The triumphs of perseverance and enterprise, recorded as examples for the young

If great proficiency in tongues, skill to depicture human thought and character, and enthusiastic devotion to art, he worthy of our admiration, the toiling intelligences who have taught us to subdue the physical world, and to bring it to subserve our wants and wishes, claim scarcely less homage. Art and literature could never have sprung into existence if men had remained mere strugglers for life, in their inability to contend with the elements of nature, because ignorant of its laws; and an acquaintance with the languages of tribes merely barbarous would have been but a worthless kind of knowledge. To scientific discoverers—the pioneers of civilization, who make the world worth living in, and render man’s tenancy of it more valuable by every successive step of discovery—our primary tribute of admiration and gratitude seems due. They are the grand revealers of the physical security, health, plenty, and means of locomotion, which give the mind vantage-ground for its reach after higher refinement and purer pleasures.

Should the common observation be urged, that many of the most important natural discoveries have resulted from accident, let it be remembered, that, but for the existence of some of our race, more attentive than the rest, Nature might still have spoken in vain, as she had undoubtedly done to thousands before she found an intelligent listener, in each grand instance of physical discovery. Grant all the truth that may attach to the observation just quoted, and yet the weighty reflection remains—that it was only by men who, in the sailor’s phrase, were “on the look-out,” that the revelations of Nature were caught. The natural laws were in operation for ages, but were undiscovered, because men guessed rather than inquired, or lived on without heed to mark, effort to comprehend, industry to register, and, above all, without perseverance to proceed from step to step in discovery, till entire truths were learnt. That these have been the attributes of those to whom we owe the rich boon of science, a rapid survey of some of their lives will manifest.

SIR HUMPHREY DAVY,

The son of a wood carver of Penzance, was apprenticed by his father to a surgeon and apothecary of that town, and afterwards with another of the same profession, but gave little satisfaction to either of his masters. Natural philosophy had become his absorbing passion; and, even while a boy, he dreamt of future fame as a chemist. The rich diversity of minerals in Cornwall offered the finest field for his empassioned inquiries; and he was in the habit of rambling alone for miles, bent upon his yearning investigation into the wonders of Nature. In his master’s garret, and with the assistance of such a laboratory as he could form for himself from the phials and gallipots of the apothecary’s shop, and the pots and pans of the kitchen, he brought the mineral and other substances he collected to the test. The surgeon of a French vessel wrecked on the coast gave him a case of instruments, among which was one that he contrived to fashion into an air-pump, and he was soon enabled to extend the range of his experiments; but the proper use of many of the instruments was unknown to him.

A fortunate accident brought him the acquaintanceship of Davies Gilbert, an eminent man of science. Young Davy was leaning one day on the gate of his father’s house, when a friend, who was passing by with Mr. Gilbert, said, “That is young Davy, who is so fond of chemistry.” Mr. Gilbert immediately entered into conversation with the youth, and offered him assistance in his studies. By the kind offices of his new friend he was afterwards introduced to Dr. Beddoes, who had formed a pneumatic institution at Bristol, and was in want of a superintendent for it. At the age of nineteen Davy received this appointment, and immediately began the splendid course of chemical discovery which has rendered his name immortal as one of the greatest benefactors as well as geniuses of the race.

At twenty-one he published his “Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide, and its respiration.” The singularly intoxicating quality of this gas when breathed was unknown before Davy’s publication of his experiments in this treatise. The attention it drew upon him from the scientific world issued in his being invited to leave Bristol, and take the chair of chemistry which had just been established in the London Royal Institution. Although but a youth of two-and-twenty, his lectures in the metropolis were attended by breathless crowds of men of science and title; and, in another year, he was also appointed Professor of Chemistry to the Board of Agriculture. His lectures in that capacity greatly advanced chemical knowledge, and were published at the request of the Board. When twenty-five he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and, on the death of Sir Joseph Banks, was made its President by a unanimous vote. It was in the delivery of his Bakerian lectures, before this learned body, that he laid the foundation of the new science called “electro-chemistry.” The Italians, Volta and Galvani, had some years before discovered and made known the surprising effects produced on the muscles of dead animals by two metals being brought into contact with each other. Davy showed that the metals underwent chemical changes, not by what had been hitherto termed “electricity,” but by affinity; and that the same effects might be produced by one of the metals, provided a fluid were brought to act on its surface in a certain manner. The composition and decomposition of substances by the application of the galvanic energy, as displayed in the experiments of the young philosopher, filled the minds of men of science with wonder.

His grand discoveries of the metallic bases of the alkalies and earths, of the various properties of the gases, and of the connexion of electricity and magnetism, continued to absorb the attention of the scientific world through succeeding years; but a simple invention, whereby human life was rescued from danger in mines, the region whence so great a portion of the wealth of England is derived, placed him before the minds of millions, learned and illiterate, as one of the guardians of man’s existence. This was the well-known “safety lamp,” an instrument which is provided at a trifling expense, and with which the toiling miner can enter subterranean regions unpierceable before, without danger of explosion of the “fire-damp,” so destructive, before this discovery, to the lives of thousands. The humblest miner rejects any other name but that of “Davy Lamp” for this apparently insignificant protector; and ventures, with it in his hand, cheerfully and boldly into the realms of darkness, where the “black diamonds” lie so many fathoms beneath the surface of the earth, and, not seldom, under the bed of the sea. The proprietors of the northern coal mines presented the discoverer with a service of plate of the value of £2000, at a public dinner, as a manifestation of their sense of his merits. He was the first person knighted by the Prince Regent, afterwards King George IV., and was a few years after raised to the baronetage. Such honours served to mark the estimation in which he was held by those who had it in their power to confer them; but Davy’s enduring distinctions, like those of the unequalled Newton, are derived from the increase of power over nature, which he has secured for millions yet unborn, by the force of his genius, girt up, tirelessly by Perseverance, till its grand triumphs were won.

From this hasty survey of the magnificent course of one of the great penetrators into the secrets of nature, and preservers of human life, let us cast a glance on the struggles of one who has been the means of multiplying man’s hands and fingers—to use a strong figure—of opening up sources of employment for millions, and of showing the road to wealth for thousands.

SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT,

Was a poor barber till the age of thirty, and then changed his trade for that of an itinerant dealer in hair. Nothing is known of any early attachment he had for mechanical inventions; but, about four years after he had given up shaving beards, he is found enthusiastically bent on the project of discovering the “perpetual motion,” and, in his quest for a person to make him some wheels, gets acquainted with a clockmaker of Warrington, named Kay. This individual had also been for some time bent on the construction of new mechanic powers, and, either to him alone, or to the joint wit of the two, is to be attributed their entry on an attempt at Preston, in Lancashire, to erect a novel machine for spinning cotton-thread. The partnership was broken, and the endeavour given up, in consequence of the threats uttered by the working spinners, who dreaded that such an invention would rob them of bread, by lessening the necessity for human labour; and Arkwright alone, bent on the accomplishment of the design, went to Nottingham. A firm of bankers in that town made him some advances of capital, with a view to partake in the benefits arising from his invention; but, as Arkwright’s first machines did not answer his end efficiently, they grew weary of the connection, and refused further supplies. Unshaken in his own belief of future success, Arkwright now took his models to a firm of stocking weavers, one of whom, Mr. Strutt—a name which has also become eminent in the manufacturing enterprise of the country—was a man of intelligence, and of some degree of acquaintance with science. This firm entered into a partnership with Arkwright, and, he having taken out a patent for his invention, they built a spinning-mill, to be driven by horse-power, and filled it with frames. Two years afterwards they built another mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire, moved by water-power; but it was in the face of losses and discouragements that they thus pushed their speculations. During five years they sunk twelve thousand pounds, and his partners were often on the point of giving up the scheme. But Arkwright’s confidence only increased by failure, and, by repeated essays at contrivance, he finally and most triumphantly succeeded. He lived to realise an immense fortune, and his present descendant is understood to be one of the wealthiest persons in the kingdom. The weight of cotton imported now is three hundred times greater than it was a century ago; and its manufacture, since the invention of Arkwright, has become the greatest in England.

THE REV. EDMUND CARTWRIGHT, D.D.,

Must be mentioned as the meritorious individual who completed the discovery of cotton manufacture, by the invention of the power-loom. His tendency towards mechanical contrivances had often displayed itself in his youth; but his love of literature, and settlement in the church, led him to lay aside such pursuits as trifles, and it was not till his fortieth year that a conversation occurred which roused his dormant faculty. His own account of it must be given, not only for the sake of its striking character, but for the powerful negative it puts upon the hackneyed observation, that almost all great and useful discoveries have resulted from “accident.” The narrative first appeared in the “Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica.”

“Happening to be at Matlock, in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright’s spinning-machinery. One of the company observed that, as soon as Arkwright’s patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands would never be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving-mill. This brought on a conversation upon the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable, and, in defence of their opinion, they adduced arguments which I was certainly incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at the time seen a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing by remarking that there had been lately exhibited in London an automaton figure which played at chess. ‘Now, you will not assert, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘that it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave, than one that shall make all the variety of moves that are required in that complicated game.’ Some time afterwards, a particular circumstance recalling this conversation to my mind, it struck me that, as in plain weaving, according to the conception I then had of the business, there could be only three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there could be little difficulty in producing and repeating them. Full of these ideas, I immediately employed a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the machine was finished I got a weaver to put in the warp, which was of such materials as sail-cloth is usually made of. To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the produce. As I had never before turned my thoughts to mechanism, either in theory or practice, nor had seen a loom at work, nor knew anything of its construction, you will readily suppose that my first loom must have been a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was laid perpendicularly; the reed fell with a force of at least half-a-hundred weight; and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine, at a slow rate, and only for a short time. Conceiving, in my simplicity, that I had accomplished all that was required, I then secured what I thought a most valuable property by a patent, 4th of April, 1785. This being done, I then condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy modes of operation with mine. Availing myself, however, of what I then saw, I made a loom in its general principles nearly as they are now made. But it was not till the year 1787 that I completed my invention, when I took out my last weaving patent, August the 1st of that year.”

Challenged by a manufacturer who came to see his machine, to render it capable of weaving checks or fancy patterns, Dr. Cartwright applied his mind to the discovery, and succeeded so perfectly, that when the manufacturer visited him again some weeks after, the visitor declared he was assisted by something beyond human power. Were these discoveries the fruit of “accident,” or were they attributable to the power of mind, unswervingly bent to attain its object by Perseverance?

Numerous additional inventions in manufactures and agriculture owe their origin to this good, as well as ingenious man, whose mind was so utterly uncorrupted by any sordid passion that he neglected to turn his discoveries to any great pecuniary benefit, even when secured to him by patent. The merchants and manufacturers of Manchester, however, memorialised the Lords of the Treasury in his behalf, during his latter years, and Parliament made him a grant of 10,000l. Dr. Cartwright directed his mind to the steam-engine, among his other thoughts, and told his son, many years before the prophecy was realised, that, if he lived to manhood, he would see both ships and land-carriages moved by steam. From seeing one of his models of a steam-vessel, it is asserted Fulton, then a painter in this country, urged the idea of steam navigation upon his countrymen, on his return to America, until he saw it triumphantly carried out.

The new and vast motive power just mentioned conducts us to another illustrious name in the list of the disciples of Perseverance. Like the names of Newton, Gutenberg the inventor of printing, and a few others, the name to which we allude has claims upon the gratitude of mankind which can never be fully rendered until the entire race participate in the superior civilization it is the certain destiny of these grand discoveries to institute.

JAMES WATT,

Was the son of a small merchant of Greenock, and, on account of his weakly state when a child, was unable at first to enjoy the advantages of school tuition, and was therefore taught chiefly at home. When but six years old he was frequently caught chalking diagrams and solving problems on the hearth; and at fourteen he made a rude electrical machine with his own hands. His aunt, it is related, often chided him for indolence and mischief when he was found playing with the tea-kettle on the fire, watching the steam coming out of the spout, and trying the steam’s force by obstructing its escape; the might of the vaporous element seeming even then to have begun to present itself, unavoidably, to his imagination and understanding. He grew to be an extensive manufacturer of philosophical toys while a boy, and used to increase his pocket-money by standing with them at the college gate, in Glasgow, and vending them to the students as they passed out. At eighteen years of age his father apprenticed him to a mathematical instrument maker in London, but in little more than a year his weak health rendered it necessary to send him home to Scotland.

At twenty-one, although he had received so little instruction in that profession, his skill secured him the appointment of mathematical instrument maker to the college of Glasgow. His appointment, however, was not sufficiently productive to render it worth keeping; and, seven years afterwards, he began to practise as a general engineer, for which diligent study during this term had fitted him. He was soon sought after for almost every undertaking of public improvement; whether for the making of bridges, canals, harbours, or any other engineering design projected in Scotland. But the circumstance of a small model of a steam-engine being sent him to repair, fixed his attention powerfully upon the element which had so often excited the attention of his boyish understanding.

Watt found this model so imperfect, although it was the most perfect then known, that he could with difficulty get it to work. The more he examined it, the more deeply he became convinced that the properties of steam had never been understood; the engine was, in fact, an atmospheric rather than a steam engine. By laborious investigation he ascertained that the evaporation of water proceeded more or less rapidly in proportion to the degree of heat made to enter it; that the process of evaporation was quickened as a greater surface of water was exposed to heat, the quantity of coals necessary to raise a certain weight of water into steam, and the degrees of heat at which water boils under different pressures. He had now learnt enough of the nature of the great element he proposed to wield; but it required long thought and the most exhaustless application of contrivance to give his vaporous giant a fitting body, limbs, joints, and sinews, and so to adapt these as to render them a self-regulating mechanism. Watt found a coadjutor in the person of Boulton, of Birmingham, who was possessed of capital, and the will to embark it; and he now set to work to perfect his discovery, and did perfect it; thus revealing to man the greatest instrument of power yet put into his possession.

“In the present perfect state of the engine,” says Dr. Arnott, in his “Elements of Physics,” “it appears a thing almost endowed with intelligence. It regulates with perfect accuracy and uniformity the number of its strokes in a given time; counting or recording them, moreover, to tell how much work it has done, as a clock records the beats of its pendulum; it regulates the quantity of steam admitted to work; the briskness of the fire; the supply of water to the boiler; the supply of coals to the fire; it opens and shuts its valves with absolute precision as to time and manner; it oils its joints; it takes out any air which may accidentally enter into parts which should be vacuous; and when anything goes wrong, which it cannot itself rectify, it warns its attendants by ringing a bell: yet with all these talents and qualities, and even when exerting the power of six hundred horses, it is obedient to the hand of a child; its aliment is coal, wood, charcoal, or other combustible; it consumes none while idle; it never tires, and wants no sleep; it is not subject to malady when originally well made, and only refuses to work when worn out with age; it is equally active in all climates, and will do work of any kind; it is a water pumper, a miner, a sailor, a cotton-spinner, a weaver, a blacksmith, a miller, &c., &c.; and a small engine, in the character of a steam-pony, may be seen dragging after it on a railroad a hundred tons of merchandise, or a regiment of soldiers, with greater speed than that of our fleetest coaches. It is the king of machines, and a permanent realisation of the genii of Eastern fable, whose supernatural powers were occasionally at the command of man.”

And what was the greater instrument? The mind of Watt, whose powers were manifested by the creation of this grandest physical instrument. Could such a display of resources, such amazing circumspection of the wants and needs of his machine, and wisdom in the adaptation of its members to the perfect working of the whole, have been given forth from an intellect untrained itself to rule, uninured itself to toil, and to toil with certitude for an end, by persevering collection of all that could increase its aptitude to reach it? The estimate of James Watt’s character by the eloquent Lord Jeffrey, will afford a weighty answer.

“Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and, in many respects, a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information—had read so much, or remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodising power of understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense, and yet less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conversation had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, the admirable clearness of the information which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science might, perhaps, have been conjectured; but it could not have been inferred from his usual occupations, and, probably, is not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

“His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt, in a great measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty—by his power of digesting and arranging in its proper place all the information he received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every conception that was suggested to his mind seemed instantly to take its place among its other rich furniture, and to be condensed into the smallest and most convenient form. He never appeared, therefore, to be at all encumbered or perplexed with the verbiage of the dull books he perused, or the idle talk to which he listened, but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it for his own use to its true value and to its simplest form. And thus it often happened that a great deal more was learned, from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and arguments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could have derived from the most faithful study of the originals; and that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that invaluable assistance.”

Such was the activity, industry, discipline, and perseverance in acquirement, of the mind which gave to the world its greatest physical transformer—the instrument which is changing the entire civilization of the world, “doing the work of multitudes, overcoming the difficulties of depth, distance, minuteness, magnitude, wind, and tide; exhibiting stranger wonders than those of romance or magic; annihilating time and space; giving wings even to thought, and sending knowledge like light through the human universe; most mighty, with power that Watt knew not of, and with more than we know, for futurity. The discovery of America,” says the same eloquent writer, W. J. Fox, in his “Lectures to the Working Classes,” “was of matter to be worked upon: this is power to work upon the world.”

COLUMBUS,

Starts before the mind with the enunciation of the sentence just quoted. He whose indomitable perseverance carried his mutinous sailors onward—and onward—across the dreary Atlantic, in a frail bark, until fidelity to his own convictions issued in the magnificent proof of their verity, the discovery of the new world. But our space demands that we pass to the incomparable name which towers, alone, above that of James Watt, in the world’s list of the scientific benefactors of mankind; and, perhaps, above all human names in its peerless excellence.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON,

It is so well known, as scarcely to need repeating here, displayed his wondrous and incontrollable tendency for scientific inquiry in boyhood. In him, too, as in the minds of almost all philosophical discoverers, was evinced the faculty for mechanical contrivance, as well as acuteness for demonstration. The anecdotes of his boyish invention, of his windmill with a mouse for the miller, his water-clock, carriage, and sun-dials, and of his kites and paper lanterns, are familiar. His mother having been persuaded, by an intelligent relative, to give him up from agricultural cares, to which his genius could not be tied down, he was sent to Cambridge, and entered Trinity College in his eighteenth year. He proceeded, at once, to the study of “Descartes’ Geometry,” regarding “Euclid’s Elements” as containing self-evident truths, when he had gone through the titles of the propositions. Yet he afterwards regretted this neglect of the rigid method of demonstration, in the outset, as a great mistake, and wished he had not attached himself so closely to modes of solution by algebra. He successively studied, and wrote commentaries on, “Wallis’s Arithmetic of Infinities,” “Saunderson’s Logic,” and “Kepler’s Optics;” and, for testing the doctrines of the latter science, bought a prism, and made numerous experiments with it. While but a very young man, Dr. Isaac Barrow, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, gathered hints of new truths from his conversation; and in the publication of his lectures on optics, a few years after, the Doctor acknowledged his obligations to young Newton, and characterised him very highly. A year after this publication, Barrow resigned his chair in favour of Newton, who had recently taken the degree of Master of Arts.

Zeal to acquit himself well in his professorship, a situation so congenial to his mind, led him to devote the most profound attention to the doctrines of light and vision. Realities were what he sought, even in the most abstract pursuits; and he expended considerable manual labour in constructing reflecting telescopes. One of these most valued relics of his mechanical toil is now in the library of the Royal Society. The result of his studies and experiments was not fully known before the publication of his “Opticks,” in his sixty-second year; but it is believed his entire discovery of the nature of light was made many years before, being at length “put together out of scattered papers.” The modesty of this great man was, indeed, the most distinguishing mark of his intellect. Arrogant satisfaction, or pride of superior genius, never sullied his greatness. Even in giving this scientific treasure to the world, he says, he designed to repeat most of his observations with more care and exactness, and to make some new ones for determining the manner how the rays of light are bent in their passage by bodies, for making the fringes of colours with the dark lines between them.

How much are we indebted to the patient perseverance of all the true discoverers in science! This is the quality of mind which ever distinguished them. Rashness and presumption, haste to place his crude theories before the world, and to gain assent to them before proof, on the other hand, are the sure marks of the empiric or pretender. The popular author of “The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties”—a work the young student should carry about with him as a never-failing stimulus to perseverance—thus admirably treats this pre-eminent characteristic of the mind of Newton:—“On some occasions he was wont to say, that, if there was any mental habit or endowment in which he excelled the generality of men, it was that of patience in the examination of the facts and phenomena of his subject. This was merely another form of that teachableness which constituted the character of the man. He loved truth, and wooed her with the unwearying ardour of a lover. Other speculators had consulted the book of nature, principally for the purpose of seeking in it the defence of some favourite theory: partially, therefore, and hastily, as one would consult a dictionary. Newton perused it as a volume altogether worthy of being studied for its own sake. Hence proceeded both the patience with which he traced its characters, and the rich and plentiful discoveries with which the search rewarded him. If he afterwards classified and systematised his knowledge like a philosopher, he had first, to use his own language, gathered it like a child.”

This transcendent combination of qualities, modesty, patient investigation, and indefatigable perseverance, was still more wondrously shown in his superlative discovery of the theory of gravitation, than in his promulgation of the laws of light and vision. The anecdote of his observation of the fall of an apple from a tree, while sitting in his garden, is among the most familiar of all anecdotes to general readers. This incident, it was affirmed by his niece, as well as his friend Dr. Pemberton, occurred in Newton’s twenty-third year; and it instantly raised in him the inquiry whether the infinite universe were not held in order and kept in motion by the very power which drew the apple to the earth.

Galileo had already shown the tendency of all bodies near the earth to gravitate towards its centre, and had calculated and fixed the proportions of their speed in descent to their distance from the earth’s centre. Newton’s general application of Galileo’s rule to the planets of the solar system led him to regard his conjecture as strongly probable. He next devoted his powers to the consideration of its verity, by examining the question whether the force of gravitation by which the planets preserved their orbits and motions round the sun would precisely account for the moon’s preservation of her orbit and motion round the earth. But here the precision of his calculations was frustrated by the imperfect knowledge then existing as to the real measurement of the earth—the gravitating centre of the revolving moon. An empiric would have trumpeted his discovery to the world, in spite of the fact that this faulty admeasurement of the earth, by not affording a true calculation of her gravitating power, failed to lead him to an agreement with truth. Newton was silent for long years, until a degree of the earth’s latitude was ascertained, by actual experiment, to be sixty-nine and a half degrees instead of sixty; he then resumed his calculations, and their result was that he had probed the grand secret of the laws by which worlds move in obedience to the suns which are their centres. It only remains to be observed, as a significant reminder to the young reader, that—though he may assent to the great doctrine of Newton, and consider it to be established, he can never fully know its mathematical and mechanical verity, unless study enables him to read the “Principia”—the work in which the truth of gravitation and its laws are demonstrated. Let it be an additional motive to strive for the ability to read such a book, that in having read it the student has become acquainted with the greatest effort in abstract truth ever yet produced by the human intellect.

The moral as well as the intellectual grandeur of the life of Newton would tempt us to enlarge, but we must merely say, ere we pass on, to the youthful inquirer—read about Newton, think about Newton, and the more you know of him the more will your understanding honour him, your heart love him, and your desire strengthen to approach him in virtue, wisdom, and usefulness.

SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL,

Newton’s greatest successor in astronomical discovery, may claim an equality with him, as a true and noble disciple of perseverance. The son of a poor Hanoverian musician, he was brought over to England, with his father, in the band of the Guards. The father returned to Hanover, but young Herschel remained, and at the age of twenty began to seek his fortune in this country. After many difficulties, wanderings from place to place, as a teacher of music in families, and a few slight glimpses of favour from fortune, he obtained the office of organist in the Octagon Chapel at Bath. The emoluments of this situation, with his receipts from tuition of pupils and other engagements, were such that an ordinary mortal would have been content “to make himself comfortable” upon them, in worldly phrase. But ease and competence were not the object of Herschel’s ambition. In the midst of his wanderings, he had not only striven to acquire a sound knowledge of English, but of Italian, Latin, and Greek, and had entered on the study of counterpoint, in order to make himself a profound theorist, as well as a performer, in music. In order to comprehend the doctrines of harmonics, he found it necessary to get some acquaintance with the mathematics; and this led him at once to the line of study for which his natural genius was best fitted. On his settlement at Bath, he applied himself with ardour to these abstract inquiries, and from the mathematics proceeded to astronomy and optics. Desire to view the wonders of the heavens for himself made him eager to possess a telescope; and, deeming the price of a sufficiently powerful one more than he could afford, he set about making a five-feet reflector, and, after much difficulty, accomplished his task.

Success only stimulated him to bolder attempts, and he rapidly constructed telescopes of seven, ten, and twenty-feet focal distance. Pupils and professional engagements were given up, until he reduced his income to a bare sufficiency, in order that he might have more time for the sciences to which he was now become inseparably attached. So tireless was his perseverance in the fashioning of mirrors for his telescopes, that he would sit to polish them for twelve or fourteen hours, without intermission; and, rather than take his hand from the delicate labour, his sister was requested to put the little food he ate into his mouth. With one of his seven-feet reflectors—the most perfect instrument he had constructed—after having been engaged for a year and a half, at intervals, in a regular survey of the heavens, he at length made the discovery of the planet which, until the very recent discovery of “Neptune” by Leverrier and Adams, was regarded as the most distant member of the solar system. The Astronomer-Royal, Dr. Maskelyne, to whom Herschel made known what he had observed, together with his doubts as to the nature of the new celestial body, first affirmed it to be a comet. In a few months this error was dissipated, and the grandeur of Herschel’s discovery was acknowledged by the whole scientific world. King George the Third, in whose honour he had named the new planet Georgium Sidus (a name which has been very properly set aside for that of Uranus), conferred upon him a pension of £300 a year, that he might be enabled to give up entirely the profession of music; and the son of the poor Hanoverian musician took his station among the first in the highest of the sciences. The order of knighthood was afterwards bestowed upon him; but it could not add to the splendour of the names of either Herschel or Newton.

Inquiry will put the young reader in possession of a knowledge of many other interesting and important discoveries of the persevering Herschel. A few pages must be devoted to a brief mention of others who have benefited mankind by their unremitting labours; and they must be selected from a list where it is difficult to tell a single name unmarked by some peculiar excellence—so abundant in exemplars of meritorious toil is the vast muster-roll of science and mechanical invention.

REAUMUR,

May be instanced as one of the most industrious toilers for the advancement of useful science, though he does not take rank with the unfolders of sublime truths. During a life of seventy-five years he was incessantly engaged in endeavouring to add something to the compass of human knowledge and convenience. At one time he is found pursuing an investigation into the mode of formation and growth of shells, endeavouring to account for the progressive motion of the different kinds of testaceous animals; anon, he publishes a “Natural History of Cobwebs,” evincing a mind capable of the most minute and ingenious search; and is afterwards found showing the facility with which iron and steel may be made magnetic by percussion. For revealing to his countrymen, the French, a method of converting forged or bar-iron into steel, of making steel of what quality they pleased, and of rendering even cast-iron ductile, a pension of twelve hundred livres yearly was settled upon him. This allowance, at his death, was settled, by his own request, on the Academy of Sciences, to be applied to the defraying of expenses for future attempts to improve the arts. He also made known the useful secret of tinning plates of iron, an article for which the French, till his time, had been compelled to resort to Germany.

Continuing his researches into natural science, he showed the means by which marine animals attach themselves to solid bodies; discussed the cause of the electric effect from the stroke of a torpedo; displayed the proof that in crabs, lobsters, and crayfish, nature reproduces a lost claw; set forth a treatise showing, by experiments, that the digestive process is performed in granivorous birds by trituration, and in carnivorous by solution; and published a systematic “History of Insects.” Engaged at one period of life in proving, by experiment, that the less a cord is twisted the stronger it is—that is, that the best mode of uniting the threads of a cord is that which causes their tension to be equal in whatever direction the cord is strained; we find him, at another period, discovering the art of preserving eggs, so that they might be kept fresh and fit for incubation many years, and breeds of fowls propagated at home or abroad, by the eggs being washed with a varnish of oil, grease, or any other substance that would effectually stop the pores of the shell, and prevent the contents from evaporating. Valuable secrets in the making of glass were also discovered by him; he devised a method of making porcelain, and showed that the requisite materials were to be found in France in greater abundance than in the East; and lastly, he rendered enduring service to science by reducing thermometers to a common standard, which continental nations gratefully commemorate by still calling thermometers by his name. A life passed in mental occupations so multifarious as well as useful, surely entitles Reaumur to be termed a true scholar of perseverance.

THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE,

By a life of virtue and usefulness, merits the epithet to which his birth by courtesy entitled him. He was the youngest son of the first Earl of Cork, and after being educated at Eton was sent out to travel on the continent. A residence at Florence at the time of Galileo’s death, and the almost universal conversation then caused by the discoveries of that great philosopher, seem to have induced Boyle’s first attention to science. On returning to this country he very soon joined a knot of scientific men, who had begun to meet at each other’s houses, on a certain day in each week, for inquiry and discussion into what was then called “The New or Experimental Philosophy.” These weekly meetings eventually gave rise to the Royal Society of London; but part of the original members of the little club, a few years after its commencement, removed to Oxford, and Boyle, influenced by his attachment to these philosophic friends, in process of time took up his residence in that city. Their weekly meetings were held in his house; and here he began to prosecute with earnestness his researches into the nature of air. By his experiments and invention, the air-pump was first brought into so useful a form that he may be called its discoverer, though the genius of others has since greatly improved that important instrument. He also demonstrated the necessity of the presence of air for the support of animal life and of combustion; showing not only that a flame is instantly extinguished beneath an exhausted receiver, but that even a fish could not live under it, though immersed in water. His demonstration of the expansibility of air was still more important. Aristotle, three hundred years before the Christian era, taught that if air were rarefied till it filled ten times its usual space, it would become fire. Boyle succeeded in dilating a portion of the air of the common atmosphere, till it filled nearly fourteen thousand times its natural space.

His other discoveries were numerous, every hour of his existence might be said to be devoted to usefulness: and his wealth and station, so far from disposing him to ease and inertion, were nobly turned by him into grand aids for the advancement of knowledge. Mr. Craik thus admirably sums up his life of effort:—“From his boyhood till his death he may be said to have been almost constantly occupied in making philosophical experiments; collecting and ascertaining facts in natural science; inventing or improving instruments for the examination of nature; maintaining a regular correspondence with scientific men in all parts of Europe; receiving the daily visits of great numbers of the learned, both of his own and other countries; perusing and studying not only all the new works that appeared in the large and rapidly widening department of natural history and mathematical and experimental physics, including medicine, anatomy, chemistry, geography, &c., but many others, relating especially to theology and oriental literature; and, lastly, writing so profusely upon all these subjects, that those of his works alone which have been preserved and collected, independently of many others that are lost, fill, in one edition, six large quarto volumes. So vast an amount of literary performance, from a man who was at the same time so much of a public character, and gave so considerable a portion of his time to the service of others, shows strikingly what may be done by industry, perseverance, and such a method of life as never suffers an hour of the day to run to waste.”

The lives of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, and Kepler, among astronomers; of Napier of Murchiston, the inventor of logarithms; of Dolland and Ramsden, the improvers of optical glasses; of Cavendish, the discoverer of the composition of water; of Linnæus and Cuvier, the greatest naturalists; of Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Black, and, indeed, a host of modern chemists; might be singly and in order adduced as inspiring lessons of perseverance. The young inquirer, if he have caught a spark of zeal from the ardour of the tireless minds we have hastily endeavoured to portray, will, if he act worthily, strive to make himself acquainted more fully with the doings of these and other great men, and “gird up the loins of his mind” to follow them in their glorious path of wisdom and beneficence.