ADVERTISEMENT. THE present American edition of ST. PIERRE'S STUDIES OF NATURE cannot be better introduced to the World, than in the nervous and elegant language of DR. HUNTER'S Preface to the London edition. 'I have read,' says he, 'few performances with more complete satisfaction, and with greater improvement, than the STUDIES OF NATURE: in no one have I found the useful and the agreeable more happily blended. What work of science displays a more sublime theology, inculcates a purer morality, or breathes a more ardent and more expansive philanthropy? ST. PIERRE has enabled me to contemplate the Universe with other eyes, has furnished new arguments to combat Atheism, has established beyond the power of contradiction the doctrine of a universal Providence, has excited a warmer interest in favour of suffering humanity, and has disclosed sources unknown of intellectual enjoyment. Unfettered by system, unawed by authority, he looks immediately into Nature: he observes, he thinks, he reasons for himself; and teaches his Reader thus to observe, think, and reason.' M141225 |