Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 001.djvu/182

180 I.Vol. II. Part I.

the many distinctions by which our northern metropolis is known in the literary world, it is not the least honourable, that the first Encyclopædia, in point of celebrity, if not of time, published in Britain, was projected and executed in Edinburgh. On the plan of the Encyclopædia Britannica, important improvements have no doubt been made in other similar works; but it was even from the first a most valuable repository of knowledge, and many of the leading articles in science and literature were executed with an ability which has never been surpassed. Science, however, is unceasing in her progress; and is found, in the course of a few years, to have left far behind, the fields in which her votaries had formerly accompanied her with all the delight of discovery. The records of her advancement given in Encyclopædias soon become defective; and the deficiency must be supplied either by new editions, or by supplemental articles. The proprietors of the Britannica, though they have repeatedly been called upon, by an extended sale, to renew the editions of their work, have generally chosen to give, in the form of supplements, the additional information which the progress of science required. The Supplement which is now-going on, has attracted much of the public attention by the pomp of its announcement, and has deserved it, so far as published, by the splendour of its execution.

Three Parts of it have already appeared: the first preceded by a dissertation exhibiting a general view of the progress of metaphysical, ethical, and political philosophy, by Professor Dugald Stewart; and the third, which begins the second volume, by a similar dissertation on the history of the mathematical and physical sciences, by Professor Playfair. These dissertations are extremely valuable; and did the Supplement contain nothing more, we should have considered it as a very precious donation to the literary world. In the short sketch which we propose to give of works of this nature, our plan and limits admit of no retrospect beyond the last published Number. Of Mr Stewart's dissertation, therefore, we shall only say, that we agree with some distinguished critics in considering it as the most splendid of his works, and as combining a number of qualities which place the author at the head of the elegant writers of philosophy in our language.

The order which Mr Playfair follows in his discourse, is very properly determined by a regard to the subserviency of one science to the progress of another, and the consequent priority of the former in the course of regular study. He first traces, therefore, the progress of the pure mathematics, one of the two principal instruments which have been applied to the advancement of natural science. As the other instrument is experience, the principles of the inductive method, or that branch of logic which teaches the application, of experiment and observation to the interpretation of nature, form, of course, the second object of his inquiry. He, next proceeds to treat of natural philosophy, under the divisions of mechanics, astronomy, and optics. Under the general denomination of mechanics he includes the theory of motion, as applied not only to, solids, but to fluids, both incompressible and elastic. Optics he places after astronomy, because the discoveries in mechanics, he observes, have much less affected the progress of the former of these sciences than of the latter. A sixth division succeeds, containing the laws of the three unknown substances, if, indeed, they may be called substances, heat, electricity, and magnetism. As we intend hereafter to give, in another part of our work, a pretty full analysis of this dissertation, written by a correspondent, we shall content ourselves at present with this general outline of Mr Playfair's plan. In the object which he modestly proposes to himself, to treat his subjects with clearness and precision, Mr Playfair has completely succeeded. No author, indeed, with whom we are acquainted, excels him in luminous arrangement, or in perspicuous