Mr. MUDIE is distinguished shove the ordinary class of compilers
for many good qualities ; but the chiefest is that he reproduces the old materials he uses, and gives to the very stalest an original air, because he has made them his own by the completeness of the appropriation. This is especially the case with Popular ilIathentatics—the best of the many good books he has published. Its object is popularly to explain the elementary principle's and uses of Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geo- metry; to point out their relations, and to stimulate their study, by connecting and animating, if' one may say so, their general laws, instead of thrusting dry and isolated rules upon the mind. The value of the book will be found to consist in the comparative attraction it imparts to what has hitherto been deemed the most repulsive and tasking of studies, as well as in its setting in motion a great quantity of thinking on the subjects treated of, though it is not sufficient by itself to give a mastery in any one of them.
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