gradation of humanity; the effectual breakwater against barbarism; the ratchet in the great wheel of the world, which, even if it stands still, prevents it from slipping back. Ephemeral as man's books are, they are at least not so ephemeral as himself; and consign without difficulty to posterity what would otherwise never reach them. A good book is the Methuselah of these latter ages.

We must conclude, however, lest we should have reason to apply to ourselves the words of old Fuller: But what do 1, speaking against multiplicity of books in this age, who trespass in this nature myself? What was a learned man's compliment, 6 may serve for my confession and conclusion. Multi mei similes hoc morbo laborant ut cùm scribere nesciant, tamen a scribendo temperare non possint.' - Even as it is, we fear that some of our readers will be disposed to say that we have illustrated the ' vanity' without proving the 'glory' of literature.

ART. II. 1. The Physical Atlas; a Series of Maps and Notes illustrative of the Geographical Distribution of Ñatural Phenomena. BY ALEX. KEITH JOHNSTON, F. R. G. S., F. G. S. Imperial Folio, 30 Maps and 94 pp. Letter-press. London and Edinburgh, 1848.

2. The Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena. Quarto edition. Part I. Reduced from the edition in Imperial Folio, for the use of Colleges, Academies, and Families. London and Edinburgh, 1849.

THE

HE periodical literature of a people embodies very intelligibly the kind and extent of social and intellectual progress they have attained at the moment of its appearance. What the many read must accord in the main with the taste and opinions of the many for the time: And as soon as tastes and opinions change, the hue and tone of periodical literature will change

But it is only the lighter and more popular tastes of a nation which its periodical literature can be expected to reflect: we must look elsewhere for evidence of their solid acquirements, and of the nature, indeed, of their more permanent and established taste.

It is when a large and expensive work, like that now before us, issues from the press, that we can reasonably infer that the subject of which it treats has already taken hold of the public mind; and has obtained a place among the intellectual wants of the country in which it appears. And the inference will be

strengthened where, as in the present instance, the larger work is attended by a humbler companion, fitted for the school and the schoolmaster. Such publications assume that the old and the young, the rich and the poor, are joining in the demand.

In this point of view, British science has reason to congratulate herself on the appearance of these Physical Atlasses, and may point to them with some degree of pride; for even abstruse departments of natural knowledge must have been popularised among us, before publishers could be encouraged to make the necessary efforts for rendering their beautiful results accessible to all. Indeed, though Oxford and Cambridge have hitherto done but little for the advancement of this kind of knowledge, we are satisfied, from our own experience of other countries, that in no part of Europe are the sciences of observation so generally appreciated, and so widely diffused among the mass of ordinarilyeducated people, as in our own.

The Physical Atlas of Mr. Keith Johnston comprises four series of maps: a geological series of ten maps; a meteorological series of five maps; a hydrographical series of six maps; and a phytological and zoological series of nine maps.

The first series contains four maps of the mountain systems and chains of Europe, Asia, and America; one of the glacier regions of the Alps; two of the most remarkable volcanic phenomena; one double map, representing the general geological structure of the globe; and two single maps, the special structure of the British Isles.

The second series consists of physical charts of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans; maps of the river systems of Europe, Asia, and America; and a tidal chart of the British Seas.

The third series represents the isothermal lines and lines of equal barometric pressure, in one map; the geographical distribution of hurricanes, typhoons, and other aërial disturbances, in a second; the polarising structure of the atmosphere in a third; and, in two hyetographic maps, the general distribution of rain over the whole world, and its more special distribution over the surface of Europe.

The fourth series exhibits the geographical distribution of plants in general in one map, and that of the plants which serve as food for man in another; that of the mammiferous, the carnivorous, and the ruminant animals respectively, in three maps; that of birds and reptiles, in two maps; and, in two more, the ethnography of Europe and that of the British Islands.

For the idea of these interesting maps we are indebted to the illustrious Humboldt; for the first execution of them to Professor Berghaus, of Berlin; and for the present improved, enlarged,

and beautifully-executed Atlas to the hands and head of Mr. Keith Johnston, of Edinburgh.*

From a work so rich in information, and so varied in its materials, it is almost impossible to select and compress into a moderate compass any thing which will give the general reader a satisfactory idea of its character and contents. It is a merit which may justly be conceded to these thirty maps, that almost every one of them embodies the materials of many volumesthe results of long years of research and exhibits the most valuable thoughts of the most distinguished men of the age, pictured visibly to the eye.

*Other works of this kind, more comprehensive in some senses, but of a more special kind, have been projected in other countries, but are almost all as yet unexecuted. Of these, the linear and shaded maps of criminal statistics by M. Guerry are an admirable example, and are now ready for the press. The one which embraces the widest range of subjects is the Administrative and Statistical 'Atlas of Belgium:' it is projected by the well-known geographer of Brussels, M. Van der Maelen, in co-operation with the eminent statist M. Heuschling, to whom Belgian statistics are under so many obligations. Its title and proposed contents are as follow:

6

"Atlas Administratif et Statistique du Royaume de Belgique," dressé et publié en collaboration avec M. Xavier Heuschling, par Philippe Van der Maelen.

Cet atlas se composera d'une série de cartes construites à l'échelle de 1 à 400,000 sur une feuille grand colombier. Chaque carte, comprenant toutes les communes du Royaume avec leur circonscription territoriale, sera consacrée à une branche spéciale de l'administration ou à une partie de la statistique, d'après un système arrêté à l'avance. Ainsi il y aura une carte pour chacune des divisions communale et provinciale, judiciaire, ecclésiastique, militaire, etc.; des cartes historique et archéologique, hydrographique et orographique, météorologique et médicale, géologique, botanique, zoologique, agricole, forestière et minérale, industrielle et commerciale, financière, douanière, domaniale, electorale; des cartes pour les voies de communication, les postes et messageries, pour la population absolue et relative, par langues et dialectes, par cultes, par professions et conditions sociales, pour la mortalité et la reproduction, pour la bienfaisance, le paupérisme, la criminalité et les prisons, pour l'instruction publique, les sciences, les lettres et les arts. Un texte explicatif et descriptif, donné en marge, complétera les détails de chaque carte; les renseignements seront puisés aux meilleures sources et dans les documents les plus récents. En un mot, les auteurs se proposent d'appliquer à l'administration et à la statistique générale du pays, la pensée de Condorcet lorsqu'il prédit l'époque où l'état de nos connaissances ne pourra plus être exposé que dans des tableaux synoptiques.'

What a mass of interesting information such a book would contain! but what dozen men are equal to the compilation of it?

It might appear at first sight, and especially to the unlearned into whose hands the Atlas should come, as if the subjects illustrated in these maps had been taken at random out of the vast domain of natural knowledge, in order to form the book; as if the races of men and the distribution of birds and reptiles had no connexion whatever with geological strata and fossils, or with Alpine glaciers; as if the geographical distribution of plants, the polarisation of the atmosphere, and the tides, temperatures, storms, soundings, and currents of our seas and great oceans, were subjects wide apart from each other; as if the position and parallelism of mountain chains, or of active and extinct volcanoes, the distribution of typhoons, the course and limits of Indian hurricanes, the sources and directions of rivers, the regions which nourish the various plants on which we live, and the study of the races of men who, from time to time, have conquered and peopled the different parts of our own islands, were fields of research so discontiguous and remote, that even philosophers might long traverse them all without once meeting on any common ground.

But far different is the expectation of the eager scholar, who has once looked over Humboldt's Kosmos,' or Mrs. Sommerville's Connection of the Sciences.' He enters on the examination of the various branches of natural knowledge in the well-grounded confidence that they will be found to constitute a harmonious WHOLE, closely cemented in all its parts. And though any work on the phenomena of nature which should embody even all we at present know would still exhibit many large gaps, yet the instructed eye will perceive a common unity pervading all, and points of connexion among the most distant and apparently discordant topics of which it treats. uniting thread may be traced through the varied subjects delineated in the maps of this Physical Atlas, and discussed in its letter-press;a thread which untwists, as you follow it, into many strands, representing different trains of thought—any one of which will lead us from map to map in search of reasons for the new facts that successively strike us, and will bring us at last to the ethnographic series to Man himself, and his varieties, as palpably and intimately concerned with the first of the topics, whatever that may be, with which we had set out.

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So a

We shall better succeed, we believe, in imparting to our readers some conception of the multifarious and yet singularly well digested information comprised in the present work, by asking them to accompany us in tracing a few of the connecting links which the series of maps thus presents to an intelligent student, than by any catalogue or specimens of their contents.

We propose, therefore, to select a leading train of thought suggested by one of the earliest maps, and shall see how far, in following it out, the succeeding maps will furnish us with the materials necessary for our progress.

Turn, for example, to the first or geological series, and, among these, to that which represents the geology or paleontology of the British Isles, coloured under the direction of Professor Edward Forbes. How rich in obvious instruction, how suggestive of interesting thought and inquiry, is this map! The various colours represent, not only the various rocky formations, but diversified mineral productions also, and different agricultural capabilities and tendencies. They indicate where great cities establish themselves, and why; what brings masses of people together in particular localities, of what special class this population is composed, and what are likely to be its moral and social dispositions; why one manufacture takes root on this spot, and another on that; why here corn waves, or cattle fatten, or sheep crop the springing herbage; why here the rich proprietor and the wealthy farmer live together in comfort, and encourage each other in progressive improvement-why there husbandry is backward, the proprietor in difficulties, and the cultivator wasting life and means in a heartless struggle.

It must be well known to most of our readers that the black spots of varied extent and form, which here and there stand out like blots on the surface of a geological map of Great Britain, indicate the districts in which mineral fuel is found and is more or less extensively dug up. Upon such black spots, therefore, on whatever map they are seen, it is almost certain that a large population either already exists, or will spring up at some future period; that the employment of this population will be in mining for coal-in digging or smelting the ores of iron or copper or lead-in moulding and baking pottery-in fabricating machinery and other works in metal-in manufacturing glass, or alkali, or alum-in converting the raw cotton and wool and flax into woven and printed cloths of various texture-or in some of those many other arts which busy themselves with crude materials on a large scale, and which require much mechanical power at a cheap rate, to admit of their being economically carried on.

The natural reason for the growth of large towns and crowded populations, for a principal class at least, such as Swansea, Bristol, Merthyr-Tydvil, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, and Glasgow, -(since other considerations give importance to London, Liverpool, Dublin, Cork, Belfast, &c.)—is to be found in the geological struc