the heart. Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence, and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable than that which usually envelops a pampered imagination. The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy; and the eye that can pour forth its flood of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable apathy: the heart has become, like that of leviathan, firm as a stone, yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone.' This process of perversion and of induration may as readily have place among the religious emotions as among those of any other class; for the laws of human nature are uniform, whatever may be the immediate cause which puts them in action; and a fictitious piety corrupts or petrifies the heart not less certainly than does a romantic sentimentality. The danger attending enthusiasm in religion is not, then, of a trivial sort; and whoever disaffects the substantial matters of Christianity, and seeks to derive from it merely, or chiefly, the gratifications of excited feeling-whoever combines from its materials a paradise of abstract contemplation, or of poetic imagery, where he may take refuge from the annoyances and the importunate claims of common life-whoever thus delights himself with dreams, and is insensible to realities, lives in peril of awaking from his illusions when truth comes too late. The religious idealist sincerely believes himself, perhaps, to be eminently devout; and those who witness his abstraction, his elevation, his enjoyments, may reverence his piety; meanwhile, this fictitious happiness creeps as a lethargy through the moral system, and is rendering him continually less and less susceptible of those emotions in which true religion consists. REV. T. DALE-REV. H. MELVILL, ETC. The REV. THOMAS DALE, canon of St Paul's, and vicar of St Pancras, is author of two volumes of Sermons, the first preached at St Bride, 1830, and the second before the University of Cambridge, 1832-36. The other publications of Mr Dale are-The Sabbath Companion, 1844; Commentary on the Twenty-third Psalm, 1845; The Domestic Liturgy and Family Chaplain, 1846; &c. Mr Dale, while at college in Cambridge, published some poetical narratives, The Widow of Nain, The Outlaw of Tarsus, and Irad and Adah, since collected into one volume, 1842. Mr Dale is a native of London, born in 1797. He was for some time Professor of English Literature at the London University, and subsequently at King's College. Another canon of St Paul's, and popular metropolitan preacher, is the REV. HENRY MELVILL, author of several volumes of Sermons, and a volume of Lectures delivered at St Margaret's, Lothbury, 1850-52. The latter formed part of the Jones Lectureship, commonly called "The Golden Lecture,' which was founded by a London citizen in 1614. The annual income of the Golden Lectureship amounts to £416 a year; the patrons are the Haberdashers' Company. The Bridgewater Treatises form a valuable series of works on the theology of natural history. The Earl of Bridgewater (1758-1829) bequeathed a sum of £8000 to be invested in the public funds, and paid to persons appointed by the President of the Royal Society to write and publish works on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation. The works so produced are-The Hand, its Mechanism and Endowments as evincing Design, by SIR CHARLES BELL, Professor of Surgery in the University of Edinburgh (1774-1842); Geology and Mineralogy considered with Reference to Natural Theology, by DR WILLIAM BUCKLAND, Dean of Westminster (1784-1856); The Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man, by DR THOMAS CHALMERS (1780-1847); The Physical Condition of Man, by DR JOHN KIDD; The Habits and Instincts of Animals, by the REV. W. KIRBY (1759–1851); Chemistry and Meteorology, by DR W. PROUT; Animal and Vegetable Physiology, by DR P. M. ROGET; Astronomy and General Physics, by DR W. WHEWELL, Professor of Moral Philosophy. The names here given afford sufficient evidence of the judicious administration of the trust. The President of the Royal Society called in to his aid, in selecting the writers, the archbishop of Canterbury and bishop of London, and it is creditable to their liberality and taste that the first of the treatises was assigned to a Presbyterian minister-Dr Chalmers. DRS BROWN, WARDLAW, GUTHRIE, CAIRD, CANDLISH, CUMMING, AND TULLOCH. The Scottish divines, though enjoying comparatively little leisure from their pastoral duties, have made some contributions to our modern theological literature. DR JOHN BROWN (1785-1859), of the United Presbyterian Church, Theological Professor, &c., was a good Biblical critic and practical theologian. Amidst numerous religious treatises published between 1821 and 1852, his Expository Discourses on the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, the Epistle of Peter, Discourses and Sayings of our Lord, the Sufferings of the Messiah, &c., are warmly commended. DR RALPH WARDLAW (1779-1853), of the Independent Church, Glasgow, was author of Discourses on the Socinian Controversy, 1814, which have been frequently reprinted, and which Robert Hall said completely exhausted the subject. Dr Wardlaw published various sermons and theological essays, and was a learned, able divine, and a very impressive preacher. A life of Dr Wardlaw was published in 1856 by Dr W. L. Alexander. Among the most popular of sermons lately published are those of DR GUTHRIE and DR CAIRD. Thomas Guthrie (born at Brechin, Forfarshire, in 1800) is author of a volume of Discourses from Ezekiel, 1855; Discourses from the Epistle to the Colossians, 1859; Pleas for Ragged Schools; and several tracts against intemperance. Dr Guthrie is the most eloquent of the Free Church preachers. His sermons are marked by poetic imagery and illustration-perhaps too profusely, but often striking, pathetic, and impressive. Dr John Caird, one of the ministers of Glasgow, has published Religion in Common Life, a sermon preached before the Court at Balmoral in 1856, and a volume of Sermons, 1858; these are distinguished for their practical tendency and earnestness, and for a beautiful simplicity and clearness of style. DR ROBERT S. CANDLISH, one of the Free Church ministers of Edinburgh-son of an early friend and correspondent of the poet Burnsis author of an Exposition of the Book of Genesis, 1852; Discourses on the Resurrection, 1858; and other professional treatises, all evincing acuteness and research-a subtle and penetrating intellect. DR JOHN CUMMING, of the Scotch Church, London (born in Aberdeenshire in 1809), has written a great number of religious works-Apocalyptic Sketches, Voices of the Night, Voices of the Day, Voices of the Dead, Expository Readings on the Old and New Testament, and various controversial tracts. He is in theology what Mr G. P. R. James is in fictionas fluent and as voluminous, but with a larger body of readers and admirers. DR JOHN TULLOCH, Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews, in 1855 received one of the Burnett prizes for a treatise on Theism, the Witness of Reason and Nature to an All-wise and All-beneficent Creator. The Burnett Prize Essays are published under the bequest of an Aberdeen merchant, John Burnett (1739-1784), who left £1600 to be applied every forty years to the foundation of two premiums for essays on the Being and Character of God from Reason and Revelation. Dr Tulloch, in 1859, published a volume of four lectures, delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, Leaders of the Reformation, or sketches of Luther, Calvin, Latimer, and Knox. [Decadence of the Ancient Portion of Edinburgh.] [From Guthrie's Sermons.] atmosphere, the patched and dusty window-through which a sunbeam, like hope, is faintly stealing—the ragged, hunger-bitten, and sad-faced children, the ruffian man, the heap of straw where some wretched mother, in muttering dreams, sleeps off last night's debauch, or lies unshrouded and uncoffined in the ghastliness of a hopeless death, are sad scenes. We have often looked on them. And they appear all the sadder for the restless play of fancy. Excited by some vestiges of a frescopainting that still looks out from the foul and broken plaster, the massive marble rising over the cold and cracked hearth-stone, an elaborately carved cornice too bigh for shivering cold to pull it down for fuel, some stucco flowers or fruit yet pendant on the crumbling ceiling, fancy, kindled by these, calls up the gay scenes and actors of other days-when beauty, elegance, and fashion graced these lonely halls, and plenty smoked on groaning tables, and where these few cinders, gathered from the city dust-heap, are feebly smouldering, hospitable fires roared up the chimney. But there is that in and about these houses which bears witness of a deeper subsidence, a yet sadder change. Bent on some mission of mercy, you stand at the foot of a dark and filthy stair. It conducts you to the crowded rooms of a tenement, where-with the exception of some old decent widow who has seen better days, and when her family are all dead, and her friends all gone, still clings to God and her faith in There is a remarkable phenomenon to be seen on the dark hour of adversity and amid the wreck of forcertain parts of our coast. Strange to say, it proves, tune-from the cellar-dens below to the cold garrets notwithstanding such expressions as 'the stable and solid beneath the roof-tree, you shall find none either readland,' that it is not the land but the sea which is the ing their Bible, or even with a Bible to read. Alas! of stable element. On some summer day, when there is prayer, of morning or evening psalms, of earthly or not a wave to rock her, nor breath of wind to fill her sail heavenly peace, it may be said the place that once knew or fan a check, you launch your boat upon the waters, them, knows them no more. But before you enter the and, pulling out beyond lowest tide-mark, you idly lie doorway, raise your eyes to the lintel-stone. Dumb, it upon her bows to catch the silvery glance of a passing yet speaks of other and better times. Carved in Greek fish, or watch the movements of the many curious creaor Latin, or our own mother-tongue, you decipher such tures that travel the sea's sandy bed, or creeping out of texts as these: 'Peace be to this house.' Except the their rocky homes, wander its tangled mazes. If the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.' traveller is surprised to find a deep-sea shell imbeddedWe have a building of God, an house not made with in the marbles of a mountain-peak, how great is your hands, eternal in the heavens.' 'Fear God;' or this, surprise to see beneath you a vegetation foreign to the Love your neighbour.' Like the mouldering remnants deep! Below your boat, submerged many feet beneath of a forest that once resounded with the melody of the surface of the lowest tide, away down in these green birds, but hears nought now save the angry dash or crystal depths, you see no rusting anchor, no mouldering melancholy moan of breaking waves, these vestiges of remains of some shipwrecked one, but in the standing piety furnish a gauge which enables us to measure how stumps of trees, the mouldering vestiges of a forest, where low in these dark localities the whole stratum of society once the wild cat prowled, and the birds of heaven, has sunk. singing their loves, had nestled and nursed their young. In counterpart to those portions of our coast where seahollowed caves, with sides the waves have polished, and floors still strewed with shells and sand, now stand high above the level of strongest stream-tides, there stand these dead, decaying trees-entombed in the deep. A strange phenomenon, which admits of no other explanation than this, that there the coast-line has sunk beneath its ancient level. SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. The progress of physical and mental science has been traced with eminent ability in the series of dissertations written for the Encyclopædia Britannica. The various discoveries and distinctions are related Many of our cities present a phenomenon as melan- with admirable perspicuity, and additional interest choly to the eye of a philanthropist, as the other is is imparted to them by the biographical sketches interesting to a philosopher or geologist. In their accompanying each department. Ethical philosophy economical, educational, moral, and religious aspects, has been treated by DUGALD STEWART and MACKINcertain parts of this city bear palpable evidence of a TOSH, as already stated; and latterly a third dissercorresponding subsidence. Not a single house, nor a tation has been added by ARCHBISHOP WHATELY, block of houses, but whole streets, once from end to end exhibiting a general view of the rise, progress, and the homes of decency, and industry, and wealth, and corruptions of Christianity. Mathematical and rank, and piety, have been engulphed. A flood of ignor- physical science was taken up by PROFESSOR JOHN ance, and misery, and sin, now breaks and roars above PLAYFAIR (1748-1819), distinguished for his illusthe top of their highest tenements. Nor do the old trations of the Huttonian theory, and for his biostumps of a forest, still standing up erect beneath the graphies of Hutton and Robison. Playfair treated sea-wave, indicate a greater change, a deeper subsidence, of the period which closed with Newton and Leibthan the relics of ancient grandeur, and the touching nitz, and the subject was continued through the memorials of piety which yet linger about these course of the eighteenth century by SIR JOHN wretched dwellings, like evening twilight on the hills- LESLIE, who succeeded to Playfair in the chair of like some traces of beauty on a corpse. The unfurnished Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. floor, the begrimed and naked walls, the stifling, sickening | Sir John (1766-1832) was celebrated for his ardour 740 waking: Throw thyself on thy God, nor mock him with feeble denial; in physical research, and for his work, an Experi- in 1841, and written down immediately on mental Inquiry into the Nature and Propagation of Heat, 1804. A sixth dissertation was added in 1856 by the present Professor of Natural Philosophy, JAMES DAVID FORBES, who continued the general view of the progress of mathematical and physical science principally from 1755 to 1850. Sure of his love, and oh! sure of his mercy at last, cup of thy trial, But in its healing effect, smile at its bitterness past. Pray for that holier cup while sweet with bitter lies blending, Tears in the cheerful eye, smiles on the sorrowing cheek, Death expiring in life, when the long-drawn struggle is ending; Triumph and joy to the strong, strength to the weary and weak. 'If we look for the distinguishing characteristic of the centenary period just elapsed [1750-1850], we find it,' says Professor Forbes, 'in this, that it has drawn far more largely upon experiment as a means of arriving at truth than had previously been done. By a natural conversion of the process, the knowledge thus acquired has been applied with more freedom and boldness to the exigencies of mankind, and to the further investigation of the secrets of nature. If we compare the now extensive subjects of heat, electricity, and magnetism, The abstruse studies and triumphs of Sir John with the mere rudiments of these sciences as Herschel-his work on the Differential Calculus, understood in 1750; or if we think of the aston-his Catalogues of Stars and Nebulæ, and his Treatises ishing revival of physical and experimental optics on Sound and Light are well known; but perhaps -which had well-nigh slumbered for more than the most striking instance of his pure devotion to a century-during the too short lives of Young science was his expedition to the Cape of Good and Fresnel, we shall be disposed to admit Hope, and his sojourn there for four years, solely the former part of the statement; and when we at his own expense, with the view of examining recollect that the same period has given birth to under the most favourable circumstances the the steam-engine of Watt, with its application to southern hemisphere. This completed a telescopic shipping and railways-to the gigantic telescopes of Herschel and Lord Rosse, wonderful as works of survey of the whole surface of the visible heavens, commenced by Sir William Herschel above seventy art as well as instruments of sublime discovery-to years ago, assisted by his sister Caroline and his the electric telegraph, and to the tubular bridge brother Alexander, and continued by him almost -we shall be ready to grant the last part of down to the close of a very long life.* Sir William died the proposition, that science and art have been in 1822, aged eighty-four. In 1825 it was resumed by more indissolubly united than at any previous his son, Sir John, who published the results in 1847. period.' On his return from the Cape, the successful astronomer was honoured with a baronetcy, the university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L., and the Astronomical Society-of which he was president-voted him a testimonial for his work on Those recent discoveries in science and art are popularly described by Professor Forbes in his interesting dissertation. He is also known as the author of some valuable works-Travels through the Alps of Savoy, 1843; Norway and its Glaciers, visited in 1851; The Tour of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, 1855; &c. He has well supported the scientific reputation of the University of Edinburgh, and has still, we trust, many years-he was born in 1808-of honourable and useful exertion before him. There has been no continuation of the dissertations on the progress of metaphysical and ethical philosophy, but a work by MR J. D. MORELL, Inspector of Schools, England, in some measure supplies the deficiency. This work is entitled An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, two volumes, 1846. Mr Morell has also published four lectures on the Philosophical Tendencies of the Age, 1848; The Philosophy of Religion, 1849; and Elements of Psychology, 1853. Referring to the above works for full information, we can only notice a few of the leading scientific writers. SIR JOHN HERSCHEL The more popular treatises of this eminent astronomer-the Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy, 1830, and Treatise on Astronomy, 1833, have already been mentioned as forming part of Lardner's Cyclopædia. Sir John has since collected a series of Essays which appeared in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, with Addresses and other Pieces, 1857. Profoundly versed in almost every branch of physics, Sir John Herschel has occasionally sported with the Muses, but in the garb of the ancients-in hexameter and pentameter verses. The following stanzas are at least equal to Southey's hexameters, and the first was made in a dream * Herschel, a musician residing at Bath, though a native of Hanover, which he had left in early youth, devoted his leisure to the construction and improvement of reflecting telescopes, with which he continued ardently to survey the heavens. His zeal and assiduity had already drawn the notice of astronomers, when he announced to Dr Maskelyne, that, on the night of the 13th of March 1781, he observed a shifting star, which, from its smallness, he judged to be a comet, though it was distinguished neither by a nebulosity nor a tail. The motion of the star, however, was so slow as to require distant observations to ascertain its path. The president Saron, an expert and obliging calculator, was the first who conceived it to be a planet, having inferred, from the few observations communicated to him, that it described a circle with a radius of about twelve times the mean distance of the earth from the sun. Lexell removed all doubt, and before the close of the year, he computed the elements of the new planet with considerable accuracy, making the great axis of its orbit nineteen times greater than that of the earth, and the period of its revolution eighty-four years. Herschel proposed, out of gratitude to his royal patron [George III.], to call the planet he had found by the barbarous appellation of Georgium Sidus; but the classical name of Uranus, which Bode afterwards applied, is almost universally adopted. Animated by this happy omen, he prosecuted his astronomical observations with unwearied zeal and ardour, and continued, during the remainder of a long life, to enrich science with a succession of splendid discoveries.'—Sir John Leslie. Herschel's discoveries were chiefly made by means of his forty-feet reflector, to construct which funds were advanced by the king. This instrument is still preserved at Slough by the filial care of Sir John Herschel. An Irish nobleman, the Earl of Rosse, after many years' labour to improve the telescope, completed in 1844, and erected at Parsonstown, a telescope of six feet aperture and fifty-three or fifty-four feet of focal length. The result of Lord Rosse's observations with his six-feet speculum has been to resolve many nebulæ into stars. 741 the Southern Hemisphere. In 1850 he was appointed Master of the Mint, but he was obliged to resign the office from ill health. Besides the works to which we have referred, Sir John Herschel has published Outlines of Astronomy, 1849, of which a fifth edition, corrected to the existing state of astronomical science, was published in 1858; and he edited A Manual of Scientific Inquiry, 1849, prepared by authority of the Admiralty for the use of the navy. Sir John Herschel was born at Slough, near Windsor, in 1790, and studied at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was senior wrangler in 1813. [Tendency and Effect of Philosophical Studies.] Nothing can be more unfounded than the objection which has been taken, in limine, by persons, well meaning perhaps, certainly narrow minded, against the study of natural philosophy-that it fosters in its cultivators an undue and overweening self-conceit, leads them to doubt of the immortality of the soul, and to scoff at revealed religion. Its natural effect, we may confidently assert, on every well-constituted mind, is, and must be, the direct contrary. No doubt, the testimony of natural reason, on whatever exercised, must of necessity stop short of those truths which it is the object of revelation to make known; but while it places the existence and principal attributes of a Deity on such grounds as to render doubt absurd and atheism ridiculous, it unquestionably opposes no natural or necessary obstacle to further progress: on the contrary, by cherishing as a vital principle an unbounded spirit of inquiry and ardency of expectation, it unfetters the mind from prejudices of every kind, and leaves it open and free to every impression of a higher nature which it is susceptible of receiving, guarding only against enthusiasm and self-deception by a habit of strict investigation, but encouraging, rather than suppressing, everything that can offer a prospect or a hope beyond the present obscure and unsatisfactory state. The 742 character of the true philosopher is to hope all things not unreasonable. He who has seen obscurities which appeared impenetrable in physical and mathematical science suddenly dispelled, and the most barren and unpromising fields of inquiry converted, as if by inspiration, into rich and inexhaustible springs of knowledge and power, on a simple change of our point of view, or by merely bringing them to bear on some principle which it never occurred before to try, will surely be the very last to acquiesce in any dispiriting prospects of either the present or, the future destinies of mankind; while, on the other hand, the boundless views of intellectual and moral, as well as material relations which open on him on all hands in the course of these pursuits, the knowledge of the trivial place he occupies in the scale of creation, and the sense continually pressed upon him of his own weakness and incapacity to suspend or modify the slightest movement of the vast machinery he sees in action around him, must effectually convince him that humility of pretension, no less than confidence of hope, is what best becomes his character. * The question 'cui bono' to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this inquiry. MRS SOMERVILLE. scientific pursuits has been borne by MRS MARY Similar testimony to the intrinsic worth of SOMERVILLE, regarded as the most profoundly scientific lady of the age.' truth, which can only be attained by patient and 'Science,' she says, 'regarded as the pursuit of unprejudiced investigation, wherein nothing is too great to be attempted, nothing so minute as to be justly disregarded, must ever afford occupation of tation. The contemplation of the works of creation consummate interest and subject of elevated medielevates the mind to the admiration of whatever is great and noble, accomplishing the object of all Mackintosh, is "to inspire the love of truth, of study, which, in the elegant language of Sir J. wisdom, of beauty, especially of goodness, the highest beauty," and of that supreme and eternal Mind which contains all truth and wisdom, all beauty and goodness. By the love or delightful contemplation of these transcendent aims, for their own sake only, the mind of man is raised from low and perishable objects, and prepared for those high destinies which are appointed for all those who are capable of them.' In 1832, Mrs Somerville published the Mechanism of the Heavens, a work originally undertaken at the instance of Lord Brougham, for publication by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; but which proved too voluminous for its first destination. The authoress had previously written a treatise on the magnetising influence of the violet rays of the solar spectrum, and both works are remarkable for their clear and lucid exposition, and for the absence of all pretension. In 1884, Mrs Somerville issued a more popular scientific work, On the Connection of the Physical Sciences. In a dedication to the Queen, she says: 'If I have succeeded in my endeavour to make the laws by which | the material world is governed more familiar to my countrywomen, I shall have the gratification of thinking that the gracious permission to dedicate my book to your Majesty has not been misplaced.' This object was more than attained, for it was remarked that there were few individuals even of that gender which plumes itself upon the exclusive possession of exact science, who might not learn much that is both novel and curious in the recent progress of physics from Mrs Somerville's little volume.' In 1848, Mrs Somerville published Physical Geography, two volumes-a history of the earth in its whole material organisation, and of animal and vegetable life. This lady is a native of Scotland, born about the year 1796. She was first married to an officer of the Royal Navy, who, it is said, took great pleasure in assisting her in her mathematical studies. Her present husband is a Scottish minister. AIRY-HIND-ADAMS-R. GRANT-BABBAGE NICHOL-POWELL. In the progress of astronomical discovery, the astronomer-royal, MR GEORGE BIDDELL AIRY (born at Alnwick in 1801), has done valuable service by his lectures on experimental philosophy, and his published Observations. He is author of the treatise on Gravitation in the Penny Cyclopædia, and of various communications in scientific journals. MR JOHN RUSSELL HIND, Foreign Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, and superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, has discovered ten small planets, for which the Astronomical Society awarded him their gold medal, and a pension of £200 a year has been granted to him by royal warrant. Any new discovery or observation is chronicled by Mr Hind in the Times newspaper, and his brief notes are always welcome. The discoverer of the planet Neptune, MR JOHN COUCH ADAMS, mathematical tutor in St John's College, Cambridge, is an instance of persevering original genius. He was intended by his father, a farmer, to follow the paternal occupation, but was constantly absorbed in mathematical studies. He entered St John's College, became senior wrangler, and in 1844 made the discovery whence he derives his chief fame. Certain irregularities in the planet Uranus being unaccounted for, Mr Adams conceived that they might be occasioned by an undiscovered planet beyond it. He made experiments for this purpose; and at the same time a French astronomer, M. Le Verrier, had arrived at the same result, assigning the place of the disturbing planet to within one degree of that given by Mr Adams. The honour was thus divided, but both were independent discoverers. A History of Physical Astronomy, by ROBERT GRANT, is a work of great research and completeness, bringing the history of astronomical progress down to 1852. In conjunction with Admiral Smyth, Mr Grant has also translated Arago's Popular Astronomy, and he was conjoined with the Rev. B. Powell in translating Arago's Eminent Men, 1857. Mr Grant is in a great measure a self-educated man of science, a native of Grantown, in Invernessshire. MR CHARLES BABBAGE (born in 1790) is popularly celebrated for his calculating-machine. He is also well known for his Economy of Manufactures and Machinery, 1833-a volume that has been translated into most foreign languages. Mr Babbage's most original work is one entitled A Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, a most ingenious attempt to bring mathematics into the range of sciences which afford proof of Divine design in the constitution of the world. PROFESSOR J. P. NICHOL, Glasgow, has done much to popularise astronomy by various works at once ingenious and eloquent-as Views of the Architecture of the Heavens, 1837; Contemplations on the Solar System, 1844; Thoughts on the System of the World, 1848; The Planet Neptune, an Exposition and History, 1848; The Stellar Universe, 1848; The Planetary System, 1850. The REV. BADEN POWELL, Savilian Professor of Geometry, Oxford, has written a History of Natural Philosophy, 1842; a series of three Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy of Creation, 1855; and a work entitled The Order of Nature, 1859. In some of these treatises, he discusses matters on the borderland between religion and science in a more liberal spirit than many of his contemporaries. REV. DR WILLIAM WHEWELL, The Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, was born at Lancaster in 1795. His history affords another example of talent and perseverance overcoming difficulties. His father, a carpenter, intended bringing up his son to his own trade; but the master of the Free Grammar School at Lancaster had been struck with the boy's aptitude for mathematical studies, and he succeeded in getting him entered of Trinity College, where in due time he took his degree, and afterwards became a Fellow and tutor. For four years, from 1828 till 1832, he was Professor of Mineralogy; from 1838 to 1855, he was Professor of Moral Theology or Casuistry; and from 1841 to the present time, he has been Master of Trinity College. These accumulated university honours sufficiently indicate the high estimation in which Mr Whewell's talents were held. In the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the Royal Society, and British Association for the Advancement of Science he has been no less distinguished, while his scientific works have given him a European fame. The most important of these are-Astronomy and General Physics considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 1833; History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest to the Present Times, three volumes, 1837; The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, two volumes, 1840; The Elements of Morality, including Polity, two volumes, 1855. The second part of The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences has recently (1859) been republished, with large additions, under the title of Novum Organum Renovatum. Professor James Forbes, in the dissertation contributed to the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, says of Dr Whewell: 'One attempt-a bold and successful one-has been made, in our own day, to unite the history of science and the logic of inductive discovery-I mean the History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. An English philosopher of wonderful versatility, industry, and power has erected a permanent monument to his reputation, in a voluminous work bearing the preceding title.' Sir John Herschel has borne testimony no less favourable to the attainments of the Master of Trinity, in an essay in the Quarterly Review, 1840, and since republished in his volume of essays. |