sult is more
than the first by about one part in 200. The second rolling is a very
creditable one; it is about as much below the mark as Archimedes was above
it. Its performer is a joiner, who evidently knows well what he is about
when he measures; he is not wrong by 1 in 3,000.

The reader will smile at the quiet self-sufficiency with which "I have been
determined to try myself" follows the information that "so many great
scholars in all ages" have failed. It is an admirable spirit, when
accompanied by common sense and uncommon self-knowledge. When I was an
undergraduate there was a little attendant in the library who gave me the
following,--"As to cleaning this library, Sir, if I have spoken to the
Master once about it, I have spoken fifty times: but it is of no use; he
will not employ _littery_ men; and so I am obliged to look after it
myself."

I do not think I have mentioned the bright form of quadrature in which a
square is made equal to a circle by making each side equal to a quarter of
the circumference. The last squarer of this kind whom I have seen figures
in the last number of the _Athenaeum_ for 1855: he says the thing is no
longer a _problem_, but an _axiom_. He does not know that the area of the
circle is greater than that of any other figure of the same circuit. This
any one might see without {210} mathematics. How is it possible that the
figure of greatest area should have any one length in its circuit unlike in
form to any other part of the same length?

The feeling which tempts persons to this problem is that which, in romance,
made it impossible for a knight to pass a castle which belonged to a giant
or an enchanter. I once gave a lecture on the subject: a gentleman who was
introduced to it by what I said remarked, loud enough to be heard by all
around, "Only prove to me that it is impossible, and I will set about it
this very evening."

This rinderpest of geometry cannot be cured, when once it has seated itself
in the system: all that can be done is to apply what the learned call
prophylactics to those who are yet sound. When once the virus gets into the
brain, the victim goes round the flame like a moth; first one way and then
the other, beginning where he ended, and ending where he begun: thus
verifying the old line

"In girum imus nocte, ecce! et consumimur igni."[353]

Every mathematician knows that scores of methods, differing altogether from
each other in process, all end in this mysteri