Shaftesbury is well known as one of the members of the celebrated cabal administration, whose power, though of short duration, contributed greatly to the corrupt character of the reign of Charles II. The testimony which Locke himself has left of the penetration, the quickness, and the intuitive knowledge of character of his distinguished friend, as also of his superiority over vulgar prejudices, would seem to countervail the almost universal condemnation which his contemporaries, and subsequent historians, have passed upon him. Indeed, without appearing as his apologists, we may safely say that Shaftesbury has hardly had due justice meted out to his memory. The habeas corpus act passed during this reign, originated with him, and though the immunity from imprisonment had been already secured by Magna Charta, it still enlarged that provision and greatly extended the privileges of the British subject. The great crime of Shaftesbury consisted in his being a party leader of surpassing shrewdness and efficiency, and possessed of talents equal to any and every emergence in the state of parties. There have been many men of immeasurably less principle and natural powers, who have received the unqualified plaudits of their countrymen.

The true character of a partisan leader is ever liable to misconception by those who are removed from the vortex of politics, and who look upon its windings with uninterested feelings. The errors of the actor may be those of the head rather than of the heart. He may seem, indeed, at times, to lose his moral equilibrium and to incline fearfully from the line of truth and honesty; but he is generally surveyed through a false medium. He seems ever impetuous, headstrong, regardless of consequences, yet no one is more collected or wary. His ambition at times may appear "vauntingly to o'erleap itself," yet men are never more frequently mistaken. The veteran party leader is a perfect anomaly. In his private relations, courteous, bland, of easy approach and conversation, he always creates a favourable impression of his character. In his public life he seems to his adversaries stern and unfeeling, ofttimes corrupt and vicious. He is idolized by one set of men, denounced by another. There are few moderate opinionists in regard to him. Yet a month a week may see him the reproach of his former friends and the pride of his previous enemies. In truth, his schemes, his objects, his springs of action, are unknown to any but himself. Like the personification of Fame, caput inter nubila condit. He is a moral phenomenon, an animated mystery, a breathing enigma. Such was Shaftesbury. We can of course acquit him of much criminality.

Burnet says of him: “He had a particular talent to make others trust to his judgment and depend on it: and he brought over so many to a submission to his opinion, that I never knew any man equal to him in the art

It is true, his tergiversations were great, but not more than of many of late times. He sat too upon the trial of the regicides, but he only raised an ambitious sail for the popular breeze. He was not a vicious man we may believe, as no one could have known him better than Locke, and no one would have condemned his principles sooner. It has occurred to us that on many points Lord Shaftesbury bore a striking resemblance to Bolingbroke. But sufficient has been said of him; and of one who was honoured and beloved by Locke we could not say less.

We dismiss these volumes with the sincere hope that the life of their distinguished subject may be written in a form that will, at least, present a connected history of his labours and fortunes, for the study of the inquirer after truth, and of the advocate for liberty.

of governing parties and of making himself the head of them. His strength lay in the knowledge of England, and of all the considerable men in it. He understood well the size of their understandings, and their tempers." He seems to have completely deceived the worthy Bishop, who further remarks: “He had the dotage of astrology in him to a high degree. He told me that a Dutch Doctor had from the stars foretold him the whole series of his life. But that which was before him, when he told me this, proved false, if he told me true." Hist. Own Times, vol. i. pp. 132, 133.

REVIEW OF EULER'S LETTERS.

From the American Quarterly Review for December 1833.

Letters of Euler on Different Subjects of Natural Philosophy-Addressed to a German Princess; with Notes, and a Life of Euler. By DAVID BREWSTER, L. L. D. F.R.S. London and Edinburgh. Containing a Glossary of Scientific Terms, with Additional Notes. By JOHN Griscom, L. L. D. New York: Harper, 1833.

Ir a complete analysis of the human mind could be made, by which the exact degree of admiration and respect, with which each class of truths is received, might be discovered, it is hardly to be doubted that the one most marked would be that of mathematics. The harmony of figures, the demonstrativeness and exactitude of mathematical investigations, allow of no scepticism as to the results, but carry to the understanding a ready conviction, which both excites a pleasurable emotion, and commands unlimited faith. The leading principles in any system of morals, are arrived at only by a chain of reasoning predicated of conditions of human nature-our wants, our capacities, and our destinies. The belief of the moralist may be strong, and not to be shaken; but the operation by which he may have been led to it, may be both long and complex. It may be logically founded in his own mind; and yet that foundation may be denied by others. The knowledge which we derive primarily from sensation, is received by the great mass of mankind as the highest description of truth; as that which carries with it the greatest degree of certainty; yet, in fact, it has not that degree, nor does it convey to the intelligent mind, that entire satisfaction which attends the results of mathematical reasoning. But whatever may be the relative ranks of physical and mathematical truths, there is a completeness and independence in the modes of the latter, that give them superior claims to our admiration.

The elevated character of the science reflects most strongly upon those who devote themselves to it. Here, as in every other intellectual pursuit, the votary becomes identified with the object

which commands his efforts; and he receives an importance which, although graduated mostly by the value of his labours, is still in a great degree enhanced by the accidental connexion which thus exists. In proportion as the ends of mathematical inquiry are valuable, and its results indisputable and convincing, the successful investigation is raised in the estimation of those who can appreciate their grandeur, and in the wonderment of the million who see in him the outward manifestations of a prophetic spirit. Without, however, referring to this factitious elevation, the mathematician has intrinsic claims upon the gratitude of his fellows. The science which he cultivates is the earliest on record. It carried the Hellenists to their lofty situation among the nations of antiquity. It was the first subject of the speculations of their philosophers. "Let no one enter here who is ignorant of mathematics," was not less inscribed over their portals, in fact, than it was the condition of admission to the converse of the sages who dwelt there. The esteem in which the science was then held was not mere caprice. Without it, where would have been the pantheon or the magnificient structure dedicated to Olympian Jove? The recluse of Megara, indeed, did more for the lasting glory of his country, than did ever the hero of Salamis.

Mathematical science, when considered as the foundation of most of the useful arts of life, assumes an incontrovertible preeminence. "The hewers of wood and drawers of water," wot not of their obligations to it; yet it is no difficult task to show that even their simple labours are directed by rules derived from this source. He therefore who advances it, who developes new truths, is a direct benefactor to the world, and deserves a cenotaph the more splendid, that his contributions to mankind are enduring and directly conducive to their happiness.

Among the distinguished men who shed a rich lustre upon the exact, and especially the mathematical sciences, in the latter part of the seventeenth century and in the first part of the eighteenth, Leonard Euler has a claim to the attention of the enquirer after scientific truth, and of the historian of the progress of the human mind, not at all inferior, as respects his contributions to general knowledge, to those of any of his associates; in many other respects, however, superior to them. If to observe a bold adventurer, and a successful one, attaining to the highest points of intellectual truth, overcoming, by dint of industry and natural strength of mind, the most profound investigations, and even taking a start beyond previous inquirers, be just cause for admiration and an inducement to studied imitation,-how much more ennobling and valuable is the course of him who, while he rises to that dizzy summit from which many cannot descend,-and if they attempt it "topple down headlong,"-at the same time returns with facility to those elementary principles which were the foundation

of his eminence? Such was the character of Euler. If he at times wielded a gigantic power and exhibited extraordinary results, he also evinced an unusual adaptation to the consideration of the simple principles of science. He was not less a pioneer in the fields of research, than an instructor in the rudiments of knowledge. He was equally admirable in untried investigations, and in the hornbook. The philosopher found in him a most worthy companion, the school-boy an inappreciable master.

Bâle has the honour of being the birth-place of Euler; but his father becoming pastor of Riechen in the year after his birth, 1708, he spent his infancy in the latter village with no other instructor. From him, however, Euler seems to have imbibed an early taste for mathematics, -a predilection which was greatly fostered in the university of Bâle, to which he was afterwards removed. There he received the familiar lessons of John Bernoulli, holding with him weekly conversations, and obtaining explanations of those difficulties which invariably beset the young beginner. Such advantages, when not abused, but made incentives to greater exertions, are inestimable; and bestowed upon Euler, they were the happy means of nurturing that nascent germ which was afterwards unfolded in him with unprecedented grandeur. At the very early age of nineteen he obtained the accessit du prix, proposed by the Academy of Sciences, on the masting of ships; the first prize being taken by Bougner, hydrographical professor at Croisic, who had, through his situation, obtained a mass of statistical nautical knowledge which Euler could not command. At the same time he published his Dissertatio Physica de Sono.

Henceforward the life of Euler seems to have been one of incessant toil and useful labour. No individual, within the whole range of science, has offered so many publications valuable for their originality. The titles of his papers in the St. Petersburgh, Turin, and Berlin Transactions, occupy fifty pages.

The papers themselves comprise more than half of the forty-six quarto volumes which were published by the Academy of St. Petersburgh between 1727 and 1783; and of his posthumous papers, of which he left behind him two hundred-owing to a promise made to Count Orloff to supply the Acta Petropolitana with memoirs for twenty years after his death- a very great number have appeared in the same Transactions. Of all these it would be utterly impossible to give any account; we shall therefore confine ourselves in the ensuing pages to a brief consideration of his more important labours and contributions to science.

The great field in which Euler was mostly engaged was in improving the new analysis. By slow degrees the principle of infinites which had been somewhat exemplified in the method of Exhaustions of the old geometers, had grown up, in the hands of original thinkers, into a science of new and unbounded power.