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On comparing these two systems of formulæ, it will be sufficiently obvious, that the first is rather more simple than the second. What distinguishes them both from various other systems, which have been exhibited, is, that they are independent of the distances from the meridian, and from the perpendicular. M. Henry has composed tables, by the aid of which the trouble in using even these formulæ is considerably a-bridged. The first system is nearly conformable to the theorems given by M. Dionis Duséjour; the second is something simpler than those of Oriani, published in the Connoissance des Temps, an. 1808.

A reader of this, or indeed almost any other French mathematical work, cannot help being struck with the palpable dif-ference between the habits of French and of English mathematical authors, with regard to the manner of referring to contemporary writers. French mathematicians seem to delight in speaking of their contemporaries; and generally make their references in such a way, as, while all are spoken of in terms of respect, enables a reader to tell how the talents of each are estimated in France. No person who has read a few French mathematical works would hesitate to say, that they rank Laplace, Lagrange, and Lacroix, in the first class; Prony, Bossut, Delambre, Legendre, Girard, and Carnot, in the second; and. Francœur, Haŭy, Monge, Biot, Henry, Poisson, and a few more in the third class; the rest being either ranked as éléves, or not having yet sufficiently distinguished themselves to deserve a marked specification. Instead of any thing like this, the habit of English mathematical writers (with a very few exceptions) is, to observe a sort of sullen silence respecting the merits of contemporary Englishmen. How is this difference to be accounted for? Perhaps by an equally striking difference between the talents of the writers on the respective sides of the channel. In France, and indeed on the Continent generally, as far as we have had means of judging, no man who has not a mind formed for mathematical pursuits, and whose attainments are not above mediocrity, ever ventures to publish : the esprit de corps would enkindle into a flame that would consume the presumptuous adventurer; and booksellers are too wise, if not too honest, to lend their support to such a writer. Here, on the contrary, a man who has but just sense enough not to transcribe nonsense from preceding authors, may patch up a new book, and is almost sure to find some speculating bookseller to take his work, and by dint of advertisement, and puff, to force it into circulation. The conséquence is, that among English mathematical writers one can trace scarcely any thing like gradation: they are divided into eight or ten, who can think, and investigate, and arrange, and

write, to the real advantage of science; and about three or four times that number, who are unable to think of any thing · connected with the subject, except it be how they can pilfer with the greatest probability of escaping detection. Hence, among other causes, it happens, that we meet with so few references. If a man of reputation have too much forbearance to hold up his plunderers to contempt, it is too much to expect that these plunderers will refer to an author for the purpose of saying that his are the stores they have made so free with.

As this is an evil which we are convinced has tended much to the depreciation of the English mathematical character, we have thought it a duty to express our opinion without disguise. We trust the good sense of the public will withhold encouragement from mere pretenders to science, and thus give a new stimulus to those who actually possess talents and genius; many of whose productions, being now thought too difficult," are laid aside to make room for the vilest trash. Then shall we expect that the progress of the mathematical sciences, in Britain, will keep pace with that on the Continent; and shall feel confident that some of our real mathematicians will benefit the world with performances that will be honourable to the country of NEWTON.

Art. III. Remarks on the Sermons preached before the University of Oxford by Dr. Barrow, and the Rev. Mr Nares, on the Prize Dissertations of the Rev. Mr. Pearson, and Mr. Cunningham, read at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and on a Pamphlet written by a late Resident in Bengal, on the Practicability, Policy, and Obligation of communicating to the Natives of India the Knowledge of Christianity.' By Major Scott Waring. 8vo. pp. 123. Price 5s. Ridgway, 1808. A Whimsical anecdote is told of a hawker crying certain

small wares on the Thames, at one time when it was frozen over, and a sort of fair was held on the ice; the makers and retailers of which anecdote, however, should have had more humanity than to find any amusement in inventing and repeating it. The story is, that when the ice broke under this unfortunate person, and in closing again severed the head, the force of habit was such, that the head, in rolling along the ice, continued for a while, like that of Orpheus, to articulate a part of the accustomed cry. It is not according to the best morality, to fabricate for a jocular purpose stories involving a tragical idea; and it would not perhaps be according to the best morality, for critics to be affected chiefly by the ludicrousness of the thing, when they witness in controversy a case nearly parallel to the above story. The writer whose fourth bulky pamphlet we have many months omitted to notice, from nau

sea of literary dullness and dregs, not to say of impiety, has long since, as a reasoner, (if it were at all allowable so to apply that denomination) been 'cut sheer;' but he has not the less gone on repeating just the same things in almost literally the same words. Such of our readers as have not taken the trouble to look through the whole of his pamphlets, will really suspect ourselves of being under some compulsory spell to iterate the same sentences whenever we have to do with this unfortunate writer; they will impute to us a total want of the discrimination, requisite to vary the modes of critical description and animadversion. We cannot help it. When a yogi, in that part of the world to which these publications relate, has fixed himself on the top of a post under a vow to repeat some one word or phrase millions of times, a person, that should be sent repeatedly to reconnoitre him, and report what he is at, must every time return with the same story. The only variation he can make in his report will be, to signify, after each visit of observation, how much nearer the performer's ens rationis appears to have approached toward that final irremediable fatuity, in which the describers of the Hindoo customs inform us that this 'religious' exercise not unfrequently terminates.

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Probably no external stimulus was necessary to ensure the repetition, through a hundred and twenty additional pages, of the phrases and sentences mania of conversion,' 'ignorant sectarian bigots,' 'inad Calvinistic missionaries,' 'I am decidedly of opinion that the conversion of the Hindoos is impracticable, these proceedings will end in the destruction of our eastern empire,' and about half a dozen more. There was something so ingenious, so eloquent, and, we may add, so genteel, in such expressions, that to have once struck them out created both an inducement and a warrant to repeat them a hundred times over at the least. Extraneous promptings, however, were furnished, by the publications mentioned in the title; some of which we believe preceded, and some came after, the Major's third pamphlet; and all of which he carries an air of having triumphantly refuted by one more change of arrangement, settled by pure casualty, of the sentences of assertion and vulgar abuse of which he had made up so many pamphlets before,-with the petty addition of one or two facts, occasional compliments to Lord Teignmouth, and a few harmless attempts, of which we will quote specimens, to answer the noble author's Considerations.' Lest his Lordship should be elated above all reasonable self-estimation by compliments from the person who has expressed his high respect for Mr. Twining, for the officer who has written a Vindication of the Hindoos, and for the Barrister,'-the Major judges it necessary to tell him, that though he had peculiar advantages, from

his high station in India, for obtaining an extensive and intimáte knowledge of the character and state of the people, yet any man possessing common sense, who has resided in India at any period of his life,' (or who has only been two years in India,' as he puts it, in repeating the sentence in another part of the pamphlet) is as fully qualified as his Lordship himself to form a correct opinion on the practicability or impracticability of converting the natives of Hindostan to Christianity. In another part he says, 'I have reconsidered with the most careful attention every point on which my opinion differs from that of the noble writer of the Considerations. The result is, a decided conviction in my mind, that he has not refuted a single fact or argument, contained in my observations.' We wonder whether he expected this dignified and enlightened opponent to try again. We have not heard of any further operations against the Major, and we suppose he has reduced all his opponents to despair. Indeed it was easy, a good while since, to foresee that his position was impregnable; the huge heaps of rubbish which defended it being constantly increasing, and affording such plenty of convenient and offensive substances to be flung down on every assailant.

Yet we do not see why the silence of his adversaries should be admitted by him as a sufficient reason for closing his labours. We think there is very fair occasion for a fifth pamphlet, larger than any of the preceding. Its object should be to say over again the same things he has so often said before; but to endeavour, in saying them, to put them into something like an orderly distribution, so that inatters of the saine kind should be mostly placed together. The imputations on Christian societies and missionaries on account of the affair at Vellore, might conveniently form the matter of one section; the plain gratuitous abuse of the missionaries that of another; the more than twenty times repeated assertions of the illegality of their entrance into India that of a third; the impossibility of converting the natives that of the fourth, and so of the rest. If even no more than one half of his repetitions, referable to each of these heads, were thus laid together, a somewhat more distinct view would be afforded of the extent of those resources, from which the fashion of the day has submitted to be furnished with railing or argument against the plans for imparting the true religion to heathens. In performing such a task, however, no little assistance would be needed, we apprehend, by our author; as, in point of dislocation and utter absence of all connection, his composition has assuredly no parallel in the humblest refuse of the circulating library and a person who has no perception at all about arrangement and connexión of ideas in the course of performance, is little

likely, without much help, to acquire any thing of it in the course of revision. For the encouragement of any that might wish to share the Major's honours, but have been withheld from coming forth by an apprehension, that some slight degree of logical order and connected succession of thought would be required, in a remonstrance to government against permitting the addresses of Christian teachers, and the offer of translated bibles, to the pagans of India, we make a slight extract, to exhibit the method of composition which will be allowed and even applauded in such a performance,

In July 1807, there were fifteen missionaries of the baptist society in Bengal, and fourteen of the London missionary society on the coast. I include the ladies as missionaries, because they (the sisters as they call them) are represented as very active and very useful in catechising and instructing women and children.

The candid and respectable writer of the Considerations, will, I am sure, acknowledge, that the law ought not to be violated even in the hope of propagating Christianity in India.

The stress that I have laid on the missions of Doctors Buchanan and Kerr to the Syrian Christians of Malagala, appears perfectly ridiculous to this respectable writer. Let him candidly and fairly consider, &c.' 7. 80.

These two complete paragraphs, with the beginning of a third, stand in this form and order on the page!-and there are numberless examples of the same strict relation and train of thoughts. Another entire paragraph will not occupy much of our page.

"More than one half of Mr. Cunningham's Essay is utterly inapplicable to the thesis of Dr. Buchanan. Were the Hindoos and the Mahomedans ten times more the slaves of superstition than they are, it would really be of no consequence to the only question for our consideration, which is, the practicability of converting them to the true religion, Mr. Wilberforce spoke of fifteen or sixteen millions of people, meaning, I presume, the population of Bengal only, and that Hindoo population Lord Melville truly described as a timid and innocent people, though singularly attached to their religion.' p. 43.

Making such quotations, and any remark on them, would be inexcusable trifling in any case, but where such writing has gained for itself a certain degree of consequence with the public, by its malice against the most zealous and enterprising friends of Christianity. In this case, it becomes worth while to take a passing notice, and give a slight sample, of the very singular imbecility of mind, the total incapacity of putting ideas together in any rational disposition, which would have doomed any productions not amicably addressed to the irreligion of the nation to perish within the week.

As this pamphlet contains nothing even pretending to novel

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