The reader will be amazed that there are so
many common things in the world of which he has never heard, and that
they have so large and fruitful an influence over the world's progress.
If there are striking faults in Mr. Marsh's work, they seem to be these:
want of continuity in treatment, and disproportionate development of
some subjects in contrast with others. The book is, in fact, too large
for a popular treatise, and not large enough for a scientific exposition
of all it essays to discuss. It claims to be a popular work; but the
elaborate discussion of Forests is far beyond the wishes or needs of any
but a scientific reader. The broken, jagged, paragraph style is a
drawback to the pleasure of perusing it: the notion seems to impress the
author that people will not read anything elaborate, unless it be broken
up into labelled paragraphs. It is true of the newspaper: it is not true
of the octavo, to which they sit down expecting a different mode of
treatment, a broad, discursive style, flowing, redundant, and even
eloquent. Yet Mr. Marsh has in some instances transgressed, we think,
even in fulness: the great prominence given, for example, to the
drainage of Holland is untrue to the general tenor of the book and to
the prospective future of the world.
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