THE ARCANA OF SCIENCE*
Is a "library of entertaining knowledge" in itself. This is the true lounging book: a fact of the most striking kind may be snitched up in tile momeni I hat a lady takes to put on her bonnet. There are thousands of such facts within the small compass of this duo- decimo. Some of our readers may recollect, how Lord CHESTER- FIELD ITC0111111Cililed his son to read HolcAcs:, and what occasion he suggested should be seized for leaning an ode of HORACE per clay. Let this hint be taken : let the Arcana lie on the table of every ante-charither, in the parlours of inns, and wherever men are doomed to "Mick their heels." The most wretched condition of inns in point of lit eratute ought to he taken into consideration by those who are anxious for the promulgation of knowledge. How many an evening, a morning, an hour, are lost in these places of perpetual resort, for want of a small stock of books. Every body knows that nothing is to be had in the way of literature at an inn, and yet some
* Limbird, 1529
there are who in a moment of desperate ennui will apply to the bar for aid : the return comes in the shape of a greasy Racing Calendar, an odd volume of the Town and Country Magazine, or worse still, the beginning of Julia Mandeville. Let Mr. BROUGHAM, and those who have proposed the ambulating book clubs, look to the benighted state of our inns, and the vast field of improvement which here lies unculti- vated. If there were a Book Society on the principle of the Bible Society, they would present every frequented inn in the country with a small but choice collection of books of valuable information for the use of travellers. The Arcanu of Science is full of those small facts which the curious glean from the journals of the day ; and to read them is as little troublesome as the perusal of a newspaper, and the harvest of entertainment is far more copious.
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