516 SIMSON. 



This, however, is not the only ground of regret ; 

 for had it been so, the teacher's defect has been thus 

 supplied by the scholar. But good cause remains 

 to lament that both of those great masters did not abate 

 somewhat of their devotion to the Greek Geometry, 

 and instead of being captivated only with the view of its 

 incomparable beauty, did not help forward by their 

 discoveries those branches of the science which, though 

 they may have far less grace, have yet a far wider range 

 and far greater usefulness. Surely it is deeply to be 

 lamented that such extraordinary powers of original 

 investigation as both these great men possessed should, 

 especially in the case of Stewart, have been wasted upon 

 what Professor Robison's learned wit terms " a super- 

 stitious palaeology," and in the overcoming of difficulties 

 raised by themselves of reaching the point in view by 

 a devious and hard ascent, when a short and an easy 

 path lay open before them of doing, and not very well 

 doing, by an imperfect though elegant tool, and with 

 no help from machinery, the same work which might 

 with far better success and greater facility have been 

 performed by the most perfect instrument that ever man 

 invented ; like the laborious, patient, and ignorant 

 Hindu, who with a knife will carve the most beautiful 

 ivory trinket, on which he spends a lifetime that might 

 have been employed in the most important works by the 

 aid of fit implements nay, who might have turned by a 

 simple lathe myriads of the same kind of toy. 



THE END. 



London : Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES & SONS, Stamford Street- 



