my brother and myself felt tired of and disgusted with our occupation, so, respecting the hospitality of England, we separated from our companions, and strove by leading honest lives to atone for our past offences.

My brother managed to obtain a situation in a mercantile house, where by slow degrees he at length made a sufficient fortune to enable us to return to our native mountains. For the last few years we have been living at Lucerne, where, by spending our time and money amongst the poor, we have endeavoured to atone, as far as we can, for the misdeeds of the past.

Thus ended this remarkable confession, which it is needless to add, I read with great attention and no little excitement and surprise. We soon found our way to Agatha Snow's house; she was still in many respects the Agatha of former days, a strange mixture of good and evil, though now the good prevailed, as formerly the bad had prevailed.

As in her confession, so in her conversation, she could hardly at times abstain from laughing at the ludicrous points of the Ghost story. Still I believe, judging from her general demeanour as well as from the charity with which she gave to the poor, that she was truly repentant; and, when at length she died, respected by the rich and lamented by the poor, I felt confident that her end was peace.

AMYNTAS.

MATHEMATICS, A SATIRE.

[The following effusion is supposed to be due to a man who suffered much and long from want of appreciation on the part of Examiners. The Tripos-list (in which, instead of being a wrangler, he was but a few places from the bottom) drove him to desperation, and these lines, which were left behind in his rooms, are the consequence. The Editor has struck out several allusions to private tutors, which seemed to partake of a personal nature.]

WHEN the Chaldæan shepherds watched by night,
And pondered on the distant worlds of light,
In all the freshness of its youth arrayed

A mighty science was to men displayed.

As silently of old its votaries sat,

And gathered in its laws-great truths, whereat
The eye flashed bright-then Poetry's rare fire
Was ever near to quicken and inspire;
Imagination owned the kindred twain;
Ah me! of old 'twas thus, a glorious reign,
Ere Mathematics, harnessed to a tram,
Was brought to basest use of carting cram.

But now-great Science hear my truthful lay!--
But now we never think-it doesn't pay:
The age is passed; far wiser is our hope,
Our high ambition has a larger scope;
No more we strive to leave a mark for fame,
To gain a mark is now our noble aim;
To floor a paper, taking honest care
Only to fudge a little here and there:
This is our grand resolve, the worthy end
To which our modern aspirations tend.

Of old, how eager was the thirsty mind
New laws and undiscovered truths to find!
How, as in earnest search the kindling eye
Devoured each symbol-truth, the heaving sigh
Would greet the closing page! but now, forsooth,
Our modern volumes, for our high behoof,
Temper the rough wind to the shorn lamb's state-
Omit Arts. 5-9, Chaps. VI.-VIII.

Now by the mystic (-1)

No more shall fearful looking volumes stun;
Hence folio treatises, great tomes away,
Rose-water mathematics have the day!
Now crown octavo volumes deftly bound,
The royal road to learning's dome have found;
Macadamised and fair the way appears,
And laureate honours droop on lengthened ears.
Soon shall we have, as taste and art increase,
Our books embellished with a frontispiece:
And startled Euler scandalised shall view
His propositions set in red and blue!

Yet still with olden fame we can compare,
Claim for our age its due inventive share,
Speak of advance in mathematic lore,
And point to grand results unknown before.
Granted no wondrous laws repay our zeal,
And little of the world our powers reveal,
Yet we the old philosophers could show
How to set a, b, c down in a row.*

The glorious science lives, to flourish still!
We differentiate with easy skill:
Let not our learned era be defamed,
Immense equations now, like dragons tamed,
Defend in vain within their magic ring
The doomed solution, such the force we bring.
The glorious science lives! and this its power,
To bully some poor rider by the hour,
Till worried, knocked about, and beaten well,
It 66 comes out"-like a winkle from its shell.
'Tis true, we grant, when yielded is our prize,
It is not much in quality or size,

But if the fox beneath your censure smart,
At least bear tribute to the hunter's part.

Had Galileo's mind remained content,

And had it on results like ours been bent,

Those mild results which now our thirst assuage,

In Mathematics' crown octavo age;

No inquisition, meddlesome or mad,

Would ere have deemed his calculations bad;

Save haply when analysis had shown

That half a man 66

can dig a ditch alone."

*There is supposed to be some allusion to determinants here.

Here then our comfort; if we aim not high,
At least we fear no charge of heresy.

The rash intruding spirit we disown,

That dares to guess at suns and worlds unknown; In humbler guise we are content to plod,

And talk of fleas and spiders on a rod!

But hold my muse; nor venture on the ground
That opens now, where conicoids abound,
Or that profound abyss, infinity,

Where all the asymptotes in limbo lie.
Enough; it yet remains to weep the age
Of bygone enterprise, that would engage
Freely with Nature's laws, mayhap to fall,
Yet, stumbling grasp the treasure after all.

May the day come, when men of stronger thought
No more shall toy with science as in sport,
Blow pretty bubbles, calculate their height,
And mark them as they vanish out of sight,
But turn to nature, and with strength of yore,
Compel her to divulge her hidden lore.

F. H. D.

+

ΜΕΓΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ, ΜΕΓΑ ΚΑΚΟΝ.

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more."

TENNYSON.

IN

N one of those noble libraries which are the pride and ornament of the modern capitals of civilization, there stood, amid throngs of frivolous loungers, two more thoughtful occupants. The one a youth, with intellectual forehead, bright hopeful eyes, and glowing cheek; the other a grayhaired man, whose pale and furrowed brow told of long years of patient study and research.

"Ah!" cried the first, as he glanced around at shelf upon shelf, chamber upon chamber, richly stored with the trophies of learning and genius, "what a field here lies before me! many years of life still await me, how gloriously shall they be spent! how I burn to traverse these regions of thought, to know and feel what the wisest and wittiest of mankind have discovered, invented, or imagined; to study, estimate, compare, all the great philosophers, historians, and poets; and in such company, associating with such princely intellects, to myself become wise and great!"

The other heard him not, but as he glanced around, his mind too was moved to meditation.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "how my estimate of this vast collection has altered since first I saw it! what a mass of rubbish I now see around me! what exploded error, garbled truth, facts belied, falsehoods invented, absurd pretension, intellectual quackery! Palimpsests-where lying monkish legends have smothered beyond the chemist's reach the utterances of more honest minds! Commentators-wresting from their text ideas the author never dreamed of! Editorsdegrading some estimable name into a mere pedestal whereon to display their own ignorance and conceit! Truths, thinly