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    appearance , and yet it nothing resembled the foreign English which I had been in the habit of hearing through the palisades of the prison , he could scarcely be a foreigner . ' Your properties ! ' said I : 'I am in the King ' s-lane . Why did you put them there , if you did not wish them to be seen ' — ' On the spy , ' said the woman , ' hey ? I'll drown him in the sludge in the toad-pond over the hedge . '— So we will , ' said the man , ' drown him anon in the mud !'—' ¦ Drown me , will you ? ' said I ; I should like to see you ! What ' s all this about ? Was it because I saw you with your hands full of straw plait , and my mother there . . . . ?'—' Yes , ' said the woman ; what was I about ? ' —Myself . 'How should I know ? Making bad money , perhaps V And it will be as well here to observe , that at this time there was much bad money in circulation in the neighbourhood , generally

    supposed to be fabricated by the prisoners , so that this false ^ coin and straw plait formed the standard subjects of conversation at Norman Cross . — ' I'll strangle thee . ' said the beldame , dashing at me . ' Bad money is it !'— ' Leave him to me , wifelkin , ' said the man , interposing "; ' you shall now see how I'll baste him down the lane . '—Myself . ' I tell you what , my chap , you had better put down ttiat thing of yours ; my father lies concealed within my tepid breast , and if to me you offer any harm or wrong , I'll call him forth to help me with his forked tongue . '—Man . ' What do ye mean , ye Bengui ' s bantling ? I never heard such discourse in all my life : playman ' s speech or Frenchman ' s talk—which , I wonder ? Your father ! Tell the mumping villain that if he comes near my fire I'll serve him out as I will you . Take that .... Tiny Jesus ! what have we got here ? Oh , delicate Jeeus ! what is the matter with the child ?'—I had made a motion which the

    viper understood ; and now , partly disengaging itself from my bosom , where it had lain perdu , it raised its head to a level with my faee , and stared upon my enemy with its glittering eye 8 . The man stood like one transfixed , and the ladle , with which he had aimed a blow at me , now hung in the air like the hand which held it ; his mouth was extended , and his cheeks became of a pale yellow , save alone that place which bore the mark which 1 have already described , and this shone now portentously , like fire . He stood in this manner for some time ; at

    last the ladle fell from his hand , and its falling appeared to rouse him from his stupor . — ' I say , wifelkin , ' said he , in a faltering tone , ' did you ever see the like of this here ?'—But the woman had retreated to the tent , from the entrance of which her loathly face was now thrust , with an expression partly of terror and partly of curiosity . After gazing some time longer at the viper and myself , the man stooped down and took up the ladle ; then , as if somewhat move assured , he moved to Ihe tent , where he eriterpd into conversation wi ' . h the beldame in a low

    voice . Of their discourse , though I could hear the greater part of it , I understood not a single word ; and I wondered what it could be , for 1 knew by the sound that it was not French . At last the man , in a somewhat louder tone , appeared to put a question to the woman , who nodded her head affirmatively , and in a moment or two produced a small stool , which she delivered to him . lie placed it on the ground , close by the door of the tent , first rubbing it with his sleeve , ns if for the purpose of polishing its surface . — . 'Now , my precious little gentleman , do sit down here by the poor people ' s tent ; we wish to bo civil in our slight way . Don ' t , be angry , mid say no ; but look kindly upon us , and be satisfied , my precious little God Almighty . '—Woman ' Yes , my gorgeous angel , sit down by the poor bodies' fire , : md oaf . a sweetmeat . We want to ask you a question or two ; only first put that serpent , away . '—Mynelf . ' 1 can sit down , and bid the serpent go to sleep , tint ' s ensy enough ; but as for eating a sweetmeat , how can I do that ? I have not got one , and when * am 1 to jLjet it ?'¦— Woman . ' Never fear , my tiny tawny , we can give ; you one , such as yon never ate , t dare say , however far you may have come from . ' — The serpent sunk into iis usual resting-place , and I sat down on the stool . The woman opened a . box , and took out a strange little basket or hamper , not much lurger than a man ' s fiat , and formed of a delicate kind of matting . It was aewed at the top : but , ripping it open with a knife , she held it to me , and I saw , to my surprise , that in contained candied fruits of a dark ^ reeii hue , tempting enough to one of my n ^ p . ' There , my tiny , ' said she , ' taste , and tell me how you like them . ' " This commenced an acquaintance with gipsies and their Koimnnny which has given a colour to his whole , life . Hut our great complaint of Lavengro in that we know not what to believe in it , there is Htich vulgar artifice- of fiction and exaggeration . spoiling almost all the scenes . A plain story of his life and adventures told in his direct style would have been invaluable ; but in Lavengro there is no truth—at least none . separable from the fiction . The descriptions of scenery are often delightfulthose of town detestable . There is also an offensive- amount of " . swagger" in the book ; and pretensions are set up for which there seems no solid ground . To take only one example , it strikes iin as remarkable that so much should be said about his knowledge of languages , and so little , so very little evidence given of even the most superficial knowledge ; . On one occasion lie ventures upon a snatch of i < Yench dialogue , and puts forth such a sentence as this " II dit <| tie tout l ' equipage est en a , ss ; - / . bon gout" - " I le says that the equi- page is altogether' /// good taste , " is a phrasu which in UngliMh no l , nvengro could object to , and in the " I'Vench of Strattford atte Howe , " of which Pan Chaucer speaks , " en asscy . bon gout , " may pass , but elsewhere " d ' assez bon gout" would , vvo mibniil , be the phrase of a Lavengro .

    SIR ISAAC NEWTON AND PROFESSOR COTES . Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes ; including Letters of other Eminent Men . By J . Edleston , M . A . J . W . Parker . The first edition of the Principia appeared in 1687 , when Newton was about forty-five years of age , and it was not until more than twenty years had rolled over that he could be prevailed upon to revert to this gigantic offspring of his youthful powers , so as to undertake the labour of making the necessary corrections and improvements for a second edition . At lengthen 1709 , through the laudable importunity of the celebrated Dr . Bentley ,

    Newton wa 8 induced to commit the charge of watching this anxiously-desired work through the press to the celebrated Roger Cotes , then Plumian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge , and the first who occupied that chair . This is the Cotes at whose death , when only thirtyfour years of age , Newton is reported to have said , " Had Cotes lived , we might have known something "—and yet there exists ample testimony in the correspondence before us to show , that Cotes won these golden opinions of the great master , not as the wages of submissive adulation , but as an honest tribute to his own intrinsic worth . On one occasion Cotes observes with that freedom which

    great and generous minds never misinterpret , " Your treatise on the Cubic Curves should be reprinted , for I think the enumeration is imperfect . . I think there are some other things of less moment amiss in the same treatise " j and this to a man forty years his senior , and who has been charged by some with being of a jealous and querulous

    disposition . The letters which passed between Newton and Cotes connected with the republication of the Principia , extend over a period of rather better than four year 3 , the second edition having been printed at Cambridge in the Midsummer of 1713 . It is not uninteresting to notice , that Bentley was frequently the medium of communication between the author and editor , carrying packets from one to the other on his journeys between Cambridge and London .

    These letters are published by the permission of the Master and Fellows , from a collection in the library of Trinity College , Cambridge , which was given or left to the society by the Reverend Edward Hawkins , to whom they-were bequeathed by Dr . Robert Smith , the author of the well-known treatises on Optics and Harmonics , who succeeded Cotes as Plumian Professor , and was the son of Cotes ' s uncle , and first tutor of John Smith , with

    whom Cotes appears to have kept up from the time he was a boy at St . Paul ' School all through his life a brisk mathematical correspondence . Some letters between Cotes and Smith ( the uncle ) are given in the work before us , but we cannot make out from Mr . Edleston ' s rather unsatisfactory preface , whether or not they and some others which he has bound up with them , formed a part of the same collection with the Principia letters .

    From the nature of its materials , notwithstanding certain great faults of style , Mr . Edleston ' s work cannot fail to reward the curiosity of all who take an interest in the life and times of one of the most illustrious of England ' s worthies . The value to the general reader is much enhanced by an excellent and minute synoptical view of all the ascertained facts of Sir laaac ' s social and intellectual history , illustrated and enlivened by copious notes , evincing much diligence , research , and discrimination on the part of the editor , who is agreeable and amusing enough when he is content to write in his

    natural vein . We feel grateful to him for the care with which lie has hunted up the minutest incidents of Sir Isaac ' s daily college life , such as the list of his " exitu and entrances , " his weekly buttery bills , the dividends which he , received as Fellow of Trinity ; nor are we indifferent to the information that , when engaged in making out his theory of light and colour , " to quicken his faculties and fix his attention , he confined himself to a small quantity of bread during all the time , with a little sack und water , of which , without any regulation he

    ' , ¦ < ( < i took , as he found a craving or failure of spirits . " This account is extracted from Dr . Cheyne ' s Natural , Method of Curing Discuses of the liotlt / and Disorders of Mind London . 1 74 ' 2 * A modern school of medi c ine would , perhaps , recommen d to discoverers a similar diet less the flack ; we , on the contrary , on Liebigian principles , an ; advocate nither for a liberal supply of animal tissue to the stomach , and nitrogen to the brain ( between whiles of working ) , when the latter is engaged upon it * most arduous and exhruiHting function of

    elaborating new ideas , and pursuing original trains of research . We confess to having experienced great delight in conning over an examination paper in algebra , given by Newton to Flamsteed at a lecture in 1674 , which Mr . Edleston has incorporated in his work . The questions in this paper are drawn Up in the most approved modern Cambridge style , regularly

    numbered I . II . III . IV ., with subdivisions lettered a , j 3 , t , » and are of the most elementary kind , such as a modern schoolboy could solve without difficulty in the first year of his apprenticeship to the symbolical art ; and we think that it redounds to Newton ' s honour that he could descend from the Bublime speculations in which he stood alone and unapproached , to the discharge of the most eomm 6 nplace functions of a college tutor .

    In casting our eye down Mr . Edleston ' e chronological synopsis , we observed that Newton was only in his twenty-third year when he published his first two papers on fluxions . Perhaps some of our readers may think this not less wonderful than the fact of a certain heaven-born financier becoming First Lord of the Treasury at the same age . The only fact we know to parallel ( or perhaps to surpass ) it is the publication by the Newton ol our day , the venerable and glory-crowned Charles Frederick Gauss , of his Magnum Opus , on the theory

    of numbers at the age of seventeen . —a production undeniably less prolific than those to which we have adverted in immediate physical applications , but not less marvellous as a monument of almost superhuman sagacity . It would be easy to produce many examples from the collection before us in illustration of that magnanimous feature in Newton's character already adverted to , which was evinced in his readiness to acknowledge merit in others , even when displayed in a form rather calculated to wound his own selflove . He writes to Cotes , Letter LXXXII . : —

    " I hear that Mr . Bernouilli has sent a paper of forty pages , to be published in the Acta Leprica , relating to what I have written upon the curved lines , described ^ by projectiles in resisting mediums , and therein he partly makes observations upon what I have written , and partly improves it . " These observations were of such a sort that Bernouilli expressed to Leibnitz his apprehensions that Newton had refrained in consequence of being offended by them from presenting him , according

    to a previous promise , with a copy of the second edition of the Principia , and of the Commercium Epistolicum . But what says De Moivre ? — 'J ' ai vu M . Newton qui m ' a dit qu'il avait Iu avec beaucoup do plaisir votre methode de resoudre le probleme de la resistance ; il vous rend justice en honame qui n ' e 8 t nullement offense ; il dit qu ' tlle est admirablemen t belle et meme qu'elle est commode pour dea expressions finies . "

    Folly and presumption , like other diseased natural growths , reproduce themselves in forms of wonderful constancy and persistency in all ages and periods of the history of the human mind . The host of doublers of the cube and squares of the circle which every year of the present century brings under public notice , will recognize a kindred spirit in a certain Mr . Green , B . A ., of Clare-hall , whose name occurs in the volume before us , who , discontented with the " Popish titles" of a Cartesian and Galilean Philosophy , proposed to establish what he termed " one which is truly English , Cani

    tabrgian , and Clarehsian , and which ho would venture to call the Greenica system . " This Green had previousl y submitted to Newton a demonstration that the area of a circle is equal to four-fifths of the square of its diameter , and appears to have been highly huffed by his papers being returned to him unread . " What , then , " says he , writing in Latin , " after I had been treated in this way , must you conclude I felt certainly not Icsh than that I or the problem was contemned . " A very rational conclusion , we admit , and which seems to have had the effect of spurring on Mr . Green to publish a book for the avowed end of overthrowing his antagonist ' s principles of philosophy .

    Whilst it is desirable to do full justice to the merits of those through whose labours ( he limit *? of the human understanding tire extended , it is likewise profitable to notice their occasional aberrations , or shortcomi ng * , in order that our just veneration for superior powers may not degenerate into a superstitious Hubjeetion to authority . How little could Newton have foreseen the injury which h « was inflicting upon the utudy of mathematical science in this country , from the , paralyzing uflecta of which wo are now , after the lapse of neurly u century and a half , only beginning to recover , when , comparing his method of denoting fluents and fluxions with Lcibnit / i ' M of representing differentials and intc-

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    154 ®|) * VLeattet . £ Sa * uri > ay ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 15, 1851, page 154, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1870/page/14/