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Is is scarcely possible to imagine two instances, in which the literal truth of the assertions made in the letters before referred to, could be more strikingly exemplefied. In the first extract, the term felt is inelegantly and inaccurately employed, because applied to a part (the vertebra) destitute of feeling. Again, the term whose is twice used ungrammatically in the space of four lines! The author seems to have been ignorant that who is applied to persons, which and that to things. There is some obscurity and even inaccuracy in this passage in the language of the original; but the idea intended to be conveyed, must be evident to every one, at all acquainted with the subject. It is difficult to imagine how it could be rendered with more simplicity and perspicuity, than in the American translation. But the English translator, ignorant of his subject, has followed the original into a palpable error. "A lever is a bar, moveable about a fixed point." "The body which communicateds motion to the bar, is called the power, and the body which receives the motion, the weight."--(Enfield's Philosophy.) To say, therefore, "that every vertebra and the parts attached to it, represent a lever," &c. (English translation) is much the same as to assert, that a horse is a part of the coach. The truth is, there is as much difference between the power and the lever, as there is between a dunce and a critic, or any other two objects in nature, which possess but few properties in common. It is equally absurd, in speaking of the vertebral column, to say "the it is the power, which draws it forwards," and "that the resistance (or weight) is in the muscles," (English translation) because the very reverse is norotiously the fact. The weight of resistance which tends to carry the vertebral column forwards, evidently resides in the abdominal and thoracic viscera, &c. and the power, which opposes this, in the muscles placed on the posterior part of the trunk; and to affirm the contrary, is as absurd as to say, that the coach draws the horse.

Nor has the author of the handbill been more fortunate in his second extract. There is no doubt that the English translator has given the literal construction, but this so far from being any evidence of the excellence of his work, proves conclusively, that he was unqualified for the task he had undertaken. It is perfectly evident, from the connections of the sentence, and the plainest principles of natural philosophy, that there is an error, probably typographical, in the original, though neither the English translator, nor the sagacious author of the handbill, had the intelligence to perceive it. The author having first stated the well-known principle in optics, that "light in passing from a rarer into a denser medium, is refracted towards the perpendicular, and in passing from a denser into a rarer, is refracted from the perpendicular," then applies this principle to the course of the light passing through the humours of the eye. He first shows that the light in passing from the air into the cornea, that is from a rarer into a denser medium, is refracted towards the perpendicular, in other words, is made to converge. Again, in passing from the aqueous into the crystalline humour, which is also passing from a rarer to a denser medium, it is refracted still more towards the perpendicular, i.e. its convergency is increased. But when it passes from the crystalline into the vitreous humour, the circumstances are reversed. It then passes from a denser into a rarer medium, and of course, according to the principles already laid down, it is refracted from the perpendicular in other words, "its convergency is diminished"* (American translation.) No doubt by a typgraphical error the term "convergence"* was used instead of "divergence;" this is sufficiently evident in a variet of ways, first, because as it now stans in English, which is literal translation , it is a palpable absurdity, a contradiction in thers; and secondly, if there could be any doubt on the subject, it is perfectly cleared up in the latter part of the sentece, in which it is remarked, "it may perhaps be said that the nature might have arrived at the same results by diminishing the refractive power of the crystalline humor," &c. One scarcely knows which to admire most, the literal accuracy of the translator, or the critical acumen of the author of the handbill.
It is amusing to see an attempt made to test the value of an elborate scientific work of 430 closely printed octavo pages, by extract of six or eight lines; it reminds us of the Pedant in Hierocles, who having a house to sell, brought a brick in his pocket as a specimen.
The publisher thing it proper on this occasion to remark, notwithstanding the attemp whoch has been made to impress the bpublic with the belief, that as English translation of Magendie will be published in this country, they have good reasons for believing that the second
*See the extract from the orginal.