to his home-as the calm and beautiful still basins eighty-four. In 1876 was published a Memoir of or fiords, surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral Caroline Herschel, the sister of Sir William and meadows, to the Norwegian pilot escaping from a heavy aunt of Sir John, who died in 1848, aged ninetystorm in the North Sea-or as the green and dewy spot, seven years and ten months. The author of this gushing with fountains, to the exhausted and thirsty memoir, Mrs John Herschel, says of Caroline: traveller in the midst of the desert. Its influence out- She stood beside her brother, William Herschel, lives all earthly enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decay and the frame dissolves. It appears as sharing his labours, helping his life. In the days that evening-star of light in the horizon of life, which, when he gave up a lucrative career that he might we are sure, is to become, in another season, a morning-devote himself to astronomy, it was owing to her star; and it throws its radiance through the gloom and

shadow of death.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.

thrift and care that he was not harassed by the rambling vexations of money matters. She had been his helper and assistant in the days when he was a leading musician; she became his helper and assistant when he gave himself up to astronThe more popular treatises of this eminent omy. By sheer force of will and devoted affecastronomer-the Preliminary Discourse on Natural tion, she learned enough of mathematics and of Philosophy, 1830, and Treatise on Astronomy, methods of calculation, which to those unlearned 1833, have been widely circulated. Sir John seem mysteries, to be able to commit to writing subsequently collected a series of Essays which the results of his researches. She became his appeared in the Edinburgh and Quarterly assistant in the workshop; she helped him to Reviews, with Addresses and other Pieces, 1857. grind and polish his mirrors; she stood beside Profoundly versed in almost every branch of his telescope in the nights of mid-winter, to write physics, Sir John Herschel occasionally sported down his observations when the very ink was with the Muses, but in the garb of the ancients- frozen in the bottle. She kept him alive by her in hexameter and pentameter verses. The follow-care; thinking nothing of herself, she lived for ing stanzas are at least equal to Southey's hexam- him. She loved him, and believed in him, and eters, and the first was made in a dream in 1841, helped him with all her heart and with all her and written down immediately on waking: strength.'

Herschel

The survey of the heavens begun by Sir William This devoted lady discovered eight comets ! was resumed in 1825 by his son, Sir John, who published the results in 1847. 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 Societyof which he was president-voted him a testimonial for his work on the Southern Hemisphere. Besides the works to which we have referred, Sir John Herschel 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.

The abstruse studies and triumphs of Sir John Herschel-his work on the Differential Calculus, his Catalogues of Stars and Nebulæ, and his Sir John Herschel was born at Slough, near Treatises on Sound and Light are well known; Windsor, in 1792, and studied at St John's but perhaps the most striking instance of his College, Cambridge, where he took his Bachelor's pure devotion to science was his expedition to the Degree in 1813, coming out as Senior Wrangler Cape of Good Hope, and his sojourn there for and Smith's Prizeman. His first work was a four years, solely at his own expense, with the Collection of Examples of the Application of the view of examining under the most favourable cir- Calculus to Finite Differences, 1813. cumstances the southern hemisphere. This com-tributed various papers to the Edinburgh Philopleted a telescopic survey of the whole surface of sophical Journal and the Royal Society of Edinthe visible heavens, commenced by Sir William burgh (1819-24), and he was employed for eight Herschel above seventy years ago, assisted by his years in re-examining the nebula and cluster of sister Caroline and his brother Alexander, and continued by him almost down to the close of a very long life. Sir William died in 1822, aged

*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 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 99

He con

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. 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 fiftythree or fifty-four feet of focal length. The result of Lord Rosse's observations with his six-feet speculum has been to resolve many nebula into stars.

737

stars discovered by his father. The result was published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1832; the nebula were about 2300 in number, and of these 525 were discovered by Sir John himself. He also discovered between three and four thousand double stars. Sir John received from William IV. the Hanoverian Guelphic order of knighthood, and Queen Victoria in 1838 conferred upon him a baronetcy. He was literally covered with honorary distinctions from learned societies and foreign academies. From 1850 till 1855 he held the office of Master of the Mint, which he was forced to resign from ill health. On the 11th of May 1871, this most illustrious of European men of science died at his

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.

seat, Collingwood, near Hawkhurst, Kent, agederseding or

seventy-nine.

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. 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 oursuits, 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

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

A Taste for Reading.

If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a for reading. I speak of it, of course, only as a worldly advantage, and not in the slightest degree as superseding or derogating from the higher office, and surer and stronger panoply of religious principles, but as a taste, an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man, unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most per verse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history-with the wisest, the wittiest—with the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters that have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations-a contempo rary of all ages. The world has been created for him. It is hardly possible but the character should take a higher and better tone from the constant habit of associating in thought with a class of thinkers, to say the least of it, above the average of humanity. It is morally impossible but that the manners should take a tinge of good breeding and civilisation from having constantly before one's eyes the way in which the bestbred and best-informed have talked and conducted themselves in their intercourse with each other. There is a gentle but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of. It cannot, in short, be better summed up than in the words of the Latin poet :

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.

It civilises the conduct of men, and suffers them not to remain barbarous.

MRS MARY SOMERVILLE.

Another distinguished astronomer, a worthy contemporary of Caroline Herschel, was MARY SOMERVILLE, who died at Naples, November 28, 1872, aged ninety-two. She had attained to the highest proficiency and honours in physical science, was a member of various learned societies at home and abroad, had received the approbation of Laplace, Humboldt, Playfair, Herschel, and other eminent contemporaries, and at the age of ninety-two was engaged in solving mathematical problems! Mrs Somerville was born in the manse or parsonage of Jedburgh; her father, Sir William George Fairfax, Vice-admiral of the Red, was Lord Duncan's captain at the battle of Camperdown in 1797. His daughter Mary was she was fourteen, it was said, she had studied educated at a school in Musselburgh, and before Euclid, and Bonnycastle's and Euler's Algebra, but Concealed as much as possible her acquirements. In 1804 she was married to her cousin, Captain Samuel Greig, son of Admiral Greig, who served many years in the Russian navy, and died Governor of Cronstadt, Captain Greig died two

field ran the aqueduct; on the other, a deep and wide ditch full of water. I had gone towards the aqueduct, leaving the others in the field. All at once, we heard a loud shouting, when an enormous drove of the beautiful Campagna gray cattle, with their wide-spreading horns, came rushing wildly between us, with their heads down and their tails erect, driven by men with long spears, mounted on little spirited horses at full gallop. It was we perceive the danger we had run. As there was no so sudden and so rapid, that only after it was over did possible escape, there was nothing for it but standing still, which Somerville and my girls had presence of mind to do, and the drove dividing, rushed like a whirlwind to the right and left of them. The danger was not so much of being gored, as of being run over by the excited and terrified animals, and round the walls of Rome places of refuge are provided for those who may be passing when the cattle are driven.

Near where this occurred there is a house with the inscription, Casa Dei Spiriti ;' but I do not think the superstition seems to be the 'Jettatura' or evil eye, Italians believe in either ghosts or witches; their chief which they have inherited from the early Romans, and, I believe, Etruscans. They consider it a bad omen to meet a monk or priest on first going out in the morning. My daughters were engaged to ride with a large party, and the meet was at our house. A Roman, who hap pened to go out first, saw a friar, and rushed in again laughing, and waited till he was out of sight. Soon after they set off, this gentleman was thrown from his horse and ducked in a pool; so the Jettature was fulfilled. enough to account for his fall without the evil eye. But my daughters thought his bad seat on horseback

years after their union. In 1812 his widow married another cousin, Dr William Somerville, son of the minister of Jedburgh, author of two historical works-the histories of the Revolution and of the reign of Queen Anne-and of memoirs of his own Life and Times. The venerable minister (1741-1813) records, with pride, that Miss Fairfax had been born and nursed in his house, her father being at that time abroad on public service; that she long resided in his family, and was occasionally his scholar, being remarkable for her ardent thirst of knowledge and her assiduous application to study. Dr William Somerville, the son, attained the rank of Inspector of the Army Medical Board, and Physician to the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. He took great pains to foster the intellectual pursuits of his wife, and lived to witness her success and celebrity, dying at Florence in 1860, at the great age of ninety-one. Mrs Somerville first attracted notice by experiments on the magnetic influence of the violet rays of the solar spectrum. Lord Brougham then solicited her to prepare for the Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a popular summary of the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace. She complied, and her manuscript being submitted to Sir John Herschel, he said he was delighted with it—that it was a book for posterity, but quite above the class for which Lord Brougham's course was intended. Mrs Somerville herself modestly said of it: 'I simply translated Laplace's work from algebra into common language.' However, she consented to publish it as an independent work, under the title of The Mechanism of the After an interval of eleven years from the Heavens, 1831, and it at once fixed her reputation publication of her Physical Geography, Mrs as one of the ablest cultivators of physical science. Somerville came forward with two more volumes, The Royal Society admitted her a member, and On Molecular and Microscopic Science. She commissioned a bust of her, which was executed continued her scientific studies and inquiries; and by Chantrey, and placed in the hall of the Society in January 1872, a gentleman who had visited her, in Somerset House. It is said that Mrs Somer- wrote: She is still full of vigour, and working ville, meeting one day with Laplace, in Paris, the away at her mathematical researches, being particgreat geometer said: 'There have been only three ularly occupied just now with the theory of quawomen who have understood me-yourself, Caro- ternions, a branch of transcendent mathematics line Herschel, and a Mrs Greig, of whom I have which very few, if any, persons of Mrs Somerville's never been able to learn anything.' 'I was Mrs age and sex have ever had the wish or power to Greig,' said the modest little woman. So, then, study.' For many years the deceased resided with there are only two of you!' exclaimed the philos- her family at Florence, and there she was as opher. The learned Frenchman did not live to assiduous in the cultivation of her flower-garden see Mrs Somerville's version of his great work, as and of music as she was of her mathematics. he died in 1827. In 1834 Mrs Somerville pub- | Her circumstances were easy though not opulent, lished The Connection of the Physical Sciences, a and Sir Robert Peel-the most attentive of all work which affords a condensed view of the phe-prime-ministers since the days of Halifax to nomena of the universe, and has enjoyed great literary and scientific claims-had in 1835 placed popularity; it is now in the ninth edition. Her her on the pension list for £300 per annum. next work was her Physical Geography, published had three children, a son (who died in 1865) and in 1848. This work was chiefly written in Rome, two daughters. To an American gentleman who and while resident there, Mrs Somerville met with visited her, she said: 'I speak Italian, but no one a little adventure which she thus describes in her could ever take me for other than a Scotch woman.' Personal Recollections: Her love of science had been to her an inexhaustible source of interest and gratification; and I have no doubt,' she said, 'but we shall know more of the heavenly bodies in another state of existence-in that eternal city 'which hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God doth enlighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.'

Scene in the Campagna.

I had very great delight in the Campagna of Rome; the fine range of Apennines bounding the plain, over which the fleeting shadows of the passing clouds fell, ever changing and always beautiful, whether viewed in the early morning, or in the glory of the setting sun, I was never tired of admiring; and whenever I drove out, preferred a country drive to the more fashionable Villa Borghese. One day Somerville and I and our daughters went to drive towards the Tavolato, on the road to Albano. We got out of the carriage and went into a field, tempted by the wild-flowers. On one side of this

She

In her old age Mrs Somerville had amused herself by writing out reminiscences of her early struggles and difficulties in the acquirement of knowledge, and of her subsequent studies and life. These were published in 1873 by her daughter, Martha Somerville, under the title of

Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville, with Selections from her Correspondence.

PROFESSOR J. D. FORBES.

JAMES DAVID FORBES is chiefly known for his theory of glacial motion, which appears to have been independent of that of Rendu, and also for his observations as to the plastic or viscous theory of glaciers. His claims have been disputed, but the general opinion seems to be that the palm of originality, or at least priority of announcement, belongs to the Scottish professor. Mr Forbes was born at Colinton, near Edinburgh, in 1809, son of Sir William Forbes, an eminent banker and citizen of Edinburgh; his mother, Williamina Belches, heiress of a gentleman of the old stock of Invermay, afterwards Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn. This lady was the object of Sir Walter Scott's early and lasting attachment. Visiting at St Andrews thirty years later in his life, he says: I remembered the name I had once carved in Runic characters beside the castle gate, and asked why it should still agitate my heart. Lady Forbes had then been long dead. In 1833, Mr Forbes was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in the university of Aberdeen, which he held until 1859, when he became Principal of St Andrews University. He died December 31, 1868. His principal works are-Travels through the Alps and Savoy, 1843; Norway and its Glaciers, 1853; The Tour of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, 1855; and Occasional Papers on the Theory of Glaciers, 1859. He wrote also numerous papers in the scientific journals.

DR WHEWELL.

WILLIAM WHEWELL was a native of Lancaster, born May 24, 1794. He was of humble parentage, and his father, a joiner, intended him to follow his own trade; but he was early distinguished for ability, and after passing with honour through the grammar-school at Lancaster, he was placed at Heversham School, in order to be qualified for an exhibition at Trinity College, Cambridge, connected with that seminary. He entered Trinity College in 1812, became a Fellow in 1817, took his degree of M.A. in 1819, and the same year published his first work, a Treatise on Mechanics. He was ordained priest in 1826. For four years, from 1828 to 1832, he was Professor of Mineralogy; from 1838 to 1855, he was Professor of Moral Theology or Casuistical Divinity; and from 1841 till his death, he was Master of Trinity College. These accumulated university honours sufficiently indicate the high estimation in which Dr Whewell's talents and services were held. In the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the Royal Society, and British Association for the Advancement of Science, he was no less distinguished; while his scientific and philosophic works gave him a European fame. After contributing various articles to reviews, Dr Whewell in 1833 published his Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology-an able work, learned and eloquent, which has passed through seven editions. His next and his greatest work was his History of the Inductive Sciences, three volumes, 1837; which was followed in 1840 by The Philosophy

of the Inductive Sciences. Passing over various mathematical publications, we may notice, as indicating the versatility of Dr Whewell's talents, that in the year 1847 he published Verse Translations from the German, English Hexameter Translations, and Sermons preached in Trinity College Chapel. In 1853 he issued anonymously, of the Plurality of Worlds: an Essay. There was a common belief in the doctrine of the plurality of worlds, which was supported by Dr Chalmers in his Astronomical Discourses. Whewell, in his Essay (which is one of the cleverest of his works), opposed the popular belief, maintaining that the earth alone among stars and planets is the abode of intellectual, moral, and religious creatures. Sir David Brewster and others opposed this theory. Dr Whewell said the views he had committed to paper had been long in his mind, and the convictions they involved had gradually grown deeper. His friend, Sir James Stephen, thought the plurality of worlds was a doctrine which supplied consolation and comfort to a mind oppressed with the aspect of the sin and misery of the earth. But Whewell replied: "To me the effect would be the contrary. I should have no consolation or comfort in thinking that our earth is selected as the especial abode of sin; and the consolation which revealed religion offers for this sin and misery is, not that there are other worlds in the stars sinless and happy, but that on the earth an atonement and reconciliation were effected. This doctrine gives a peculiar place to the earth in theology. It is, or has been, in a peculiar manner the scene of God's agency and presence. This was the view on which I worked.' In opposition to Dean Mansel, who held that a true knowledge of God is impossible for man, Dr Whewell said: 'If we cannot know anything about God, revelation is in vain. We cannot have anything revealed to us, if we have no power of seeing what is revealed. It is of no use to take away the veil, when we are blind. If, in consequence of our defect of sight, we cannot see God at all by the sun of nature, we cannot see Him by the lightning of Sinai, nor by the fire of Mount Carmel, nor by the star in the East, nor by the rising sun of the Resurrection. If we cannot know God, to what purpose is it that the Scriptures, Old and New, constantly exhort us to know Him, and represent to us the knowledge of Him as the great purpose of man's life, and the sole ground of his eternal hopes?'

Numerous works connected with moral philosophy were from time to time published by Whewell-as Elements of Morality, 1845; Lectures on Systematic Morality, 1846; Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England, 1852; Platonic Dialogues for English Readers, 18591861, &c. Various scientific memoirs, sermons, and miscellaneous pieces in prose and verse were thrown off by the indefatigable Master of Trinity, and perhaps, as Sir John Herschel said, a more wonderful variety and amount of knowledge in almost every department of human inquiry was never accumulated by any man.' The death of Dr Whewell was accidental. He was thrown from his horse on the 24th of February, and died on the 6th of March 1866. An account of the writings, with selections from the correspondence of Dr Whewell, was lately published by I. Todhunter, M.A., &c.