Produced by Brendan O'Connor, Jonathan Ingram, Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. * * * * * No. CCCXXXVI. OCTOBER, 1843. VOL. LIV. * * * * * CONTENTS. MILL'S LOGIC. MY COUNTRY NEIGHBOURS. TRAVELS OF KERIM KHAN. THE THIRTEENTH; A TALE OF DOOM. REMINISCENCES OF SYRIA. THE FATE OF POLYCRATES. MODERN PAINTERS. A ROYAL SALUTE. PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN ENGLAND. CHRONICLES OF PARIS. THE RUE ST DENIS. THE LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT. MILL'S LOGIC.[1] [1] A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive; being a connected view of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. By John Stuart Mill. In two volumes. London: Parker. These are _not_ degenerate days. We have still strong thinkers amongst us; men of untiring perseverance, who flinch before no difficulties, who never hide the knot which their readers are only too willing that they should let alone; men who dare write what the ninety-nine out of every hundred will pronounce a _dry_ book; who pledge themselves, not to the public, but to their subject, and will not desert it till their task is completed. One of this order is Mr John Stuart Mill. The work he has now presented to the public, we deem to be, after its kind, of the very highest character, every where displaying powers of clear, patient, indefatigable thinking. Abstract enough it must be allowed to be, calling for an unremitted attention, and yielding but little, even in the shape of illustration, of lighter and more amusing matter; he has taken no pains to bestow upon it any other interest than what searching thought and lucid views, aptly expressed, ought of themselves to create. His subject, indeed--the laws by which human belief and the inquisition of truth are to be governed and directed--is both of that extensive and fundamental character, that it would be treated with success only by one who knew how to resist the temptations to digress, as well as how to apply himself with vigour to the solution of the various questions that must rise before him. "This book," the author says in his preface, "makes no pretence of giving to the world a new theory of our intellectual operations. Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded on the fact, that it is an attempt not to supersede, but to embody and systematize, the best ideas which have been either promulgated on its subject by speculative writers, or conformed to by accurate thinkers in their scientific enquiries.