trafficking with the riches of the mind. It is doubtful whether any of the books written with this object have ever served their purpose, save in the case of their originators. Cardan may have found the burden of his failure and poverty grow lighter as he set down his woes on paper, but the rest of the world must have read the book for some other reason than the hope of consolation. Read to-day in Bedingfield's quaint English, the book is full of charm and interest. It is filled with apt illustration from Greek philosophy and from Holy Writ as well, and lighted up by spaces of lively wit. It was accepted by the public taste for reasons akin to those which would secure popularity for a clever volume of essays at the present time, and was translated into more than one foreign language, Bedingfield's translation being published some thirty years after its first appearance. The _De Sapientia_, with which it is generally classed, is of far less interest. It is a series of ethical discourses, lengthy and discursive, which must have seemed dull enough to contemporary students: to read it through now would be a task almost impossible. It is only remembered because Cardan has inserted therein, somewhat incongruously, that account of his asserted cures of phthisis which Cassanate quoted when he wrote to Cardan about Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, and which were afterwards seized upon by hostile critics as evidence of his disregard of truth. Another of his minor works highly characteristic of the author is the _Somniorum Synesiorum_, a collection of all the remarkable dreams he ever dreamt, many of which have been already noticed. To judge from what specimens of his epistles are extant, Cardan seems to have been a good letter-writer. One of the most noteworthy is that which he addressed to Gian Battista after his marriage. It shows Cardan to have been a loving father and a master of sapient exhortation, while the son's fate gives melancholy testimony of the futility of good counsel unaided by direction and example. He tells of his grief at seeing the evil case into which his son had fallen, vexed by poverty, disgrace, and loss of health, how he would gladly even now receive the prodigal into his house (he says nothing about the wife), did he not fear that such a step would lead to his own ruin rather than to his son's restoration. After showing that any fresh misfortune to himself must needs cut away the last hope for Gian Battista, he sketches out a line of conduct for the ill-starred youth which he declared, if rightly pursued, might re-establish his fortunes.