428 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[APRIL, 



vantages what they may birth, or station, or 

 money, or talents, or acquirements if they 

 can be made available for the augmentation 

 of power, they will be employed in augment- 

 ing that power, and they are fairly so em- 

 ployed. So long as a prejudice exists in 

 favour of birth, those who possess the supe- 

 riority will be desirous of retaining, or rather 

 of extending, the privileges, which such pre- 

 judice creates. If that, or any other quality, 

 be one which few only can possess, the dis- 

 tinction is the more valuable ; and if it be 

 one quite unattainable by art or industry, 

 such as the accident of birth, or some of the 

 exclusive graces of exclusive society, it is of 

 higher value still, and makes the proud pos- 

 sessor more resolute in repelling encroach- 

 ments. All attempts to place advantages of 

 a different, but more common, and of an ac- 

 quirable character, on a level with them, is 

 naturally opposed. Thus birth and connec- 

 tion, which cannot be purchased, will, of 

 course, in self-defence, resist the contact and 

 invasion of mere wealth, which may be won 

 by any body. The set, who figure at Al- 

 mack's consist, or wish to consist, of persons 

 of a certain degree of eclat if not peremp- 

 torily of the higher families, yet certainly of 

 those who have the superiorities resulting 

 from intercourse with the higher society, 

 and unattainable in any other quarter, of 

 those, who have made the best use of the 

 best opportunities, which such intercourse 

 presents, of those, who are conspicuous for 

 grace, or beauty, or accomplishments, or cul- 

 tivated and exhibitable talents. The first 

 principle the binding quality of the institu- 

 tion is to keep out vulgar competitors, and 

 repress the presumption of such as are not 

 content to rest in proprid pclfe. 



The novel before us, which has already 

 reached a third edition, has made a consider- 

 able sensation, as the phrase i., by laying 

 open to the public gaze, the mysteries of this 

 institution, and exhibiting the principles on 

 which its exclusive dominion is wielded. 

 After all, little, indeed, was there to tell. 

 We have had " fashionable novels" before 

 many of them, no doubt, written by such as 

 had only had occasional glimpses of what 

 was passing behind the scenes, but some, 

 nevertheless, of acknowledged fidelity read, 

 relished, and approved by the parties they 

 profess to describe, and therefore such as 

 may be safely regarded as faithful exhibitors of 

 scenes- -not accessible, nor at all approach- 

 able, by numbers ; and for that reason, the 

 object to many of intense curiosity. This 

 story of Almack's is pretty manifestly the 

 production of one who mingles with those he 

 or she pout-trays. If not, the matter is lien 

 imagine, and that is, the next best thing to re- 

 ality. There is an ease and quietness about 

 the thing, generally felt to be the effect and 

 characteristic of familiarity. The whole tone 

 of it is natural no exclamations, or wonder- 

 mentsno reprobatings, or palliatings ; but 

 every thing seems to proceed from a state of 

 feeling, quite unperturbed, not spurning the 



opinions of others, or affecting carelessness 

 about them, but uot thinking about them: 

 all such considerations being unawakened, 

 from the party mixing with equals, and those 

 of the highest class. 



The scene is laid first in the country. The 

 neighbourhood consists of a few families of 

 rank, and some of respectability all visit- 

 ing with one family of low origin and vul- 

 gar conceptions, but of prodigious wealth ; 

 whose great aim and ambition, at least that 

 of the queen of the family, is to compete 

 with the grandest. All parties look forward 

 to the season in town ; and Lady Birming- 

 ham's point is admission at Almack's. She 

 sets skilfully and resolutely to work ; she 

 throws out her nets on all sides ; spreads her 

 cards profusely, though not at random ; gives 

 the most splendid and princely parties and 

 splendid parties are irresistible things, even 

 to those who seem almost to live in them ; 

 and finally, in spite of all opposition on the 

 part of the exclusionists, she triumphantly 

 carries her point. The tale is of slender 

 construction ; nor is there any one scene of 

 very remarkable felicity. The scene at 

 the Abbey is the most so. The greater 

 part consists of dialogue and dialogue not 

 distinguishable for point or vivacity. The 

 book, however, is very far, indeed, from 

 being unreadable. The writer possesses no 

 little tact and ability, with a power of obser- 

 vation, and of communicating too, of no 

 common occurrence. 



A Table of Logarithms from I to 108,000, 

 by Charles Babbage, Esq. fyc. fyc. 8>-c. 

 There is something very ridiculous in finding 

 that the French, who, of all the nations of 

 the globe, are the fondest of submitting every 

 question to analytical investigation, and of 

 pushing their calculations to a length unwar- 

 ranted by the observations on which they rest, 

 never yet published any mathematical work in 

 which the slightest dependancecould be placed 

 on the formula. Sometimes, as in the case 

 of Lagrange's Me'canique Analitique, a whole 

 series of terms disappear, the printer's devil, 

 we suppose, having lost the copy. Then there 

 is Legendre, demonstrating a proposition, by 

 affirming as true the identical fact which he 

 intends to prove. This is sheer negligence. 

 Then again, from the appearance of the 

 calculation in De Lambre's Astronomy, we 

 have often been led to suppose that the dif- 

 ferent sheets of the manuscript had got mixed 

 together in the hands of the printer, who was 

 unable to rectify the confusion he had made. 

 We need not extend the list. The same 

 want of care is manifest in their tables as 

 in their formulae ; and whoever has had oc- 

 casion to employ the former, well knows 

 the extreme caution with which alone they 

 can be used. To the proverbial inaccuracy 

 of the French tables, there is, however, a 

 single exception in Callet's stereotyped lo- 

 garithms, which, by gradual corrections dur- 

 ing more than thirty years, have attained 

 comparative perfection. We have never- 

 theless remarked that the edition of one 



