inherent goodness or badness of their cause ;-it may only prove the ignorance, the presumption, or the unskilfulness of the champion. How often is the detection of a fallacy mistaken for the discovery of a truth! How often is an honest but intemperate zeal the prolific source of all manner of fallacies! It is not by the logic of the schools-the subtile hair-splitting dialectics, whether of Aristotle or of Gautama— that great moral and religious questions are ever to be settled. The real seat of all opposition to conviction, in the higher departments of moral and religious truth, is not the head but the heart. Once conquer, restrain, or regulate the biasses, predilections, and impetuous desires of the latter, and the former will cheerfully follow in the train of rational evidence, wherever it is to be found, and to whatever goal it may legitimately lead.

There are some, to whose judgment, on many points, we would implicitly defer, who may be disposed to regard the insertion of the foregoing article as out of place in the pages of the Calcutta Review. On this point, however, we cannot surrender our own deliberately formed judgment and resolve. We must, therefore, in the true spirit of liberal candour and mutual forbearance, make up our minds to agree to differ. Our original, and still unaltered, design, was not a limited or circumscribed one-but wide and all-comprehensive. Our projected work was not to be exclusively or mainly political or religious, literary or scientific, civil or military, topographical or statistical, judicial or commercial, entertaining or grave:-it was, on suitable occasions and in due proportions, to be all of these together. It was intended to embrace the discussion and elucidation of every subject, which, directly or indirectly would tend to excite, increase, or perpetuate an interest in Indian affairs, and, thereby, in any way, help to accelerate the progress of Indian amelioration. In the present circumstances of India, it is plainly impossible to secure the desiderated variety of articles for every number; but what is wanting in one, will be supplied in another; so that overspreading a series of numbers will be found a diversity of papers fairly embracing topics in every leading department of interest or utility. Such was the conception of the general plan which we originally formed to ourselves; and such is the plan we are determined to pursue still. The steady increase, alike in the number of our regular subscribers and regular contributors, is an unmistakeable proof that the plan has sufficiently commended itself to the judgment of an intelligent and reflecting community. Those friends, therefore,-constituting we doubt not a very small minority,-who, in their zeal for our welfare and success, suggest the propriety of omitting a certain class of articles altogether, must excuse us for being better acquainted with our own original plans and intentions than they can possibly be-and for resolving stedfastly to cherish these intentions, and unwaveringly to prosecute these plans, in the time to come. Jokes and jibes and jeers, together with the application of any epithets which may readily be drawn from the hacknied vocabulary of illiberal cant, are alike lost upon us. We can well afford complacently to smile at these and such-like. As Calcutta Reviewers we stand on our own footing-quite independent of every existing branch of the local press. We know no envies; we feel no jealousies; we cherish no rivalries. Our earnest wish is to contribute our humble share towards upholding the respectability, the decency, and the dignity of the Indian press-a press, which, whatever be its faults and shortcomings, has heretofore rendered essential service to the country, and is destined hereafter to render increasingly still more-a press, too, which has double claims on the generous and the just, from the mere circumstance of its having been treated, in high places and by high personages, with so much of undeserved obloquy and reproach. Should any of our labours meet with the approbation of our cotemporaries, we shall rejoice in their expressions of friendly feeling and good will; if the contrary should be the case, we shall endeavour meekly to profit by any admonition or reproof which may have any thing real or valid for its foundation. Every genuine friend of India we shall hail as our friend; and we shall know no enemies, except those who may be the enemies of truth, purity, and righteousness.

ART. III.-1. Traité de Géodésie, ou exposition des Méthodes trigonométriques et astronomiques, applicable soit à la mesure de la terre, soit à la confection des canevas des cartes et des plans topographiques; par L. Puissant, Chevalier de l'ordre Royal et Militaire de St. Louis, &c.-Paris 1819.

2. Méthodes Analytiques pour la determination d'un arc du Meridien; par J. B. J. Delambre, Membre de l'Institut National et du bureau des Longitudes, &c. &c., précédées d'un Mémoire sur le même sujet, par A. M. Legendre, membre de la Commission des poids et mesures de l'Institut National.-Paris, An. VII. 3. An account of the measurement of an arc of the Meridian between the parallels of 18° 3' and 24° 7', being a continuation of the grand meridional Arc of India, as detailed by the late Lieutenant-Colonel Lambton, in the volumes of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta; by Captain George Everest, of the Bengal Artillery, F. R. S., &c.-London 1830.

4. Geometrical Theorems and Analytical formule, with their application to the solution of certain geodetical problems, by William Wallace, L. L. D. Emeritus Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, &c. &c.-Edinburgh 1839. THERE is much of truth in a common proverbial saying, that one half of mankind is unacquainted with the other half. This is not more true regarding those portions of the human family that are farthest separated from each other in local habitation, than in respect of those who, though dwelling side by side, are separated and disjoined from each other by differences of rank and station, differences of opinion and motive, or differences of intellectual habits. We have heard of a Princess of the blood royal, who, on being told that many people, during a period of scarcity, were dying of starvation, declared that she thought them very foolish to permit themselves to die from such a cause; for her own part, rather than die of hunger, she would even live on bread and cheese! We have heard too of a man, who being asked how he thought Astronomers could predict eclipses, declared that nothing could be more simple-they had only to look in the Almanac! These are extreme cases, and may, perhaps, be referred to extreme thoughtlessness, rather than to extreme ignorance; but it cannot possibly be questioned that there does exist, in every class of every community, a great amount of ignorance regarding the habits and pursuits of all the other classes. To break down the barriers that thus dissever the different sections of the human family, and to excite in the breast of each a kindly and generous sympathy with the hopes

and fears, the joys and sorrows, the successes and disappointments of all, is one of the blessed effects that may be expected from that general diffusion of sound knowledge by which the present age is so distinguished. Unquestionably it is the will of Him who has made of one blood all generations of men to dwell in all places on the earth," and who has linked the various classes of Society together by mutual interests and obligations and dependencies,-that such a generous and intelligent sympathy should exist among those whom he has thus made brothers in the same family, and fellow-workers in the same service.

Perhaps there are no two classes of men who are less acquainted with each other, who know less of each other's ends and objects, difficulties and perplexities, hopes, fears and feelings, than the mathematical and the non-mathematical portion of the community. Speak to the generality of men about a mathematician, and immediately there rises up before them the image of a wretched parchment-skinned old man, in the world but not of it, dissociated from all the concerns that interest his fellowmortals, and spending his days and nights in vain attempts to trisect an angle and to square the circle, to do that in one particular way which every carpenter does a hundred times in a day without any difficulty in another, looking with an eye of scorn on all the pursuits of the working world, and despising the finest productions of human intellect and taste, because he does not see what they are meant to demonstrate! It is ever thus, that men will ply the pencil of the caricaturist in sketching those whom they do not know. Thus the merchant will be described as a man whose whole soul is in his ledger, whose affections are all concentred in "another and another lakh;" the lawyer is pictured as a compound of precedents, and rules nisi, and certiorari; and every class is conceived of by every other with reference only to those singular exceptions in whom the peculiarities of the class are ridiculously prominent. There have undoubtedly been triflers in mathematics, as well as in other pursuits; but it is a grievous mistake to suppose that mathematical studies, even of the most abstract kind, are necessarily destitute of a direct bearing upon ordinary interests and concerns of man. Lord Bacon, who did more than any other man to render the sciences practical, seems fully to have understood the important connexion that subsists between the cultivation of abstract mathematical science and the progress of mankind in practical science. Not to mention the multitudes of passages in his philosophical writings, we may quote a letter to the Marquess of Buckingham, in which he

the

states his conviction that the foundation of the Savilian and Sandisian Professorships of Geometry was of more importance than the foundation of Dulwich Hospital. The letter is as follows:

"To the Marquess of Buckingham.

"My very good Lord. I thank your Lordship for your last loving letter. I now write to give the king an account of a patent I have stayed at the office. It is of license to give in mortmain eight hundred pound land, though it be tenure in chief, to Allen, that was the player, for an hospital. I like well that Allen playeth the last act of his life so well; but if his majesty give way thus to amortize his tenures, his courts of wards will decay which I had well hoped should improve.

"But that which moved me chiefly is, that his majesty now lately did absolutely deny Sir Henry Savile for 2007., and Sir Edward Sandys for 100l. to the perpetuation of two lectures, the one in Oxford, the other in Cambridge; foundations of singular honour to his majesty, the best learned of kings, and of which there is great want; whereas hospitals abound and beggars abound never a whit the less.

"If his majesty do like to pass the book at all; yet if he would be pleased to abridge the 800l. to 500l. and then give way to the other two books for the university, it were a princely work. And I would make an humble suit to the king and desire your Lordship to join in it that it might be so. God ever preserve and prosper you.

"Your Lordship's most obliged friend and faithful servant, "FR. VERULAM, Canc.

York House, August 18, 1618.

"I have written to my Lord Chamberlain, being Chancellor of Oxford, to help in the business."

We find also in his will that Lord Bacon designed the endowment of two professorships on the model of the Savilian Professorship. The following is an extract from his will:

"And because I conceive there will be upon the moneys, raised by sale of my lands, leases, goods and chattels, a good round surplusage, over and above that which may serve to satisfy my debts and legacies and perform my will; I do desire and declare that my executors shall employ the said surplusage in manner and form following; that is to say that they purchase therewith so much land of inheritance as may create and endow two lectures in either the Universities, one of which lectures shall be of natural philosophy and the sciences in general thereunto belonging; hoping that the stipend or salaries of the lecturers may amount to two hundred pounds a year for either of them; and for the ordering of the said lectures, and the

election of lecturers from time to time, I leave it to the care of my Executors to be established by the advice of the Lords Bishops of Lincoln, and Coventry and Litchfield.

Nevertheless thus much I do direct, that none shall be lecturer, if he be English, except he be master of Arts of seven years' standing, and that he be not professed in divinity, law or physic, as long as he remains lecturer; and that it be without difference, whether he be a stranger or English; and I wish my Executors to consider of the precedent of Sir Henry Savil's lectures for their better instruction."

We regard these extracts, (especially the former) from the incidental writings of the great father of practical utilitarian philosophy, as most valuable testimonies to the importance of the study of pure demonstrative science, and as furnishing a rebuke to those multitudes who believe that they are treading in the footsteps of Bacon when they decry the study of pure mathematics as a remnant of scholastic trifling.

To the enlightened advocates of practical philosophy it is not difficult to shew that a science which brings man into contact with the eternal relations of things, which brings us back to the principles on which the universe is constructed, and which must ever be the director of observation in regard to the actually existing universe, cannot be a useless study if judiciously cultivated. Neither should it be difficult to convince the man who is accustomed to observe and analyse the workings of the mind, that so far from dissociating their devotee from the rest of the world, mathematical studies are best of all fitted for cultivating those talents and accomplishments which enable a man to attract and please and instruct his fellows. It may seem a somewhat startling affirmation, but we are persuaded it is true, that the imagination is the faculty which the mathematician is called chiefly to exercise. We speak not of course of the mere learner of mathematics, who can merely make himself master, by an effort, of a proposition of which the demonstration is put before him. We do not regard him as a mathematician at all. At the best he stands in the same relation towards the true mathematician in which the brick-layer stands towards the architect. He may doubtless discharge all his functions without a particle of imagination. But mathematical invention is effected by forming in the mind new combinations, by so tracing relations and connexions as to be able intuitively to detect the bearings of a demonstrated truth upon other subjects than those regarding which it is demonstrated; and this we suppose is just as much an exercise of the imagination as is that put forth by the poet or the painter.

But we despair of being able to convince the generality

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