inations, does not cast out any
hooks for more.

Lettre a MM. les Membres de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, contenant
un developpement de la refutation du systeme de la gravitation
universelle, qui leur a ete presentee le 30 aout, 1830. Par Felix
Passot.[610] Paris, 1830, 8vo.

Works of this sort are less common in France than in England. In France
there is only the Academy of Sciences to go to: in England there is a
reading public out of the Royal Society, &c.

A DISCOURSE ON PROBABILITY.

About 1830 was published, in the _Library of Useful Knowledge_, the tract
on _Probability_, the joint work of the late Sir John Lubbock[611] and Mr.
Drinkwater (Bethune).[612] It is one of the best elementary openings of the
subject. A binder put my name on the outside (the work was anonymous) and
the consequence was that nothing could drive out of people's heads that it
was written by me. I do not know how many denials I have made, from a
passage in one of my own works to a letter in the _Times_: and I am not
sure that I have succeeded in establishing the truth, even now. I
accordingly note the fact once more. But as a book has no right here unless
it contain a paradox--or thing counter to general opinion or practice--I
will produce two small ones. Sir John Lubbock, with whom lay the executive
arrangement, had a strong objection to the last word in "Theory of
Probabilities," he maintained that the singular _probability_, should be
used; and I hold him quite right.

{280}

The second case was this: My friend Sir J. L., with a large cluster of
intellectual qualities, and another of social qualities, had one point of
character which I will not call bad and cannot call good; he never used a
slang expression. To such a length did he carry his dislike, that he could
not bear _head_ and _tail_, even in a work on games of chance: so he used
_obverse_ and _reverse_. I stared when I first saw this: but, to my
delight, I found that the force of circumstances beat him at last. He was
obliged to take an example from the race-course, and the name of one of the
horses was _Bessy Bedlam_! And he did not put her down as _Elizabeth
Bethlehem_, but forced himself to follow the jockeys.

[Almanach Romain sur la Loterie Royale de France, ou les Etrennes
necessaires aux Actionnaires et Receveurs de la dite Loterie. Par M.
Menut de St.-Mesmin. Paris, 1830. 12mo.

This book contains all the drawings of the