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Whelpley's Compend of History.
A COMPEND OF HISTORY from the Earliest Times;
comprehending a General View of the Present State of the World.
By Samuel Whelpley. Seventh Edition, with Corrections and
Improvements, by Rev. Joseph Emerson, Principal of the
Female Seminary at Wethersfield.
Of Whelpley's Compend, the Rev. Mr. Emerson says, in the Prospectus
of his Female Seminary, “For many years I have been solicitously inquiring
for the best Compend of General History for the use of Schools. That which
I consider by far the best which I have yet examined, is the Compend of Mr.
Whelpley. My estimation of this work has been rising for more than ten
years, while I have been engaged in reading and teaching it more than ten
times through. It is not a mere compilation or abridgment in the words of
others: his style is his own—a style, perhaps, not less distinctly marked than
that of any other prose writer in the language.”
CONVERSATIONS ON THE ANIMAL ECONOMY;
designed for the Instruction of Youth. By Isaac Ray, M. D.
Illustrated by numerous Engravings.
This book can need no other recommendation than that it was made by
Doct. Ray, has received the sanction of Professor Cleaveland, and is used in
many of our most respectable seminaries.
A CATECHISM OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. By
I. Nichols, D. D. “Every house is builded by some man.
He that built all things is God.”
This valuable work was much wanted, especially for the higher classes in
our Sunday schools, to which Paley's admirable treatise on the same subject
is, on many accounts, not fitted. The general style of the latter, it is
true, is incomparable, and many of the author's illustrations are among the
most striking and beautiful that can be adduced; and of these Dr. Nichols
has availed himself freely, and, for the most part, without altering the expression.
But Paley committed a serious error in the very outset, considering
his work as one to be put into the hands of the young, by plunging into
some of the most abstruse and difficult metaphysical questions on the atheistical
controversy; questions for which his readers are not prepared, and
questions, too, it must be confessed, which he has not treated with much
ability, nor even with his accustomed clearness, nor even with fairness. Paley,
also, as is well known, was not an adept in the natural sciences; in consequence
of which several defects and a few serious blunders occur in his
work, which are but imperfectly corrected and supplied by Paxton's Illustrations,
and the excellent notes in the last Boston edition. Dr. Nichols has
had this edition before him, and other recent and valuable treatises on
the same and kindred subjects, and particularly Dr. Bell's two admirable
numbers, in the “Library of Useful Knowledge,” on Animal Mechanics.
With these materials, he has given us a compilation, which, for the learning
it displays, and the devotional spirit breathing through its pages, as well as
for its literary execution and general appearance, merits a much higher distinction
than is commonly awarded to works of this class. The present edition
is a great improvement on the first, as regards the mechanical execution.
The text has also been enlarged about one seventh part; most of the additions
consisting of further and important illustrations, under the different
heads, borrowed from comparative anatomy.
—Christian Examiner.
This valuable work, which is wholly free from any thing of a sectarian
character, is rapidly coming into use in various Academies, and the higher
classes of Sunday Schools.
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