BY THOMAS MORELL, LONDON: PRINTED FOR B. J. HOLDSWORTH, 18, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. 1827. PREFACE. THE principal contents of this elementary volume were first collected solely with a view to private academical instruction, and intended to be accompanied with additional oral information. This circumstance is stated to account for the technical and didactic form in which they appear. Had it been the primary design of the Author to submit his work to the public eye, he would probably have adopted a less scholastic arrangement of his subjects, and indulged in greater freedom of composition; but the information would, in that case, have been less condensed, the method less perspicuous, and the volume itself, though more generally attractive, of less intrinsic value. There are several classes of persons to whom the Author ventures to hope the present Work may prove acceptable and useful. It may revive, in the minds of those who have formerly passed through Nor will it be wholly course of scientific education, some agreeable recollections of pursuits and objects, which have almost faded from their remembrance. It may serve, in some degree, to guide the inquiries and stimulate the exertions of those, who, having completed the elementary process of classical literature, are just entering upon the higher departments of philosophy and science. uninteresting, it is presumed, to others, who, placed in circumstances less favourable to the acquisition of knowledge, yet eager in its pursuit, are desirous of finding, within a narrow compass, and ready collected to their hands, a mass of information on scientific subjects, which they have neither leisure nor opportunity to collect for themselves. The Author will be happy, if the labour bestowed on the compilation of the following pages shall contribute, in any degree, to supply the wants, or gratify the wishes, of these several classes of intellectual inquirers. It is the business of the historian faithfully to record, not to invent. All, therefore, that can |