The mathematical style of Laplace is entirely destitute of the simplicity of that of Euler, or the exquisite symmetry and attention to the principles of notation, which distinguishes that of Lagrange. We may almost imagine that we see the first rough form in which his thoughts were committed to paper; and that, when by attention to a particular case, he had hit upon a wider method, which embraced that and others, he was content to leave the first nearly as it stood before the generalization opened upon him. His writings abound with parts in which the immediate train of investigation is dropped, either not to be resumed at all, or at a much later period of the subject. He seems, like the discoverer of a new channel, to have explored every inlet which came in his way, and the chart of his labours consequently shows the unfinished surveys on either side of the main track. This habit is no fault, but quite the reverse, in a work intended for finished mathematicians, to be the storehouse of all that could be useful in future operations: but it makes both the Mécanique Céleste and the Théorie des Probabilités present almost unconquerable difficulties to the student. These are increased by the very wide steps left to be filled up by the reader, which are numerous enough to justify us in saying, that what is left out in these writings would constitute a mass four times as great as that which is put in, and this exclusive of numerical calculations. When we add that those two works are contained in six quarto volumes, which hold more than two thousand five hundred pages, some notion may be formed of the extent of Laplace’s labours. It will be perceived that this slight sketch is intended only for those who are not mathematicians. In conclusion, we may take the opportunity of expressing a hope, that at no distant period analytical knowledge will have become so general, and the public mind be so far informed upon the great theory first propounded by Newton, and reduced to demonstration by Lagrange and Laplace, that the evidence furnished by the two last shall possess equal weight with the authority of the first. [Illustration] HANDEL. George Frederic Handel, whom we will venture to call the greatest of musicians, considering the state in which he found his art, and the means at his command, was born at Halle, in the Duchy of Magdeburg, February 24, 1684. He was intended, almost from his cradle, for the profession of the civil law; but, at the early age of seven, he manifested so uncontrollable an inclination, and so decided a talent for the study of music, that his father, an eminent physician, wisely consented to change his destination, and suffered him to continue under the direction of a master those studies, which he had been secretly pursuing with no other guide than his own genius.