Various

“ I am old enough to experience that Time has laid his hand not only on my head to whiten my locks, but in this instance compels me to acknowledge that even the memories of my early days are, like the present, imperfect. ”

“ Well, the man resists, and disobeys; what follows? Why, that he be lawfully and rightfully declared a rebel to our gracious sovereign, whose command he has disobeyed, and that by three blasts of a horn, at the market-place of Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland. And he is then legally imprisoned, not on account of any civil debt, but because of his ungrateful contempt of the royal mandate."
I have only quoted what was absolutely necessary to answer the Query; but there is much more to be found on the subject in the same place. ”

“ Indeed, without it, all attempts to study the geometry of space (even the very elements of descriptive geometry, to say nothing of the more recondite investigations of the science) would be entirely unproductive. It is, moreover, a power capable of being acquired by men of average intellect without extreme difficulty ”

“ With the exception, indeed, of the schoolmaster, and the exciseman, and the surveyor, there are comparatively few instances of persons whose employment was not strictly sedentary having devoted their intellectual energies to mathematics, independent of early cultivation. To them the subject was more or less professional, and their devotion to it was to be expected—indeed far more than has been realised. It is professional now to a larger and more varied class of men, and of course there is a stronger body of non-academic mathematicians now than at any former period. ”

“ It is true that a custom has existed in many places for nearly two centuries and a half to assign to the clergy a method of interment distinct from that adopted for the laity; and the observance of this usage is not limited to Romanists, for its continuance may be noted among members of the Church of Ireland also, at least in remote districts of that country. ”

“ In the reprints of these works, only the names, real or assumed, of those whose contributions were actually printed, are inserted—not the list of all correspondents.
Now one would be led to suppose that the study of mathematics was peculiarly suited to the daily mode of life and occupation of these men. Their employment was monotonous; their life sedentary; and their minds were left perfectly free from any contemplative purpose they might choose. Algebraic investigation required writing: but the weaver's hands being engaged he could not write. ”

“ In the group of three children of life-size we have a rare work of the period when few men of genius wielded the brush or daubed canvas, even through the inspiring patronage of a wealthy banker, whose progeny they are—and this is executed too before academies and societies offered their fostering aid, and when Hogarth struggled on probably side by side with Dandridge. ”

“ His criticism, that the Holyrood House portrait is "too modern," will be agreed in by all who will take the trouble to compare the portrait in Lodge with undoubted portraits of the time: the style is too modern by a hundred years. But the portrait is of a man upwards of sixty years old: Beaton was murdered in 1546, in the fiftieth year of his age. The portrait is of a dark haired man without beard.
I now come to a portrait of Beaton which there appears reason to think is genuine, and I beg the favour of your correspondents to give me any information in their power regarding it. ”

“ At the same time it may be doubted whether there be even as many really able men devoted to science purely and for its own sake in this country as there were a century ago, when science wore a more humble guise. ”

“ The author of a series of very witty and instructive papers written under the title of, and for the prose of showing us How to make Home Unhealthy,—written, too, it is obvious, on the principle of "When I say hold fast, let go, and When I say let go, hold fast,"—has improved upon the old saw, and bids us "Laugh and grow healthy." The subject is one which comes home to everybody, and we accordingly recommend everybody in search of a pleasant half-hour's reading of a happy combination of common sense and uncommon humour to apply themselves to the study of How to make Home Unhealthy. ”

“ This, however, is not to be charged to them as a scientific vice, peculiarly:—for, in truth, it must be confessed to be a vice, not only too common, but almost universal amongst English geometers; and even in the geometry of the Greeks themselves, the great object appears to have been "problem-solving" rather than the deduction and arrangement of scientific truths. The modern French geometers have, however, broken this spell; and it is not too much too hope that we shall not be long ere we join them in the development of the systems they have already opened ”

“ The author exhibits great industry and research, and brings that kindly reverential temper to his subject, which cannot fail to win for it the sympathy of his readers. The apostolic origin of British Christianity, and the early independence of the British Church, are satisfactorily maintained, the labours of St. Patrick in Ireland, St. David and his workfellows in Wales, St. Columba and St. Ninian in the North, are duly chronicled; and the slender particulars that remain to us of the ancient Church in Cornwall, are gleaned up with diligence and accuracy. ”

“ That such men, if once imbued with a love for geometry, and having once got over the drudgery of elementary acquisition, should be favourably situated for its cultivation, follows as a matter of course. ”

“ It cannot be doubted that MR. WILKINSON has traced with singular acumen the manner in which the spirit of geometrical research was diffused amongst the operative classes, and the class immediately above them—the exciseman and the country schoolmaster. Still it is not to be inferred, that even these classes did not contain a considerable number of able geometers anterior to the period embraced in his discussion. The Mathematical Society of Spitalfields existed more than half a century before the Oldham Society was formed. ”

“ They were surrounded, enveloped, by the worst social and moral influences; yet, so far as can now be gathered from isolated remarks in the periodicals of the time, they may be held up as a pattern worthy of the imitation of the philosophers of our own time in respect to the generosity and strict honour which marked their intercourse with one another.
Mathematicians seldom grow up solitarily in any locality. When one arises, the absence of all external and social incentives to the study can only betoken an inherent propensity and constitutional fitness for it. ”

“ Nicholas Ferrar, no doubt the manuscript collections noticed by MR. RIMBAULT (p. 407.) :
"Little Gidding," it has been observed, "was in England what Port Royal was in France. Ardent devotion to the Redeemer characterised both. In each, peace, charity, good order, and love to the souls and bodies of men, were eminently exhibited; upon each the hand of persecution fell with unrelenting severity. Port Royal was destroyed by the Jesuits; Little Gidding by the Puritans."
J.Y.
Hoxton.
Arminian Nunnery in Huntingdonshire (Vol. ii., p. 407.) ”

“ Although at one period of our life we took great pains to make a collection of the periodicals which, during the last century, were devoted wholly or partially to mathematics, yet we could never even approximate towards completeness. ”

“ The Tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer in Westminster Abbey is fast mouldering into irretrievable decay. A sum of One Hundred Pounds will effect a perfect repair. The Committee have not thought it right to fix any limit to the subscription; they themselves, have opened the list with a contribution from each of them of Five Shillings; but they will be ready to receive any amount, more or less, which those who value poetry and honour Chaucer may be kind enough to remit to them. ”

“ The preceding remarks will, in some degree, furnish the elements of an answer to the inquiry, "Why did geometrical speculation take so much deeper root amongst the Lancashire weavers, than amongst any other classes of artisans?" The subject was better adapted to the weaver's mechanical life than any other that could be named; for even the other favourite subjects, botany and entomology, required the suspension of their proper employment at the loom. ”

“ Beaton was elected to the Cardinalate in Dec. 1538; did he visit Rome after that? He was at all events in Paris. The Scotch College at Rome was a natural habitat for a portrait of a Scottish churchman so famous as Cardinal Beaton, and it would be strange indeed if they had not one of him where they affected a collecion of portraits of British prelates. I propose to have this portrait engraved, if its probable authenticity cannot be shaken. Did Pinkerton engrave any portrait of Beaton? There is none in my copies of his Iconographia Scotica, 1797, and his Scottish Gallery, 1799. ”

“ Such a man is too much in earnest to keep his knowledge to himself, or to wish to stand alone. He makes disciples,—he aids, encourages, guides them. His own researches are fully communicated; and this with a prodigality proportioned to his own great resources. ”

“ Osnaburg Bishopric (Vol. ii. p. 358.) .—By the treaty of Osnaburg, in 1624, it was stipulated "that the alternate nomination to the Bishopric of Osnaburg should be in the catholic bishops, and in the protestant branches of the house of Luneburg." Thus, the Princes Ernest Augustus, the father of George I., Ernest Augustus, brother of the same monarch, and the late Duke of York, became sovereign-bishops of Osnaburg. But by the treaty of Vienna, in 1815, the bishopric became an integral part of the kingdom of Hanover. (Vide Halliday's House of Guelph, 4to. 1820, pp. 134, 135, 335.) ”

“ Pennant informs me the Cardinal Beaton is false. It is, indeed, too modern. A real Beaton is said to exist in Fife."—Pinkerton's Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 17.
Lord Buchan writes to him that Mr. Beaton, of Balfour, believes himself to have a genuine portrait of the Cardinal, and offers it for engraving. The authenticity of this portrait, however, appears not to have been established, and it was not engraved. ”

“ Would it not be practicable for publishers to issue these emendations and errata in a separate form and at a fair price, for the benefit of the purchasers of the preceding editions?
Were this plan generally adopted, the value of most books would be materially enhanced, and people would not object, as they now do, to order new publications.
HERBERT.
"He who runs may read."—There appeared in Vol. ii., p. 374., a new, and, in my opinion, an erroneous, interpretation of part of ver. 2., chap. ii. Habakkuk. ”

“ It cannot be denied, at all events, that some of our French cotemporaries have fallen into both these errors; but the abuse of a principle is no argument for our not using it, though its existence (or even possible existence) should be a strong incentive to caution. ”

“ For a man or woman that is in a consumption.—Take a brasse pot, and fill it with water, and set it on the fire, and put a great earthen pot within that pot, and then put in these parcels following:—Take a cock and pull him alive, then flea off his skin, then beat him in pieces ”

“ The word τοκος, as applied to interest, was understood by the Greeks themselves to be derived from τικτω, "to produce," i.e. money begetting money; the offspring or produce of money lent out. Whether its identity may not be established with the word in current use for thousands of years in this country to express precisely the same meaning, is a question I should like to see discussed {436} by some of your correspondents. The word taka signifies any thing pressed or stamped, anything on which an impression is made hence a coin ”

“ Scottish Prisoners sold to Plantations (Vol. ii., pp. 297. 350. 379.) .—
"The judgements of heaven were never so visible upon any people as those which have fallen upon the Scots since [the sale of Charles I.] ; for, besides the sweeping furious plague that reigned in Edinburgh, and the incredible number of witches which have increased, and have been executed there since; besides the sundry shameful defeats they have received by the English, who carried away more of them prisoners than they were themselves in number; besides that many of them died of mere hunger ”

“ He feels no jealousy of competition, and is always gratified by seeing others successful. Thus such bodies of men are created in wonderfully short periods by the magnanimous labours of one ardent {438} spirit. These are the men that found societies, schools, sects; wherever one unselfish and earnest man settles down, there we invariably find a cluster of students of his subject, that often lasts for ages. ”

“ As, however, it is probable that many of your readers may feel an interest in a general statement of a very curious intellectual phenomenon, I am not without a hope that, though so far removed from the usual topics discussed in the work, they will not be altogether unacceptable or useless. ”

“ Mice as a Medicine (Vol. i., p. 397.) .—An old woman lately recommended an occasional roast mouse as a certain cure for a little boy who wetted his bed at night. Her own son, she said, had got over this weakness by eating three roast mice. I am told that the Faculty employ this remedy, and that it has been prescribed in the Oxford Infirmary. ”

“ As I have stopped it, the sense quadrates with the context: and surely it is one unalterable property of philosophy to make seeming strange and preternatural phenomena familiar and reducible to cause and reason."
Does not Mr. Theobald, in his closing remark, turn what in Lafeu is really an ironical outburst on would-be philosophers, into something like a serious common-place?
A. ROFFE.
Query, In a work entitled Philosophy of Shakspeare, by W.H. Roukin, Lafeu's speech is quoted, and one word changed; "and we have our philosophical persons," &c., becomes "yet we have," &c. ”

“ That it is a portrait of Beaton's time is certain; but the artist is unknown, and the picture has sustained damage. It is attributed, by a competent judge, who has himself painted two careful copies of it, to Titian, not only from its general style and handling, but from certain peculiarities of canvas, &c., on which latter circumstances, however, he does not lay much stress, taking them only as adminicles in proof. The portrait is a half-length, about 2 ft. ”

“ A portrait of this eminent Man was engraved by Pennant, from a picture at Holyrood House, in Part II. of his Tour in Scotland, p. 243. 4to. Lond. 1776. Lodge has an engraving from the same portrait in his collection of Illustrious Personages. This is a strange circumstance; because, when Pinkerton was about to include this portrait in his collection, Pennant wrote to him, on 30th April, 1796, as follows:
"Give me leave to say, that I suspect the authenticity of my Cardinal Beaton. ”