not to operate even in the rare instances of transcendent merit, where matchless genius excludes all possibility of imitation, and nothing remains but wonder in those who contemplate its triumphs at a distance that forbids all attempts to approach. We are this day assembled to commemorate him of whom the consent of nations has declared that he is chargeable with nothing like a follower's exaggeration or local partiality, who pronounces the name of Newton as that of the greatest genius ever bestowed by the bounty of Providence for instructing mankind on the frame of the universe, and the laws by which it is governed:

'Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes
Restinxit; stellas exortus uti ætherius sol.”—(Luc.)

"In genius who surpassed mankind as far

As does the mid-day sun the midnight star.”—(Dryden.)

But, though scaling these lofty heights be hopeless, yet is there

cloud subsequently passed, but who died at a green old age, in his 85th year, but unmarried, on the 20th of March, 1727.

The relations of Sir Isaac, who inherited his personal estate, devoted the sum of £500 to the erection of a monument to his memory in Westminister Abbey, but in his case the proverb that a prophet is honored everywhere save in his own country and among his own people, has, until recently, been verified. Some three or four years ago, however, the inhabitants, or the Town Council, of Grantham, bethought themselves that some ornament was required for a vacant space of ground which is styled St. Peter's Hill, though it seems to be little, if at all, above the dead level of the Lincolnshire fens. It was suggested, and the suggestion was favorably received, that the most appropriate ornament would be a monument to the memory of a man whose early career was so closely identified with the town and neighborhood, and whose researches had conferred an eternal benefit upon mankind. A committee was formed to carry out this object, and Mr. Thomas Winter, a member of the Town Council-to whose untiring zeal and energy its successful accomplishment is, we believe, mainly attributable-undertook to act as the honorary secretary. Mr. Winter at once placed himself in communication with Lord Rosse, Lord Brougham and other gentlemen of distinction in the literary and scientific world, who evinced a warm interest in the success of the scheme. Under these auspices the project received the sanction of the Royal Society, and the patronage of Her Majesty and the Prince Consort, who aided the fund by a subscription of £100. A general meeting of the subscribers was held in 1854, at St. George's Hall, Liverpool, during the séance in that town of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, when it was resolved that the memorial should be a bronze statue, and its execution was intrusted by the Committee of Selection to Mr. William Theed, the result of whose labors is not only creditable to himself, but not unworthy of the great philosopher whose memory it perpetuates. A detailed description of the statue appeared in the Times of Thursday last. The likeness of Sir Isaac is copied from the mask of his face taken after death, and from a portrait bust by Roubilliac. It represents him in the costume of the period, and in the gown of a Master of Arts, in the act of lecturing. The figure is nearly thirteen feet high, weighing upwards of two tons, and about half the quantity of the material of which it is composed was presented in the shape of old gun metal, by Her Majesty's government. The statue was cast at the foundery of Messrs. Robinson and Cottam, of Pimlico, and as a specimen of clean casting, with sharp outline, does them high credit. The figure stands upon a pedestal of Anglesey marble, designed by Mr. Theed, and cut by Mr. Rogers, of Park Hill. The total height of the pedestal and figure is twenty-seven feet, and its cost is £1,630. of which £600 were contributed by the inhabitants of Grantham and the neighborhood.

SECOND SERIES, VOL. XXVII, No. 79. JAN., 1859.

some use and much gratification in contemplating by what steps. he ascended. Tracing his course of action may help others to gain the lower eminences lying within their reach, while admiration excited and curiosity satisfied are frames of mind both wholesome and pleasing. Nothing new, it is true, can be given in narrative, hardly anything in reflection, less still perhaps in comment or illustration; but it is well to assemble in one view various parts of the vast subject, with the surrounding circumstances, whether accidental or intrinsic, and to mark in passing the misconceptions raised by individual ignorance or national prejudice, which the historian of science occasionally finds crossing his path. The remark is common and is obvious, that the genius of Newton did not manifest itself at a very carly age. His faculties were not, like those of some great and many ordinary individuals, precociously developed. Among the former, Clairaut stands preeminent, who at nineteen years of age presented to the Royal Academy a memoir of great originality upon a difficult subject in the higher geometry, and at eighteen published his great work on curves of double curvature, composed during the two preceding years. Pascal, too, at sixteen, wrote an excellent treatise on conic sections. That Newton cannot be ranked in this respect with those extraordinary persons is owing to the accidents which prevented him from entering upon mathematical study before his eighteenth year; and then a much greater marvel was wrought than even the Clairauts and the Pascals displayed.

His earliest history is involved in some obscurity, and the most celebrated of men has, in this particular, been compared to the most celebrated of rivers (the Nile), as if the course of both in its feebler state had been concealed from mortal eyes. We have it, however, well ascertained that within four years, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, he had begun to study mathematical science, and had taken his place among its greatest masters; learnt for the first time the elements of geometry and analysis, and discovered a calculus which entirely changed the face of the science, effecting a complete revolution in that and in every branch of philosophy connected with it. Before 1661

he had not read Euclid; in 1665 he had committed to writing the method of fluxions. At twenty-five years of age he had discovered the law of gravitation, and laid the foundation of celestial dynamics, the science created by him. Before ten years had elapsed he added to his discoveries that of the fundamental properties of light. So brilliant a course of discovery in so short a time, changing and reconstructing analytical, astronomical, and optical science, almost defies belief. The statement could only be deemed possible by an appeal to the incontestible evidence that proves it strictly true. By a rare felicity these

doctrines gained the universal assent of mankind as soon as they were clearly understood; and their originality has never been seriously called in question.

Some doubts having been raised respecting his inventing the calculus-doubts raised in consequence of his so long withholding the publication of his method-no sooner was the inquiry instituted than the evidence produced proved so decisive that all men in all countries acknowledged him to have been by several years the earliest inventor, and Leibnitz at the utmost, the first publisher, the only question raised being, first, whether or not he had borrowed from Newton; and next, whether, as second inventor he could have any merit at all,-both which questions have long since been decided in favor of Leibnitz. But undeniable though it be that Newton made the great steps of this progress, and made them without any anticipation or participation by others, it is equally certain that there had been approaches in former times by preceding philosophers to the same discoveries. Cavalieri, by his Geometry of Indivisibles (1635), Roberval, by his Method of Tangents (1367), had both given solutions which Descartes could not attempt; and it is remarkable that Cavalieri regarded curves as polygons, surfaces as composed of lines, while Roberval viewed geometrical quantities as generated by motion; so that the one approached to the differential calculus, the other to fluxions; and Fermat, in the interval between them, comes still nearer the great discovery by his determination of maxima and minima, and his drawing of tangents. More recently Hudden had made public similar methods. invented by Schoetin; and what is material, treating the subject algebraically, while those just now mentioned had rather dealt with it geometrically. It is thus easy to perceive how near an approach had been made to the calculus before the great event of its final discovery. There had in like manner been ap proaches made to the law of gravitation, and the dynamical system of the universe. Galileo's important propositions on motion, especially on the curvilinear motion, and Kepler's laws upon the elliptical form of the planetary orbits, the proportion of the areas to the times, and of the periodic times to the mean distances; and Huygens's theorems on centrifugal forces had been fol lowed by still nearer approaches to the doctrine of attraction. Borelli had distinctly ascribed the motion of the satellites to their being drawn towards the principal planets, and thus prevented from flying off by the centrifugal force. Even the composition of white light, and the different action of bodies upon its component parts had been vaguely conjectured by Ant. de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, at the beginning, and more precisely in the middle of the 17th century by Marcus (Kronland, of Prague,) unknown to Newton, who only refers to the

Archbishop's work; while the treatise of Huygens on light, Grimaldi's observation on colors by inflexion, as well as on the elongation of the image in the prismatic spectrum, had been brought to his attention, although much less near to his own great discovery than Marcus's experiment.

But all this only shows that the discoveries of Newton, great and rapid as were the steps by which they advanced our knowledge, yet obeyed the law of continuity, or rather of gradual progress, which governs all human approaches towards perfection. The limited nature of man's faculties precludes the possibility of his ever reaching at once the utmost excellence of which they are capable. Survey the whole circle of the sciences, and trace the history of our progress in each, you find this to be the universal rule. In chemical philosophy the dreams of the Alchemists prepared the way for the more rational, though erroneous, theory of Stahl; and it was by repeated improvements that his errors, so long prevalent, were at length exploded, giving place to the sound doctrine which is now established. The great discoveries of Black and Priestley, on heat and aeriform fluids had been preceded by the happy conjectures of Newton and the experiments of others. Nay, Voltaire had well nigh discovered both the absorption of heat, the constitution of the atmosphere, and the oxydation of metals; and by a few more trials might have ascertained it. Cuvier had been preceded by inquirers who took sound views of fossil osteology, among whom the truly original genius of Hunter fills the foremost place. The inductive system of Bacon had been, at least in its practice, known to his predecessors. Observations and even experiments were not unknown to the ancient philosophers, though mingled with gross errors; in early times, almost in the dark ages, experimental inquiries had been carried on with success by Friar Bacon, and that method actually recommended in a treatise, as it was two centuries later by Leonardo da Vinci, and at the latter end of the next century Gilbert examined the whole subject of magnetic action entirely by experiments. So that Lord Bacon's claim to be regarded as the father of modern philosophy rests upon the important, the invaluable step of reducing to a system the method of investigation adopted by those eminent men, generalizing it, and extending its application to all matters of contingent truth, exploding the errors, the absurd dogmas, and fantastic subtleties of the ancient schools, and above all, confining to the subject of our inquiry, and the manner of conducting it, within the limits which our faculties prescribe. Nor is this great law of gradual progress confined to the physical sciences; in the moral it equally governs. Before the foundations of political economy were laid by Hume and Smith, a great step had been made by the French philosophers, disciples of

Quesnai; but a nearer approach to sound principles had signalized the labors of Gournay, and those labors had been shared and his doctrines patronized by Turgôt when Chief Minister. Again, in constitutional policy, see by what slow degrees, from its first rude elements, the attendance of feudal tenants at their lord's court, and the summons of burghers to grant supplies of money, the great discovery of modern times in the science of practical politics has been effected, the representative scheme which enables states of any extent to enjoy popular government and allows mixed monarchy to be established, combining freedom with order-a plan pronounced by the statesmen and writers of antiquity to be of hardly possible formation, and wholly impossible continuance. The globe itself, as well as the science of its inhabitants, has been explored according to the law which forbids a sudden and rapid leaping forward, and decrees that each successive step, prepared by the last, shall facilitate the next. Even Columbus followed several successful discoverers on a smaller scale, and is by some believed to have had, unknown to him, a predecessor in the great exploit by which he pierced the night of ages, and unfolded a new world to the eyes of the old. The arts afford no exception to the general law. Demosthenes had eminent forerunners, Pericles the last of them. Homer must have had predecessors of great merit, though doubtless as far surpassed by him as Fra Bartolomeo and Pietro Perugino were by Michael Angelo and Raphael. Dante owed much to Virgil; he may be allowed to have owed, through his Latin Mentor, not a little to the old Grecian; and Milton had both the orators and the poets of the ancient world for his predecessors and his masters. The art of war itself is no exception to the rule. The plan of bringing an overpowering force to bear on a given point had been tried occasionally before Frederick II. reduced it to a system; and the Wellingtons and Napoleons of our own day made it the foundation of their strategy as it had also been previously the main-spring of our naval tactics.

It has oftentimes been held that the invention of logarithms stands alone in the history of science, as having been preceded by no step leading towards the discovery. There is, however, great inaccuracy in this statement, for not only was the doctrine of infinitesimals familiar to its illustrious author, and the relation of geometrical to arithmetical series well known, but he had himself struck out several methods of great ingenuity and utility (as that known by the name of Napier's Bones)-methods that are now forgotten, eclipsed as they were by the consummation which has immortalized his name. So the inventive powers of Watt, preceded as he was by Worcester and Newcomen, but far more materially by Causs and Papin, had been exercised on