general somnolency was undisturbed by even a whisper of innovation, and men and boys mused away over squares and circles, surds and binomials, in pleasant and unapprehensive lethargy. But lately, about the time of conferring the Bachelors' degrees, an evil spirit started up among them, in the shape of a smart pamphlet, questioning their reverend and tranquil system. This pamphlet took the Bull by the horns, and protesting, in the face of the Caput and of day, that the plan of University honours was only a contrivance to make University education nugatory, proceeded to shake mathematic glory on its throne. This ad yersary asserts, without the fear of the heads of Colleges before his eyes, that at the most favourable computation, the cause of knowledge reaps annually no more than a dozen decent proficients in sines and tangents, out of an average of 146 graduates, and an expense of about L.700 each, or in the whole above L.100,000. He thus goes into proof.

On the average of the last three years, about 146 men enter the Se nate-house annually, at the usual degree time; of these, 52 obtain honours of whom 19 are wranglers, or proficients in mathematics, 19 are se nior optimes, or second rates, and 14 are junior optimes, or smatterers. What have the remaining 94 to shew for an education of three years and a quarter? at an expence nearer L.800 than 700. The University examination for their degree is in mathematics, and if they have learned four books of Euclid, (or even less,) can answer a sum in arithmetic, and can solve a simple equation, they are deemed qualified for this degree. That is, the University pronounces this a sufficient progress, after three years and a quarter of study!

What have those men learned in religion, ethics, metaphysics, history, classics, jurisprudence? Who can tell? for except the short one day's examination in Locke, Paley, and Butler, in the Senate-house, the University muat be supposed to know nothing of these things. So much for the multitude of students!

-But, of the junior optimes, dony bring their mathematical reading to after use?

-Of the senior optimes, do any two in a year keep up their mathematics VOL. XI.

so as to make any progress in them after they have taken their degrees?

Of the wranglers, do many of the lower wranglers, and all, or nearly all of the higher, pursue their mathematical studies farther than to fit them for the fellowship examination; which at some colleges, as at Trinity, is partly mathematical?

In fact, do more than two-thirds of the wranglers pursue their mathematical studies after they have taken their degrees?

If they do not, then all the fruit of their three their three years and a quarter's study, and all the expences of 146 men, amounting to above L.100,000, are concentrated, as far as any literary benefit results from them, in about a dozen or fifteen individuals!

It must be asked, how many of these individuals, how many Cambridge mathematicians, distinguish themselves by bringing their mathematics to bear upon the useful arts?

Is it true, that they, generally speaking, turn them to any account, except that of speculative amusement, or academic contention?

Have the Cambridge mathematicians within the last century made themselves memorable by any great discovery, by any great general promotion of their peculiar science, or are they in fact looked up to by the scientific world?

Is there not even in their system of mathematics an obvious error in their almost exclusive study of the speculative part?

Are not practical mathematics the great source of useful inventions?

Take a wrangler into an irregular field with a common land-surveyor, and which of them will measure it soonest and best?

Let one of those academic graduates try his skill with a practical sailor at an observation!

Build a bridge across the Thames; who will do it best, Rennie, (supposing him to be alive,) or a committee of senior wranglers?

This tough disputant even attacks the mathematical examination, which he calls a mere display of the examiner's ingenuity in quibbles, niceties, and knackeries, and tricks of the art, no better, no more useful than the quibbles of the schoolmen.

He next falls fiercely on the Academic taste in Greek, and charges the star5 A

tled University with expending its favouritism on the dramatic writers, and with the petty and pedantic spirit in which even this is done. With the eternal puzzle of IAMBICS, troch aics, and anapæsts, and twisting monostrophies into choruses and doch miacs, and the whole miserable and muddy toil of a versification unsettled after all, beyond the hopes of scholarship. For this task-work of trifling, the University abandons the orators, philosophers, and historians of Greece, with all their lessons of manliness, eloquence, and moral dignity.

The result of the reasoning is to give a wiser distribution of studies and their reward; to make some religious knowledge a requisite even in a mathematician, and to give classical attainments some chance of academical distinction. There seems some feasibility in the proposal, when we recollect, though Cambridge has not been able to find it out, that not one student in a hundred is intended by Nature, or by his family, for a seeker of Surds; that, for the general purposes of accomplished public life, the Classics are worth all the Algebraists, from Diophantus downwards; and if such things might be insinuated, that students intended for parsons (the case in four at least, out of six) might without serious impropriety be taught something of the doctrines and authorities of the Christian religion.

This pamphlet was too true not to receive an anwser; and, rather unluckily for his fame, the Championship 'was adopted by Monk, a very good Grecian, and a very honest man, but a very puzzled pamphleteer. The pens of universities, wise as they are, are not always among the most dexterous; and many a Doctor has had to redden deeper than his hood, before the more cunning paragraphs of an adversary unknown to Caputs and Common rooms. But Monk has had in his day the curious credit of furnishing some part of an article in the Quarterly Review, upon Brougham's absurd bill, with, however, the curious claim attached to this credit, of its being altogether due to the Dean of Westminster, from whom again the jokes are exclusively claimed for Mr Canning. The decision of this tripartite parentage must be left to some literary Solomon; but as the world has it, if the matter came to the sword, Monk

would not be entitled to a limb. The Professor's pamphlet was, as became his station, very angry, and as became his cause, by no means convincing. He had the hard task of warring for the obsolete, the useless, and the untenable; and the result was rout, with infinite slaughter. But the Uni versity is a stronghold, and into its sable state, and smoky ordinances, ancient absurdity cannot be pursued with any effect. Time, which saps dungeons, and sends Doctors of the utmost Greek to sleep with their fa thers, and teaches the rising genera tion to laugh at the follies of the past, will have his way here too; and Mathematics will take their place at last, where common sense would have placed them centuries ago, altogether subordinate to the nobler and more enlarged education of classical litera

ture.

Unfortunate Lady Morgan, "Uxor pauperis byci," has been writing notes during the hot weather, for a satire on all who do not buy her books. The poetry is supposed to proceed from Sir Charles, that medical representative of "all the talents.” Her ladyship, ("WHIP ME SUCH LADYSHIPS!") has been telling all the world, in the newspapers, how all the world receive her what hurryings of footmen, and rustlings of dowagers, are put in motion at the announcement of Miladi Morgan. But all is vain. A regular dealer in her style must run the hazard of being avoided, and no person of character will choose to be the material of this rash and bitter animal's romances. In fact, Miladi and Co. have formed themselves into a travelling committee of grievances; and every two or three years may be expected to load the public with her Flora of nonsense and national accusation. She has already gathered up the fooleries of France, and

detailed the grandes pensées of the Benjamin Constants and La Fayettes, for the edification of the earth. The Carbonari vagabondism of Italy has found in her ladyship a ready conduit for disemboguing its distresses. Let her look in time to Port Jackson; she will there find food for a folio, in complaints of hard labour and horsebean soup. Severe things are beginning to be said of the government of Madagascar. Or if she

should not like to anticipate her tour so far eastward, she has the empire of Morocco a glorious field for a grievance-hunter, and where she may talk of kings, in perfect contempt of the Attorney-General. But why do I con descender to allude to this person? Time, the great curer, will soon wring the pen from her hand. With the usual habit of vulgar minds, to suppose all the world thinking about them, this woman has imagined that the whole body of London Literati can think of nothing but her rambling novels and senseless tours.- "I am sure they were talking of me,' says Scrub, for they laughed consumedly." She carries a pocket-list of all possible writers, and can swear to each man's share in the contempt which the reviews have unequivocally enough thrown upon her productions. Those names must of course be, in the great majority of instances, the merest conjecture, but with her ladyship, conjecture is proof; and her next mawkish novel, or beggarly tour, exhibits the results of her indiscriminate ire. Whether the husband or the wife has written the Satire in question, this work is altogether pointless, common-place, and contemptible. Yet if the public were disposed to look upon this Gipsy pair as worth retaliation, what better material for burlesque could be desired, than the extreme of shallow pretension and innate vulgarity; than the scribbler who tells us that crime and folly are nothing but contortions of the stomach, that pockets are picked by Diarrhoea, and burglary is committed by Constipation. For this little she-copartner of his trunk and tavern-bills, what can be said, that is not said by the authorship of St Clair, and the panegyric of Paumy? and would it not be the part of wisdom in both to retire to their original departments in the dust and obscurity of the earth; the Knight, to extracting the Molares of the Welch, and the Ladi, to the administration of the ferula, and the netting, knotting, and cross-stitching, that once made her a wonder to her admiring pupils, and no insult or ridicule to any one?

The Dress Ball at the King's Theatre, for the Irish, was of the most expensive construction. All the fashionable, and all that desired to be thought

the fashionable, for fifty miles round London, were jammed into the Theatre. The preparations fell heavy upon the peerage, for nothing short of nobility was allowed to breathe a hint in the arrangement of the Fete. Of the crowd of competitors, for the honour of superintending, some half dozen have been so happy as to bear the supreme responsibility. The Duke. of Devonshire attended to the spelling of the invitation cards, Lord Gwydyr manœuvred the Constables, Lord Lowther papered the boxes, Lord Glengall tasted the syllabubs, Lord Fife attended to the shoes and stockings of the Figurantes, and the Marquis of Aylesbury undertook to see that the orange-women were at their posts. Why should such men and such labours be" Illachrymabiles, longa nocte pressi?" And who that saw the Duke of Devonshire, devoured with fatigue, and rushing about for hours before the doors were opened, in his waistcoat and trowsers, ruling the tide of lamp-lighters, floor-chalkers, and jelly-loaded waiters, would not rejoice that his Historian was found?

The vast room was full in a moment-a Babel of congratulations, a Calcutta of heat, an enormous Bazaar of feathers, diamond necklaces, epaulettes, and curled and cropped heads. In half an hour after the first party had glided into the saloon, wondering, and scarcely daring to tread on the white tracery of the floor, it was not possible to discover an inch lower than the shoulders of any human being. The multitude were wedged as closely as if they had been squeezed together by machinery. The eye rested upon a plantation of feathers fixed on a solid substratum of heads. Dancing was impossible, except the dancers were to have mounted on their compatriots, and made a platform of the skulls. To eat, drink, or talk, was out of all hope; to breathe was the utmost limit of indulgence, and this was enjoyed only by the excluded, who stood on the entrance-steps and in the corners in tribulation, rashly longing to plunge into the waving and boiling tide below. This ordeal, to which the ploughshares and brimstones of the past ages were a pastoral amusement, lasted to the majority for half a dozen hours. After this, what right have we to say that late revels and punch a la romaine enfeeble the stamina of our high-born?

An army of coal-heavers would have been shrivelled up in half the time. When the seniors had withdrawn along with the King, five hundred of the fair est, and most inexhaustible of beings, quadrilled and waltzed it till five in the morning. Kings have their proverbial hours of ease, but I will dare to say, that the heaviest hour of council never fell heavier on his Majesty than that night's joy. The night was hot, and they had fixed him in a box curtained and counterpaned round like a twofold bed. There sat the Monarch with "our Brother of York," in very condescending and patient good humour, but unquestionably in great weariness. There was nothing for him to see but the glances of feathers that sloped down into the remote lamplight. Etiquette forbade that he should do anything, and excepting a minuet, or some such tedious exhibition, by a group of the opera dancers, his whole vision for three hours was feathers, so stuck together, that he might have imagined he saw the stern of a Mammoth ostrich. In addition, his supper was stolen.

Belzoni, born for adventures, found himself involved in one, which, like all the rest, ran suddenly into letter-press, and bore a charge of extreme insolence and brutality against the head of the Bow-street Office, that ought to operate as a lesson to his superiors how they seleet a future thieftaker. Belzoni undoubtedly wears moustaches of a disproportionate size-his beard is suspiciously unshaven and his yellow visage is palpably Mahometan. Yet all these offences, flagrant as they are, do not seem quite enough to justify even the holy zeal of Sir Richard Birnie ("Gad-a-merey, fellow!") in dragging Belzoni, like a culprit, through the well-dressed mob, whose coin was probably at the moment glittering on his back in the shape of monumental shillings, notwithstanding any Bow-street doubt of his orthodoxy. The sale of the ticket, however, remains among the secrets of the night; and the correspondence of Mr Taylor Vaughan with Ebers, (" Amica collatio cum Judæo,") has by no means tended to subdue the controversial 'spirit of Bond-Street and the Age.

The Quarterly Review, destined always to follow, is at last threatening a tremendous article on the sins of Lord

Byron. Of course, not a syllable will be said that can be suspected to impede the sale of a single sixpence worth of his works. Cain, which no one now reads, is to be made the scape-goat; and the genuine and productive mischiefs of his lordship, the Harolds and Don Juans, are to be slurred over by the committee of pens, which are to make havoc of unfortunate and forgot ten Cain. This resolution is the work of grave remonstrances from the wigs and gowns which have hitherto purchased their pamphlets and primers at Murray's.

Some impulse of the same kind is said to have awaked the dormant vigour of the Edinburgh Review; and persons on both sides of the Tweed have the credit of compelling the two great ostentatious instruments of candid criticism, to be, for the first time these half dozen years, candid and critical.

The Edinburgh Review has, however, taken the lead. It has sent out a tardy, but a bold defiance, and giving Lord Byron sufficient honour for the spirit of his poetry, flagellates him for the offence of his insolent, ungenerous, and profane principles. This is done for once in plain language; and his lordship will probably feel, that the dexterous remotion of his person beyond the grasp of British Law, implies no impunity to his insults on the decencies, honour, and feelings of England. There are men in the world who have so accurate a sense of their own deservings, that they think it a just argument against all law and all providence that they have not been hanged. For such men, the discovery that the disgust of society is gathering against them, is so far a salutary interposition. It may stop them before they reach the summit of madness and impiety, and make their return not a direct violation of the laws of nature. The Edinburgh Review has had the merit of laying on this preservative lash; and it has probably crushed out, with the last trample of its heel, the whole brood of "Cains" which were threatened from Pisa! Shelley will henceforth rave only to the moon. Hunt will sonneteer himself, and "urge tear on tear," in memory of Hampstead butter and Chelsea bunns; and Byron, sick of his companions, and ashamed of his career, will at length ask his dæmon, how it is that he has

cast himself out of all the advantages that life lavished on him? Why, he is an Englishman without a country a peer without a seat in Parliament and, most momentous of all, a Christian without a religion? He has lived long enough to know, that to live as he has done, is to stuff himself with the husks and swinish refuse of life. Is an English nobleman to have no correspondent but his bookseller? No friends but a vulgar group, already shaken out of English society? No objects but the paltry praises of temporizing reviews? And no studies but the shame and scorn of honourable literature? He is already perishing his later productions are successively his worst-his miserable tragedies have shewn, that when he is not allowed to rant about himself, he can do nothing he has decidedly failed in the noblest class of poetry

MY DEAR SIR,

I really am quite ashamed to accept all the beautiful volumes you have sent me, for I wished no other reward of my insignificant labours than the pleasure of seeing now and then a lucubration of mine in the best possible Periodical. However, to send the books back would be foolish; so I have arranged them altogether in a body, in one division of my library; but I insist on your sending no more, at least till I have done something to deserve them. I am delighted to observe your own name on the title-page of so many of them—and have no doubt that in a very short time, you will be one of the greatest Publishers of the age. Indeed, you seem already to have got into the very first Class.-Constable, Murray, and Blackwood, are the Trio Lumina Britannorum. Your publi'cations are all right worthy the reputation of famous No. 17, Princes' Street; not a single catch-penny among them and excelling one another in regular progression.

You know that I am little or nothing of a critic; and indeed criticism would be but a cold-hearted return to your liberality. But I cannot help telling you how I have felt on the perusal of some of these works. The "Annals of the Parish" is my greatest favourite. There is nothing at all

resembling it that I know of in our diterature. I do not in the least understand what those persons mean who have complimented Micah Balwhidder on his likeness to the Vicar of Wakefield. He has none. But they are both clergymen, and both most excellent, worthy, primitive, simple men,and that to indiscriminating minds is enough. I was rather surprised to observe a remark of this kind in your own Magazine. It could not have come from the pen of one of your choice spirits. I hate that habit of finding resemblances to which some people are addicted. They never see the real essential character of any body's face, figure, or mind, but only what is on the surface. Accordingly, if two men have each a shortish or a longish nose, they are thought to be extremely like

quite like brothers-although as unlike as your divine Maga is to the human Monthly. When applied to books such criticism is pernicious. Authors of genius are defrauded of the praise due to their originality, and are called Plagiaries at the very time they have produced what is peculiarly their own. Micah Balwhidder is no monogamist, God knows, like the English vicar. Is his manse like the vicarage? Has he sons and daughters in it, with long, happy, or tragical histories? Is he subjected to many mutations of fortune?