Reviews and Notices of Books. } ips | 
that, like Bundora’s box, he had still something sticking within. 
Tt came out in the form ofa suggestion that the discoverer of the 
quadrature of the circle was entitled to a reward of £10,000, and 
that he trusted he should get it; and that if he did get it, it would 
make a man of him. The last words. were enough. We saw 
clearly that the thing was impossible, and made our bow. 
We trust Mr Smith will excuse our having taken the liberty of 
cautioning our readers against the results of his labours, ‘That 
the book contains many ingenious arguments, and much that will 
interest those who are curious in such matters, we have no doubt. 
To such persons we recommend the book, not to the vulgar, The 
unwary student, on opening it, may find himself in the position of 
the unfortunate hill farmer when he added to his scanty library 
Mr Ruskin’s volume on Sheepfolds. 
The Mathematical Works of Isaac Barrow, D.D., Master of 
Trinity College, Cambridge. Edited for Trinity College, 
by W. WHEWELL, D.D., Master of the College. 1860. 
Dr Isaac Barrow was the first Lucasian Professor of Mathema- 
tics in the University of Cambridge. He held the professorship 
only six years, and was succeeded by Isaac Newton. On the 
elevation of Dr Pearson to the see of Chester in 1673, Barrow 
became Master of Trinity College. We find him thus exhibited, 
in conjunction with a great mathematician on the one side, and a 
great divine on the other. And the mathematician ani the 
divine, each judging from Barrow’s labours in his own department, 
acknowledge themselves to be linked with a man worthy of the 
position. 
The characteristic of the writers of the age in which Barrow 
lived was exhaustiveness. The habit of thinking then in vogue 
led men to the very roots of a subject.. It is not simply the exhi- 
bition of erudition that strikes one in the writings of such men 
as Pearson and Barrow; it is the manifestation of that peculiar 
habit of casting about the mind to reach and ransack every cor- 
ner and cranny of a subject, to take every step cautiously and 
slowly, even painfully, lest when some high point should be 
reached the foundations might be found to shake. The writers of 
that age did not consider it to be sufficient to state and discuss 
everything which might fairly be said on both sides of the ques- 
tion; they were not satisfied with the annihilation of their oppo- 
nents’ arguments and the exhibition of their own; it behoved them 
to rake up the ashes of every forgotten adversary, and to recount 
the triumphs of every insignificant supporter ; it behoved them to 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. XIV. NO. I.—JuLy 1861. Q 
