Mascart and Joubert's “Electricity and Magnetism”

Abstract

MANY of our readers must already be familiar with the “Électricité Statique” of M. Mascart. They will therefore turn with high expectations to the perusal of the “Leçons sur l'Électricité et le Magnétisme,” of which he is one of the authors. On the whole they will not be disappointed. They will find in it all the limpid clearness, all the vivacity, all the elegance of presentation, both spiritual and material, that characterise the best French text books; and they will find withal none of the shallowness with which their grudging admirers have been wont to credit them. It is a wonderful national gift that our Gallic neighbours have—their power of scientific exposition. We Britons, with a stray exception, are far behind them; still farther are our German cousins. Notwithstanding our undoubted kinship in language and descent with the Germans, and all our well-founded appreciation of their excellence, we weary of their very virtues. One turns from their copious Gründlichkeit, as from the indispensable labour of life, and one finds in the reading of a good French text-book a never-failing pleasure.

Leçons sur L'Électricité et la Magnetisme.

Par E. Mascart J. Joubert. Tome I. (Paris, 1882.)