abstruse subject; no one
seeking assistance in the acquisition of distinct and accurate views
on the various and difficult topics which these volumes embrace--can
fail to read them with satisfaction and with benefit.

To give a full account--to give any account--of a work which traverses
so wide a field of subject, would be here a futile attempt; we should,
after all our efforts, merely produce a laboured and imperfect
synopsis, which would in vain solicit the perusal of our readers. What
we purpose doing, is to take up, in the order in which they occur,
some of the topics on which Mr Mill has thrown a new light, or which
he has at least invested with a novel interest by the view he has
given of them. And as, in this selection of topics, we are not bound
to choose those which are most austere and repulsive, we hope that
such of our readers as are not deterred by the very name of logic,
will follow us with some interest through the several points of view,
and the various extracts we shall present to them.

_The Syllogism._--The logic of _Induction_, as that to which attention
has been least devoted, which has been least reduced to systematic
form, and which lies at the basis of all other modes of reasoning,
constitutes the prominent subject of these volumes. Nevertheless, the
old topic of logic proper, or deductive reasoning, is not omitted, and
the first passage to which we feel bound, on many accounts, to give
our attention, is the disquisition on the syllogism.

Fortunately for us it is not necessary, in order to convey the point
of our author's observations upon this head, to afflict our readers
with any dissertation upon _mode_ or _figure_, or other logical
technicalities. The first form or _figure_ of the syllogism (to which
those who have not utterly forgotten their scholastic discipline will
remember that all others may be reduced) is familiar to every one, and
to this alone we shall have occasion to refer.

"All men are mortal.
A king is a man;
Therefore a king is mortal."

Who has not met--what young lady even, though but in her teens, has
not encountered some such charming triplet as this, which looks so
like verse at a distance, but, like some other compositions,
approximates nothing the more on this account to poetry? Who has not
learnt from such examples what is a _major_, what a _middle term_, and
what the _minor_ or conclusion?

As no one, in the present day, advises the adoption, in