en to Hamilton has been,
that his teaching not only inspired them with an enthusiasm for the
science, and gave them clear ideas and accurate information, but
directly aided them in the discipline of their minds. Some of his
students became, later in life, champions of his system; others became
its opponents; but opponents as well as champions warmly professed their
obligations to their instructor, and dated their interest in philosophy
from the period when they were brought by these Lectures within the
contagious sphere of his powerful intellect. So numerous were these
testimonials, that they gradually roused public curiosity to see
and read what was so effective as spoken. That curiosity has now an
opportunity of being gratified, and we do not doubt that these Lectures
will have a greater popularity than usually attends philosophical
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 t