A child beginning to read by himself may owe terrible dreams and waking images of horror to our spelling, as I did when six years old. In one of the common poetry-books there is an admonition against confining little birds in cages, and the child is asked what if a great giant, amazingly strong, were to take you away, shut you up,
And feed you with vic-tu-als you ne-ver could bear.
The book was hyphened for the beginner's use; and I had not the least idea that _vic-tu-als_ were _vittles_: by the sound of the word I judged they must be of iron; and it entered into my soul.
The worst of the phonetic shorthand book is that they nowhere, so far as I have seen, give _all_ the symbols, in every stage of advancement, together, in one or following pages. It is symbols and talk, more symbols and more talk, etc. A universal view of the signs ought to begin the works. { 83}
Ombrological Almanac. Seventeenth year. An essay on Anemology and Ombrology. By Peter Legh,[170] Esq. London, 1856, 12mo.
Mr. Legh, already mentioned, was an intelligent country gentleman, and a legitimate speculator. But the clue was not reserved for him.
The proof that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles looked for in the inflation of the circle. By Gen. Perronet Thompson. London, 1856, 8vo. (pp. 4.)
Another attempt, the third, at this old difficulty, which cannot be put into few words of explanation.[171]
Comets considered as volcanoes, and the cause of their velocity and other phenomena thereby explained. London (_circa_ 1856), 8vo.
The title explains the book better than the book explains the title.
1856. A stranger applied to me to know what the ideas of a friend of his were worth upon the magnitude of the earth. The matter being one involving points of antiquity, I mentioned various persons whose speculations he seemed to have ignored; among others, Thales. The reply was, "I am instructed by the author to inform you that he is perfectly acquainted with the works of Thales, Euclid, Archimedes, ..." I had some thought of asking whether he had used the Elzevir edition of Thales,[172] which is known to be very incomplete, or that of Professor Niemand with the lections, Nirgend, 1824, 2 vols. folio; just to see whether the { 84} last would not have been the very edition he had read. But I refrained, in mercy.