The Sun.
London, England, 1853-10-14 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 14, 1853

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A Complete System of Arithmetic. .
Trotter. Oliver and Bov d
.
The ingenious compiler of this, little volume—.
descriptive of " Theoretical a
metic"— has already rendero',:t his name familiar to
many students in the TT
nited Kingdom by his
" Manual of Logaritk,ms and by his "
-ey to
Ingram's. Mathern:atics." Tad Practical Arith-
His present work will
c. on.siderably
it is to thP., use of schools, it may also be em-
loyed e'ftend his reputation. Adapted as
P advantageously in the labour of self-
tuitio.n. It commences by giving the whole
of the fundamental rules of arithmetic in
4110 succession, and having " grounded" the
scholar in those, carries him onward easily to their
application to mercantile computation. In this
manner the promise of the title-page is fulfilled.
The system here submitted to the use of students
is, as it professes to be, practical as well as theore-
tical in its information. After explaining the fun-
damental rules of the science, and their ordinary
application, the compiler advances to a higher stage
—to vulgar and decimal fractions—and then to
involution and evolution—subsequently to series
—and ultimately to annuities, certain and con-
tingent. The amount of knowledge comprised
in this volume within 300 pages, is creditable not
only to the industry of Mr. Trotter in its accumu-
lation, but to his skill in its arrangement. While
the present compilation is the
latest, it is also
something more than that—it is about the
soundest of all popular works on arithmetic.

By James

Speeches of Kossuth.— Edited by Francis W. New.

man. Triibner and Co.

In this singularly attractive volume are com-
prised several of those remarkable speeches,
by which Louis Kossuth has gained for him-
self the reputation of a very great orator among
the Anglo-Saxon population in both hemispheres.
Assuredly never before has foreigner spoken as
this one has, in a tongue not learned by him in
childhood among the familiar scenes of Fatherland.
Seldom, indeed, have we English listened to words
of more impassioned rhetoric from the lips of the
most gifted of our countrymen. In this, as in so
many other respects, the ex-Governor and some
time Liberator of Hungary stands alone among the
noble band of tho mono illustrious of the world's de-
magogues. After winning a great name in the midst
of his own people, he has acquired a new renown
in the land of his banishment. He came amongst
us with a glorious reputation to support, and that
reputation he has wonderfully enhanced, or rather
ho has added reputation to reputation. His pa-
triotism he had already manifested in rousing and di-
recting the Magyar war of independence. His states-
manship he had attested by the successful acts of his
humane and powerful government. His eloquence
we had become conscious of, from listening to it at
rare intervals through the faint echoes of inadequatt
translation. At last Kossuth himself arrived in
England, and we were enabled to see the man face
to face of whose deeds of glory and words of wisdom
we had heard so frequently—we were enabled to
measure the height of his genius and the depth of
his sensibility. And the Liberator 131. Hungary not
only came and took refuge on the soil of England,
but spoke in their own language to.many thousands
of Englishmen. Spoke in broken accents, it is
true, but in words of winged eloquence. His
triumphal. progress through England, and after
that through the United States of America, will not
speedily be lost to the popular recollection. If it
could otherwise fade away speedily—here is a
monument for its perpetuation. It has evidently
been a labour of love with the editor (Francis W.
Newman) the building up of this same monument.
He has his reconvene° however. For if ho may be
said to have raised an intellectual effigy of the great
Hungarian patriot, he has availed himself of the
privilege of the sculptor—lie has carved his own
name on the pedestal.

The History of the Taxation of England. By
William Tayler. Hope and Co.
How fruitful a theme for the arguments of the
politico-statician The History of the Taxation
of England—with an Account of the Rise and Pro-
gress of the National Debt. The History- of the
Representative Government of the United King-
dom—with an account of the military and ma-
ritime -victories, the warlike glory, and the
national crimes of the great Anglo-Saxon race.
That is the correct signification of Mich annals and
of such a description--of the description of the
National Debt and of the annals of Taxation. It
is a subject of this character and of this magnitude
that Mr. Tayler, of the Middle Temple, has selected
for the display of his industry and lucidity in
compilation, and both of these merits he has re-
vealed in the present volume, in a manner calcu-
lated to earn for him something of a reputation.
Dividing the work before us into two parts, he has
treated first of the progress of Taxation from 1066,
in the reign of William the Conqueror to 1688, in
the reign of William of Orange, in other words, to
the period of the Revolution—recounting after-
wards the extraordinary strides of this dread and
bugbear of the British people, Taxation from
1688 in the age of William to 1853, in that
of "Victoria. A resume of the whole, there given
by the compiler, will be perused by the reader
with advantage. Subsequently, will be found in
the volume three really useful appendices, fol-
lowed by an account, first, of the " Public In-
come," and then of the " Public Expenditure."
Among the persons whose names, speeches, and
opinions are referred to during the course of the
narrative, will be found enumerated almost all the
political celebrities from the days of Queen Anne
down to those of our present gracious Sovereign.
The catalogue, by the way, begins with Walpole
and ends with Disraeli. We can confidently com-
mend the book as a reliable authority upon the
subject of Taxation.

The London Season of 1853. By the Little St.
Leger. W. It. Sams.
A very inadequate notion could alone be con-
veyed, by that abbreviated heading, of the fun
stored up in this delightful little poetic pleasantry.
Therefore let us give the title-page to our
readers in its entirety. Listen !—" The London
Season of 1853 ; or, Lays, Musical and Lunatic : by
the Little St. Leger, thirty-first cousin to the
Great St. Leger." And a comical fellow to boot :
one who hath his " quips and his quiddities."
Read him and answer—aye, and we warrant your
answer will be rendered somewhat inarticu-
late by your laughter. For the Little Saint
Leger is most ludicrously and provokingly in-
coherent in his reminiscences. He never fails,
from the first stanza to the last, to preserve
in his own mind and in that of his reader that if
his lays are musical they aro also decidedly lunatic.
The review ho takes of the last season is such a
droll omnium gatherum. One can't help fancying
sometimes, at the end of a stanza, that it closes with
an Irish whoop and the flourish, not of a pen but of
a shilelah : the conceit comes forth with such a roar
of animal spirit and such a startling unexpected-
ness. Hear him—the bon vivant, with his concert
recollections :
" Mons. Jullien, that comical fellow,
Is gone with his band to New York,
With the great wonder, young Bottesini—
By Jove ! I cant't pull out this cork?"
Or, again, with his appetising thoughtfulness, the
gourmet !
" In September I go to Doncaster,
To see the great St. Leger race,
What fun we shall have, my dear fellow,—
Don't forget the greengages and plaice."
Is not this, however, sufficiently musical or lu-
natic ? Hear him a little later :
" How vexing to lose dear Ferraris,
And Sontag, the sweet evergreen I
Her
tired—hurrahaje
opensstsl all s n
season—
I'mane,xtseree
"
After that are you not satisfied ? If not—listen to
the Thirty-first Cousin to the Great St. Leger
carolling elsewhere of some of the motley sights
witnessed' last season by the Londoners.
" Have you seen gorgeous Sardanapalus,
Mont Blanc, and the idols Aztec?
By Jove ! round the globe I've been roaming ;
How funny ! King Cole, you're a brick."
And so on throughout the whole of this length-
ened and fantastic celebration. After this royster-
ing account of the byegone season, we have in the
brochure before us, " the ninth statue," being a
graceful tribute to Anna Thillon ; " The Little
Bateman's" being a panegyric upon the genius of
those marvellous little children ; an " Acrostic"
on the name of Miss Romer ; and the translation
of a letter written two or three years ago byßossini
—the last mentioned a charmingly humorous
piece of composition.

Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian. Sea. By
Zavier Hommaire de Hell. Chapman and Hall.
If ever that notable civil engineer, wanderer,
man of letters, member of the Societe Geologique
de France, and Knight of the Order of St. Vladi-
mir, of Russia, called by his terrible patronymic,
Xavier Hommaire de Hell, obtains an audience,
it will be now when a work relating to the subject
treated din this goodly volume of his cannot fail
to prove attractive. The author sets out on his
rovings in Turkey, and closes them, for the time,
in Bessarabia. He conducts the reader by plea-
sant stages over the whole of those wonderful
steppes of the Caspian of which the book
in its very title purports to be descriptive. Inci-
dentally, moreover, he carries us with him in ima-
gination through the Cruncea and, among other
scenes of strange interest, through the Caucasus.
Always, too, with an air of delightful vivacity. He
cannot open his lips, or rather bestir his pen to the
outpouring of a sentence, ormuchmore, more, of a chapter,