mode recommended in the Report appears likely to accomplish this very salutary object. But we hardly think it insures an adequate attention to the more minute points of a question. The immense consumption of time in these preliminary inquiries, and the consequent indifference of members to a protracted discussion and examination, is a difficulty which cannot be surmounted by any construction of a Committee, however excellent. With this impression, we may properly conclude this subject by the insertion of a proposition, which emanates from a friend, whose practical acquaintance with the subject ensures us against the adoption of any crude opinion.

The objections to the present plan of committees are, that the members whose attendance is most regular are such as, from local connexion, and otherwise, must labour under a bias ; a fact which appears to render it necessary to keep the committees open, at least as long as they are upon any thing like the present arrangement: since, while the committees are open, members free from bias may come in on emergency, and correct the proceedings. But these latter members, from not hearing the whole of the evidence, are apt, with the purest intentions, to form a very hasty view of the subject; so that the resolutions of the committee are, on the one side, liable to be warped by local feelings, and on the other, by imperfect knowledge; and yet it is on the mere ipse dixit of a committee, that the house is called upon to act with respect to the facts at least, of every private bill.

The three evils, then, which it is proposed to remove, are, first, local prejudice; secondly, incomplete knowledge; thirdly, the want of stated grounds for the house to proceed upon, in the adoption of the decisions of the committees. It is also proposed to obtain a check on the conduct of parties, who too often protract the proceedings to a ruinous length, in the hope of bearing down their opponents by a weight of expense.

The intended plan is, for the Speaker, or the house at large, to appoint a list of commissioners, whose business it shall be to take evidence, and report upon it, either to the house, or to committees, as might be deemed expedient; the report to resemble in some respects a special verdict: that is to say, deciding what facts are proved by the evidence which has been adduced. It is proposed, however, that it should award the proportion of costs to be paid by the different parties, to be taxed by some officer of the house; such taxation to include stated fees to be paid to the commissioners themselves. report might, in all cases, be printed.

This

It is proposed, that each commission do consist of three members; one at least, to be a lawyer. That the appointments be made pro hac vice from the whole body of commissioners, with reference to the particular subject under discussion; for

instance, that there may be an engineer on the commission for a canal-bill; a chemist for gas-works, &c. &c. Each commission to be appointed by the Speaker.

The advantages which it is presumed would flow from such an arrangement, are as follows: First, the evils before mentioned, would be obviated; secondly, the commissioners, not being members of the house, might give their time more uninterruptedly to the inquiry, and thereby promote despatch; thirdly, the evidence, being shortened by the fear in which the parties would be held of being mulcted in costs, would be a much smaller mass to be inspected by such members as chose to check the report of the commission; fourthly, in cases of local questions, much expense to parties might be saved, by the commission holding their meetings near the spot from which the evidence is drawn; fifthly, it is presumed that many bills would be kept altogether out of the house, by the fear of incurring not only the costs of support, but of opposition: while on the other hand, frivolous opposition would be in like manner altogether prevented; sixthly, the labours of committees would be much relieved, while it is presumed the ultimate cost to parties, even with the addition of the proposed fees to commissioners, would, by the shortening of the contest, be also diminished.

WRIGHT'S SOLUTIONS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PROBLEMS.
I see the gentleman is not in your books.
No; an' he were, I would burn my study.

So many and so monotonous, I might add, so unavailing, are the complaints made of the rapid increase of worthless publications, that we shall not prefix any such to our present discussion; that is, we shall indulge in no general anathemas against the ignorant dabblers in literature and science, who daily and hourly annoy the public with their crude and contemptible lucubrations; with this special reservation, that we be allowed, before proceeding to a calm analysis of the work before us, to break one vial of wrath over the head of its author, and to stigmatize him as-Yet, no; however righteous our indignation in truth is, it is a feeling which we may hope more easily to communicate to our readers by a plain statement of facts than by indulging in these ebullitions of spleen, which rise up in spite of ourselves to trouble the clear well of criticism. We, therefore, do entreat you, the public, we do earnestly beseech you, to dismiss from your minds all that you have chanced to hear to the disadvantage of the prisoner at the bar, and be guided in your impartial verdict solely by the evidence which it now becomes our painful duty to lay before you.

We may indeed assert, with more truth than always belongs to such declarations, that Mr. Wright's labours would have been confidently left by us to sink to that place in the estimation of the scientific world, to which their own specific gravity, (to use appropriate language) would, in all probability, have speedily consigned them: but this determination was considerably shaken, and, at length, overthrown by the favourable notice which has been taken of this work in a recent number of a periodical publication of no inconsiderable celebrity. We say favourable notice, for the Westminster Reviewers have hitherto displayed such evident pleasure in severe castigation, even when not always well-merited, that we cannot but look on the slight, and at best, equivocal censures bestowed by them on some few of Mr. Wright's blunders, as a convincing proof that he stands pre-eminently high in their estimation. Let us now proceed to examine how far this good opinion is well-founded.

The book known by the title of the Cambridge Problems consists of a series of questions in most branches of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, which formed a part of the yearly examinations for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, from 1801 to 1820inclusive of these questions Mr. Wright professes to give the solutions. It might lead us into discussions too protracted to occupy a place in our present argument, if we were to offer an opinion of the adviseableness of such a publication, even were it perfectly executed; it is sufficient for our present purpose to maintain that no good whatever, but rather great mischief, will result from such a performance as these soi-disant solutions appear to be. The first thing to notice is the arrangement, which is that which would naturally suggest itself, and with which we have no fault to find. The questions, which in the Problems succeed each other without regularity in the order in which they were originally proposed, are here reduced and classified under the appropriate heads of Astronomy, Mechanics, Integrals, &c. If indeed we found less to complain of in the body of the work, there is room enough for remark in the careless manner in which the indices are digested, in their omissions and displacements; but these errors are as dust in the balance, and it is the advantage of great offenders that we overlook or disregard their inferior peccadilloes. Perhaps, too, the purchaser may wish, on finding similar questions, nay in some cases almost identical ones, of which, in a collection so formed, it is not to be supposed there are not several, thus brought into immediate juxtaposition, that Mr. W. had diminished the size of his bulky volumes by merely giving the solution of one or two as a sample of the rest. A ready answer to this will perhaps be: "I call my book a Solution of the Cambridge Problems; I ask 31, 3s. for it on this plea; and you might

justly deem yourselves aggrieved and defrauded, if I bated you a single one, however inconsiderable." Is it so indeed? Are we so scrupulous? What then becomes of this plea, when we occasionally find, that, whilst these elementary questions are reiterated with unsparing fidelity, others, anak λeyoueva, are either totally omitted, as in page 53, No. 1; page 192, No. 6; page 422, Nos. 6 and 7; rage 424, No. 21; of the Problems, (none of which questions have we been able to find solved); or have different questions substituted for them, as in page 288, No. 16, where, instead of the required series,

the author has summed cos. A. + cos. 2 A. + &c., and no where else can we find any trace of the series in question; or are referred to in books where they are not to be met with, as in p. 75, No. 10? There are several, indeed, of which we know not whether to rank them among those omitted or not. In the index of reference, which gives the volume and page where the solution is to be met with, the latter important direction is frequently not to be found, nor, consequently, any clue to the sought-for solution Indeed, did we not wish to avoid meddling with what the Westminsters have already discussed, we could remark upon the very vague direction which Mr. Wright gives to those authors of established reputation' in the university to whom he refers us, among whom, be sure, you find himself.

6

However, we might forgive all this; we believe the omis sions just mentioned are not very numerous, and we ought perhaps, to be thankful for what we get;' perhaps we might, if that were given us correctly; but now we come to the great head and front of Mr. Wright's offending, of this 'viri matheseos planè periti,' as his admiring publishers call him in their preface to the Glasgow reprint of the Jesuits' Newton, of which more anon. Here indeed we feel some doubt as to the most advisable course to pursue. We scarcely venture to entangle our readers in the long and tedious exposition of blunders, which we could set before them; and yet a mere list of reference will not carry with it that irresistible conviction of the fallibility of our author, which we hope to produce before we leave him. Whilst we deliberate on the best middle course, we will touch on another subordinate branch of the subject. No one of any pretensions to celebrity can have witnessed unmoved the frightful facility with which Mr. Wright detects, and the reckless exultation with which he exposes, the errors of his predecessors in the paths of science. He is not to be daunted (and in this we sincerely commend him) by the mere

names, however great, of Hutton, Playfair, &c., but proudly lifting his head among them,

"The bad affrights, afflicts the best,"

like the intrepid Höené de Wronski, when he predicated of himself that he was "accoutumé à corriger les erreurs de Lagrange et de Laplace." We wish, however, for his own sake, that he had indulged a little more temperately in his triumph, and our reasons will presently appear when we proceed to examine some few of these blunders of Mr. Wright's detection, which will bring us back to the point at which we just now hesitated. We will begin with Hutton's blunder, vol. II, page 631.

The question is that of a chain slipping off a quadrant of a circle, which is placed with one bounding radius horizontal; the velocity is sought at the moment of the chain becoming free. In a subjoined note, we are told that " Dr. Hutton, in his tracts, vol. 3, page 341, has considered the case of a chain falling down an inclined plane. In estimating the moving force, he neglects wholly that part of it which arises from the part in contact with the plane, and thus makes a palpable blunder." Palpable indeed! but is it really so? Can Homer have so slumbered? or is it rather Mr. Wright who did not perceive that, in the place referred to, Dr. Hutton expressly says a "horizontal plane," with part of the chain hanging vertically down at the first?-so at least it stands in the copy before us of 1812. Perhaps, should Mr. Wright's book ever reach a second edition, he will inform us if the passage stands differently in the one he uses. But, even if the Doctor had committed this oversight, there is something peculiarly offensive to us in the flippant tone, which our author, a mere stripling, unknown in the mathematical world, adopts towards so venerable and talented a personage. This may seem an opinion which infringes the liberty of the republic of letters; but we repeat it, though far from allowing the ipse dixit of Dr. Hutton, or of Dr. any body else, to be to us in lieu of demonstration, yet should we really detect an oversight in one who has so great a claim to our respect, we should point it out as modestly and quietly as possible, and not proclaim him publicly as a palpable blunderer. How then if the whole charge fall to the ground or recoil upon ourselves? It happens indeed, most unfortunately for Mr. Wright's reputation, that in his own solution of the problem, to which the notice just récited is appended, he has committed a blunder of the grossest kind. Uneasy indeed he seems to have been about it, which, by the way, is in itself a more promising symptom of improvement than the blind and confident conceit he elsewhere evinces. "If," says he, at the close of his solution, "if that part of the moving force which arises from the weight of the part of the chain in contact with the curve be rightly determined, this is a true solu