Page images
PDF
EPUB

124

Geography.

The necessity of some acquaintance with Geography will not be disputed, no part of learning is more necessary than the knowledge of the situation of nations on which their interests generally depend; if the young man be dedicated to any of the learned professions, it is scarcely possible that he will not be obliged to apply himself, in some part of his life, to this study, as no other branch of literature can be fully comprehended without it. Dr. Johnson.

WILKINSON.

21 12s 6d.

Atlas Classica, quarto, coloured,

SMITH. A Classical Atlas, quarto.

D'ANVILLE. An Ancient Atlas, by D'Anville, folio, 31.

A Compendium of Ancient Geography, by the same author, 2 vols. octavo, 1l ls.

A more useful compendium cannot be pointed out for the purchase of the student; great diligence and research is every where displayed in the compilation.

RENNELL. The Geography of Herodotus, by Major Rennell.

Memoir of a Map of Hindostan, and of the Peninsula of India.

The services Major Rennell has rendered his country, by his excellent work on Ancient Geography, will secure him a lasting name in the literary annals of Great Britain.

Of the writings of the Ancient Geographers a few only have been transmitted to the present time; the principal of these are Strabo, Ptolemy, Pompo

nius Mela, and Stephanus Byzantinus. Among the moderns who have illustrated Ancient Geography are Cluverius, Cellarius, D'Anville, Gosselin, and Major Rennell, whose researches have shed a flood of light on the geography of the classic historians.

Of the period of the middle ages we have no geographical work extant, that can afford any just idea of the new order of things introduced into Europe by the different people of Germany, after the subversion of the Roman Empire in the fifth century.

ARROWSMITH. A New General Atlas, quarto, by Arrowsmith, containing sixty maps, 21 12s 6d, 1826.

PINKERTON. An Atlas of Modern Geography, by John Pinkerton, folio, 919s.

Modern Geography, 2 vols. quarto, 51 5s.

abridged, octavo, 18s.

These works are highly esteemed.

Thomson's Edinburgh Atlas, royal folio.

Edinburgh Gazetteer, or Geographical Dictionary, comprising a complete body of Geography, Physical, Statistical, and Commercial, in six volumes, octavo, 5/8s.

vo, 18s.

abridged, in one volume, octa

This work may be considered as the most complete body of geographical science extant.

MALTE BRUN. A System of Universal Geography, in seven volumes, octavo, by M. Malte Brun, 4/ 4s.

The plan of this work is excellent, and the arrangement is far superior to any other work of the kind extant.

This eminent geographer has recently paid the debt of nature, but he lived to render every assistance to the editor of the English translation. No good library ought to be without this truly excellent performance.

GUTHRIE.

A Geographical Grammar, octavo, by

Guthrie, bound, 18s.

A System of Geography, quarto, with an atlas in quarto, 31 3s.

GOLDSMITH. A System of Popular Geography, numerous plates, one thick volume, 18mo. 15s.

For young persons, nothing more entertaining and pleasing can be placed in their hands.

BROOKES. A General Gazetteer, octavo, 12s, 18mo.

6s.

WALKER. General Gazetteer, by Walker, octavo,

14s.

CAPPER. A Topographical Dictionary of the United Kingdom, by B. Capper, in octavo, Il 11s 6d.

Sebastian Munster may be considered as the restorer of the study of geography, who published a very voluminous cosmographical work in 1550. Since the revival of literature, Atelius Gerard Mercator, Varenius, Janson, Blaeu, and Vischer, among the Dutch and Flemish, have distinguished themselves by their maps and other geographical works. To these may be added Sanson, De Lisle, Cassini, D'Anville, Zannoni, Buache, Mentelle, Busching, and Chauchard, among the French and Germans; and, lastly, though the study of this important science has only been of late years peculiarly cultivated in Great Britain, yet the geographical works and maps of Arrowsmith, Rennell, Pinkerton, and Playfair, have reflected equal credit on their country and the subject they have illustrated. To the extension of geographical knowledge nothing has more effectually contributed than the different voyages of discovery that have been undertaken within the last hundred years, under the patronage of the different governments of Europe and America. Among these the voyages and

travels of Lord Anson, Captains Cook, Byron, Wallis, and Carteret ; of Bougainville, Dixon, Meares, Vancouver, Perouse, Mungo Park, Humboldt, and Bonpland, Lord Valentia, Mackenzie, Weld, Col. Pike, Ross, Parry, Lyon, Hall, Kotzebue, Weddell, Burckhardt, Belzoni, Denham, Burchell, and Sir Robert Ker Porter, hold a distinguished rank.

English Literature.

Ramsay observed, Literature is upon the growth; it is in its spring in France; here it is rather passée.

Johnson. Literature was in France long before we had it. Paris was the second city for the revival of letters. Italy had it first, to be sure. What have we done for literature, equal to what was done by the Stephani and others in France? Our literature came to us through France. Caxton printed only two books, Chaucer and Gower, that were not translations from the French; and Chaucer, we know, took much from the Italians. No, sir, if literature be in its spring in France, it is a second spring: it is after a winter. We are now before the French in literature, but we had it long after them.

Boswell's Johnson.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The science of books, for so bibliography is sometimes dignified, may deserve the gratitude of a public who are yet insensible to the useful zeal of those book practitioners, the nature of whose labours is still so imperfectly comprehended.

The Abbé Rive speaking of a Bibliographer, exclaimed,—" He chained together the knowledge of whole generations for posterity, and he read in future ages."

D'Israeli says, there are few things by which we can so well trace the history of the human mind as by a classed catalogue with dates of the first publication of books; even the relative prices of books at different periods, their decline, and then their rise, and again their fall, form a chapter in this history of the human mind.

The gradual depreciation of a great author marks a change in knowledge or in taste.

DESCRIPTION OF A BIBLIOMANIAC.

In error obstinate, in wrangling loud,
For trifles eager, positive, and proud;
Deep in the darkness of dull authors bred,
With all their refuse lumber'd in his head;
What ev'ry dunce from ev'ry dunghill drew,
Of literary offals, old or new.

USES OF BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Many secrets we discover in bibliography. Great writers unskilled in this science of books, have frequently used defective editions, as Hume did the castrated Whitelocke; or, like Robertson, they are ignorant of even the sources of the knowledge they would give the public, or they compose on a subject which, too late, they discover had been anticipated.

Bibliography will shew what has been done, and suggest to our invention what it wanted. Many have often protracted their journey in a road which had already been worn out by the wheels which had traversed it; bibliography unrolls the whole map of the country we purpose travelling over, the post roads, and the bye paths.

READING.

D'Israeli.

Pliny and Seneca give very safe advice on reading; that we should read much but not many books. But they had no monthly list of new publications. Since their days others have favoured us with methods of study and catalogues of books to read, vain attempts to circumscribe that invincible code of human knowledge which is perpetually enlarging itself. We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than not to read them; such an art is practicable.

LIBRARIES IN AMERICA.

The largest in the country is that of Harvard College, which is now said to contain 25,000 volumes; six or eight years since it had little more than half that number, and this rapid increase affords a pleasing proof of the improving state of instruction. Next in consequence is that of Philadelphia, being the City and the Logan Libraries

« PreviousContinue »