sion; design was always (as its title imports) knowledge, and therefore disposed to bestow upon the attainment of it the requisite measure of attention and exertion. They have accordingly eschewed all nauseating puerility of phrase and ultra-simplification of statement, which would have answered no purpose whatever, except to give an air of prosing to their explanations that would have been perfectly ludicrous; but remembering that they were writing, not for infants, but for men, have expressed themselves in a manly and healthy style, only studying upon every occasion the utmost exactness and clearness of language; and, above all, taking care to assume nothing to be known by the reader in relation to the subject handled, or the other departments of science or learning connected with it, except what has been expressly communicated to him in a previous part of the treatise, or in some other previously published one to which he is referred. This last mentioned principle, indeed, is almost the only one that, in the composition of every part of such a work as the present, ought never to be lost sight of. If it be constantly kept in view, the writer can hardly fail to attain his object, and to make himself perfectly understood by all those of his readers who are really anxious to understand him. It is altogether a delusion to suppose that even the very lowest orders require, in order to be made to apprehend what is said to them, to be addressed only in monosyllables, and sentences not above an inch and a half long. Their understandings are of far greater stretch than they are sometimes believed to be; and we say again, as we have done before, that we are firmly convinced no greater or more fatal mistake could be committed in any attempt to interest them in the pursuit of knowledge, than by speaking to them in the language of the nursery. Of the meaning of the technical terms employed in the different sciences, they must of course be presumed to be altogether ignorant; and these, therefore, must either be to present to the public a complete body of useful knowledge in the most comprehensive sense of that expresan Encyclopedia, in short, which should embrace not only science, strictly so called, but whatever else of real and solid learning admitted of being distributed under distinct heads and methodically exhibited. And really, looking to the manner in which these treatises are accommodated to the conveniences and the wants of all sorts of purchasers, and all sorts of students, we do not wonder at the wide diffusion they have attained, unprecedented as it is, and greatly beyond, we believe, even the most sanguine expectations of those who first suggested the work. In the first place, we have certainly nothing so cheap in the whole compass of our literature. Every one of these sixpenny pamphlets-thrown off as it is in the first style of typography and embellishment-contains as much letter-press as an octavo volume, printed in the ordinary manner, of a hundred pages. Then each may be purchased separately so that no person need give his money for information he does not want; and the student of one subject or class of subjects, may confine his purchases to his own department. But a still more important peculiarity of these treatises than even their cheapness, is their especial suitableness for those who come to the study of the subjects treated of without any previous acquaintance with them, and are anxious to master their difficulties by their own efforts. Not that there is in the style, or manner of statement, of the writers, any affected adaptation to tender or imbecile capacities, as if they had felt themselves to be writing merely for children, or persons altogether incapable of any intellectual exertion. We should have been sorry to have seen the work disfigured by any vain and pernicious attempt of this kind. The authors have rightly felt that it was their business to address themselves as to men anxious to acquire laid aside, or its import clearly explained whenever any one of them is introduced; but we really know no other rule of style for didactic treatises intended for the perusal of peasants and mechanics, that would not be equally good and apposite for works of the same nature, addressed to the most cultivated ranks of the community. Undoubtedly it would be a great error in either case, to deviate into any imitation of the lisp and babble of infancy. But we must now turn to the new series of publications commenced by the Society-The Library of Entertaining Knowledge, the first volume of which lies on our table. We rejoice, in the first place, to find that the committee of the Society do not contemplate limiting their operations to the superintendence of any single work; but that, availing themselves of the advantage which their number gives them, they do not shrink from committing themselves to a more extensive field of occupation and usefulness. This is to give their services in good earnest to the cause they have taken by the hand; to show to the public that it is not merely the sanction of their distinguished names which they are disposed to lend it, but that they are really anxious to devote their personal exertions in large measure to its support and furtherance. We cannot attempt to give expression to the gratitude and admiration which we feel to be due to them for all the sacrifices they have so ungrudgingly made in the prosecution of their truly philanthropic enterprise; but when we reflect that nearly all of them are actively engaged besides in professional pursuits, and that some of them rank among the very busiest of the public men of the day, it is impossible for us not to acknowledge how deep a debt we owe them for this disinterested dedication of so much of their time and labor to an object recommended to them only by its importance to the happiness of their fellow-men. Of their illustrious chairman in particular, who, with more regular occupation to employ his time and strength than any other man in the kingdom, finds yet more leisure than any other for every incidental call of benevolence and patriotism, and is not only the active and efficient auxiliary in all endeavors that are made for the promotion of literature, liberty, and general civilization, but of many of them the very foremost supporter, and of others the patron and founder, and suggester, without whom they never would have been in operation or existence at all; the claims upon the affection and reverence of his countrymen are far too conspicuous to stand in need of any advocacy of ours. Without the name and place of a minister, Mr. Brougham has secured for himself an influence far more extensive and powerful than that of any minister; and his, undoubtedly, is at this moment the voice which of all others would most effectually rally the intellect, and heart, and moral strength of the country, around any cause in the support of which it might be heard. To be thus one of the chief guides of public opinion throughout a mighty community, is to possess a far truer and more enviable greatness than the highest office under the crown could buy with all its patronage. It is to wield, if not the resources of the state, yet the noblest energies of the people. We But to return to our subject. hail the publication of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge as affording us a gratifying assurance that the Society take a sound and liberal view of what a popular literature should be, in order to answer all the purposes which it might be made to serve. It would have been most unfortunate, we think, had they confined their scheme to the diffusion among the people of merely scientific information-thereby, as it were, inculcating the notion that nothing was really important as a matter of knowledge or reflection, except the cold palpabilities and literalities that admit of being measured by the rules of geometry and arithmetic. By extending their plan so as to make it embrace the philosophy of mind as well as of matter, and resolving, while they presented to one class of readers their treatises on the truths of mathematics and the phenomena of the physical world, to offer, at the same time, to the same class, or to another, accounts of whatever was most interesting and instructive in biography, history, and other kindred departments, they double, in our opinion, the value of the services they undertook to perform, as the providers of useful knowledge for the people. But even in this way they could still have failed to supply all the excitement that might be safely administered to the popular intellect, and even all the reasonable gratification which a reading people would be entitled to demand, had they not also determined upon laying before the public a body of such knowledge (of which there is abundance) as is capable of interesting the mind, even in its most relaxed moods, by the direct and immediate entertainment it affords; and is therefore calculated, besides its other uses, to form the most seductive temptation that can be employed to lead an uninformed understanding to the love and the habit of more regular and elaborate study. Such is exactly the end and character of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, the publication of which has been now commenced. reading,-a mere stray fragment, as it were, of the subject, thus catching their fancy and setting them a thinking, before they had ever dreamed of encountering any complete or systematic exhibition of it. Now if this fortunate result has occasionally been produced by works not at all written with a view to the bringing about of such effects, it may be reasonably expected that the imaginations of readers will be much more frequently excited in the manner alluded to by the perusal of publications expressly intended to win them to the love of knowledge by an attractive display of the rich entertainment it has in store for them, and composed throughout with an especial reference to that object. The volume before us cannot, we are sure, be inspected without encouraging the most sanguine expectations as to the extent to which the series it so auspiciously commences, promises to operate in diffusing among the people, in this manner, a taste for even the most strictly useful and erudite branches of literature and science. We rejoice, however, to observe that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge are not to be allowed to monopolize the office of supplying us with a cheap popular literature, but that other parties are already appearing in the field as their rivals, or rather fellow-laborers in this good work. We must mention in particular two other publications, one which has been for some time in existence, and another which is just commencing. The first is Constable's Miscellany, of which we have now before us the 38th volume, containing Indeed as, on the one hand, it is quite evident that the exercise of mind which we may more properly call study, cannot be pursued at all without frequent intermissions, and is by nothing so much aided and sustained as by occasional relaxations of its intensity; so on the other it might, we believe, be very easily shown that a Personal Narrative of a Journey many of the most ardent and success- through Norway, part of Sweden, and ful laborers in the most abstruse de- the Islands and states of Denmark," partments of science and literature by a writer who takes the name of have had their attention first directed Derwent Conway, and is already to those branches of learning in the known to the public as the author of investigation of which they subse- a work entitled "Solitary Walks quently distinguished themselves, by through many Lands." The present some accidental reference to them narrative is elegantly written and full which they met with in the course of of interest; and relating as it does to their lighter and more miscellaneous scenes and manners which have been comparatively but seldom described, will be received, we doubt not, as a welcome present by the reading public. There is a great deal of amusing and instructive reading in the different volumes of this Miscellany; and we are indebted to its conductors not only for various new works of very considerable merit, but for cheap and commodious reprints of several of our old favorites. The other publication to which we refer, is Mr. Murray's Family Library," which has been for some time announced, and the first Number, or Monthly Part, of which has just appeared, containing the commencement of a History of Napoleon Buonaparte, to be completed in two such volumes. From the form and price of this work, as well as from the description of subjects to which it seems to be chiefly confined, it is intended, we presume, to circulate principally among the wealthier classes, and to offer to them a series of neatly got up, rather than of very cheap volumes, of light and amusing literature. It is elegantly embellished with engravings both on wood and steel, and the price of each volume is Five Shillings, although the matter it contains does not exceed by much more than a fourth part that of one of the Two Shilling Volumes of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge. The appearance of the work is still, however, a most gratifying symptom of the intellectual progress of the times, and of the taste that is everywhere spreading among us for the elegant and humanizing enjoyments of literature. Coming especially from the quarter in which it has originated, the present publication may be taken as a confession both that the love of knowledge is rapidly diffusing itself, and that that diffusion is a blessing, on the part of those who have hitherto most pertinaciously lamented the one truth and denied the other. We do not speak this in unkindness or by way of reproach; for we have really no feeling on the subject but one of delight, that many men of high worth and talent and genius, who were wont to be against us, are now with us in this great and good cause. The friends of liberal opinions-those who were long the friends and supporters of such opinions in their state of depression and exclusion-have, in late times, had much whereon to congratulate themselves, and to triumph if they were disposed to take any tone of triumph, in the conversion of old opponents into zealous allies, and the elevation to undisputed supremacy of many of the principles which they alone had advocated while they were everywhere else the theme of denouncement and reprobation. But of all the conversions it has been our happy lot to witness, there is none in which we rejoice more cordially than in this conversion of the enemies of popular education into its professed, and, we doubt not, its unfeigned and zealous friends. THE Poet sings his mistress' eye The theme's a novel one, 'tis true, And one objection has alone Sufficient force to scare one; The nose itself, I'm free to own, Is by no means a fair one. ON MY NOSE. It does not with the forehead blend, Nor like the Roman's eagle-beak It is not like the one that flows Nor that most fair, most monstrous one, Nor has it the important air To what class then does it belong? You marvel-there's the rub, Resemblance to the snub. The odious snub, and at its tip A thing, which ever since its birth, A never-failing butt for Mirth Yet, my poor Nose, thou 'st ever been And oft my grateful sense, I ween, When the soft breeze comes wooingly And when some simple perfume brings, Thoughts of the old forgotten things For these, my Nose, thou shalt engage THE GRAVE OF THE BROKEN HEART.* THE Rector's departure from Sea Vale ters, for chimeras dire of portly canons and their dignified spouses-solemn dinners, silent whist-tables, and all the dull ceremonial of an ecclesiastical court circle. During the last fortnight of Dr. Hartop's stay at the Rectory, the family party had been augmented by the arrival of a brother of Lady Octavia's, the Reverend Arthur Falkland, who came down to Sea Vale for the united advantages of shooting and sea-bathing, and Millicent readily accepted Vernon's apology for stealing from her a few of those hours that he would more willingly have devoted entirely to her, in order to show due attention and courtesy to his Rector's guest and nephew. No day passed, however, without his visiting the cottage-few during which he did not look in more than once or twice on its lonely mistress ; and if his visits were each time shorter, and his manner more unequal and preoccupied, she assured herself that, circumstanced as he then was, nothing could be more natural or excusable. "And it will only be for a few days longer, Milly," said he. "Thank God! only three days longer; for this is |