, as it more especially includes a sketch of the progress of the human mind itself; and as it describes those exercises of intellect which are common to all the thinking classes, and form the basis of excellence not only in speculative but in active life. The majority of men are more prone to believe than to judge: but all the additions to knowlege are made by those few who extend the circle of original observation, or reexamine established inferences. It may be, as Cicero pretends, that there is nothing so absurd as not to have been maintained by some philosopher: but it is certain that paradoxical and sophistical propositions often provoke investigation and discussion, and have repeatedly led to the detection of new truths. Hence even the records of error and credulity have a value; while the analytical statement of sound opinion informs the understanding, sharpens the judgment, reveals the deficiencies of science, and teaches the dialectic art.

M. Jourdan's translation of the work of Professor BUHLE consists of six thick octavo volumes; of which the first is merely introductory, and contains a short history of antient philosophy as far as it has contributed to tinge the sentiments of modern writers. Thus the author dwells especially on Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, and the Alexandrian Platonists, because they have influenced considerably the writers of later date. The Greeks had one advantage in philosophizing, over every subsequent literary nation; namely, that their language, being a mother-tongue and wholly selfderived,

derived, had formed its metaphysical vocabulary with consistency and precision; whereas the modern nations, importing some of their abstract terms from the Greek, some from the Latin, and deducing some of them from native resources, have seldom succeeded in giving an exact and necessarily intelligible nomenclature to the phænomena under discussion. Hence logomachies, and grammatical disputes, growing out of a misunderstood or ill-defined phraseology, abound in modern philosophy, and perplex the pursuit of truth. The theory of mind, as Lord Monboddo observes, has been retrograde.

This introductory sketch of antient metaphysics has the fault of not being executed in a strictly chronological order. Thus the sentiments of Epicurus are analyzed (pp. 90—98.) before those of Plato, (pp. 115-199.) whereas Plato flourished first. The displacement of the historic fact conceals an important law of intellect; namely, that there is a natural order in which our opinions are formed and succeed one another; and that this natural order applies alike to individuals and to societies. In the state of youthful vigour, philosophy is most willingly conversant (see our xxist vol. p. 509.) with those ideas and opinions which lead to and harmonize with the consistent doctrines of free-will, immaterialism, immortality, and a Creator: while in her declining age she dwells on those observations and theories which lead to and are associated with the doctrines of necessity, materialism, "eternal sleep," and atheism; until, at length, regretting the consolations thus cast away, and ashamed of the morals thus propagated, she takes refuge in some form of supernaturalism, or abandons awhile the human mind to the dead repose of ignorance.

Another fault pervades this sketch; the opinions of antient philosophers are frequently translated into the scholastic dialect of Kant, and are consequently misrepresented. It is said, for instance, (p. 209.) that Aristotle considered perception as a passive faculty, and admitted only its receptivity: whereas, at the close of the third chapter of his third book, on the Soul, he expressly ranks memory among the voluntary energies, which is in fact attributing activity and spontaneity to recollected perception; and, no doubt, Aristotle is right in considering memory as a sort of semi-volition, as a motion from within outwards, and not, like sensation, a motion from without inwards. In Enfield's Brucker, (vol. i. pp. 278-288.) the analysis of Aristotle's Metaphysics approaches much nearer to the original document than the paraphrase of M. BUHLE. On the other hand, his account of Sextus Empiricus surpasses in completeness that of Brucker, but is still vitiated by the insertion of the Kantian nomenclature. For example, Sextus Gg 2 Empiricus

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