[7] "It is annoying that this ingenious naturalist who has already given us more useful works and has still others in preparation, uses for this odious task, a pen dipped in gall and wormwood. It is true that many of his remarks have some foundation, and that to each error that he points out he at the same time adds its correction. But he is not always just and never fails to insult. After all, what does his book prove except that a forty-fifth part of a very useful review is not free from mistakes? Must we confuse him with those superficial writers whose liberty of body does not permit them to restrain their fruitfulness, that crowd of savants of the highest rank whose writings have adorned and still adorn the _Transactions_? Has he forgotten that the names of the Boyles, Newtons, Halleys, De Moivres, Hans Sloanes, etc. have been seen frequently? and that still are found those of the Wards, Bradleys, Grahams, Ellicots, Watsons, and of an author whom Mr. Hill prefers to all others, I mean Mr. Hill himself?" [8] "Let no free man be seized or imprisoned or in any way harmed except by trial of his peers." [9] "The master can rob, wreck and punish his slave according to his pleasure save only that he may not maim him." [10] An Irish antiquary informs me that Virgil is mentioned in annals at A.D. 784, as "Verghil, i.e., the geometer, Abbot of Achadhbo [and Bishop of Saltzburg] died in Germany in the thirteenth year of his bishoprick." No allusion is made to his opinions; but it seems he was, by tradition, a mathematician. The Abbot of Aghabo (Queen's County) was canonized by Gregory IX, in 1233. The story of the second, or scapegoat, Virgil would be much damaged by the character given to the real bishop, if there were anything in it to dilapidate.--A. De M. [11] "He performed many acts befitting the Papal dignity, and likewise many excellent (to be sure!) works." [12] "After having been on the throne during ten years of pestilence." [13] The work is the _Questiones Joannis Buridani super X libros Aristotelis ad Nicomachum, curante Egidio Delfo_ ... Parisiis, 1489, folio. It also appeared at Paris in editions of 1499, 1513, and 1518, and at Oxford in 1637. [14] Jean Buridan was born at Bethune about 1298, and died at Paris about 1358. He was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris and several times held the office of Rector. As a philosopher he was classed among the nominalists. [15] So in the original. [16] Baruch Spinoza, or Benedict de Spinoza as he later called himself, the pantheistic philosopher, excommunicated from the Jewish faith for heresy, was born at Amsterdam in 1632 and died there in 1677.