life however seems to have been spent in happiness and tranquillity,
until the riots of 1780, in which his house, with its contents, was
destroyed. Beside a valuable property in books, pictures, and furniture,
he sustained that loss which, to a literary man, is irreparable,—the
collected manuscripts of a laborious life. He bore this heavy calamity
with honourable fortitude, and declined to accept of pecuniary
compensation. To the application of government he returned this answer:
“I think it does not become me to claim or expect reparation from the
state. I have made up my mind to my misfortune as I ought, with this
consolation, that it came from those whose object manifestly was general
confusion and destruction at home, in addition to a dangerous and
complicated war abroad. If I should lay before you any account or
computation of the pecuniary damage I have sustained, it might seem a
claim or expectation of being indemnified.” Shortly afterwards he
appeared in the House of Lords, to justify the strong measures by which
the riots had been quelled. “It was wonderful,” says Bishop Newton in
his ‘Life and Anecdotes,’ “after such a shock as he had received, that
he could so soon summon his faculties as to make one of the finest and
ablest speeches that ever was heard in parliament, to justify the
legality of the late proceedings on the part of government, to
demonstrate that no royal prerogative had been exerted, no martial law
had been exercised, nothing had been done but what every man, civil or
military, had a right to do in the like cases. ‘I speak not from books,’
he said, ‘for books I have none;’ having been all consumed in the fire.
The effects of his speech were the admiration and conviction of all who
heard him, and put an end to the debate without division. Lord Mansfield
never appeared greater in any action of his life.” No particular cause
connected with the frenzy of the time can be assigned for this attack on
the Chief Justice; he had not been active in supporting the measures for
the relief of the Catholics, which produced this remarkable ebullition
of folly and wickedness. But when once riot is afoot, the causes which
have first stirred up men’s minds are readily forgotten; and the
violence of party abuse with which Lord Mansfield had been assailed, and
the unpopularity of the government, in which he was supposed to exercise
a principal though secret influence, are sufficient to account for this
calamity.
In 1776, Lord Mansfield, at his own request, was raised to the dignity
of an earl. He had no children, and his object was to raise the rank of
his paternal family in the person of his nephew Lord Stormont, to whom
the succession was secured. In 1784, he was compelled to absent himself
from his judicial duties for a season, and spent some time, with
considerable benefit to his health, at Tunbridge Wells. He returned to
his judicial employment and continued to exercise it with unclouded
intellect, being only prevented by bodily infirmity from attending the
court during the last year and a half that he held the office. In 1788
he resigned it, at the advanced age of eighty-four, having presided in
the court of King’s Bench for the unprecedented period of thirty-two
years, and being still in possession of a share of health and power of
enjoyment which seldom fall to the lot of so advanced an age. He
retained the perfect possession of his faculties until within a week of
his death, which took place March 18, 1794, in the ninetieth year of his
age.
In the case of this, as of many other eminent men, we may regret that so
few particulars of their every-day manners have been preserved. In the
relations of private life his conduct was exemplary; and the amenity of
his manners, the playfulness of his wit, and his admirable
qualifications as a companion, secured the affection of those who
enjoyed his society. His talents as a speaker were set off by a graceful
and attractive person, and a remarkably harmonious voice; qualifications
greatly conducing to good delivery, which it is said he was in the habit
of improving in youth, by sedulous cultivation under the direction of
Pope.
A gentleman (Mr. Baillie), who had been deeply indebted to Lord
Mansfield’s professional abilities, bequeathed 1500_l._ to erect a
monument to his memory. The commission was entrusted to worthy hands,
for it was given to Flaxman. A sketch of his work forms the vignette to
this memoir.
The ‘Life of the Earl of Mansfield,’ by Mr. Halliday, is the only
biographical account of this eminent lawyer which we know to exist. It
is too manifestly panegyrical, and, as has been intimated, contains a
very meagre account of the private history of its noble subject. It is
mainly occupied by reports of Lord Mansfield’s speeches and judgments,
and must therefore be chiefly acceptable to legal readers.
[Illustration: [Monument of Lord Mansfield in Westminster Abbey.]]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by E. Scriven._
BRADLEY.
_From the original Picture by Richardson in the possession of the
Royal Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]
[Illustration]
BRADLEY.
Of all men who have combined both astronomical theory and practice,
Bradley is one of the most remarkable. In this respect, we must assign
to him the first place in English history; and if we were disposed to
add, in that of the world, we are convinced that no country would
pretend to offer more than one candidate to dispute his claim.
James Bradley[1] was born in March 1692–3, at Sherbourn in
Gloucestershire. He was educated at the Grammar School of Northleach,
and admitted of Baliol College, Oxford, in March 1710–11, where he
proceeded to the degrees of B.A. and M.A. in the years 1714 and 1717
respectively. His mother’s brother was James Pound (deceased 1724),
rector of Wanstead in Essex, and known as an observer, particularly by
the observations which he furnished to Newton, as described in the
Principia. With him Bradley spent much of his younger life, and was his
assistant in his astronomical pursuits; and some observations of 1718–19
on double stars are in good accordance with the relative motions which
have been since established in the case of those bodies. His tables of
Jupiter’s satellites, on which he was employed at the same time, show
that he had detected the greater part of the inequalities in their
motions which have since been observed.
Footnote 1:
The facts here given are entirely taken from the searching account of
Bradley given by Professor Rigaud in his “Miscellaneous Works, &c., of
James Bradley, Oxford, 1832.”
In 1718 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society; in 1719 he was
ordained to the vicarage of Bridstow, in Monmouthshire; in the following
year he received a sinecure preferment. But in 1721 he resigned these
livings, on obtaining the Savilian professorship of Astronomy at Oxford,
the holder of which, by the statutes, must not have any benefice. To
finish what we may call the gazette of his life, he was engaged in
observation (with what results we shall presently see) both at Kew and
Wanstead till 1732, when he went to reside at Oxford, having since 1729
given yearly courses of lectures on Experimental Philosophy. In 1742 he
was appointed to succeed Halley as Astronomer Royal, and he held this
appointment for the remainder of his life. In the same year he obtained
the degree of D.D. In 1752, having refused the living of Greenwich,
because he thought the duty of a pastor to be incompatible with his
other studies and necessary engagements, he was presented with a pension
of 250_l._ The last observation made by him in the observatory is dated
Sept. 1, 1761; and he died July 13, 1762, at Chalford in
Gloucestershire, having been afflicted by various diseases for several
years, and particularly by a depression of spirits, arising from the
fear lest he should survive his faculties. He married in 1744, and left
one daughter, who died at Greenwich in 1812.
There are now no lineal descendants of Bradley. Most of his writings,
which were few in number, were published in the Philosophical
Transactions. His personal merits are proved by the number of his
friends, and the warmth with which they endeavoured to serve him when
occasion arose, as well as by the strength of the testimonies which
those who survived bore to his reputation as a man and a member of
society.
We have much abridged the preceding account, in order to make room for a
popular exposition of his two great discoveries—the _aberration of
light_, and the _nutation of the earth’s axis_. If we were to blot these
discoveries out of his life, there would remain an ample stock of useful
labours, fully sufficient to justify us in stating that Bradley was
unequalled as an observer, and of no mean character as a philosopher.
But for the latter we must refer the reader to the excellent account
from which our facts have been taken, or to any history of astronomy.
The _parallax_ of the fixed stars had been long a subject of inquiry. If
a body describe a circle, and a spectator on that body be unconscious of
his own motion, all other bodies will appear to describe circles
parallel to that of the spectator’s motion, and, absolutely speaking,
equal to it; consequently, the greater the distance of the body from the
spectator, the smaller will its apparent annual motion be; and it will
not be circular, because the projection of the circle upon the apparent
sphere of the heavens will foreshorten, and cause it to appear oval. If
we suppose a star to describe an oval in the course of a year, the
consequence will be that it will pass the spectator’s meridian sometimes
before a star in the centre of the oval, sometimes after it; sometimes
nearer to the pole of the heavens, and sometimes more distant; and the
nature of the motion of this kind which would arise from parallax can be
mathematically deduced. If the star be so distant that the oval is too
small to be detected by measurement (which is hitherto the case with the
fixed stars), then no alteration of place will be perceived on this
account; but if an oval large enough to be observed be described in the
course of a year, then the test of the phenomenon arising from the
earth’s motion in its orbit is as follows:—Imagine a plane always
passing through the centre of the sun, the centre of the earth, and the
centre of the oval described by the star, then the place of the star in
its oval must be in that plane; or draw the shortest distance on the
globe from the centre of the oval to the sun, and the star will be on
the point of the oval which lies in that distance.
In and before the time of Bradley, the refraction of light was not well
determined, which would throw a doubt over any observations made to
detect small quantities, unless the star which furnished them were
situated in that part of the observer’s heaven in which there is no
refraction, or next to none, that is, in or near his zenith. For the
purpose of measuring annual parallax, therefore, stars had always been
chosen which passed very nearly over the spot of observation, and
instruments called zenith sectors (now almost out of use) were employed,
which measured small angles of the meridian near the zenith, the latter
point being ascertained by a plumb-line. Mr. Molyneux, a friend of
Bradley, and a wealthy man, had caused the celebrated Graham to erect a
large instrument of this kind at his house in Kew, afterwards the
palace. Bradley and Molyneux observed with this instrument the star γ in
the Dragon, which passed nearly through the zenith of that place, in
December 1725. The star was found to pass the meridian more and more to
the south of the zenith, until the following March, when it was about
twenty seconds (about the sixty-five thousandth part of the whole
circuit of the heavens) lower than at first. It was afterwards traced
back again to its first position in the following December, allowing for
the precession of the equinoxes. Other stars were examined in the same
way, and the result was, that all stars were found to describe small[2]
ovals in the course of the year. But on comparing the situations of the
stars in their small orbits with the corresponding places of the sun, it
was evident that the cause of the phenomenon could not be the change of
place arising from the orbital motion of the earth. Various hypotheses
proposed by Bradley were found insufficient. In 1727 he erected a zenith
sector for himself at Wanstead; and by further observations, and using
different stars, he came at length to this fact, that instead of the
star being in the place which annual parallax would give it, it was
always in the position which it should have had a quarter of a year
later: or that if the observer could measure the oval with sufficient
exactness, and were to find the time of the year from the star, on the
supposition of annual parallax being the cause of the star’s orbit, he
would suppose himself in March instead of December, and so on.
Footnote 2:
The original memorandum of Bradley, on the first night on which a
decided result had been obtained, was accidentally found among his
papers. There is a fac-simile of it in Professor Rigaud’s work.
That the phenomenon then had a regular connexion with the place of the
earth was evident; but it was not that sort of connexion arising from
the mere change of place of the earth. It is related[3] that he was led
to the true explanation by observing that the vane at the top of a
boat’s mast changed its direction a little whenever the boat was put
about, and made to go in a contrary direction; and that on his remarking
that it was curious the wind should shift every time the boat was put
about, he was assured by the boatmen that the same thing always
happened. Be this as it may, he proposed to the Royal Society, in 1728,
his beautiful explanation of the annual motion which he had observed in
the stars; namely, that it is caused by the alteration in the apparent
direction of the rays of light, arising from the earth being in motion.
Suppose a stream of bullets fired into a carriage in motion, in a line
perpendicular to its side, and so directed as to hit the middle of the
first window, but not with sufficient velocity to reach any part of the
second window. It is plain that they will strike the hinder pannel,
which the motion of the carriage brings forward, and that to passengers
in the inside the direction of the stream will appear to be from the
middle of the window at which it enters to the opposite hinder pannel:
whereas, had the carriage been at rest, it would have appeared to pass
through the centre of both windows. And to make the stream really pass
through both windows it must, if the carriage be in motion, be directed
through the nearer window towards the foremost pannel on the other side.
A ray of light is in the same situation with regard to the spectator,
both as to the diurnal and the annual motion of the earth. The former
gives an insensible aberration only; the latter, one which though small
is sensible. The smallness of the latter aberration arises from the
velocity of light being more than ten thousand times that of the earth
in its orbit. And it must be remembered that the motion of light was not
an hypothesis, invented to form the basis of Bradley’s explanation, but
was ascertained before his time, by Römer, from a phenomenon of an
entirely different nature; namely, the retardation observed in the
eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites, as the planet moved from the earth.
The absolute deduction of the laws of aberration was completed by
Bradley.
Footnote 3:
Professor Rigaud gives this story on the authority of ‘Dr. Thomson’s
History of the Royal Society,’ in which work we find no authority
cited for it. We cannot find it in any other place, but are credibly
informed that it rests on good traditional evidence.
The other great discovery of Bradley, namely, the _nutation_, or
oscillatory motion of the earth’s axis, was completed in 1747. In his
Wanstead observations he had observed some minute discrepancies, which
at that time might be attributed to errors of observation; but after he
was able to clear the apparent place of a star from the effects of
aberration, the field became open to consider and assign the laws of
smaller variations. By continual observation, he found a small
irregularity in the places of the stars, depending upon the position of
the moon’s node. Newton had already shown it to be a consequence of
gravitation, that the sun must produce a small oscillation in the
earth’s axis: Bradley showed that a larger oscillation must arise from
the moon, and be completed in the course of a revolution, not of the
moon, but of the point where her orbit cuts the ecliptic. This discovery
is therefore not of so original a character as the last, since
astronomers had for some time been in the habit of trying to reconcile
every discrepancy which they observed by supposing a nutation; but to
Bradley belongs the merit of discovering that small irregularity which
really can be reconciled to such a supposition, and its physical causes.
The easiest way of conceiving the effect of nutation is as follows:—The
precession of the equinoxes, discovered by Hipparchus, has this effect,
that the fixed stars, so called, appear to move round the pole of the
ecliptic, at the rate of a revolution in about 26,000 years. Instead of
a star, let a small oval describe the same course, and let the star in
the mean while move round that oval in the course of nineteen years. The
motion thus obtained will represent the combined effect of precession
and nutation.
To these discoveries of Bradley we owe, as Delambre observes, the
accuracy of modern astronomy. It must be remarked, that no individual,
whose previous labours have caused public opinion to point him out as
most fit for the part of Astronomer Royal, has ever been passed over
when occasion occurred, from the time of Flamsteed to that at which we
write. It is the fair reward of such a course, that the reputation which
each successive occupant brought to that position should be considered
as appertaining to him in the public capacity which it gained for him;
and this being granted, it may be truly said that there is no
institution in the world which has, upon the whole, done so much towards
the advancement of correct astronomy as the Observatory of Greenwich.
[Illustration: [Observatory at Greenwich.]]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
MELANCTHON.
_From an Engraving by Albert Durer
1526._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]
[Illustration]
MELANCTHON.
Philip was the son of a respectable engineer named Schwartzerde,
that is, Black-earth, a name which he Grecised at a very early age,
as soon as his literary tastes and talents began to display
themselves,—assuming, in compliance with the suggestion of his
distinguished kinsman Reuchlin or Capnio, and according to the
fashion of the age, the classical synonyme of Melancthon. He was
born at Bretten, a place near Wittemberg, February 16, 1497. He
commenced his studies at Heidelberg in 1509; and after three years
was removed to Tubingen, where he remained till 1518. These
circumstances are in this instance not undeserving of notice,
because Melancthon gave from his very boyhood abundant proofs of an
active and brilliant genius, and acquired some juvenile distinctions
which have been recorded by grave historians, and have acquired him
a place among the ‘Enfans Célèbres’ of Baillet. During his residence
at Tubingen he gave public lectures on Virgil, Terence, Cicero, and
Livy, while he was pursuing with equal ardour his biblical studies;
and he had leisure besides to furnish assistance to Reuchlin in his
dangerous contests with the monks, and to direct the operations of a
printing-press. The course of learning and genius, when neither
darkened by early prejudice nor perverted by personal interests,
ever points to liberality and virtue. In the case of Melancthon this
tendency was doubtless confirmed by the near spectacle of monastic
oppression and bigotry; and thus we cannot question that he had
imbibed, even before his departure from Tubingen, the principles
which enlightened his subsequent career, and which throw the
brightest glory upon his memory.
In 1518 (at the age of twenty-one) he was raised to the Professorship of
Greek in the University of Wittemberg. The moment was critical. Luther,
who occupied the theological chair in the same University, had just
published his ‘Ninety-five Propositions against the Abuse of
Indulgences,’ and was entering step by step into a contest with the
Vatican. He was in possession of great personal authority; he was older
by fourteen years, and was endowed with a far more commanding spirit,
than his brother professor; and thus, in that intimacy which local
circumstances and similarity of sentiments immediately cemented between
these two eminent persons, the ascendancy was naturally assumed by
Luther, and maintained to the end of his life. Melancthon was scarcely
established at Wittemberg when he addressed to the Reformer some very
flattering expressions of admiration, couched in indifferent Greek
iambics; and in the year following he attended him to the public
disputations which he held with Eckius on the supremacy of the Pope.
Here he first beheld the strife into which he was destined presently to
enter, and learned the distasteful rudiments of theological controversy.
Two years afterwards, when certain of the opinions of Luther were
violently attacked by the Faculty of Paris, Melancthon interposed to
defend their author, to repel some vain charges which were brought
against him, and to ridicule the pride and ignorance of the doctors of
the Sorbonne. About the same time he engaged in the more delicate
question respecting the celibacy of the clergy, and opposed the Popish
practice with much zeal and learning. This was a subject which he had
always nearest his heart, and, in the discussions to which it led, he
surpassed even Luther in the earnestness of his argument; and he at
least had no personal interest in the decision, as he never took orders.
In 1528 it was determined to impose a uniform rule of doctrine and
discipline upon the ministers of the Reformed churches; and the office
of composing it was assigned to Melancthon. He published, in eighteen
chapters, an ‘Instruction to the Pastors of the Electorate of Saxony,’
in which he made the first formal exposition of the doctrinal system of
the Reformers. The work was promulgated with the approbation of Luther;
and the article concerning the bodily presence in the Eucharist conveyed
the opinion of the master rather than that of the disciple. Yet were
there other points so moderately treated and set forth in so mild and
compromising a temper, as sufficiently to mark Melancthon as the author
of the document; and so strong was the impression produced upon the
Roman Catholics themselves by its character and spirit, that many
considered it the composition of a disguised friend; and Faber even
ventured to make personal overtures to the composer, and to hold forth
the advantages that he might hope to attain by a seasonable return to
the bosom of the Apostolic Church.