BOOKS.

MR. BABBAGE'S REMINISCENCES.* Mn. BABBAGE has here given us a book even more entertaining and little less instructive than his "Economy of Manufactures," one of the most entertaining of all instructive works. Tho chief

fault of the new work is that it is excessively fragmentary and miscellaneous, threading together the most heterogeneous beads of ingenuity, jest, anecdote, argument, thought, and conviction, from' Mr. Babbage's abortive boyish attempt to raise the devil, up to his more successful attempt in mature life to illustrate the true theory of miracles. There is a dry humour as well as a matter-of-fact brevity about most of Mr. Babbage's recollections which at once impress his stories upon us as authentic, and make them amusing, though one or two of the more elaborate jokes, like the "Scenes from a New After-piece," rather suggest to us the probable form which exuberant mirth might assume in a Calculating Machine than the comic moods even of a " philosopher." The mild sur-

prise, too, with which Mr. Babbage records the injustices and inadequate appreciation be has received from his fel:ow-country- men, and the perfect impartiality with which be registers both the tributes of admiration and the alights, though they do not fail to suggest personal feeling, do so rather as a self-registering barometer suggests variable states of the weather than as words usually suggest pleasure or pain. The book, too, is so full of evidence of Mr. Babbage's wonderful fertility of invention that oue almost gets nervous before the end, lest he should be turning his readers without their own knowledge to some such account as 11:s ingenious Italian friend turned the thirsty passengers wheal he obliged to work for him when they supposed that they were working for themselves :—

"An Italian gentleman, with greater sagacity, devised a more pro-. clactive pump, and kept it in action at far lose expense. The garden wall of his villa adjoined the great high road leading from one of the capitals of northern Italy (Turin), from which it was distant but a few miles. Possessing within his garden a fine spring of water, he erected on the outside of the wall a pump for public use, and chaining to it a small iron ladle, he placed near it some rude seats for the weary traveller, and by a slight roof of climbing plants protected the whole from the mid-day sun. In this delightful shade the tired and thirsty travellers on that well beaten road ever and anon reposed and refreshed themselves, and did not fail to put in requisition the service of the pump so opportunely presented to them. From morning till night many a dusty and wayworn pilgrim plied the handle, and went on his way, Messing the liberal proprietor for his kind consideration of the passing stranger. But the owner of the villa was deeply acquainted with human nature. He knew in that sultry climate that the liquid would be more valued from its scarcity, and from the difficulty of acquiring it. He therefore, to enhance the value of the gift, wisely arranged the punip so that its spout was of rather contracted dimensions, and the handle required a moderate application of force to work it. Under these circumstances the pump raised far more water than could pass through its spout ; and, to prevent its being wasted, the surplus was conveyed by an invisible channel to a large reservoir judiciously placed for watering the proprietor's own houses, stables, and garden,—into which about five pints were poured for every spoonful passing out of the spout for the benefit of the weary traveller. Even this latter portion was not entirely neglected, for the waste-pipe conveyed the part which ran over from the ladle to some delicious strawberry beds at a lower level."

Mr. Babbage gives a very amusing account of his great mechanical struggle as a boy with his schoolfellow Marryat (afterwards Captain Marryat the novelist.) Babbage got up early with one or two industrious schoolfellows to study mathematics. Marrya;kwho thought he should like the fun, but did not at all • Passages in—,' the Life of a Philosopher. By Charles Babbage, Esq., M.A., F.R.B., An Loudon: Dingman- 1804.

care to study mathematics, tried every possible contrivance to ensure his being awakened by Babbage's early rising. He tied packthread to the door and put it round his own wrist ; Babbage untied it; then lie used thicker cord, Babbage cut it ; then

Marryat used a chain, Babbage got a pair of pliers and undid a link ; Marryat used stronger and stronger chains, at last fastened by padlocks ; and Babbage then instead of defeating him directly "turned his flank." He got a piece of thin packthread, and in the middle of the night crept out of bed and passed it through a link in the chain, he then gave Marryat repeated tugs during the night, taking care to draw the packthread away before the light came, so that Marryat's life was rendered a burden to him by constant false alarms. At last, however, a treaty of peace was concluded, and Marryat admitted to the morning seances, which he entirely deprived, of their industrial and scientific character, and turned into opportunities for letting off fireworks, by which they were detected and put an end to. Another incident of Mr. Babbage's school life was still more characteristic. He " gener- alized" some of Mr. Simeon's sermons into a skeleton form of

sermon capable of being applied to any text, in the manner in which he afterwards generalized the " economy of manufac- tures." He then actually applied it to the text " Alexander the coppersmith has done me much evil." "There were in my ser- mon," says Mr. Babbage, "some queer deductions from this text, but then they fulfilled all the usual conditions of our ser- mons, and so thought also two of my companions to whom I com- municated in confidence this new manufacture." "The sermon on the coppersmith," he continues, " was so completely isomor- phous with Mr. Sitneon's own productions that it got pat away among them as the recollections' of one of the boys." The effect on the master he passes over as too terrible for memory to dwell on.

Mr. Babbage gives but one instance of using his own ingenuity for the purpose of overreaching himself; but that is an amusing one. Rogers, the author of the " Pleasures of Memory," once objected

to, plate-glass windows, on the ground that they had given him cold through the imagination, or given his imagination a cold of which his mucus membrane had caught the infection,—by produc- iug a false impression that the window was opeu,whenit was really a sheet of plate-glass. Babbage replied that his ingenuity was too many for his imagination ; for example, when he went to sleep in the country and forgot his nightcap, he knew he should inevitably, catch cold but for his plan of tying a piece of pack- thread tight under his chin, 'which soothed his nerves with the

eidolon of a nightcap, and so prevented the mischief. We have never met with anything so like an experimental yet strictly scien- tific answer to Dr. Johnson's celebrated dictum to Boswell, " I do not knoW, Sir, perhaps no man shall ever know, whether it is better to wear nightcaps or not." Has not Mr. Babbage proved inductively (as Faraday proved about the table-turning) that nightcaps act only ,through the automatic nervous system, and that if you can satisfy the expectation of a nightcap without a nightcap you avoid the evil consequences of suspending its wear ? If so, the " economy of manufactures" is clearly in favour of the packthread for those who have already contracted the habit of nightcaps ; and against nightcaps altogether for those who have not.

Mr. Babbage has one or two very shrewd comments on the characters of some of his contemporaries. Of these the shrewdest are on the special faculty of the Duke of Wellington. It is clear that Mr. Babbage's own greatest power, that of combining a multitude of small means for the attainment of a specific end, had a sympathetic insight into that of the Duke. He gives us this interesting story of a conversation held over his Calculating Machine with the Duke of Wellington and the Countess of Wilton :—

" When I had concluded my explanation, Lady Wilton, addressing me, said, 'Now, Mr. Babbage, can you tell me what was your greatest difficulty in contriving this machine?' I had never previously asked myself that question ; but I knew the nature of it well. It arose not from the difficulty of contriving mechanism to execute each individual movement, for I had contrived very many different modes of executing each ; but it really arose from the almost innumerable combinations amongst all these contrivances—a number so vast, that no human mind could examine them all. It instantly occurred to me that a similar difficulty must present itself to a general commanding a vast army, when about to engage In a conflict with another army of equal or of greater amount. I therefore thought it must have been felt by the Duke of Wellington, and I determined to make a kind of psychological experiment upon him. Carefully abstaining from any military term, I commenced my explanation to Lady Wilton. I soon perceived by his countenance that the Duke was already in imagination again in Spain. I then went on boldly with the explanation of my own mechanical diffi- culty ; and when I had concluded, the Duke turned to Lady Wilton and said, I know that difficulty

And this swift conjecture of Mr. Babbage's received ample illus- tration and evidence on a subsequent meeting :—

" At a very small-dinner-party the characters of the French marshals became the subject of conversation. The Duke, being appealed to pointed out freely their various qualities, and assigned to each his peen- liar excellence. One question, the most highly interesting of all, naturally presented itself to our minds. I was speculating how I could, without impropriety, suggest it, when, to my great relief, one of the party, addressing the Duke, said—' Well, Sir, how was it that, with such various groat qualities, you licked them all, one after another ?' The Duke was evidently taken by surprise. He paused for a moment or two, and then said—' Well, I don't know exactly how it was ; but I think that if any unexpected circumstance occurred in the midst of a battle which deranged its whole plan, I could perhaps organize another plan more quickly than most of them.'" Mr. Babbage's account of his calculating machines is either too meagre or too full. It is too meagre to explain their me- chanical principles as completely as he might have done,—too full for the mere literature of the invention, which is all apparently that he intends to give us. But though chiefly devoted to intellectual automata, he did not despise automata of a more light and frivolous temperament. When a child he had been taken to see a good automaton, and had been initiated by the inventor into the mysteries of a half-finished silver lady, whose movements were very graceful, and who was able to bow and put up her eyeglass at intervals, as if to passing acquaintances. With this silver automaton he fell in again at a sale in years long after; he bought and repaired her, and made her discharge the pleasant and delicate duty of receiving his guests at his Saturday evening parties in Dorset Street. His female friends took great interest in her toilet, and this led to the following amusing passage of arms between the great mathematical inventor and the celebra- ted Lady Morgan :- " One evening, however, the arrival of, the new dress was postponed to so late a period that I feared it had entirely escaped the recollection of the executive department. The hour at which my friends usually arrived was rapidly approaching. In this difficulty it occurred to me that there were a few remnants of beautiful Chinese crape in the silver lady's wardrobe. Having selected two strips, one of pink and the other of light green, I hastily wound a plaited band of bright auburn hair round the block on which her head-dresses were usually construc- ted, and then pinned on the folds of coloured crape. This formed a very tolerable turban, and was not much unlike a kind of head-dress called a toke, which prevailed at that period. Another larger piece of the same pink Chinese crape I wound round her person, which I thought showed it off to considerable advantage. Fortunately, I found in her wardrobe a pair of small pink satin slippers, on each of which I fixed a single silver spangle ; then placing a small silver crescent in the front of her turban, I felt I had accomplished all that time and circumstances permitted. The criticisms on the costume of the silver lady were various. In the course of the evening, Lady Morgan communicated to me confidentially her own opinion of the dress. Holding up her fan, she whispered, My dear Mr. Babbage, I think your silver lady is rather slightly clad to-night ; shall I lend her a petticoat ?' to which I replied, ' My dear Lady Morgan, I am much indebted for your very considerate offer, but I fear you have not got one to spare.'"

We cannot quit this very entertaining book without quoting one of Mr. Babbage's thousand practical ingenuities, which sug- gest a safeguard such as would certainly have prevented one at least of the most terrible of recent railway accidents:—

" One of the most important facts which the engine-driver ought to know is the exact time since the preceding train has passed the point of railroad on which his own engine is. This may be done by placing signals, about to be described, by the side of or across the road at all places where such knowledge is most important. The principle to be employed is, that at the passage of those places the engine itself should, in its transit, wind up a weight or spring. That this weight should act upon an arm standing perpendicularly, which would immediately com- mence moving slowly to the horizontal position. This it should attain by an equable motion at the end of three, five, or any desirable number of minutes. The means of raising the weight may be derived either from a projection below the engine or by one above it. The latter, which seems preferable, might be attached to a light beam traversing the road to which the apparatus should be fixed.

Mr. Babbage's book, though scrappy, and occasionally given to clumsy gambols (as, for example, in the preliminary discussion of the origin of his own name), is exceedingly entertaining, and wonderful in its ingenuities. Many of the chapters recall to one strongly the phrase applied to some philosopher, "a benig- nant thinking animal." But in the discussion on miracle and laws of nature, to which his calculating machine gives occasion, Mr. Babbage rises into a higher region of thought, in which the genius of the great contriver, is merged in the genius of true philosophy.