Datasets:
ThingAI
/
OmniBook

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
1
text
stringlengths
54
17.5k
Playing bumble-puppy with Minnie Beebe, niece to the rector, and aged thirteen--an ancient and most honourable game, which consists in striking tennis-balls high into the air, so that they fall over the net and immoderately bounce; some hit Mrs. Honeychurch; others are lost. The sentence is confused, but the better ill...
In his normal state Mr. Beebe would never have repeated such gossip, but he was trying to shelter Lucy in her little trouble. He repeated any rubbish that came into his head."Murdered his wife?" said Mrs. Honeychurch. "Lucy, don't desert us--go on playing bumble-puppy. Really, the Pension Bertolini must have been the o...
"I have news of you at last! Miss Lavish has been bicycling in your parts, but was not sure whether a call would be welcome. Puncturing her tire near Summer Street, and it being mended while she sat very woebegone in that pretty churchyard, she saw to her astonishment, a door open opposite and the younger Emerson man c...
"I fancy they know how to read--a rare accomplishment. What have they got? Byron. Exactly. A Shropshire Lad. Never heard of it. The Way of All Flesh. Never heard of it. Gibbon. Hullo! dear George reads German. Um--um--Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and so we go on. Well, I suppose your generation knows its own business, Hone...
George sat down where the ground was dry, and drearily unlaced his boots."Aren't those masses of willow-herb splendid? I love willow-herb in seed. What's the name of this aromatic plant?"No one knew, or seemed to care."These abrupt changes of vegetation--this little spongeous tract of water plants, and on either side o...
Indoors herself, partaking of tea with old Mrs. Butterworth, she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture...
"One thing and another," said Lucy, wondering whether she would get through the meal without a lie. "Among other things, that an awful friend of hers had been bicycling through Summer Street, wondered if she'd come up and see us, and mercifully didn't.""Lucy, I do call the way you talk unkind.""She was a novelist," sai...
That was all. But, as the week wore on, more of her defences fell, and she entertained an image that had physical beauty. In spite of the clearest directions, Miss Bartlett contrived to bungle her arrival. She was due at the South-Eastern station at Dorking, whither Mrs. Honeychurch drove to meet her. She arrived at th...
"What I mean by subconscious is that Emerson lost his head. I fell into all those violets, and he was silly and surprised. I don't think we ought to blame him very much. It makes such a difference when you see a person with beautiful things behind him unexpectedly. It really does; it makes an enormous difference, and h...
"So George says. He says that the Miss Alans must go to the wall. Yet it does seem so unkind.""There is only a certain amount of kindness in the world," said George, watching the sunlight flash on the panels of the passing carriages."Yes!" exclaimed Mrs. Honeychurch. "That's exactly what I say. Why all this twiddling a...
Lucy's Sabbath was generally of this amphibious nature. She kept it without hypocrisy in the morning, and broke it without reluctance in the afternoon. As she changed her frock, she wondered whether Cecil was sneering at her; really she must overhaul herself and settle everything up before she married him.Mr. Floyd was...
"'A golden haze,'" he read. He read: "'Afar off the towers of Florence, while the bank on which she sat was carpeted with violets. All unobserved Antonio stole up behind her--'"Lest Cecil should see her face she turned to George and saw his face.He read: "'There came from his lips no wordy protestation such as formal l...
"Poor Lucy--" She stretched out her hand. "I seem to bring nothing but misfortune wherever I go." Lucy nodded. She remembered their last evening at Florence--the packing, the candle, the shadow of Miss Bartlett's toque on the door. She was not to be trapped by pathos a second time. Eluding her cousin's caress, she led ...
She had chosen the moment before bed, when, in accordance with their bourgeois habit, she always dispensed drinks to the men. Freddy and Mr. Floyd were sure to retire with their glasses, while Cecil invariably lingered, sipping at his while she locked up the sideboard."I am very sorry about it," she said; "I have caref...
"All right, Cecil, that will do. Don't apologize to me. It was my mistake.""It is a question between ideals, yours and mine--pure abstract ideals, and yours are the nobler. I was bound up in the old vicious notions, and all the time you were splendid and new." His voice broke. "I must actually thank you for what you ha...
"Then you don't see the wonder of this Greek visit. I haven't been to Greece myself, and don't mean to go, and I can't imagine any of my friends going. It is altogether too big for our little lot. Don't you think so? Italy is just about as much as we can manage. Italy is heroic, but Greece is godlike or devilish--I am ...
Mr. Beebe reminded her that Constantinople was still unlikely, and that the Miss Alans only aimed at Athens, "with Delphi, perhaps, if the roads are safe." But this made no difference to her enthusiasm. She had always longed to go to Greece even more, it seemed. He saw, to his surprise, that she was apparently serious....
"You may well ask that," replied Miss Bartlett, who was evidently interested, and had almost dropped her evasive manner. "Why Greece? (What is it, Minnie dear--jam?) Why not Tunbridge Wells? Oh, Mr. Beebe! I had a long and most unsatisfactory interview with dear Lucy this morning. I cannot help her. I will say no more....
The Miss Alans were found in their beloved temperance hotel near Bloomsbury--a clean, airless establishment much patronized by provincial England. They always perched there before crossing the great seas, and for a week or two would fidget gently over clothes, guide-books, mackintosh squares, digestive bread, and other...
She and her mother shopped in silence, spoke little in the train, little again in the carriage, which met them at Dorking Station. It had poured all day and as they ascended through the deep Surrey lanes showers of water fell from the over-hanging beech-trees and rattled on the hood. Lucy complained that the hood was s...
"I am so sorry, but it is no good discussing this affair. I am deeply sorry about it.""Then there came something about a novel. I didn't follow it at all; I had to hear so much, and he minded telling me; he finds me too old. Ah, well, one must have failures. George comes down to-morrow, and takes me up to his London ro...
"I only wish poets would say this, too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul! Your soul, dear Lucy! I hate the word now, because of all the cant with which superstition has wrapped it round. But we h...
"But it will all come right in the end. He has to build us both up from the beginning again. I wish, though, that Cecil had not turned so cynical about women. He has, for the second time, quite altered. Why will men have theories about women? I haven't any about men. I wish, too, that Mr. Beebe--""You may well wish tha...
E-text prepared by David Starner, Keith Edkins, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)Transcriber's note:A few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text.In mathematical formulae the carat (^) and underscore (_) introduce su...
Of course the paradoxers do not persuade any persons who know their subjects: and so these Scribes and Pharisees reject the Messiah. We must suppose that the makers of this comparison are Christians: for if they thought the Messiah an enthusiast or an impostor, they would be absurd in comparing those who reject what th...
"Or suppose a line drawn from a given point at 90, and from the same point at 60. Let each of these lines revolve on this point toward each other at an equal ratio. They will become one line at 75, and bisect the curve, which is one-sixth of the entire circle. The result, taking 16 as a diameter, gives an area of 201.0...
There is one trisection which is of more importance than that of the angle. It is easy to get half the paper on which you write for margin; or a quarter; but very troublesome to get a third. Show us how, easily and certainly, to fold the paper into three, and you will be a real benefactor to society.Early in the centur...
Mr. Henry Perigal helped me twenty years ago with the diagrams, direct from the lathe to the wood, for the article "Trochoidal Curves," in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_: these cuts add very greatly to the value of the article, which, indeed, could not have been made intelligible without them. He has had many years' experienc...
He _shortened his clause_; and for a reason. If he had used the whole epithet which he knew so well, any one might have given his argument a half-turn. Had he written, as he ought, "the _Holy_ Catholic Church" and then argued as above, some sly Protestant would have parodied him with "and yet if I ask any of them the q...
The mention of Dr. Wiseman reminds me of another word, appropriated by Christians to themselves: _fides_;[59] the Roman faith is _fides_, and nothing else; and the adherents are _fideles_.[60] Hereby hangs a retort. When Dr. Wiseman was first in England, he gave a course of lectures in defence of his creed, which were ...
The reasoning habit of the educated community, in four cases out of five, permits universal propositions to be stated at one time, and denied, _pro re nata_,[70] at another. "Before we proceed to consider any question involving physical principles, we should set out with _clear ideas_ of the naturally possible and impo...
If Religion and Philosophy be the two poles of a battery, whose is the battery Religion and Philosophy have been made the poles of? Is the change in the relation of the wires any presumption of a removal of the managers? We know pretty well who handled the instrument: has he resigned or been[77] turned out? Has he been...
1849. _Joseph Ady_[83] is entitled to a place in this list of discoverers: his great fault, like that of some others, lay in pushing his method too far. He began by detecting unclaimed dividends, and disclosing them to their right owners, exacting his fee before he made his communication. He then generalized into tryin...
The great _ghost-paradox_, and its theory of _coincidences_, will rise to the surface in the mind of every one. But the use of the word _coincidence_ is here at variance with its common meaning. When A is constantly happening, and also B, the occurrence of A and B at the same moment is the mere coincidence which may be...
But there are coincidences which are really connected without the connection being known to those who find in them matter of astonishment. Presentiments furnish marked cases: sometimes there is no mystery to those who have the clue. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (vol. 80, part 2, p. 33) we read, the subject being prese...
The Divine Drama of History and Civilisation. By the Rev. James Smith, M.A.[108] London, 1854, 8vo.I have several books on that great paradox of our day, _Spiritualism_, but I shall exclude all but three. The bibliography of this subject is now very large. The question is one both of evidence and speculation;--Are ...
Equazioni geometriche, estratte dalla lettera del Rev. Arciprete ... al Professore Pullicino[128] sulla quadratura del cerchio. Milan, 1855 or 1856, 8vo.Il Mediterraneo gazetta di Malta, 26 Decembre 1855, No. 909: also 911, 912, 913, 914, 936, 939.The Malta Times, Tuesday, 9th June 1857.Misura esatta del ce...
There is a point about Mr. Shanks's 608 figures of the value of [pi] which attracts attention, perhaps without deserving it. It might be expected that, in so many figures, the nine digits and the cipher would occur each about the same number of times; that is, each about 61 times. But the fact stands thus: 3 occurs 68 ...
There has been a moderate quantity of well-meant attempt to enforce, sometimes motive, sometimes doctrine, by arguments drawn from mathematics, the proponents being persons unskilled in that science for the most part. The ground is very dangerous: for the illustration often turns the other way with greater power, in a ...
"We were subsequently referred to De Morgan's _Formal Logic_ and Boole's _Laws of Thought_[161] both very elaborate works, and greatly in the direction taken by ourselves. That the writers amazingly surpass us in learning we most willingly admit, but we venture to pronounce of both their learned treatis...
[The last number of this Budget had stood in type for months, waiting until there should be a little cessation of correspondence more connected with the things of the day. {80} I had quite forgotten what it was to contain; and little thought, when I read the proof, that my allusions to my friend Mr. Boole, then in life...
Lunar Motion. The whole argument stated, and illustrated by diagrams; with letters from the Astronomer Royal. By Jellinger C. Symons. London, 1856, 8vo.The Astronomer Royal endeavored to disentangle Mr. J. C. Symons, but failed. Mr. Airy[175] can correct the error of a ship's compasses, because he can put her h...
But, strange as it may appear, the opposer of the earth's roundness has more of a case--or less of a want of case--than the arithmetical squarer of the circle. The evidence that the earth is round is but cumulative and circumstantial: scores of phenomena ask, separately and independently, what other explanation can be ...
Miranda. A book divided into three parts, entitled Souls, Numbers, Stars, on the Neo-Christian Religion ... Vol. i. London, 1858, 1859, 1860. 8vo.The name of the author is Filopanti.[189] He announces himself as the 49th and last Emanuel: his immediate {94} predecessors were Emanuel Washington, Emanuel Newton, ...
"_Hewn on the stone_, 'at the mouth of the Sepulchre,' is his name,--Robert Cottle, born at Bristol, June 2, 1774; died at Kirkstall Lodge, Clapham Park, May 6, 1858. _And that day_ (May 12, 1858) _was the preparation_ (day and year for 'the PREPARED place for you'--Cottleites---by the widowed mother of the Father's ho...
"The clergy of the Established Church, taken at the round number of 20,000, may, in their first estate, be likened to 20,000 gold blanks, destined to become sovereigns, in succession,--they are placed between the matrix of the Mint, when, by the pressure of the screw, they receive the impress that fits them to become p...
"Mr. James Smith, a gentleman residing near Liverpool, was some years ago seized with the _morbus cyclometricus_.[203] The symptoms soon took a defined form: his circumference shrank into exactly 3-1/8 times his diameter, instead of close to 3-16/113, which the mathematician knows to be so near to truth that the error ...
"Say that the blood-globule of one of our animalcules is a millionth of an inch in diameter. Fashion in thought a globe like our own, but so much larger that our globe is but a blood-globule in one of its animalcules: never mind the microscope which shows the creature being rather a bulky instrument. Call this the firs...
"Mr. James Smith, of whose performance in the way of squaring the circle we spoke some weeks ago in terms short of entire acquiescence, has advertised himself in our columns, as our readers will have seen. He has also forwarded his letter to the Liverpool _Albion_, with an additional statement, which he did not make in...
Mr. Smith's method of proving that every circle is 3-1/8 diameters is to assume that it is so,--"if you dislike the term datum, then, by hypothesis, let 8 circumferences be exactly equal to 25 diameters,"--and then to show that every other supposition is thereby made absurd. The right to this assumption is enforced in ...
"Tit for tat; Butter for fat: If you kill my dog, I'll kill your cat."He is a glaring instance of the truth of the observations quoted above. I will answer for it that, at the Mersey Dock Board, he never dreams of proving that the balance at the banker's is larger than that in the book by assuming that the larger...
... It appears to me that so far as his theory is concerned he comes off unscathed. You might have found "a hole in Smith's circle" (have you seen a pamphlet bearing this title? [I never heard of it until now]), but after all it is quite possible the hole may have been left by design, for the purpose of entrapping the ...
"I licks ye because I kin, and because I like, and because ye'se critters that licks is good for. Skins ye have on, and skins I'll have off; hard or soft, wet or dry, spring or fall. Walk in grace if ye like till pumpkins is peaches; but licked ye must be till your toe-nails drop off and your noses bleed blue ink. And-...
_Challenge._ 1,000 to 30,000. "Leverrier's[238] name stand placed first. Do the worthy Frenchman justice. By awarding him the medal in a trice. Give Adams[239] an extra--of which neck and neck the race. Now I challenge to meet them and the F.R.S.'s all, For good will and _one_ thousand p...
1846. At the end of this year arose the celebrated controversy relative to the discovery of Neptune. Those who know it are well aware that Mr. Adams's[248] now undoubted right to rank with Le Verrier[249] was made sure at the very outset by the manner in which Mr. Airy,[250] the Astronomer Royal, came forward to state ...
The third class is the safe class, as its editors know: and, as a usual rule, they refuse unpaid contributions of the editorial cast. It is said that when Canning[258] declined a cheque forwarded for an article in the _Quarterly_, John Murray[259] sent it back with a blunt threat that if he did not take his money he co...
"'But there _is_ another difference between old and new times, yet more remarkable, for we have _nothing_ of it now: whereas in things indivisible we count with our fathers, and should say in buying an acre of land, that the result has no parts, and that the purchaser, till he owns all the ground, owns none, the change...
"By hypothesis [what, again!] let 14 deg. 24' be the chord of an arc of 15 deg. [but I wont, says 14 deg. 24'], and consequently equal to a side of a regular polygon of 24 sides inscribed in the circle. Then 4 times 14 deg. 24' = 57 deg. 36' = the radius of the circle ..."That is, four times the chord of an arc is the ...
This is much about _Thorn_, and its connected words, Thor, Thoth, Theta, etc. It is a very mysterious vagary. The author of it is the person whom I have described elsewhere as having for his device the round man in the three-cornered hole, the writer of the little heap of satirical anonymous letters about the Beast and...
How then comes the history of astronomy among the paradoxes? Simply because the author, so admirably when writing about what he knew, did not know what he did not know, and blundered like a circle-squarer. And why should the faults of so good a writer be recorded in such a list as the present? For three reasons: First,...
Some man of letters must have turned Apollo into Phaeinus of Elis; and there he is in the histories of astronomy to {168} this day. Salmasius[296] will have Aratus to have meant him, and proposes to read [Greek: eleioio]: he did not observe that Phaeinus is a very common adjective of Aratus, and that, if his conjecture...
"From a florin they get to 2 Note the sophism of expressing 2-5ths of a penny, but who our coin in terms of the ever bought anything, who ever penny, which we abandon, reckoned or wished to reckon instead of the florin, which in such a coin as that?" we retain. Remember that this (Hear, hear.) ...
For a long period of years, allusion to the general ignorance of arithmetic, has been a standing mode of argument, and has always been well received: whenever o...
Secondly, he assumes that the penny, such as it now is, will remain, as a coin of estimation, after it has ceased to be a coin of exchange; and that the mass of the people will continue to think of prices in old pence, and to calculate them in new ones, or else in new mils. No answer is required to this, beyond the mer...
Here is General Thompson again, with another paradox: but always master of the subject, always well up in what his predecessors have done, and always aiming at a useful end. He desires to abolish temperament by additional keys, and has constructed an enharmonic organ with forty sounds in the octave. If this can be intr...
I have not scrupled to bear hard on my own university, on the Royal Society, and on other respectable existences: being very much the friend of all. I will now clear the Royal Society from a very small and obscure slander, simply because I know how. This dissertation began with {190} the work of Mr. Oliver Byrne, the d...
This is a work on Spiritual Manifestations. The author upholds the facts for spiritual phenomena: the prefator suspends his opinion as to the cause, though he upholds the facts. The work begins systematically with the lower class of phenomena, proceeds to the higher class, and offers a theory, suggested by the facts, o...
A. B. recommended the spirit-theory as an hypothesis on which to ground inquiry; that is, as the means of suggestion for the direction of inquiry. Every person who knows anything of the progress of physics understands what is meant; but not the reviewers I speak of. Many of them consider A. B. as _adopting_ the spirit-...
I now come to the medical review. After a quantity of remark which has been already disposed of, the writer shows Greek learning, a field in which the old physician would have had a little knowledge. A. B., for the joke's sake, had left untranslated, as being too deep, a remarkably easy sentence of Aristotle, to the ef...
_Paradoxer._--Great men have been derided, and I am derided: which proves that my system ought to be adopted. This is a summary of all the degrees in which paradoxers contend for the former derision of truths now established, giving their systems _probability_. I annex a paragraph which D [e &c.] inserted in the _Athen...
What Mr. James Smith says of these methods is worth noting. He says I have given three "_fancy_ proofs" of the value of [pi]: he evidently takes me to be offering demonstration. He proceeds thus:--"His first proof is traceable to the diameter of a circle {211} of radius 1. His second, to the side of any inscribed equil...
_Apopempsis of the Tutelaries._--Again and again I am told that I spend too much time and trouble upon my two tutelaries: but when I come to my summing-up I shall make it appear that I have a purpose. Some say I am too hard upon them: but this is quite a mistake. Both of them beat little Oliver himself in the art and s...
were added up. This is almost as good as the _Filii Dei Vicarius_, the numerical letters of which also make 666. No more of these crazy--I first wrote _puerile_, but why should young cricketers be libelled?--attempts to extract religious use from numerical vagaries, and to make God over all a proposer of _salvation con...
The same opponent is surprised that I should suppose a thing which "comes to pass" must be completed, and cannot contain what is to happen 1800 years after. All who have any knowledge of English idiom know that a thing _comes_ to pass when it happens, and _came_ to pass afterwards. But as the original is Greek, we must...
D. F. Julianus Caesar Atheus (or Aug.[371]); Diocles Augustus; Ludovicus; Silvester Secundus; Linus Secundus; {228} Vicarius Filii Dei; Doctor et Rex Latinus; Paulo V. Vice-Deo; Vicarius Generalis Dei in Terris; Ipse Catholicae Ecclesiae Visibile Caput; Dux Cleri; Una, Vera, Catholica, Infallibilis Ecclesia; Auctoritas...
"So that 'Zaphnath Paaneah' may be after all the revealer of the 'Northern Tau' [Greek: Phaneroo]--To make manifest, shew, or explain; and this may satisfy the House of Joseph in Amos 5^c. While Belteshazzar = 666 may be also satisfactory to the House of David, and so we may have Zech. 10^c. 6^v. in operation when Ezek...
My account of Mr. Thom and his 666 appeared on October 27: and on the 29th I received from the editor a copy of Mr. Thom's sermons published in 1863 (he died Feb. 27, 1862) with best wishes for my health and happiness. The editor does not name himself in the book; but he signed his name in my copy: and may my circumfer...
The introduction of things quite irrelevant, by way of reproach, is an argument in universal request: and it often happens that the argument so produced really tells against the producer. So common is it that we forget how boyish it is; but we are strikingly reminded when it actually comes from a boy. In a certain poli...
On looking at this homoeopathic treatment of the 3-1/8 quadrature--remember, homoeopathic, _similia similibus_,[390] not infinitesimal--and at the imputation thrown upon it, I asked myself, what _is_ vulgarity? No two agree, except in this, that every one sees vulgarity in what is directed against himself. Mark the wor...
"Or you may do this: calculate the side of a polygon of 24 sides inscribed in a circle. I think you are a Mathematician enough to do this. You will find that if the radius of the circle be one, the side of this polygon is .264 etc. Now, the arc which this side subtends is according to your proposition 3.125/12 = .2604,...
The blessing of Isaac meant for Esau, went to false Jacob, in spite of the imposition; and the writer of Genesis seems to intend to give the notion that Isaac had no power to pronounce it null and void. And "Jacob's policy, whereby he became rich"--as the chapter-heading puts it--in speckled and spotted stock, is not c...
We, the undersigned Students We, the undersigned Students of the Natural Sciences, of Theology and of Nature, desire to express our sincere desire to express our sincere regret, that researches into regret, that common notions of scientific truth are perverted religious truth are perverted by some in ou...
"The kind of test before me is the utmost our time will allow of that inquisition into opinion which has been the curse of Christianity ever since the State took Providence under its protection. The writ _de haeretico commiserando_ is little more than the smell of the empty cask: and those who issue it may represent th...
I must not forget the "moderate computation" paradox. This is the way by which large figures are usually obtained. Anything surprisingly great is got by the "lowest computation," anything as surprisingly small by the "utmost computation"; and these are the two great subdivisions of "moderate computation." In this way w...
"As admirers of the learning and moral excellence of their hero, we glow at almost every page with indignation that his weaknesses and his failings should be disclosed to public view.... Johnson, after the luster he had reflected on the name of Thrale ... was to have his memory tortured and abused by her detested itch ...
I have come in the way of a work, entitled _The Grave of Human Philosophies_ (1827), translated from the French of R. de Becourt[441] by A. Dalmas. It supports, but I suspect not very accurately, the views of the old Hindu books. {278} That the sun is only 450 miles from us, and only 40 miles in diameter, may be passed...
We shall make one little extract from the _myrrour_, and one from Ringelberg. Caxton's author makes a singular remark for his time; and one well worthy of attention. The grammar rules of a language, he says, must have been invented by foreigners: "And whan any suche tonge was perfytely had and usyd amonge any people, t...
Some of our readers may still have hanging about them the feelings derived from this old repugnance of a class to all that did not associate direct doctrinal teaching of religion with every attempt to communicate knowledge. I will take one more instance, by way of pointing out the extent to which stupidity can go. If t...
The longest articles in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_ were "Rome" in 98 columns and "Yorkshire" in 86 columns. The only article which can be called a treatise is the Astronomer Royal's "Gravitation," founded on the method of Newton in the eleventh section, but carried to a much greater extent. In the _English Cyclopaedia_, t...
Though the title-page of this collection bears the date 1841, it is only just completed by the publication of its Table of Contents and Index. Without these, a work of the kind is useless for consultation, and cannot make its way. The reason of the delay will appear: its effect is well known to us. We have found inquir...
The first who appears on the scene is the celebrated Oughtred, who is related to have died of joy at the Restoration: but it should be added, by way of excuse, that he was eighty-six years old. He is an animal of extinct race, an Eton mathematician. Few Eton men, even of the minority which knows what a sliding rule is,...
Little points of life and manners come out occasionally. Baker, the author of a work on algebra much esteemed at the time, wrote to Collins that their circumstances are alike, "having a just and equal number of chargeable olive-branches, and being in the same predicament and blessed condemnation with you, not more prea...
Three letters touch upon "the experiment of glass rubbed to cause various motions in bits of paper underneath": they are supplements to the account given by Newton to the Royal Society, and printed by Birch. It was Newton, so far as appears, who added _glass_ to the substances known to be electric. Soon afterwards we c...
_Redit labor actus in orbem._[584] Among the matters which have come to me since the Budget opened, there is a pamphlet of quadrature of two pages and a half from Professor Recalcati,[585] already mentioned. It ends with "Quelque objection qu'on fasse touchant les raisonnements ci-dessus on tombera toujours dans l'absu...
"_Jacob Behmen._--That Prof. De Morgan classes Jacob Behmen among paradoxers can only be attributed to the fact of his being avowedly unacquainted with the writings {319} of that author. Perhaps you may think a few words from one who knows them well of sufficient interest to the learned Professor, and your readers in g...
The above reminds me of a class of paradoxers whom I wonder that I forgot; they are without exception the greatest bores of all, because they can put the small end of their paradox into any literary conversation whatever. I mean the people who have heard the local pronunciation of celebrated names, and attempt not only...
Language is in constant fermentation, and all that is thrown in, so far as it is not fit to assimilate, is thrown off; and this without any obvious struggle. In the meanwhile every one who has read good authors, from Shakspeare downward, knows what is and what is not English; and knows, also, that our language is not o...
The old English has _fote_, _fode_, _loke_, _coke_, _roke_, etc., for _foot_, etc. And _above_ rhymes in Chaucer to _remove_. Suspecting that the broader sounds are the older, we may surmise that _remove_ and _food_ have retained their old sounds, and that _cook_, once _coke_, would have rhymed to our _Luke_, the vowel...
"Prof. De Morgan, who, from his position in the scientific world, might fairly afford to look favourably on less practised efforts than his own, seems to delight in ridiculing the discoverer. Science is, of course, a very respectable person when he comes out and makes himself useful in the world [it must have been a la...
But the American got nearer to Horace than the martyr-philosopher to Laplace. For all the words are in Horace, except _Thule_, which might have been there. But [rectangle] is not a symbol wanted by Laplace; nor can we see how it could have been; in fact, it is not recognized in algebra. As to the junctions, etc., Lapla...