Homer to Dante, and from Dante to Byron, with whose productions he was not perfectly familiar. His acquaintaince with the records of history, and with the principles of political as well as moral and metaphysical science, was extensive and profound.— • Est enim et scientia comprehendenda rerum plurimarum, sine quâ verborum volubilitas inanis atque irridenda est; et ipsa oratio conformanda non solum electione, sed etiam constructione verborum; et omnes animorum motus, quos hominum generi rerum natura tribuit, penitus pernoscendi, quod omnis vis ratioque dicendi, in eorum, qui audiunt, mentibus, aut sedandis, aut excitandis expromenda est. Accedat eodem oportet lepos quidam, facetiæque et eruditio libero digna, celeritasque et brevitas et respondendi, et lacessendi, subtili venustate atque 'urbanitate conjunctâ. Tenenda præterea est omnis antiquitas, 'exemplorumque vis:'-(Cic. De Or. Lib. I.)

All this was well known when he entered into public life, and vast expectations were raised of his success. Nor can it be said with any truth that these were disappointed. For though he made no progress, during the first two sessions of his sitting in Parliament, while he joined Mr Pitt who estimated him at the highest rate, and Mr Canning, whom he long after rejoined, having quitted him for a season; yet having been one of those most conscientious and honourable Pittites who adhered with Lord Grenville to Mr Fox, after Mr Pitt had been, unhappily for his fame and for his happiness, induced to break up the Coalition in 1804 and take office alone, Mr Ward, in the short session of 1807, before the dissolution, distinguished himself above all competitors by a most able and eloquent advocacy of the Slave Trade Abolition; in him rendered the more valuable and the more meritorious by the fact, that he was heir to ample West Indian possessions. In 1808, and still more in 1810, when the Walcheren expedition was brought into discussion at the commencement of the session, he delivered some of the most splendid orations which have been heard in Parliament; whether we regard the closeness of their reasoning, the force of their sarcasm, or the inimitable beauty of their composition. His health in some of the following years was so much broken, that he rarely took part in debate; but he returned to public life in the high station of Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when Mr Canning's administration was formed in 1827; and continued in that great and difficult office until the secession of the Canning party at Whitsuntide of the following year. Steady to the principles of his leader, he offered the most uncompromising resistance to all Parliamentary Reform; attacked with extraordinary vehemence and the most distinguished ability the Bill of 1831; and alone, or al

most alone of his party, held by its peculiar creed, when, happily for the country, as we think, Lords Melbourne, Palmerston, and Glenelg had joined with the brave Gyas and the brave Cloan'thus,' in deserting their colours, and ranging themselves under the banners of Reform.

To say that Mr Ward failed in answering the large expectations formed of him by all parties, is therefore a very great mistake. His capacity and his acquirements were fully developed, and bore him both to high honours, to great fame, and to exalted station. But he had an over-sensitiveness, an exquisitely fastidious taste, a nervous temperament which was perhaps never uncombined with physical constitution, and ended in the most melancholy mental as well as bodily disease. Unsteadiness of purpose, therefore-unwillingness to risk, and reluctance to exert -incapacity to make up his mind either as to the measures of others or his own conduct-greatly checquered his existence as a public man during the latter years of his brilliant, but unhappy life. At length, what seemed only to have been a morbid affection of the will, extended itself to the understanding, and laid waste one of the most acute, subtle, powerful intellects ever bestowed upon man. A cloud overspread his whole mind; he ceased utterly out of society; he, who was among its most brilliant ornaments, could no more be admitted to its intercourse; he whose faculties of every kind and in the most extraordinary combination, hardly had known an equal, was reduced to the darkness of entire aberration of intellect; and fate, untimely and relentless, more, far more, than counterbalanced all the singular gifts with which nature and fortune had striven together in order to enrich him, and left us all the melancholy reflection, how little those gifts avail here below!

From these lofty though mournful contemplations, we must once more descend to the mean level of the Book before us. That this writer is of the class to which the notorious Mary Ann Clarke belonged, as far as regards revelations of private anecdote, and making money of her own journals and other people's letters, we have already suggested. But it appears, too, which might not have been so readily expected, that she has cultivated her sister-artist's acquaintance. Her object in so doing is unfolded by herself. It was in the way of business-of their common trade-as one dealer in the foul wares of improper books or prints may communicate with another in furtherance of their forbidden traffic. She has occasion to cite Mary Ann Clarke as her

authority for a scandalous anecdote respecting the Royal Family, and she adds, you know how I wheedled her to show me the 'notes she had prepared for her own Memoirs.'* We ask what she would have said of any of those exalted persons whom she slanders in each page of her work, had they been guilty of associating with an infamous woman like this, and for so sordid a purpose ?

6

One other anecdote recorded by herself,-one more trait of her sketched by her own hand, and we have done. The Princess,' (says she, Vol. II. 198,) has heaped benefits on Lady C. *Campbell, and sent her a thousand ducats in hard cash as soon as she arrived' (at Genoa). How does she requite all this kindness? How relieve herself from this load of gratitude for the benefits so heaped upon her? By this abominable publication! Is she callous and insensible to the cruelty and the ingratitude she is thus committing? No such thing. She can feel it criminal to write down the anecdotes which no eye but her own can 'WRITING these notes, though they are never to meet 'any eye but my own, seems to me unamiable; for I am more 'than ever overwhelmed with kindness.' Where then were the feelings thus roused by the mere scratching of the solitary pen,when the machinery of the printing press was by her own mercenary hand made to play, and the recorded scandal to resound through all the newspapers and in all the circulating libraries of the empire? Verily, she has pronounced with her own mouth her own condemnation, and under this sentence we leave her.†

ever see.

*The italics are the writer's own, to call our attention to her cunning tricks.

† We are aware that we have in this long paper confined our attention entirely to the general subject of the Abuses of the Press, and the Characters of Statesmen and Princes now no more. We have purposely kept ourselves within those comparatively narrow limits, and we think our reasons justify this course. As to the Press, we felt it sufficient for one occasion to open the general subject, and reserve for a future discussion those most important details with which we are enabled to illustrate our positions, and which we shall hereafter lay at large before the reader. As to the historical portion of this article, we felt it a safer course, and one that exposed us both to fewer temptations and less misconstruction, to avoid sketching the characters, or commenting on the conduct of living statesmen and living monarchs. But we desire it to be

distinctly understood that we have so abstained, without entertaining the least doubt that the public conduct and public character of living men and of women, too, in high station, falls within the legitimate scope of our duty. Our next article of this kind will comprehend the other great characters of the past age.

ART. II. The Mechanical Euclid, containing the Elements of Mechanics and Hydrostatics demonstrated after the manner of the Elements of Geometry; and including the propositions fixed upon by the University of Cambridge as requisite for the degree of B. A. To which are added Remarks on Mathematical Reasoning and on the Logic of Induction. By the Rev. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. 8vo. 1887. Cambridge.

University of Cambridge has sometimes been reproached with devoting her care too exclusively to her best students, and with stimulating such as were capable of high attainments, while she neglected those whose abilities limited them to a humbler ambition. A complaint has also been made that, while her highest academical honours could not be won without intense and constant labour, her ordinary degrees might be obtained by candidates who could scarcely be said to have received an education. She has, of late years, directed her attention to removing the grounds of these objections to her system. Among other steps taken with this view, she has recently determined that the elementary portions of mechanics and hydrostatics shall be an essential part of the subject of the examinations for the usual degrees. We will not at present enquire how it has happened that this could ever have been dispensed with: there can be no doubt of the propriety of the measure now adopted, as far as it goes.

The author of the work now before us was one of the Syndicate, upon whose recommendation the resolution was founded. Mr Whewell, independently of his direct contributions to science, has a very strong claim to the respect of the scientific commonwealth on account of his exertions in promoting a spirit of activity and improvement in his University. The present work is intended by him to be a manual of the branches comprehended in the resolution above-mentioned. It contains also some additional propositions in mechanics, a syllabus of the propositions of elementary algebra and geometry, with demonstrations of the former, and a treatise in which the author explains his own views of the principles of mathematical and inductive reasoning. His opinions upon mathematical reasoning he states to be opposed to those commonly held upon the subject: and the discussion of these opinions will form the subject of the present article; though we should gladly have taken the opportunity, had our

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limits allowed it, of making our readers acquainted with the body of the work, which will, we presume, become a text-book, both in the University, for the use of which it was especially written, and elsewhere. The question-what are the principles of mathematical reasoning—is one, as its mere statement shows, of the most extensive importance, and forms an intellectual problem of the deepest interest.

Mr Whewell begins his remarks by observing that the study of a science, treated according to a rigorous system of mathematical reasoning, is useful, not only on account of the positive knowledge which may be acquired on the subjects which be'long to the science, but also on account of the collateral effects and general bearings of such a study, as a discipline of the 'mind and an illustration of philosophical principles.' The collateral benefits are probably more important than the direct ones to a great majority of the students who pass through an University. Mr Whewell considers that these may be promoted in two ways, by habituating the mind to strict reasoning, and by 'affording an occasion of contemplating some of the most important mental processes and some of the most distinct forms of truth; in other words, that mathematical studies teach 'practical logic' and 'theoretical metaphysics.'

The first of these two objects he states to be promoted by bringing under the student's notice clear examples of trains of demonstration, by exercising him in the habits of attention and connected thought, and by familiarizing him with the peculiar conviction which demonstration produces, and with the rigor'ous exclusion of all considerations which do not enter into the ' demonstration.' To this it might be added, that the solution of problems, which are not simply examples of general formulas, requires and creates the habit of searching for, and selecting, among established general principles, those capable of meeting the respective difficulties of which the aggregate forms the difficulty of the whole problem, and that the faculty of invention is thus exercised in combination with vigilant and scrupulous reasoning; a discipline of very great value, and sometimes overlooked by those who speak of the study of Mathematics as if it merely taught how to follow the reasoning supplied to the student by mathematical writers.

Mr Whewell then notices the objection commonly made to the study of mathematics, as a discipline of the mind, namely, that it tends to render men insensible to all reasoning which is ⚫ not mathematical, and leads them to demand, in other subjects, proofs such as the subject does not admit of, or such as are not 'appropriate to the matter.' He answers, that such results are