(P. 592.) "Joanna Southcott[109] is not very gallantly treated by the gentlemen of the Press, who, we believe, without knowing anything about her, merely pick up their idea of her character from the rabble. We once entertained the same rabble idea of her; but having read her works--for we really have read them--we now regard her with great respect. However, there is a great abundance of chaff and straw to her grain; but the grain is good, and as we do not eat either the chaff or straw if we can avoid it, nor even the raw grain, but thrash it and winnow it, and grind it and bake it, we find it, after undergoing this process, not only very palatable, but a special dainty of its kind. But the husk is an insurmountable obstacle to those learned and educated gentlemen who judge of books entirely by the style and the grammar, or those who eat grain as it grows, like the cattle. Such men would reject all prological revelation; for there never was and probably never will be a revelation by voice and vision communicated in classical manner. It would be an invasion of the rights and prerogatives of Humanity, and as contrary to the Divine and Established order of mundane government, as a field of quartern loaves or hot French rolls." Mr. Smith's book is spiritualism from beginning to end; and my anonymous gainsayer, honest of course, is either ignorant of the work he thinks he has read, or has a most remarkable development of the organ of imperception.] A CONDENSED HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS. I cut the following from a Sunday paper in 1849: "X. Y.--The Chaldeans began the mathematics, in which the Egyptians excelled. Then crossing the sea, by means {59} of Thales,[110] the Milesian, they came into Greece, where they were improved very much by Pythagoras,[111] Anaxagoras,[112] and Anopides[113] of Chios. These were followed by Briso,[114] Antipho, [two circle-squarers; where is Euclid?] and Hippocrates,[115] but the excellence of the algebraic art was begun by Geber,[116] an Arabian astronomer, and was carried on by Cardanus,[117] Tartaglia,[118] Clavius,[119], Stevinus,[120] Ghetaldus,[121] Herig_e_nius,[122] Fran. Van Schooten [meaning Francis Van Schooten[123]], Florida de Beau_m_e,[124] etc." Bryso was a mistaken man. Antipho had the disadvantage of being in advance of his age. He had the notion of which the modern geometry has made so much, that of {60} a circle being the polygon of an infinitely great number of sides. He could make no use of it, but the notion itself made him a sophist in the eyes of Aristotle, Eutocius,[125] etc. Geber, an Arab astronomer, and a reputed conjurer in Europe, seems to have given his name to unintelligible language in the word _gibberish_. At one time _algebra_ was traced to him; but very absurdly, though I have heard it suggested that _algebra_ and _gibberish_ must have had one inventor.