20 
COMPUTATIONS OF Z. COLBURN. 
On nismeri'*}?! 
compulations, 
particularly 
loose po form- 
« «f h y~Z. ’Jcl- 
L v»i'L. 
intellectual competency to execute the instructions of his 
tuior. 
It will be proper to separate the consideration of the boy 
from the examination of his studies ; and 1 shall hope, that a 
concise inquiry into these will not be erroneously denominated 
a personal severity against the student. 
The attention of the infant mind is invariably excited by 
sensible objects around it. Any thing ;hat pleases the eye, or 
that delights the ear, may engage the spontaneous preference 
of a child ; and the feelings having been once peculiarly 
roused by a favourite object, the momentary charm may ripen 
into a permanent attachment, and all the faculties of the 
understanding become gradually absorbed by the contemplation 
of that object aione. In the property of numbers there is not 
any thing which can appeal to the untutored senses. Every 
thing is recondite and imperceptible. Numbers are themselves 
artificial, the slow production of very great men, who had 
real occasion for extensive and intricate combinations. It was 
a conviction of their utility that stimulated Genius to invent 
them; and not any quality in themselves to allure and gratify 
the senses. The first contemplation of numbers is unpleasant 
and irksome ; and much laborious application is necessary to 
produce even an idea of those latent properties which render 
them so eminently useful. All the qualities of numbers are 
precisely the reverse of those which are known to operate 
attractively on the infant mind ; and the statement is not cre- 
dible, that the young calculator has derived his modes of com- 
putation from the unassisted efforts of his native faculties. 
He Isas certainly been assiduously instructed in the limited use 
of figures ; and his whole knowledge of them is probably 
derived from that instruction. In the supposed methods of 
calculation, there will be. found very little of the ingenious or 
the novel ; but there is ingenuity and novelty in exhibiting their 
effects to the world as the natural fruits of ungrafted genius, 
or the voluntary attainments of an uneducated child. To 
estimate the following explanations, it will be requisite to bear 
in recollection a few relative circumstances ; viz. that in the 
science of analysis, every operation seems difficult and com- 
plex till maturely comprehended ; and that the demonstration 
of 
