apparatus to assist his efforts in every other pursuit. But how few, after they leave these walls, can command their own time sufficiently to follow any new course of study, except in connexion with their future profession. Those hours in which Truth dawns upon us in the clear air of delightful studies glide away, very rarely to return. The little comforts of many a lowly home have been abridged, many an hour stolen from slumber, many a heavy eye and aching head turned upon the pillow, to furnish a child with the funds for his academic education. In proportion, then, to the severity of these privations will be the desire of the individual to lighten the burden the moment he is able. He is glad to employ what he has acquired without attempting to increase the store. numerous instances, indeed, the power and the inclination are wanting; for the exhaustion always keeps pace with the stimulant; and the very nerves of the understanding lose the tone and force of health, by the over-exertion and straining of this early race. These cases are too common to be particularized. But there is another ill-consequence to be mentioned, not so much flowing from the Science itself, as from the temper in which it is cultivated; we mean a disregard, often deepening into contempt, towards other pursuits. This assertion admits of ample proof. In 66 The celebrated Barrow, who in one place calls poetry ingenious nonsense, in a letter to Skinner, presumed to speak of the author of Paradise Lost as one Milton." Sir Isaac Newton is related to have said of the same work: "This is a fine poem, but what does it prove?" A question so marvellously weak that it seems almost to refute the anecdote. We have read of a lawyer who threw away a celebrated novel, because the first chapter contained a bad will; and of a Geometrician, whose sole pleasure in the Eneid consisted in tracing the voyage of Æneas. Sir Edward Coke, in the copy of the Novum Organum now in the library at Holkham, has written with his own hand the following: Auctori consilium, Instaurare paras veterum documenta sophisma, Locke affords another specimen of a mind contracted by its prevailing occupation; this partial blindness of the perception may be the inevitable result of the absorption of the faculties in one great object: yet, while we pardon it in such men as Barrow and Newton, we cannot but observe something of a maimed appearance in their intellect. Giants though they be, they are giants with a single eye. But this grace cannot be extended to that large company of technical mathematicians, who are conversant with the letter but not with the spirit. 66 Hitherto our remarks have been confined to the study of mathematics, viewed only in relation to intellectual discipline. We are now to speak of it in the wider signification of a moral regulator, not only as favourable to self-control," but giving to the mind a power of concentration, "that saves it from the languor and misery arising from vacuity of thought." Undoubtedly to a mind, like Professor Sedgwick's, stored with knowledge and enriched by reflection, such studies, tending to harmonize the materials of thought, must be very advantageous; but all these arguments seem to assume the existence of other acquirements, the collection of other treasures; in the great majority of instances, these acquirements do not exist; these treasures are not collected. If, on the other hand, it be asserted that mathematics, whether in higher or lower subjects, suffices of itself, by employing the mind, to protect it from vacuity of thought, then we apprehend such an ascription of power to be most perfectly erroneous. An astronomer, or an engineer, engaged during the day in practical applications of the sciences, will, of course, come within the limits of the proposition; for they escape from vacuity of thought by their plans and calculations, as a lawyer does by his briefs. Yet even in such practised heads as these weariness will arise, and the mind, fatigued by its tension, will long to be unbent. For of all the pursuits of human ingenuity, that of mathematics demands the intensest application. It is related of one well known in the records of science, that after the exhaustion of some minute astronomical experiments, he has been driven to count the drops of rain at the window, or watch the race of two flies along the glass, in order that by an utter repose of thought the intellect might recover its elasticity. These remarks bear chiefly on those in whom mathematics may be regarded as a profession; Professor Sedgwick, however, makes no such restriction; but gives to it an universal application. But the most ardent admirer of mechanical problems. will tire at last; he cannot always be calculating the resistance of our feet to the ground, or the rapidity of descent down an inclined plane, or the momentum of a bullet passing through a sheet of paper. Every one knows, who knows anything of the human mind, that as the subject, on which it leans, declines in interest, vacuity and restlessness of thought supervene; and these enemies of intellectual dignity are only to be repelled by a variety of resources. These evil spirits are not to be laid by a single tune. Having endeavoured to show that in this exclusive application to mathematical learning, the end is inadequate to the labour; that a single element of knowledge is erected into a system; that its influence upon the understanding depends upon general cultivation, to which, by its very exclusiveness, this study is most unfavourable; that, consequently, in a large majority of cases, the intellectual education, properly so called, remains to begin after the termination of academical residence,-we shall now make one or two very brief remarks upon the influence of mathematics upon the health and energies of the student; and we shall take for our authority one whom the most ardent supporters of the present system will not refuse to accept,-one who not only obtained the highest scientific honours of the University, but who was throughout his life remarkable for the masculine vigour, and the logical acuteness of his faculties. We shall take Arch deacon Paley. "You may do anything with young men," were his words to a friend at Carlisle, "by encouragements, by prizes, by honours, and distinctions. See what is done at Cambridge. But there the stimulus is too strong, two or three heads are cracked by it every year. Some of them go mad; others are reduced to such a state of debility, both of mind and body, that they are unfit for anything during the rest of their lives. I always coun |