brought over an invitation to come over and help put the plan (for carrying out which 5,000 dollars were voted) in action. He was very nearly going across along with Mr. Reed, the English Literature Professor. The Arctic (in which Mr. Reed sailed) was run down, and 'in a selfish struggle for life the women and 'children perished; and Mr. Reed, unsuited for such a strife, 'went down with them.'

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Even geology receives Mr. Babbage's attention: he does not think that the importance of his theory of isothermal lines has been well understood by geologists.' The complementary chapter to the two describing his achievements is that on the results of science,' which to our author have been mostly negative. He tried for the Haileybury Mathematical Professorship in 1816. The only honest man among the Directors told him that 'if he had interest he'd get it.' He is rejected at Edinburgh, and twice applies unsuccessfully for a seat at the Board of Longitude. Once Sir Joseph Banks opposes him, 'because I had taken an active part in founding the Astronomical Society.' In 1846 he tries for the Mastership of the Mint. 'It was necessary to detach Sheil from O'Connell, and so Sheil gets the 'appointment which Newton once held.' Twice since he has applied for the same office, but has failed on both occasions. In fact, he never got anything, and is almost justified, by repeated disappointments, in saying of a minister, he is a man who can"not be fair if he would; for in his balance one grain of nepotism must weigh down all the honesty he has at his disposal. His way of consoling himself is what we might expect from such a man. It is not he, but the ministry who have suffered. 'I was again passed over under circumstances which, at the time, I thought, must have caused deep regret in the mind of the 'minister who made the appointment.' Put not your trust in Governments,' might well be Mr. Babbage's motto. He has found time to be an ardent politician, always on the 'Liberal' side; and imagines himself very ill-treated by his party. We do not think his sneers at Lord Derby and slow jokes against Mr. Disraeli very becoming: he surely could not expect from the chiefs of the party which he had unvaryingly opposed the consideration and assistance which his 'friends' had declined to give him. After all, Mr. Babbage does get a good deal out of the Government, in the way of subsidy during the construction of the machine. He cannot fairly complain at their declining to go further with his engine; for if its powers were to be unlimited, so likewise seemed to be the expenses of putting it in gear. He has a right to grumble that he was so often passed over, when snug things which would have enabled him to play the philo

<

sopher in comfort were being given away to cousins of Under Secretaries and the like; but this is the way, and Mr. Babbage ought to have known it, with men in office, especially with those of the Liberal profession.

He managed, as we said, to see a good deal of the bad side of politics. Talking of elections, he tells how the opposite party outwitted his side by pairing a Tory, who had just broken his arm, against a sound Whig. Ah, they may laugh, but our sound man had no vote,' whispered Babbage's fellow committeeman; we didn't like to tell you at the time.' 'You were quite right,' replied the conscientious philosopher. About university elections he speaks with a severity which, we trust, is altogether undeserved. The clerical element is large, and they (sic) are for the most part expectant of something better hereafter.' Find out therefore what books your (clerical) voter may have written, 'what is the nature of his preferment, the source whence derived, 'the nature of his expectations, their source, the age of the impediment, the state of its health, the chance of its promotion. A paragraph in a newspaper, regretting the alarming state of the health of some eminent divine, will frequently decide the 'oscillation even of a cautious voter. This dodge is the more ' easily practised because some eminent divines, on the approach ' of an university election, occasionally become ill, and even take 'to their bed to avoid the bore of being canvassed, or of com'mitting themselves, until they see how the land lies.' We hope, for the credit of the cloth, that this charge was true chiefly of the dark days of the ‘Georgian era.'

'Be sure to ascertain who are the personal enemies of the 'opposing candidate. . . . . . Men will always give themselves 'tenfold trouble to crush a man obnoxious to their hatred than they will take to serve their most favoured ally.' This (which, by the way, is a fair sample of Mr. Babbage's style, and his wearisome habit of dressing up in grand phrase portentous nothings) is unhappily a truth which every one's election experience can confirm. We have seen that Mr. Babbage did not take much by his electioneering. When Mr. Cavendish got in for Cambridge he was very busy on the Liberal Committee, 're'sisting even the persuasions of the beautiful Lady Copley that 'he would vote for her husband.' He invariably remained (he tells us) at his post till midnight. He got a voter from Berlin, and by a fluke 'pocketed' another who had just come from Bengal-was, in fact, off Portsmouth in his East Indiaman; but all his zeal gained him nothing from the Whigs. He belonged to no great house,' had no powerful connexions, and so (while one of his 'lieutenants' became a Master in Chancery, and the other got 10,000l. a year in India) he still remained plain Mr.

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Babbage, the troublesome and crotchety projector. One cannot fancy him an M.P.; yet he tells us how he was weak enough to stand for Finsbury in 1835. Of course, he never had a chance. The idea of Finsbury choosing a real man of science, though never so demonstrative in his Whiggery, is to an outsider something too absurd. The chief result of his canvass was a new after-piece, called "Politics and Poetry, or the decline of Science," a would-be farce, in which he details the sufferings of a 'Liberal' member, expected to get places for all his electors' relatives, and to back all their cheating contracts. In the farce, the philosopher-member misses a committee' in order to watch a transit of Venus. This disgusts his supporters, who are 'City men, plain business people;' and his colleague, a Scot, bringing forward one of his own countrymen, the philosopher, deserted by the practical men, thrown overboard by the grand folks who had flattered him, and cut by his scientific friends, who can't oppose ministers, you know,' gives up politics for ever, and exit; crying, Those rascal Whigs, my blood boils to think of them." We hope Mr. Babbage has not forgotten his experiences: it is worth even an unsuccessful contest for Finsbury to have learnt that philosophers' had best leave politics alone. Official personages treated him as they do such men: worked upon his immense vanity, profited by his power of unlimited exertion, and then cast him off when he came to claim his reward.

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The many-sidedness and amazing self-confidence of the man is shown by three successive chapters, in which he treats of subjects the most various-of patent locks, of street beggars, and of the ballet. In the first he speaks of his own tractOn the Art of opening all Locks,' which he is much gratified by finding is the very system devised by Mr. Hobbs.' Picking locks leads to deciphering. Every cipher,' he says, 'can be deciphered.' A difficult cipher which he describes is made by writing all the letters of the alphabet on an outer circle in regular order, and on an inner circle the same letters in any order. Instead of the initial letter of your word write that which stands opposite to it in the inner or promiscuous circle. Now turn the inner circle round till the cipher just written is opposite the letter a in the outer circle; then find the second letter as before, and so on. This seems hard, yet this yields to paticnce. To help him in deciphering, our author compiles twenty-four dictionaries (and then as many more based on these-the work comprises half a million words, and is still unfinished), containing all words of one letter, two, three, &c. up to twenty-six letters, and then classifying the words which have two or more letters in common, &c. He is then led to speak of 'sanarina' words, a process,

doubtless, well known to most of our readers, whereby out of Dean,' for instance, you get the following:

DE AN

EASE

ASKS

NEST

Bishop,' Mr. Babbage tells us, cannot be 'squared;' he is the ἄγαθος τετράγωνος without need of adventitious help.

Beggars, beware.' If you ask the philosopher' for a copper, he takes your address, and, dividing St. Giles's into districts, hunts you down in your real whereabouts with more than the skill and patience of a detective. If any one wanted testimony as to the misery of a large class in London, and the need there was for a Lodging House Act when weekly tenants' used to sublet their wretched rooms to scores of still poorer wretches, he may find it in the philosopher's volume. The theatre comes no more amiss to him than the police court, with Sir R. Birnie on the bench. He nearly gets carried up on the stage, along with the devils in Don Giovanni,' as he is wandering about among the machinery! He then invents a 'rainbow dance,' in which groups of ballet girls are placed in cones of coloured light, and so take the colour of the ray which falls upon them. Not content with this dance, Mr. Babbage constructs a ballet, in which is introduced (besides lobsters, geological animals, &c.) 'a central sea of white hot fluid, full of infinitesimal eels all of one sort, wriggling eternally;' which must have been a delightful stage effect. On which our author remarks, in which he takes to be a light pleasant strain; this was to assist the teaching of ministers who prefer the doctrine of eternal bodily torments. 'An ancestor of mine, Dr. Barthogge, wrote, I regret to say it, 'a book to prove this; so I felt it a kind of hereditary duty to 'give him a lift: Mr. Lumley however declines the scientific ballet with thanks, alleging the great danger of fire from the coloured lights.

We naturally expect to hear a good deal about streetnuisances. Mr. Babbage buys a house in a very quiet neighbourhood, and erects workshops, &c. But the authorities' force a cab-stand upon the street, though there is another one already not 200 yards off; and the new race of inhabitants-coffeeshop keepers, lodging-house letters, and the like,' took a pleasure in persecuting the philosopher-used to incite musicians of all kinds to play before his windows, and when at last he rushed out to look for a policeman, they would form a noisy mob, following him with uncomplimentary epithets.' He describes the whole scene, suo more, Homerically; the crowd pushing on

when he moved, retreating when he faced round, and then beginning their shouting and abuse the moment he turned his back. It is the retreat of Ajax from the Trojans. The poor musicians suffer, for they are left in the lurch at the policecourt, and generally fined. Generally, but not always. Mr. X, an anti-Italian magistrate, is succeeded at Marylebone by Mr. Y. an organ-lover, who keeps dismissing charges, and refers the sufferer to the Court of Queen's Bench for redress! One day the poor man actually pays twenty-seven shillings for summonses, and finds all the addresses given are false. He naturally enough asks, Why cannot the police legally take possession of their instruments? then the false addresses would be useless. 'Hardly a week passes,' says our author, without my being 'followed by a crowd, chiefly (he adds, with covert satire) belonging to ragged schools, the Portman Ragged School, &c.' At other times they cry 'Stop thief,' or break his windows, or write anonymous letters. One man cries, You deserve to have your house burnt and you in it, and I'll do it for you, you old 'villain.' Another neighbour buys a penny whistle, and daily, during his dinner hour, blows it for half an hour.' 'I simply 'noted the fact in a memorandum book, and then used the time he thought he was destroying in taking a walk.' In fact, Mr. Babbage's gentleness seems more than a match for his persecutors' inveteracy. He will not attribute bad motives: They sent me music of all kinds, probably with the pacific view of finding out whether there are not some kinds of instruments 'which we might both approve.'

We can only hope that, now' the grumbling Bass has quelled the cheery treble,' our author finds his reward for the loss of time and expense of solicitors, &c. to say nothing of the unpopularity which his crusade brought on him. To the sick, of whom he says there are always 472 per cent. in London, he is certainly a benefactor. He tells some sad stories of people driven to distraction by street noises when forced to come to town for medical advice. As to the mischief done in other ways, our author was once (he says) asked by a sarcastic magistrate whether he seriously believed a man's brain would 'be injured by listening to a street-organ. He replied, “Certainly not; for no man having brains ever listened to street ' musicians.'

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This is, of course, an exaggeration. But there are many men of fine nerves, and delicate health, and refined susceptibilities, who will bless the name of Babbage for doing something to suppress an intolerable nuisance.

But we are not yet at the end of our author's pretensions. He claims to know all about wit- vants, indeed, apparently to