duction of many a gloomy hour, when the soul was at mortal strife with its own nature.

It has been said, that self-knowledge is a science of such difficult attainment, that men "deceive themselves, and say that they have no sin;" that actions appear to the actors of them in so favourable a light, that a writer, de seipso, cannot unravel the truth. We apprehend there is a good deal of error in this opinion: the yet eauTov is not so difficult a task as has been imagined-it is not that men cannot, but that they will not, see the reality. A man always knows, or easily could know, if he would give himself the trouble, the sterling quality of his own deeds; should he, however, be disinclined to enter into the examination, and to throw a sop to his conscience, we readily acknowledge the powerful effect of the casuistry which is ever at hand to gloss over, misrepresent, and soften down; but this is only when there is a traitor in the bosom, and no effort or attempt at resistance is made.

Jerome Cardan was the most remarkable, and, at the time, considered one of the greatest men of the sixteenth century. More was written and said about him, and he himself wrote more, than almost any other writer of the age. He was consulted as one who had preternatural information; by some, he was almost adored as a demi-god; by others, he was hated as an impostor and a villain; and by others, pitied or despised as a madman. His bitterest antagonist, the elder Scaliger, confessed that at times he wrote as one inspired, and at others as an idiot. Artists frequently came from distant parts of the country, that they might take his portrait. He was a mathematician, and is celebrated as the inventor of one of the most important rules in Algebra, which goes by his name. He was a physician, and his advice was requested from all parts. He was invited by the King of Denmark to reside in his dominions, and, being sent for from Italy to Scotland, cured the Archbishop of St. Andrews of a disorder which had bidden defiance to the most skilful physicians in the country: he is hence mentioned as a magician by the Scotch historians. He was an astronomer, and yet he believed in astrology; and at the same time, an eminent metaphysician and moral philosopher. He was called a polypus of science-cut off one head, and a score sprang up-refute him in one department, yet his fame and reputation stood upon the footing of half a dozen others. He was as singular in his birth and death as in his life: in the womb, his mother attempted to destroy him by means of deleterious drugs, and he was ushered into the world with fearful signs:

"The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top,
And chattering pies in dismal discord sung;

His mother felt more than a mother's pain."

During his life he was afflicted with the pains of poverty, and the miseries of professional authorship, but these have happened to many men; his misfortunes were peculiar―a wandering and unsettled mode of existence, and the being charged with theft and all sorts of dishonesty, moral and literary, were nothing to his family anxieties; his eldest son was ignominiously executed for the murder of his wife, and he himself was compelled more than once to imprison his youngest son, who was an unprincipled knave, and whom he was compelled to disinherit and disown. It has been mentioned that Cardan was an astrologer; he, it is said, predicted his own death at a particular time, and starved himself to prove the truth of the prophecy. The events, however, of the life of this singular personage are not so remarkable as the portrait of his mind which he has left us in the book, of the contents of which we will proceed to give an account.

Cardan, in this production, did not think proper to follow the ordinary mode of biography; he does not begin with his birth and his infancy, and thus narrate in order the incidents of his life. The manner of the book is as singular as the matter. He divides all the qualities and properties incidental to man under different heads, which he affixes to the beginning of a chapter, and proceeds to describe his own individual peculiarities under each; as for instance, de Statura et Forma corporis; de Valetudine; de Moribus et Animi Vitio, et Erroribus. Thus giving, as it were, a regular inventory of his whole effects, intellectual, moral, and personal. His life is like the statistical statement of the surveyor of a parish-every thing connected with him has its separate and peculiar notice, down to his very food, his clothes, and his exercise. He takes the height and breadth, and marks, of his person, as a curious traveller would measure the pyramids. The interest of narrative never entered into his mind; his book is a record of facts, which he felt he was called upon to make, before so singular a being disappeared from the face of the earth. A naturalist would thus describe an animal he had never met with, and never expected to see again. A mineralogist, in stringing together an account of the external appearances, the component parts and different uses of a mineral, would be just as accurate and just as jejune. It is, perhaps, the most difficult book to get through that was ever written, which contained so many remarkable circumstances. He writes as if he were giving evidence in a court of justice, and every sentence was an answer

to a question put to him. It mattered not to him who read his work; for he seems to have written it under the influence of an imperious sense of duty, as if some superior being had demanded the items of his existence. It is like a last account given in to be summed up, on the day when every man shall know his doom.

We will proceed to turn over the leaves of the little volume before us, and make a few extracts as we go along from the different chapters as they occur, paying chief attention to those parts which tend to distinguish the most remarkable traits in the character of this singular person. By so doing, we hope to gain another object, that of making this interesting work better known to the generality of readers, and thus ensuring a more particular notice of it than is commonly paid.

The first chapter our auto-biographer entitles "Patria et Majores," in which he gives a very particular account of the family of Cardan. The duration of life always seems to have been a very favourite speculation with him, probably in consequence of his astrological studies, and the prediction relative to his own death. He therefore dwells, with manifest pleasure, on the remarkable longevity for which his ancestors were distinguished. The sons of his grandfather, he tells us, lived respectively to the ages of ninety-three, eighty-eight, eighty-six; and their sons again to those of eighty-eight, ninety-six, seventy-four, eighty-four; and his father to that of eighty. With the same delight, he reckons up the years of his maternal relations. His astrological propensities lead him to pay particular attention to all coincident events; and he mentions in this chapter, with a laudable minuteness, that his maternal grandfather spent part of his time in prison, at the very same period of life that this wholesome restraint was laid upon himself.

He gives a whole chapter to the account of his birth and the astrological situation of the stars at the time of it. It is here that he records his narrow escape from the designs of his mother.

66 Tentatis, ut audivi, abortivis medicamentis frustra, ortus sum an. M.D.VIII. calend. Oct. hora noctis prima non exacta, sed paulo magis dimidia et tamen besse minore. . . . Natus ergo, imo a matré extractus, tanquam mortuus, cum capillis nigris, recreatus balneo vini calidi, quod alteri potuit esse perniciosum, conflictata tribus perpetuis diebus in partu, superstes evasi tandem."

He gives this most singular of all reasons for appearing to the world in the human form:

"Cum Sol, et maleficæ ambæ, et Venus et Mercurius essent in

signis humanis, ideo non declinavi e formâ humanâ, sed cum Jupiter esset in ascendenti et Venus totius figuræ domina, non fui oblæsus nisi in genitalibus: ut a xxi anno ad xxxi non potuerim concumbere cum mulieribus, et sæpius deflerem sortem meam cuique alteri propriam invidens."

All his unfortunate propensities, as well as high faculties (some of which he does not scruple to claim to be supernatural) he attributes to the influence of evil stars.

"Remansit (he says) ergo sola quædam vafricies et animus minime liber: verum omnia abrupta et interdicta consilia; ut uno verbo dicam destitutus corporeis viribus cum paucis amicis, parvo patrimonio, pluribus inimicis, quorum maximam partem neque nomine neque vultu agnosco, absque humana sapientia, nec memoria validus, sed providentia aliquanto melior: ut nesciam cur conditio quæ ad familiam et majores contemptibilis censetur, gloriosa imo invidiosa apud eosdem sit."

There is something very singular in the mode in which Cardan speaks of his parents. To his mother, he does not seem to have owed much, but of both he speaks with the utmost indifference, and probably never felt a spark of natural affection for either, and only mentions them, because they were his parents, and should therefore be known. Of his father, (who appears to have been a man of austere morals, for he would not allow an old gentleman to leave his ill-gotten wealth to his son, merely observing, male parta esse) he says, that he had a ruddy complexion, and could, like a cat, see in the night, was very fond of Euclid, and had round shoulders, (Erat Euclidis operum studiosus et humeris incurvis.) He gives this laconic character of his mother. 66 My mother was given to anger, had an excellent memory and a good wit, was low in stature, fat and pious.'

The fifth chapter is entitled, " On my height and shape of body," the whole of which, as it is short, we feel ourselves compelled to quote. It is, perhaps, the only accurate and minute portrait of a man's own person, down to the most casual blemish, ever handed down to posterity by the pen. Cardan probably thought, that future ages would be very curious about a form, which a superior being (his dæmon) had condescended to inhabit.

"Statura mediocris; pedibus brevibus, latis prope digitos, dorso eorum altiore, adeo ut vix calceos congruentes inveniam, cogererque antea illos instituere: pectore angusto aliqualiter: brachiis admodum tenuibus, dextra manu crassiore, digitisque incompactis, ut chiromantici rudem esse pronunciarint ac stupidum: inde ubi norunt, puduerit. In ea linea vitæ brevis, et Saturnina vocata longa et profunda: sinistra

autem pulchra, ob longis digitis, et teretibus ac compactis: unguibus splendidis, collo aliquantulum longiore et tenuiore; mento diviso, labro inferiore crasso et pendulo: oculis valde parvis ac quasi conniventibus, in quid intentius aspicio; super palpebram sinistri oculi macula lenti parvæ similis, ut nec facile deprehendi queat: fronte latiore, et in lateribus, ubi temporibus jungitur, capillis nuda, quorum color et barbæ flavus erat, detonsos soleo crines ferre et barbam brevem, quæ ut mentum bifida erat: pars tota sub mento pilis abundabat longis, ut ibi magis barbatus viderer. Senectus barbam mutavit, capillos parum: Sermo altior, adeo ut reprehenderer ab his qui se amicos mihi simulabant, vox aspera, magna et quæ tamen profitendo non procul audiretur: Sermo non admodum suavis et nimius: intuitus fixus quasi cogitantis, dentes superiores anteriores magnæ: color ex albo ruber: facies oblonga, non multum tamen caput retro in angustum desinit tanquam in spherulam exiguam. Adeo vero nil rarum est in nobis ut pictores plures qui ex longinquis regionibus venerant, me delineandi causa, nihil invenire potuerint, quo exprimere ita possint, ut ex pictura dignoscerer. In gutturis parte inferiore tumor velut spherula dura, non admodum conspicua, a matre hereditaria et derivata."

Under the head of De Valetudine he informs us, that he had been generally so free from the disease called the hæmorrhoides and the gout, that he has oftener sought to bring them on, rather than drive them away. "It was my practice, (he afterwards adds) a practice at which many wondered, to bring on some disorder, if I happened to have none upon me, as I have just observed of the gout. The reason of this is, that in my opinion pleasure consists in the subsiding of preceding pain. Now if pain be voluntary, it can be made to cease at pleasure. And I have found out that I cannot exist without a certain degree of pain; for, when it altogether ceases, I feel so impetuous a fury seize my mind, that a moderate quantity of voluntary pain is much more safe, and renders me much more respectable. For this reason I bite my lips, distort my fingers, pinch my skin and the tender fleshy part of the left arm even to tears. Thus I have been able to live without reproach. I have a horror by nature of standing on lofty places, however broad, and have always entertained the greatest apprehensions of hydrophobia. Sometimes I have been filled, with what I may term a heroic passion, which has often led me to the thought of putting an end to myself."

Under the head of exercise (de Exercitatione) he tells us, that one of his amusements was to traverse the streets in arms during the night, in towns where he happened to be residing, contrary to the orders of the magistrates. At one time it was his practice to spend the whole of the day, from dawn to dusk, in athletic exercises, and then, in a state of profuse perspiration, sit down to some musical instrument; after which, he would fre