1815,] MR. EDITOR, Mathematical Problém. HAVING observed that the pages of your ably conducted journal are frequently occupied by scientific investiga tions, and that some of the first mathematicians of the age favour the public through your medium with their lucubrations, I am induced to trouble you with the following problem, hoping for a solution of it from some of your learned contributors. To cut a given right line into two such parts, that the cubes on them shall, taken together, be equal to five times the cube on half the given line. MR. EDITOR, I ain, Y. IN the memoir and correspondence of my late valued friend, JOHN TWEDdell, recently published by his brother, I found that all mention of my name, though one of his most intimate friends, had been omitted, and that having never been written to by the Editor, his letters to me did not appear in the correspondence. I have two motives for wishing that this had not happened; the first is, that from the high estimation in which I always held the lamented author of that correspondence, I had fondly hoped to have seen my name united to his, as his friend and confident; for I had rather be known to the world as the friend of John Tweddell than by any adventitious title or distinction whatever. The next motive for wishing his letters to me bad not been withheld from the public, is because they contain much valuable information. On inquiring from the Editor the cause of the omission abovementioned, I received a polite answer, alleging, that he was not aware of my baving corresponded with his brother, but that if the book should come to a second edition, he should be happy to have the opportunity of remedying his neglect; but as that seems to me not very probable, I cannot restrain the strong desire I feel of asserting my claim to the friendship of John Tweddell, and of doing honour to his memory by the publication of the five letters which I received from him during his travels. That I received no more was my own fault, as will be seen by his frequent reproaches for my indolence; but during the course of our correspondence I received many letters from him, which serve to prove that a man of purer mind and more amiable character hardly ever existed; a man possessed of more live ly and playful humour, or more genuine 7 benevolence and good temper. Should there appear in these letters some evidence of those indiscretions, which he so feelingly laments in the preface to his Prolusions, I can only say, that they were not of a nature to dishonour his memory, nor sully the lustre of the most brilliant talents and the most steady integrity. Various were the causes I assigned for my friend's Travels. The malevolence of party spirit ascribed them to his political opinions. Those who pretend ed to be less censorious attributed them Hamburg, d'Hotel Londres, I am tolerably, well, though I have been thod. Letters of the late J. Tweddell to Mr. Burdon. understand nothing but the course of ex- My love to my brother, tell him I thank him for his letter which I have just received. DEAR BURDON, Berlin, Feb. 7, 1796. On my arrival here, about three weeks ago, I found your letter. I would have replied to it earlier, but the dissipation of the Carnival, and the number of engagements which it has brought in its train, have kept me too long from occupations which I like better. Think not that I have been very gay, though in the midst of gaiety; a lightness of spirits is not to me the natural effect of large and tumultuous societies; but it is a part of my scheme to see every thing, to partake of every thing, and, as far as I can, to derive some little benefit and amusement at least, from as many things as I can.My health is not particularly good, neither is it in the other extreme: I have no illness, except occasional head-achs. As for my spirits, they are better, I may venture to say, though not good: they are tolerably even, and I think as little as I can help upon those subjects which are calculated to depress them. I have no happiness, but I have less - pain than I had some time ago. Since I have been here I have been almost every day at court, or in parties where the court have been. I had about ten minutes conversation with the King upon the general objects of travelling, and particularly (if any thing can be particular in ten minutes between a king and myself, except that we converse at all) upon Bruce's travels. The royal family are very affable; and the younger part mix in society, like other individuals, during the Carnival. The princesses are very beautiful: I have been at two or three of their balls, and two or three of their suppers, and have had two or three long conversations with the Prince Royal. Such are the honours reserved for the Friends of Liberty in the Court of Despotism! Corruption is here in 'its maturity; nay, it is rotten ripe. The ministers of the King are as contemptible and scoundrelly a herd as ever wallowed in the debaucheries of court-intrigue. I assure you the King is a much better man than any of his counsellors. You may guess at their characters. The manners of the people are bad: the men are cold and disagreeable; and the women, without being hot, are guilty of all the excesses of heat. They are very fond of the English; and, I assure you, it is a matter of pure choice on the part of an English * {Aug. 1, without enchantment; and a man may sometimes be found, who with strong passions would be virtuous from disgust, I confess the women are not all of this description-I speak of the generality. Digby joined me before I left Hamburg. We came round by Brunswick and Magdeburg. We were introduced to the Duke, who asked us to dine; and we supped with the Duchess. The same invitation to dinner and supper was continued while we staid. The manners of the Duke are very noble and very conciliating. He is by far the first gentleman of his court. He made me regret that he was the author of that infamous manifesto.† Berlin is a most magnificent city, far surpassing my expectations in every respect, and perhaps deriving no small addition to its splendour from the sandy desert by which it is surrounded.. You are astonished after the long monotony of fir and sand, to find yourself environed by all the noblest monuments of pure architecture; and I think the place is well worthy the attention of every traveller, if it is only to obtain an adequate idea of Frederic II., which cannot justly be formed without seeing his capital, and contemplating his public works. The narrow limits of a letter are unequal to the description of such a place; of which the first coup-d'œil amply repays for all the desagrémens of the preceding voyage, and those are not a few. You have no idea of German roads. We have been travelling sometimes for three days together without going faster than a snail's pace; and from seven o'clock in the morning till midnight going eight German (about 30 English) miles, and all the while in imminent danger of overturning. I live, wherever I arrive in Germany, a good deal with the French. You have no idea of the luxury of conversing with an intelligent man, or a pleasant woman of that nation, after the tedious prolixity of a German conversation. I have made considerable progress in the French language, and can write it now with tolerable fluency and correctness. Our ambassador here, Lord Elgin, has done every thing in the world to amuse and entertain us: his civilities to me are very great. I have had a letter from G a few days ago: he does not seem * The late Rev. Charles Digby, canon of Windsor, son of Col. Stephen Digby; with whom my friend had become acquainted by a very singular circumstance a few years before he left England. Mr. Digby, though a very amiable young man, was by no means formed to be a companion for Tweddell, and they soon parted. Why the editor of the Memoir, Corre*spondence, and Prolusions, has omitted the classical and elegant Greek note to the first Greek ode, I am at a loss to discover; except because it breathes an ardent spirit of liberty. But they are not voluptuous in the sense of exciting desire; their manners are lascivious sanguine on the subject of peace: he writes under much concern on the score of Mrs. G's health. I am sorry for the misfortune in his family. Let me hear from you soon. Your letters will always give me great pleasure; for I know the sincerity of your regard for me, and am very sensible of the many proofs you have given me of it. I shall remain here till the 1st of next month; shall spend a week at Leipsic, and near a month at Dresden; and after that shall be at Vienna till the month of June. God bless you. Yours very truly, J.T. MR. EDITOR, 'I AM one of those with whom your Magazine is a great favourite, and (flattery apart) deservedly so. Having premised this, I proceed to inform you I was at once surprised and displeased (and I believe many others were so likewise) to read, a month or two since, a notification that the pages of your work were henceforth forbidden to the puzzling riddle, the playful charade, and ingenious ænigma, forsooth, sir, because your work was of a character too exalted for such trifles, or at least such was the opinion of your advisers. It is far from iny wish to insinuate any thing against the intention of those advisers, or against their talents and sound judgment, but I must enter the lists (whatsoever reception my chivalry may experience) to rescue this amusing and innocent play of wit, from the opprobrium which such an exile would cast upon it; and I have only to regret that no better champion has appeared to prove that the neglected riddle is full as well worthy (if not more so) of filling up a vacant space, as an ungenerous quarrel over a deceased missionary. The nature of a magazine, sir, (or I have mistaken its nature) implies a miscellaneous collection of every thing which is likely to better or amuse society, and that no particular part of it, but NEW MONTHLY MAG,-No. 19. 9 every age, and I had almost said every condition. Surely, then, your usual acuteness must have slumbered, when you rejected from your work those artful allegories, which were thought no disgrace to the pages of a celebrated work in its golden age, under the acute and indefatigable Mr. Urban. Though Samson had put forth no riddle, or though its solution had not cost the men of Ashkelon so dear; though the royal son of Bathsheba (and he was the wisest of ænigmas, and shewn wondrous skill in woman-born) had not delighted in their solution-yet, sir, where is the consistency of the scholar, who indiscriminately censures "Problems such as these," yet pays an unbounded tribute of admiration to the hieroglyphics of Egypt?-for what are the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but a series of ænigmatical instruction?. With the man of classic knowledge and of classic feeling, I had thought my cause already gained by citing the moral ænigma of the darkly mysterious Sphynx, and its solution by Edipus, with the high reward of that solution, and all the train of ills which followed; since the cruel destiny of the noble-minded son of Laius, and the sorrows of the amiable and plaintive Antigone, have left us the master-pieces of the ancient drama. Had Aristotle disdained to quote a riddle, still there is no little authority in the wit and labour which have been expended over the celebrated" Ælia Lælia Cuspis." To him who trusts more to his own sense than to the authority of names of high renown, I beg to hand this moral and ingenious ænigma, and if, sir, it shall be deemed contemptible, it will be in vain for me to argue further. Emblem of youth and innocence, I And with no care opprest; Till some rude lover breaks the mound, boldly spread my charms around, And takes me to his breast. There soon I sicken and decay,, My beauty's lost, I'm turn'd away, And thrown upon the street; Where I despis'd and rolling lie, See no Samaritan pass by, But num'rous insults meet. Ye fair! contemplate well my fate, Reflect upon my wretched state, Implore th' Almighty's aid; Lest you (which Heav'n forbid) like me, Should come to want and misery, Be ruined and betray'd. HASSANA 10 Hypothesis respecting the Author of the Iliad. MR. EDITOR, Dr. Clarke offers some conjectures on the hypothesis, which I presume he would not have done, had he not thought himself supported by Dr. Bentley's authority PSW J. S. Nelson-street, 3d June, 1815. de [Aug, 1, tions, should they appear of sufficient importance, to the public. They had been induced to undertake this excursion, and its proposed narrative, in consequence of being dissatisfied with the productions of almost all other tourists who had visited those parts, from that of surly Johnson down to the birth of the last extraordinary performance of the kind,-which lately issued from a pen in the Poultry, and which may be considered as the cream and quintessence of the whole, and, after a candid perusal of them all, they considered themselves as fully warranted in dooming them in the ag gregate, if not (like Don Quixote's library) to the flames, at any rate to the snuff-shop, kitchen, or temple of Cloacina; with the single exception of Johnson's Tour, which, but for the beautifully-expressed sentiment contained in it when he speaks of the island of Iona, they would have condemned to the same fate. They alleged that the descriptions of the scenery, by which these ephemeral productions are characterized, are generally conveyed in such language as, by exciting a disgust at the mode of description, (which is insensibly transferred to the thing or scene described,) instead of encouraging in the reader the desire of contemplating the scene on the spot, actually tended to deter him from entertaining the bare thought of it; in which mind, if any thing were wanting to it, he was unalterably confirmed by the coloured views accompanying them: these being, in their opinion, far from the easy unaffected draughts, if not the finished pictures, of a master; on the contrary, so many hideous attempts after Nature, which would hardly have been exhibited in the windows of the celebrated Carrington, Bowles, and Co., who it is well known are not over-fastidious in the admission of such specimens of excellence into their collection. They likened the descriptive part of these abortions to the epistolary correspondence of schoolboys with their playfellows, or too fond mothers; in which they make an awkward, but pardonable, attempt at giving an account (sometimes an humourous one, forsooth) of their rural excursions, sights, and amusements, during the holidays: and they compared the copper plate views, so gaudia coloured, with which they are embellished, to the rude essays of boarding-school * See Mawman's Tour. kuoji. + See Tour through the Western High 11 1815.1 Account of a Projected Tour in Scotland. misses, who have been a few months under the tuition of a drawing-master. They scouted the idea as altogether absurd, of gentlemen painters on these Occasions aspiring to celebrity, however temporary and local, by imitating the style of meritorious professional men, such as Jukes, Gilpin, and others; as if the labours of those justly esteemed artists, because every thing appears so easy and natural in their effect, only required their imitation to insure success; never once reflecting that, to lay no stress whatever upon the requisite genius, men who devote themselves for a livelihood from morning till night to the exercise of their profession, must infinitely outstrip those who, from no such necessity being imposed upon them, only apply to it on the spur of the moment, and who must consequently follow haud passibus aquis. They were of opinion, that mediocrity, which all agree to be intolerable in poetry, is equally insufferable in her sister arts, music and painting; and they contended that Lord Chesterfield, when he denounced the practising on the violin by men of rank and fashion, as not becoming their sphere of life, and proposed restricting its use among its proper professors, with as much reason, though on a different principle, might have extended his prohibition to the use of the pencil; since it is only by the judicious division and assignment of labour, both intellectual and manual, that men can hope for the greatest perfection in all matters, either of science or art. But, miserably executed, both in point of literature and painting, as these Caledonian Tours have been, and deplorably short of imparting any thing like an adequate idea of the real scenery of the country, still they convey a glimmering kind of light, from the faint rays of which these gentlemen strongly sus pected that the mountains of Scotland, bleak and barren' as they are, had not been exhibited in the most favourable colours, and that their visiting them personally, and surveying them carefully, in all probability would amply reward their toil. Fraught with these sentiments, they were about entering on their projected journey, from which they promised themselves much pleasure, and their friends and the public equal amusement and information. And well might they have done so; for the painter was a man of soul, who viewed the works of creation with a 'poetic eye. He was acutely alive to the impressions of the sublime 11 and beautiful, and equally happy in the expression conveyed by his pencil-one, in short, who did not frivolously waste his attention on its minute and subordinate parts, but whose bold and comprehensive mind at once grasped the entire scene before him: while the other, to the indispensable ground-work of a sound classical education, superadded all the cultivation of which a happy natural genius is susceptible. History and antiquities, particularly as relating to Scotland-the different branches of natural history, especially zoology, mineralogy, and botany-as well as the application of mathematics to practice, so requisite to the philosophic traveller-were quite familiar to him. He had associated extensively among all ranks of mankind, and had been peculiarly observant of their manners, which he could pourtray with equal fidelity and liveliness, never indulging a vein of delicate satire, with which he was strongly tinctured by nature, beyond the bounds of discretion. Much was expected from the joint labours of such men; and no doubt much would have been effected by them. They certainly would not have skimmed the surface, nor would the world have been disgusted to downright nausea with their accounts of how much whiskey and oat-cakes they had called for at this hovel of an inn, or how they had lain at that; how hospitably they had been entertained by one laird, and how inhospitably another had suffered them to pass his house without inviting them into it; or such like puerilities. No! they had set out with much more enlarged views, and their attention would have been directed to objects more dignified and better calculated to afford useful instruction. But the best laid plans of men are too often marred by the unforeseen occurrence of circumstances apparently the most trivial "It was their evil destiny to land at Leith, upon a dismal rainy day, when the quay streets (which never are, if they ever were, commonly inoffensive in point of cleanliness) happened to be dirty beyond measure. Various stenches, highly obnoxious to their yet uninured organs of smell, assailed their nostrils, principally exhaled from the overflowing gutters, which, in point of colour, if not of contents, might well have been compared to the golden streams of the Pactolus. The heavy, gothic, irregular stone houses, generally half dilapidated by time, with their small windows, having many of them |