publications. The American publishers deserve thanks for the cheap,
compact, and elegant form of their reprint.

We have no space to present here an exposition of Hamilton's system, or
to discuss any of its leading principles. We can merely allude to some
characteristics of his mode of thinking and writing which make his
Lectures of especial value to those who propose to begin the study of
metaphysics, or whose knowledge of the science is superficial. Hamilton
has the immense advantage of being a scholar in that large sense which
implies the exercise, not merely of attention and memory, but of every
faculty of the mind, in the acquisition and arrangement of knowledge.
His erudition is great, but it is also critical and interpretative. He
knows intimately every philosophical writer from the dawn of speculation
to the last German thinker, including the somewhat neglected Schoolmen
of the Middle Ages; and in this volume, every important question that
arises is historically as well as analytically treated, and the names
are given of the thinkers on both sides. In the course of one or two
sentences, he often places the reader in a position to view a principle,
not only in itself, but in relation to the controversies which have
raged round it for two thousand years. Hamilton's erudition is
also displayed in the quotations with which his pages are
sprinkled,--fragrant sentences, which came originally from the
imagination or character of the writers he quotes, and which relieve his
own abstract propositions and reasonings with concrete beauty or truth.
Most of these quotations will be novel even to advanced students.

Hamilton is also admirable in statement. Confusion, vacillation,
obscurity, uncertainty, are as foreign to his style as to his mind. He
is almost rigid in his precision. Every word has its meaning, and
every idea its stern, sure, decisive statement. His masterly powers