The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-21 00:00:00

change which has taken place in this respeet ? and
who, to come more particularly to the subject under
our present consideration, can for a moment compare
books, such as were placed in our hands in our youth,
with those which the present generation have at
their command, without being impressed with a
feeling of thankfulness that the present opportunity
is his own ? In support of the appeal to the admire.
tion and gratitude of the youth of our own times, we
could name many of the publications, periodical or
otherwise, intended to diffuse the taste for all that is
great and good, emanating from men who, having
found happiness in the prosecution of study, make it
a duty to impart what they know to others. But our
business is moro especially with the book bearing the
above title, and we must preface all further observa-
tions with the expression of a conviction, that a more
splendid and more inviting incentive to the study of
a science, so interesting in itself, though hitherto
much neglected, never was yet produced; and we
can scarcely credit the evidence of our own:senses, such
is the force of habit, on finding it announced in its
title-page, that the " Physical Atlas," now before us,
is a book intended for schools, colleges, &c. How-
ever, so it is; and we admit our willingness to re-
mime our long foregone studies, and not only continue
hut in many respects extend our acquaintance with
the subjects of which it treats. Nor should we omit
to say, that it is with a high degree of satisfaction
that we find in a work professedly reduced as to size
and costliness from the edition in imperial folio, so
much in the present edition to admire on the score of
execution, wbich were, however, but poor praise, if
we did not feel hound to laud it upon much higher
grounds—upon the intrinsic worth of the vast and
well-digested fund of information it contains. It
may be little to our credit, but we were not
prepared to find that our mother earth, as we
were wont to call the soil we trod in our youth, was
likely to furnish us with so many and such deeply
interesting materials for reflection as those we find in
the course of the Atlas before us. But let us not
digress ; rather let us remember that we have now to
do with the said Atlas, and not with the earth ; and,
fearing we cannot do better justice to the work than
by quoting a short passage in its introduction, we
will do so :

" To the student who has hitherto only been accus-
tomed to the dry details of geography as usually taught,
the study of physical geography must open up a to-
tally new and most interesting field. He will here be-
come acquainted with the living and active operations of
nature, and the beautiful and appropriate bearings of all
her relative dependencies, instead of poring over her
dry bones—her unconnected, isolated, and consequently
barren facts, &c."

To which unpretending, but most true and proper
address, we would add our own testimony, and say
that not only will.the student find the work submitted
to his notice replete with information :upon every
subject that may in any way or degree be taken in
connexion with the earth—not only will he find each
separate subject tangibly and fully elucidated by clear
and concise statements—not only will he find those
statements borne out and illustrated by a
series of maps as beautiful in their conception
as unrivalled in their execution, but he will find the
various parts of the work successfully tending to the
formation of a harmonious whole, resting upon undo.
Diable evidence, resulting from the author's patient
investigation of its multifarious topics, supported by
the combined testimony of preceding and contempo-
rary writers ; and whether we view it as regards
clearness of style, comprehensiveness of subject, ela-
borate details, soundness of views, or as a happy and
harmonious combination of parts, which, however
widely distant from each other in the scale of those
things which make up our habitable world, yet are
not only linked with, but inseparable from it, whe-
ther we look upon it as a source of information and
serious study, or as a book of reference to appeal to in
the hour of doubt, or as an ornament (we love that
happy blending of first-rate execution with a noble
simplicity in the ornamentation of a book) for the
shelves of our studio, we feel in justice and duty
bound to say that few works equal and none surpass
the " Physical Atlas of ITatural Phenomena."