Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/50

 readily understand, and more firmly retain, that of which the truth has been brought home to his understanding, than a chaos of rules, which he has been made to learn by rote, however carefully and neatly he may have recorded the whole mass in his cyphering-book.

We do not apologize to our readen tor this apparent aberration. It is the pedantic manner of teaching arithmetic of many of our private seminaries (for most of our eminent public schools consider any thing but Latin and Greek, and mathematics in particular, either below their dignity or beyond their province); it is, we are convinced, this pedantry of system that creates the disgust in our youth for numerical science, and launches them into the counting-houses or public offices so totally ignorant of a branch of knowledge, the want of which they feel at every step in their career, without then having either the application or the time for supplying that chasm in their education.

Mr. Dubost’s Commercial Arithmetic sets out from the first elements of the science, and gradually leads the learner from one problem to another, through every rule necessary for the purposes of a commercial life. His method, although singularly concise, is perspicuous; and his demonstrations will be found intelligible to the most common capacity, being unincumbered by algebraical notations. The manner in which he introduces the doctrine of decimals at the very outset of the work, by combining it at once with our numeral system, is novel and ingenious; the rule given for division of decimals (a stumbling-block in many arithmetical treatises) is both simple and well explained. The chapter on fractions is divested of its usually mysterious and dry complexion, and the rules for their multiplication and division are well defined and demonstrated. The rule of three is, as it ought to be, built upon geometrical proportion; and from the same doctrine Mr. D. has deduced one of the most important, though least understood, rules in commercial arithmetic, the rule of equation, or, as it is generally termed by such of our English arithmeticians as have noticed this species of calculation at all, conjoined proportion, upon which, as he justly observes, the principal calculations on business are founded.

The few pages devoted to the article of exchanges are sufficient to give correct ideas of a subject which, in most elementary treatises we know of, is little more than a confused compilation of antiquated and erroneous statements, copied from preceding works equally loose and incorrect in that respect. A short chapter comprehending the first rudiments of algebra closes the work. Here the few analytical questions appear to us so judiciously chosen, and their solution developed in so clear and systematic a manner, as to persuade us that this little appendix will tend, not only to remove the terror with which young beginners in mathematics are accustomed to view that science, but even to stimulate their ardour for the attainment of ulterior perfection therein.

Such are the leading features of this valuable little treatise. It is but justice due to its author, whom