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MAGAZINIANA :-

Punctilious Waiters, 567.

Ice-boats, 568.

Empress Maria Theresa and the Duc
de Choiseul, 568.

Insect Sagacity, 568.
Kangaroo Waggery, 569.
Portuguese Ladies, 569.

The Aborigines of New South Wales,
569.

May Fair, reviewed, 208.
Military Sketch-Book, reviewed, 108.
Moody (Major) on Negro Labour, and
the Edinburgh Review, 84.
Musical Reminiscences respecting the
Italian Opera in England, reviewed,
151-Grassini, 153-Braham, 154-
Catalani, 155-Curioni, Zucchelli, and
Ronzi de Begnis, 156-Velluti, Cara-
dori, and Bonini, ib.-on the misman-
agement of the Opera, 158.

New South Wales, Two Years in, re-
viewed, 517.

Niebuhr's Roman History, reviewed, 374.
North American and Quarterly Reviews,
the, 400.

Parr's (Dr.) Library of a Peer, reviewed,

357.

Philosophy in Sport, reviewed. 384.
Pitt, (William, Earl of Chatham,) His-
tory of, reviewed, 412.
Political Economy, reviewed, 313.

Reviewers Reviewed, the, 15.
Royal Institution of Great Britain, Pro-
ceedings of the, 124.

Shakspeare Meeting at the Garrick's
Head, Bow-street, 9.

Shares, Prices of, in the principal Canals,
Docks, Waterworks, Mines, &c. 134,
282, 423, 570.

Thompson's Travels in Southern Africa,
reviewed, 487.

Tone, (Theobald Wolfe,) Memoirs and
Journal of, reviewed, 137.

Wellesley Case, the, 508.

ERRATUM.

Page 525, note, for gnue, read emu.

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THE

LONDON MAGAZINE.

MAY 1, 1827.

THE HAMILTONIAN SYSTEM.

NOTHING is more difficult in this transitory state than to choose the proper medium between modesty and quackery. In the management of useful ideas, it is equally fatal to pretend too little and to pretend too much; to let an invention die for want of breath, or to burst it by excessive puffing. It is not in the way of modesty that the inventor, as he calls himself, of the Hamiltonian "System," as he calls it, is likely to fail.

At the outset, it must be confessed, that the weakness of human nature affords a great encouragement to extravagant pretensions. A man who promises to creep into a pint bottle, will attract a greater crowd than he who promises to creep into a quart; but when, after a trial, the multitude have been satisfied that they cannot be deceived by the greatest pretender, he will have a smaller chance of obtaining attention when he shows them that he can really thrust his finger into the neck of the bottle.

It is the business of those sanguine and inventive geniuses who are somewhat unjustly, though compendiously, classed under the general name of quacks, to catch at all events public attention. For this purpose, they not only give the greatest air of improbability to the pretended results, but the greatest possible novelty to their means; they pretend to attain by expedients altogether new, an end altogether impossible; this would be the perfection of quackery; and towards this unattainable point of perfection quacks always strive.

As people are too apt in the first instance to attribute undue importance to such pretenders; so they are also too ready when they discover gross instances of exaggeration and absurdity in the pretensions, to set them aside as altogether worthless.

The acquisition of a knowledge of languages is so useful, but so tedious a process, that it is worth while to examine whether there is really any thing in " the Hamiltonian system " which is calculated to shorten it. Our opinion of it may be shortly expressed in the old French sentence:-There is much in it novel and valuable; but that which is novel is not valuable, and that which is valuable is not novel. The subject is, however, too important to be thus summarily dismissed. MAY, 1827.

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