EEYIEWS. 
91 
1. Indefinitely expensive. 
2. The ultimate success prohlematical. 
3. The expenditiu’e utterly incapable of being calculated. 
In fact Government tried “ How not to do it,” and as far as it was con- 
cerned it succeeded. How, however, the result proves the accuracy of 
Mr. Babbage’s ^^re-conception, and fuUy justifies liis bitterly sarcastic com- 
ments on the Tory Government. When speaking of the diflerence engine he 
vmtes : — 
“ It can not only calculate the millions the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer 
squandered, but it can deal with the smallest quantities ; nay it feels even for 
zeros. It is as conscious as Lord Derby himself is, of the presence of a nega- 
tive quantity, and it is not beyond the ken of either of them (the two 
machines ?) to foresee the existence of impossible ones.”'^ 
After the chapters devoted to the history of the calculating machine we 
are treated to a kind of olla podrida, containing descriptions of various inci- 
dents in the writer’s life, and among the rest to those in connection with 
Mr. Babbage’s pet grievance, the “ street nuisances.” Some — to us — amusing 
facts are stated, from which Ave learn that in one year this gentleman expended 
no less than one hundred and four p>ounds in his endeavours to suppress 
street music. 
The “ Passages from the Life of a Philosopher ” can hardly be termed a 
scientific book, although it deals Avith many matters relating to science, and 
in one or two places is even hyper-mathematical. It is essentially a nicely 
and attractively Avritten narratAe of the principal incidents in a savanfs life, 
and may be read iDy all classes of cultivated book-lovers, scientific and 
literary. Here and there throughout its pages many laughable anecdotes may 
be found, but above all things it shows what a single mind is capable of when 
pitted against circumstances, and justifies the remark of the author’s mother: 
“ My dear son, you have advanced far in the accomplishment of a great 
object, which is worthy of your ambition. You are capable of completing it. 
My advice is— pursue it even if it should oblige you to live on bread and 
cheese.” 
HEALTH SCIENCE.t 
T O ameliorate the sanitary condition of the poor ; to remove the working 
man from the foul purlieus in which he now drags on what can hardly 
be termed an existence ; to develop a proper system of general drainage and 
ventilation : such are the serious tasks which the author of the important 
volume under notice proposes to accomplish. And how does he think he is 
likely to see so great an object attained ? By publishing the results of his 
own numerous examinations of the dwellings of the poor. By shoAving us 
the filth and the misery and the depravity of the lower classes who inhabit 
^ Impossible quantities in algebra are something like mares' nests in 
ordinary life. 
t “Another Blow for Life.” By George Godwin, F.E.S., editor of 
The Builder; assisted by Mr. John Brown. With forty-one illustrations. 
Pp. 129. London : Allen & Co. 1864. 
