The one great defect of the researches of those men was, that they were conducted in a manner so desultory, and that the subjects themselves were often so isolated, that there can seldom be made out more than a few dislocated fragments of any one subject of inquiry whatever.  Special inquiries are prosecuted with great vigour and acumen; but we look in vain for system, classification, or general principles.  This, however, is not to be charged to them as a scientific vice, peculiarly:—­for, in truth, it must be confessed to be a vice, not only too common, but almost universal amongst English geometers; and even in the geometry of the Greeks themselves, the great object appears to have been “problem-solving” rather than the deduction and arrangement of scientific truths.  The modern French geometers have, however, broken this spell; and it is not too much too hope that we shall not be long ere we join them in the development of the systems they have already opened; and, moreover, add to the list some independent topics of our own.  The chief dangers to which we are in this case exposed are, classification with incomplete data, and drawing inferences upon trust.  It cannot be denied, at all events, that some of our French cotemporaries have fallen into both these errors; but the abuse of a principle is no argument for our not using it, though its existence (or even possible existence) should be a strong incentive to caution.

These remarks have taken a more general form than it is usual to give in your pages.  As, however, it is probable that many of your readers may feel an interest in a general statement of a very curious intellectual phenomenon, I am not without a hope that, though so far removed from the usual topics discussed in the work, they will not be altogether unacceptable or useless.

PEN-AND-INK.

[Footnote 1:  Although at one period of our life we took great pains to make a collection of the periodicals which, during the last century, were devoted wholly or partially to mathematics, yet we could never even approximate towards completeness.  It was not, certainly, from niggardly expenditure.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether a complete set exists, or could even be formed now.]

[Footnote 2:  See Philosophical Magazine, Sept. 1850.]

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MINOR NOTES.

Sermon’s Pills.—­In Guizot’s Life of Monk, Duke of Albermarle, translated and edited by the present Lord Wharncliffe, it is stated (p. 313.) that when the Duke was suffering from the diseases which afterwards proved fatal to him,