approbation of all thinking non-claimants: there is no need of a succession of exposures. Time gets through the job in his own workmanlike manner as already described. On looking back more than twenty years, I find among my cuttings the following passage, relating to a person who had signalized himself by an effort to teach comets to the conductor of the _Nautical Almanac_: "Our brethren of the literary class have not the least idea of the small amount of appearance of knowledge {356} which sets up the scientific charlatan. Their world is large, and there are many who have that moderate knowledge, and perception of what is knowledge, before which extreme ignorance is detected in its first prank. There is a public of moderate cultivation, for the most part sound in its judgment, always ready in its decisions. Accordingly, all their successful pretenders have _some pretension_. It is not so in science. Those who have a right to judge are fewer and farther between. The consequence is, that many scientific pretenders have _nothing but pretension_." This is nearly as applicable now as then. It is impossible to make those who have not studied for themselves fully aware of the truth of what I have quoted. The best chance is collection of cases; in fact, a Budget of Paradoxes. Those who have no knowledge of the subject can thus argue from the seen to the unseen. All can feel the impracticability of the Hubongramillposanfy numeration, and the absurdity of the equality of contour of a regular pentagon and hexagon in one and the same circle. Many may accordingly be satisfied, on the assurance of those who have studied, that there is as much of impracticability, or as much of absurdity, in things which are hidden under "Sines, tangents, secants, radius, cosines Subtangents, segments and all those signs; Enough to prove that he who read 'em Was just as mad as he who made 'em." Not that I mean to be disrespectful to mathematical terms: they are short and easily explained, and compete favorably with those of most other subjects: for instance, with "Horse-pleas, traverses, demurrers, Jeofails, imparlances, and errors, Averments, bars, and protestandos, And puis d'arreign continuandos." {357} From which it appears that, taking the selections made by satirists for our samples, there are, one with another, four letters more in a law term than in one of mathematics. But pleading has been simplified of late years. All paradoxers can publish; and any one who likes may read. But this is not enough; they find that they cannot publish, or those who can find they are _not_ read, and they lay their plans athwart the noses of those who, they think, ought to read. To recommend them to be content with publication, like other authors, is an affront: of this I will give the reader an amusing instance. My good nature, of which I keep a stock, though I do not use it all up in this Budget, prompts me to conceal the name.