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Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder in one of his novels in making certain of his characters behold a sunset over the waters of a seaport, I think Montrose, situated on the eastern coast of Scotland. Godwin, too, in his Caleb Williams; or Things as they are, by the prolonged detention of his hero in prison, evidently regards Habeas Corpus as a thing that is not.

The following passage from Dr. Latham's English Language seems to me to require some explanation; speaking of the genitive or possessive case, he says,

"In the plural number, however, it is rare; so rare, indeed, that whenever the plural ends in s (as it always does), there is no genitive.". P. 217.

Some of the finest blunders that have been perpetrated are to be found in necrological

EPITAPH AT WOOD DITTON. You have recently appropriated a small space in your "medium of intercommunication" to the subject of epitaphs. I can furnish you with one, which I have been accustomed to regard as a "grand clamacterical absurdity." About thirty years ago, when making a short summer ramble, I entered the churchyard of Wood Ditton, near Newmarket, and my attention was attracted by a headstone, having inlaid into its upper part a piece of iron, measuring about ten inches by six, and hollowed out into the shape of a dish. I inquired of a cottager residing on the spot what the thing meant? I was informed that the party whose ashes the grave covered was a man who, during a long life, had a strange taste for sopping a slice of bread in a dripping-pan (a pan over which meat has been roasted), and would relinquish for this all kinds of dishes, sweet or savory; that in his will he left a request that a dripping-pan should be fixed in his gravestone; that he wrote his own epitaph, an exact copy of which I herewith give you, and which he requested to be engraven on the stone:

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and epitaphic records; in a recent obituary of some "oldest inhabitant," it was stated that the defunct had "continued to walk to church for the last ten years without intermission."

The anachronisms and other errors of painters form an amusing chapter in every compilation on the fine arts; I have seen an engraving after Morland, in which a plentiful crop of apples is being gathered from the oak tree, in painting which that inimitable and truly English artist was facile princeps; and when Hogarth, in his plate of "Morning," matutinal devotions, he indicates the earlirepresents an old lady proceeding to her ness of the hour by making the hands of the clock point to seven minutes past five, — an hour at which, on a winter morning, it would be impossible to discern either clock or lady.

They were represented to have proceeded from the pen of Thomas Dunbar of Brasenose, who, from 1815 to 1822, was keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. I have never seen them in print, or even in writing. Then were recited memoriter, and from memory I write them down; and hence, no doubt, there will be some deviations from the true text. But they seem too good to be lost; and I am not without hope that a correct copy may eventually be elicited from some of your correspondents.

With regard to the first, whether the lines were really made on the occasion stated, or the occasion was invented (as I am inclined to suspect) to suit the lines, is perhaps not very ma terial:

"Reply to Miss Charlotte Ness, who inquired the meaning of the logical terms ABSTRACT and CONCRETE.

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Say what is Abstract, what Concrete?
Their differences define.'

They both in one fair person meet,

And that, dear maid, is thine.'

How so? The riddle pray undo.'
'I thus your wish express;
For when I lovely Charlotte view,

I then view loveli-Ness.'"

On a certain D. D. (who, from a peculiarity in his walk, had acquired the sobriquet of Dr. Toe) being jilted by Miss H— who eloped with her father's footman:

""Twixt footman Sam and Doctor Toe
A controversy fell,
Which should prevail against his foe,
And bear away the belle.
The lady chose the footman's heart.

Say, who can wonder? no man :
The whole prevail'd above the part,
'Twas Foot-man versus Toe-man."
-Notes and Queries.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 611.-9 FEBRUARY, 1856.

From The Examiner. the demonstrations of the laws of motion Analytical View of Sir Isaac Newton's contained in the first two books are not much Principia. By Henry Lord Brougham, better known to the majority of the world F.R.S., Member of the National Institute who have lived since Newton than they were of France, and of the Royal Academy of

Naples. And E. J. Routh, B. A., Fellow to those who existed before him.

man & Co.

Yet with

of St. Peter's College, Cambridge. Long-out some information upon these points, no one can form the crudest conception of the nature and extent of his powers, or pretend to comprehend why the triumphs of his intellect should have placed him above even the Homers and Shakspeares.

On the pedestal of the statue of Sir Isaac Newton in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, is inscribed the words:

"Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit.” That this is not the language of hyperbolical compliment will be conceded by any one who has read M. Arago's notice of Newton; where, after announcing that he intends to criticize him as freely as if he had been his equal, he hastens to add that "he considers him the greatest genius of all countries and all times."

To master the original work is, however, a very serious labor. The singular philosophical penetration of Newton made much appear obvious to his understanding which could only be perceived by slower minds after long and severe thought, and which by many could not without assistance be perecived at all. Having occasion, when a young man, and before he had entered upon his mathematical studies, to look into Euclid, he found the propositions so self-evident that he expressed astonishment that any one should consider it necessary to demonstrate them, and threw it aside as " a trifling book." Later in life he expressed his regret that he had not paid more attention to the Greek geometrician; but the intuitive perception of the parts which caught his eye in this first hasty view of the work is not the less a proof how much he surpassed other men in mathematical sagacity. Euclid, we may be confident, was never laid aside before or since for a similar reason. His Optics

Such is the latest verdict on the subject, delivered after the most rigorous investigation by a man singularly accomplished, who was thoroughly conversant with the entire cycle of science, and was never disposed to confer gratuitous commendation upon foreign philosophers. It is indeed only the repetition of the judgment which has been pronounced by every competent inquirer; and, as among these there have been many whose taste for literature has been not inferior to their knowledge of science, it may safely be assumed that if all the geniuses which the world has produced - poets, novelists, orators, historians-furnish another example of this quality of could be marshalled in the order of their merit, Sir Isaac Newton would be entitled by common consent to lead the procession.

The Principia is the most wonderful of the productions of this prodigy of our race; and Lord Brougham does little more than add a corollary to the proposition with which we started, when he says that it is a work justly considered by all men as the greatest of the monuments of human genius. The grand theory of Universal Gravitation which is there expounded is familiar as a naked fact to every educated person; but the mathematical reasoning by which it is established, the numberless details involved in its application, and LIVING AGE. VOL. XII. 21

DOXI.

Newton's mind. He has summed up in eight axioms the principles of the science which had been established previously to his own discoveries, adding "that this may suffice for an introduction to readers of quick wit and good understanding not yet versed in optics." If any person nevertheless who was entirely ignorant of the subject were to attempt to master this introduction by the sole assistance which Newton has afforded him, he would either rise up with very elevated ideas of Newton's notion of "a quick wit and a good understanding," or he would learn to have a mean opinion of his own.

The Principia is still more complimentary

to the human mind. Not only is it remark- he aimed are distinctly set forth in the introable for conciseness, but large gaps occur in the duction, which is, indeed, a complete descripreasoning which Newton must have supposed needless to be filled up for the assistance of others, because they appeared obvious deductions to himself. "The distances," says Lord Brougham, "which he could stride at once, must, by weaker persons, be divided into many portions and travelled by successive steps." The slow sale of the work- -a second edition not having been called for till twenty-seven years after the first-is admitted by Lord Brougham, who thinks the neglect discreditable to the world, to have been due in part to this want of condescension to the requirements of meaner capacities; and we should be inclined to ascribe a considerably larger influence to the circumstance than he has assigned to it.

tion of the work. His first, but evidently subsidiary design, was to furnish a history of the discoveries contained in the Principia, and which, as facts to be taken upon trust, may be apprehended without the slightest acquaintance with mathematics. "But this," says Lord Brougham, "is in every way a most imperfect knowledge, and neither can give satisfaction though retained, nor is likely to be retained without a knowledge also of the demonstrations." A second object therefore was to assist those who have acquired the rudiments of Geometry and Analysis, to comprehend the proofs of some of the principal propositions, and the nature of the proofs in the cases which are incapable of this extreme eleBishop Hoadley, who was well versed mentary treatment. Ascending a step higher, in Natural Philosophy, while stating, in his the bulk of the work is addressed to the Account of the Life of Samuel Clarke, that readers who have entered upon the Calculus, the strong prejudice in favor of the Cartesian and who yet require aids to permit them to theory operated against the favorable recep- follow its applications. Other portions of the tion of the Principia, confesses in the same book demand a more familiar knowledge of sentence that the manner no less than the the modern Analysis, but these are easily sepmatter "placed it out of the reach of the gen-arated from the rest, and will not interfere erality even of learned readers."

Numerous commentaries upon the original work of Newton in whole or in part, and the exposition of his discoveries by succeding authors under new forms, have now smoothed the path of the student, and removed the difficulties which are not inherent in the subject. But to comprehend all the propositions contained in the Principia, together with the demonstrations upon which they rest, requires an amount of mathematics which can only be possessed by the few who have had the patience to apply to them with prolonged assiduity. On the other hand, a purely popular exposition fails to reveal fully the marvellous sagacity of the conceptions, and of the processes by which they are worked out, fails also, in consequence, to convey an adequate idea of the peculiarities and greatness of that genius of which all must be curious to contemplate the manifestations, surpassing as it does in degree and differing in kind from the intellectual efforts with which most persons are familiar.

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with the pleasure and satisfaction with which less qualified students will regard the main problems, and the great edifice of which these are the columns.

Lord Brougham has not stopped here. He has shown the state of mechanical science when Newton arose, that a just idea may be formed of the magnitude of his additions to it; and, what is more important, has described the contributions that have been made since to a system of which the mighty founder not only drew the outline but supplied most of the details. When Newton composed the Principia he had invented his method of Fluxions, and there can be little doubt that he used it in many of his investigations, which he afterwards, if we may so speak, translated into Geometry. His motive for this was probably the reluctance to encumber a new theory with a new system of mathematics, and one which, on a first acquaintance, rendered the evidence less patent and striking. With these advantages, Geometry, in the majority of instances, is not near so wieldy, and in many The book now before us, the Analytical is altogether inapplicable. Nay, the Calculus View of the Principia, by Lord Brougham, is itself, as it was known to Newton, was unexactly the book which was required to fill the equal to the entire task imposed upon it; and intermediate and unoccupied ground between though what he could not demonstrate he too much and too little. The objects at which almost invariably divined, he left in some

cases to his successors the satisfaction of prov-test, the stumbling-block, and the triumph of ing by rigorous calculation that the inequal- the law of gravitation. ities in the planetary movements were really due to the causes he assigned for them. Something too remained, though little, for his followers to add as well as to confirm.

The analytical view of Lord Brougham thus comprises a survey of the subject matter of the Principia in the state into which it has been brought by the latest investigators. It was now that foreigners came into the Besides the mathematical lore which such a field, and reaped the after crop. Euler, a work requires, much tact was needful in the German, and two Frenchmen, Clairaut and arrangement and connection of the topics; D'Alembert, extended in a surprising degree in the choice of the processes; in the deterthe powers of the instrument with which mination of which results were to be simply Newton had worked, and made further com- related, which to be accompanied by an outline plications obedient to its sway. All three of the proof, which to be set forth with the were men of the first genius in mathematics; steps in full. In all these respects the design but a greater perhaps than any of them ap- has been executed with signal success; and peared in the next generation, in the person whether as an independent manual of the of an Italian, Lagrange, who took another vast | Newtonian philosophy, or as an introduction stride in the new path. His contemporary, to further studies, the volume will be of exLaplace, was inferior to him in inventive ceeding service to every beginner who has remathematical power, but superior in the ap- course to it. Many, it is to be hoped, will plication of it to physical phenomena; and avail themselves of its appearance to approach the discoveries of Lagrange, aided by his own the sublimest theme of science which was ever admirable genius, enabled him to do more offered to the contemplation of man. In every than any single person towards completing the branch of philosophy, the ultimate law asNewtonian view of the system of the universe. sumes a simplicity which conceals both the Even since the publication of the Mécanique intricacy of the details which it reduces to Celeste, the Calculus has been in many respects order, and the enormous difficulty attendant methodized and improved; and old demon-upon its discovery, its application, and its strations have assumed a more convenient proof; but it is in the appreciation of these form. that its beauty and its marvels become appaLord Brougham was peculiarly qualified to rent, and no person, we repeat, can have much treat the advances subsequent to the time of idea of what Newton accomplished who will Newton, and which, as we have seen, have not be at the pains to master some such expobeen mainly due to continental mathemati-sition as that which Lord Brougham, in concians; for his writings show that, contrary to junction with Mr. Routh, a young man of the common practice, he has drawn his knowl-distinguished mathemetical talents, has here edge from the original authorities, and not given to the world. from the ordinary text-books. Indeed, though a few persons in this country, and Professor de Morgan in particular, are deeply read in the literature of mathematics, an intimate ac- In his sketch of the life of D'Alembert, quaintance with the classics of the science is Lord Brougham mentions that when he was far from usual among English geometricians. engaged in 1838 in preparing the first edition Lord Brougham is as much at home with of the Analytical View now enlarged and reLaplace as with Newton; and it is an indica-published, he found the present Lord Chantion of his familiarity with the labors of foreign cellor amusing his leisure with the Calculus, philosophers that his work is dedicated to one in which he had become a proficient during of their number-Baron Plana of Turin- his university career. Lord Lyndhurst, we the city which also gave birth to Lagrange. This distinguished mathematician is well entitled to Lord Brougham's compliment; which is the more appropriate, because, in addition to his general eminence, he is the author of the most elaborate and perfect treatise that exists on the Lunar Theory, which was at once the

It is impossible not to feel that this treatise acquires a great additional interest in consequence of the source from which it proceeds.

believe, in like manner, on his retirement from the woolsack, often reverted to the same studies of his early manhood. The Chief Baron contributed a mathematical paper the other day to the Royal Society's transactions. The hold which this pursuit retains upon its votaries, and which cannot be obliterated by

the hurry of a long professional and parlia- | menced his brilliant career, to devote his rare mentary life, which puts it of necessity in powers to the social and moral progress of his abeyance, is a striking testimony to its inher- countrymen; but it is nevertheless a delightent fascination. And it certainly adds to the consideration which belongs to the luminaries of the law, that besides those qualities which shine forth from the bench, their minds should be imbued with the profound theories of mathematical science. Of the great magistrates who have adorned the woolsack, none since the time of Lord Bacon have rivalled Lord Brougham in genius and acquirements. When the services he has rendered to mankind by word and pen, through the press and in the senate, are considered, no one can regret that he was drawn aside from those mathematical and scientific researches with which he com

ful subject of contemplation that the most eloquent orator of his age, fresh from the excitement of his stirring conflicts, should have resumed the calm and abstruse investigations of the philosopher. It imparts new fascination even to the truths of the Principia that they should have absorbed the attention and won the extremest admiration of a man so eminent in other departments; and we do not therefore scruple to enumerate it among the merits or at least among the attractions of the Analytical View that it is the work of Lord Brougham.

THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN FIGURE. With
Six Illustrative Outlines. By Joseph Bonomi.
Renshaw.

THIS is a small piece of artistic antiquarianism, as curious as it is original. It is the Canon of the proportions of the human frame, handed down to us by Vitruvius, in the third book of his Treatise on Architecture. From some obscurity in that writer's text, and from the poor illustrations that accompany the old editions, this Canon has hitherto been disregarded. In the Library of the Academy of Venice, however, there has been discovered a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, and a translation of Vitruvius' remarks into Italian, so lucid and so intelligible that it is probable the Italian artist must have possessed a more perfect copy of the author than now exists. The importance of this new reading is, that it probably hands down to us the great Canon of Polycletus, as it agrees with the best Greek statues, and is understood by comparison with the three succeeding Canons used by the Egyptians. Man is found to be constructed on purely geometric laws, though the beauty of his body and the harmony of its parts are now forever, we suppose, hidden by the labors of the tailor. A great miracle is a house that widens and widens without any reconstruction, and adapts itself to the fresh wants of every year, that widens and still preserves its relative proportions, that widens and preserves its original shape and form. The original text is too curious to escape quotation :

"Nature, in the composition of the human frame, has so ordained that the face from the chin to the highest point of the forehead whence the hair begins, is a tenth part of the whole stature; the same proportion obtains in the hand

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measured from the wrist to the extremity of the middle finger. The head, from the chin to the top of the scalp, is an eighth. From the top of the chest to the highest point of the forehead is a seventh. From the nipples to the top of the scalp is the fourth of the whole stature. If the length of the face, from the chin to the roots of the hair, be divided into three equal parts, the first division determines the place of the nostrils; the second the point where the eyebrows meet. The foot is the seventh part of the height of the entire frame; the cubit and the chest are ea ha fourth. The other members have certain a nities which were always observed by the celebrated of ancient painters and sculptors, and we must look for them in those produc ons which have excited universal admiration. . . . The navel is naturally the central point of the human body; for if a man should lie on his back with his arms and legs extended, the periphery of the circle which may described about him, with the navel for its centre, would touch the extremities of his hands and feet. The same affinities obtain if we apply a square to the human figure; for, like the contiguous sides, the height from the feet to the top of the head is found to be the same as the distance from the extremity of one hand to the other, when the arms are extended. The standards according to which all admeasurements are wont to be made, are likewise deduced from the members of the body; such as the digit, the palm, the foot, and the cubit; all of which are subdivided by the perfect number which the Greeks call Teleios."

The book is a valuable one to artists and persons interested in Greek Art; and we are very grateful to Mr. Bonomi for the easy access which he has given us to this curious treasury of artistic speculation.-Athenæum.

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