Valuable space is occasionally occupied by the too rhetorical statement of matters which would have been better presented in a simpler way; thus, the fervid description of oxygen, however appropriate in Faraday's admirable lectures before the Royal Institution, is out of place in the "Iron-Manufacturer's Guide." We must also enter an earnest protest against the importation, upon any terms, of such words as "ironoxydulcarbonate," "ironoxydhydrate," and the adjective "anhydrate." Some descriptions of considerable imaginative power have found place even in the directory of works. From the description of the Allentown furnaces we learn, with some surprise, that "no finer object of art invites the artist"; and again, "that the repose of bygone centuries seems to sit upon its immense walls, while the roaring energy of the present day fills it with a truer and better life than the revelry of Kenilworth or the chivalry of Heidelberg." The average age of the Allentown works subsequently appears to be nine years.
Another principal division of Mr. Lesley's book treats of the ores of iron in the United States. This portion of the book contains much valuable and interesting information, which has never been published before in so complete and satisfactory a form. The geographical and geological position of every ore-bank in the country, which has been opened and worked, is fully described, with many details of the peculiar properties, mineralogical associations, and history of each bed or mine. The inexhaustible wealth of the country in ores of iron is clearly shown, and the superiority of the American ores to the English needs no other demonstration than can be found on the pages of this catalogue of our ore-beds. Two or three geological maps, to illustrate the distribution of the ores, would have been an instructive addition to the book. In this section, as in the preceding one on the chemistry of iron, much space is misapplied to the discussion of questions of structural geology, of opposing theories of the formation of veins, and other scientific problems with which the iron-master is not concerned, and which he cannot be expected to understand, much less to solve. We regret the more this unnecessary introduction of comparatively irrelevant matters, when we find, at the close of the volume, that the unexpected length of the discussion of the ores has prevented the publication of several chapters on the machinery now in use, the hot-blast and anthracite coal, the efforts to obtain malleable iron directly from the ore, and the history and present condition of the iron-manufacture in America.
The American Iron-Association, by their Secretary, have accomplished a very laborious and valuable work, in accumulating and digesting the mass of facts and statistics embodied in this, the first "Iron-Manufacturer's Guide"; but the subject is as inexhaustible as the mineral wealth of the country, and we shall look for the future publications of the society with much interest.
An Essay on Intuitive Morals. Being an Attempt to Popularize Ethical Science. Part I. Theory of Morals. First American Edition, with Additions and Corrections by the Author. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1859. pp. 294.
Four years ago last March this book appeared in England, published by Longman; a thin octavo, exciting little attention there, and scarcely more on this side the water, where the best English books have of late years found their first appreciation. The first notice of it printed in this country, so far as we know, appeared in the "Harvard Magazine" for June, 1855,—a publication so obscure, that, to most readers of the ATLANTIC, this will be their first knowledge of its existence. About two years later, Part II appeared in England, and then both books were reviewed in the "Christian Examiner"; yet, to all intents and purposes, this new edition is a new book, and we shall treat it as such. We have as yet a reprint of Part I. only, but we trust the publishers will soon give us the other,—"The Practice of Morals,"—which, if less valuable than this, is still so much better than most works of its kind as to demand a republication.
The author—a woman—(for, to the shame of our virile secus be it said, a woman has written the best popular treatise on Ethics in the language)—divides her First Part into four chapters:—
I. What Is the Moral Law?
II. Where the Moral Law is found.
III. That the Moral Law can be obeyed.
IV. Why the Moral Law should be obeyed.
This, as will be seen, is an exhaustive analysis. To the great question of the first chapter, after a full discussion, she gives this answer:—
"The Moral Law is the resumption of the eternal necessary Obligation of all Rational Free Agents to do and feel those Sentiments which are Right. The identification of this law with His will constitutes the Holiness of the Infinite God. Voluntary and disinterested obedience to this law constitutes the Virtue of all finite creatures. Virtue is capable of infinite growth, of endless approach to the Divine nature and to perfect conformity with the law. God has made all rational free agents for virtue, and all worlds for rational free agents. The Moral Law, therefore, not only reigns throughout His creation, (all its behests being enforced thereon by His omnipotence,) but is itself the reason why that creation exists."—pp. 62-63.
This is certainly good defining, and the passage we have Italicized has the true Transcendental ring. Indeed, the book is a system of Kantian Ethics, as the author herself says in her Preface; and the tough old Königsberg professor has no reason to complain of his gentle expounder. Unlike most British writers,—with the grand exception of Sir William Hamilton, the greatest British metaphysician since Locke and Hume,—she understands Kant, admires and loves him, and so is worthy to develop his knotty sublimities. This alone would be high praise; but we think she earns a more original and personal esteem.