monarch’s weak health, meditated procuring the regency for himself. Anne
of Austria, aware of this intention, approved of the project of
Cinq-Mars, which of course implied the assassination of the Cardinal. No
other mode of defying his power and talent could have been contemplated.
But Richelieu was on the watch. The Court was then in the south of
France, engaged in the conquest of Roussillon, a situation favourable
for the relation of the conspirators with Spain. The Minister surprised
one of the emissaries, had the fortune to seize a treaty concluded
between them and the enemies of France; and with this flagrant proof of
their treason, he repaired to Louis, and forced from him an order for
their arrest. It was tantamount to their condemnation. Cinq-Mars and his
friends perished on the scaffold; Anne of Austria was again humbled; and
every enemy of the Cardinal shrunk in awe and submission before his
ascendency. Amongst them was the King himself, whom Richelieu looked
upon as an equal in dignity, an inferior in mind and in power. The
guards of the Cardinal were numerous as the Monarch’s, and independent
of any authority save that of their immediate master. A treaty was even
drawn up between king and minister, as between two potentates. But the
power and the pride of Richelieu reached at once their height and their
termination. A mortal illness seized him in the latter days of 1642, a
few months after the execution of Cinq-Mars. No remorse for his cruelty
or abatement of his pride marked his last moments. He summoned the
monarch like a servant to his couch, instructed him what policy to
follow, and appointed the minister who was to be his own successor. Even
in the last religious duties, the same character and the same spirit
were observable. As his cardinal’s robe was a covering and excuse for
all crimes in life, he seemed to think that it exempted him from the
common lot of mortals after death.
Such was the career of this supereminent statesman, who, although in the
position of Damocles all his life, with the sword of the assassin
suspended over his head, surrounded with enemies, and with insecure and
treacherous support even from the monarch whom he served, still not only
maintained his own station, but possessed time and zeal to frame and
execute gigantic projects for the advancement of his country and of his
age. It makes no small part of Henry IV.’s glory that he conceived a
plan for diminishing the power of the House of Austria. Richelieu,
without either the security or the advantages of the king and the
warrior, achieved it. Not only this, but he dared to enter upon the war
at the very same time when he was humbling that aristocracy which had
hitherto composed the martial force of the country.
The effects of his domestic policy were indeed more durable than those
of what he most prided himself upon, his foreign policy. The latter was
his end, the former his means; but the means were the more important of
the two. For half a century previous, kings had been acquiring a
sacro-sanctity, a power founded on respect, which equalled that of
Asiatic despots; whilst at the same time their real sources of power
remained in the hands of the aristocracy. From this contradiction, this
want of harmony betwixt the theoretic and the real power of monarchs,
proceeded a state of licence liable at all times to produce the most
serious convulsions. To this state of things Richelieu put an end for
ever. He crushed the power of the great nobility, as Henry VII., by very
different means, had done before him in England. He made Louis a
sovereign in the most absolute sense; he reformed and changed the whole
system of administration, destroyed all local authorities, and
centralized them, as the term is, in the capital and the court. We see,
accordingly, that it was only the capital which could oppose Mazarin;
all provincial force was destroyed by Richelieu. He it was, in fact, who
founded the French monarchy, such as it existed until near the end of
the eighteenth century, a grand, indeed, rather than a happy result. He
was a man of penetrating and commanding intellect, who visibly
influenced the fortunes of Europe to an extent which few princes or
ministers have equalled. Unscrupulous in his purposes, he was no less so
in the means by which he effected them. But so long as men are honoured,
not for their moral excellences, but for the great things which they
have done for themselves, or their country, the name of Richelieu will
be recollected with respect, as that of one of the most successful
statesmen that ever lived.
His measures with respect to commerce were very remarkable. He proposed
to render the French marine as formidable as the French armies, and
chose the wisest means in favouring colonization and commercial
companies for the purpose. The chief part of their successful
settlements in the east and west the French owe to Richelieu. In
financial measures he showed least sagacity, and the disordered state in
which he left this branch of the administration was the principal cause
of the difficulties of his successor.
As a patron of letters, Richelieu has acquired a reputation almost
rivalling that of his statesmanship. His first and earliest success in
life had been as a scholar supporting his theses; and, as it is
continually observed that great men form very erroneous judgments of
their own excellences, he ever prided himself especially in his powers
as a penman: it was a complete mistake on his part. He has left a
considerable quantity of theological tracts of trifling merit.
Not content with his own sphere of greatness, he aspired to the minor
praise of being skilled in the fashionable literature of the day; and
amused himself by composing dramatic pieces, some of which Corneille was
employed to correct. The independence of the poet, and the pride of the
patron, led to a quarrel of which we have given some account in the life
of the great tragedian. In 1635 Richelieu founded the French Academy. We
should expect to find in his political writings traces of the
master-hand of one, who, with a mind of unusual power, had long studied
the subject of which he wrote. But those which are ascribed to him, for
none, we believe are avowed, or absolutely known to be his, are of
unequal merit. The ‘Mémoires de la Mère, et du Fils,’ are mediocre, and
unworthy of him. The ‘Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu’ (the
authenticity of which is strongly contested by Voltaire) bears a much
higher reputation as a work upon Government. La Bruyere has said of it,
that the man who had done such things ought never to have written, or to
have written in the style in which it is written.
There are several English lives of Cardinal Richelieu, most of them
published in the seventeenth century, but none which we know to be of
authority. In French, we may recommend the reader to the life of Aubery.
The best account of Richelieu, however, is said to be contained in the
‘Histoire de Louis XIII.’ by P. Griffet.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
J. H. WOLLASTON.
_From the original Picture by J. Jackson
in the possession of the Royal Society._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
WOLLASTON.
No record of this eminent philosopher has yet appeared, except his
scientific papers, and a few meagre biographical sketches published
shortly after his death. It is to be hoped that some one duly qualified
for the task will become the historian of his life and labours before it
is too late.
William Hyde Wollaston was born August 6, 1766. His grandfather was well
known as the author of a work, entitled ‘The Religion of Nature
Delineated.’ He completed his education at Caius College, Cambridge. It
has been said, in most of the memoirs of him, that he obtained the
honour of being senior wrangler. This is a mistake, arising from Francis
Wollaston, of Sidney, having gained the first place in 1783. It appears
from the Cantabrigienses Graduati that he did not graduate in Arts; but,
with a view to practising medicine, proceeded to the degrees of M.B. in
1787, and M.D. in 1793. He was not unversed, however, in mathematical
studies. He first established himself as a physician at Bury St.
Edmunds, in Suffolk; but meeting with little encouragement, removed to
London. Soon after this change of abode, he became a candidate for the
office of physician to St. George’s Hospital, in opposition to Dr.
Pemberton. The latter was elected, and Wollaston, in a fit of pique,
declared that he would abandon the profession, and never more write a
prescription, were it for his own father.
He kept to his resolution, hasty and unwise as it may seem; and from
this time forward devoted himself solely to the cultivation of science.
Even in an economical view he had no cause to regret this, for he
acquired wealth by the exercise of his inventive genius. One single
discovery, that of a method by which platinum can be made ductile and
malleable, is said to have produced him about thirty thousand pounds. It
has been objected that he derogated from the dignity of the philosophic
character by too keen an eye towards making his experiments profitable:
but in this field, if in any, the labourer is surely worthy of his
reward; and unless it can be shown that he turned away from any train of
discovery, because it did not promise pecuniary gain, surely not a
shadow of blame can be attached to him for profiting by the legitimate
earnings of his industry and talents. That he was fond of acquiring
money, there is good reason to believe; but there is a story, which has
been before told, and which we have ourselves some reason to consider
authentic, which proves that he could use nobly that which he had gained
frugally. A gentleman, in embarrassed circumstances, requested his
interference to procure some place under government. He replied, “I have
lived to sixty without asking a single favour from men in office, and it
is not, after that age, that I shall be induced to do it, were it even
to serve a brother. If the enclosed can be of any use to you, in your
present difficulties, pray accept it; for it is much at your service.”
The enclosure was a cheque for ten thousand pounds.
One of Wollaston’s peculiarities was an exceeding jealousy of any person
entering his laboratory. “Do you see that furnace?” he once said to a
friend, who had penetrated unbidden to this sacred ground. “Yes.” “Then
make a profound bow to it, for this is the first, and will be the last
time of your seeing it.” It is not a necessary inference, that this
dislike to having his processes observed arose from jealousy either of
his fame or his profit: it may have been merely the result of a somewhat
saturnine and reserved temper, which seems to have shunned unnecessary
publicity on all occasions.
Wollaston was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1793. He was
appointed one of its Secretaries, November 6, 1806. His first paper,
which is on medical subjects, is published in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1797; and, until his death, he continued to be a
frequent contributor. His papers amount in number to thirty-nine, and
must be well examined before a just idea can be formed of the extent and
variety of his scientific knowledge. They embrace various subjects
connected with Pathology, Optics, Electricity, Chemistry,
Crystallography, and mechanical contrivances of various sorts. He
contributed a few papers to other philosophical works. Of the Geological
Society he was an active member, though he sent no memoirs to its
Transactions; and on the first annual meeting of that body after his
death, the president, Dr. Fitton, bore testimony to the high value of
his services to the science of Geology.
The lives of Wollaston and Davy began and ended nearly at the same time,
and ran parallel to each other; they never crossed. Each was original,
and independent of the other; their minds were unlike, their processes
different, and the discoveries of one never interfered with those of the
other. “The chemical manipulations of Wollaston and Davy,” we quote from
Dr. Paris, “offered a singular contrast to each other, and might be
considered as highly characteristic of the temperaments and intellectual
qualities of these remarkable men. Every process of the former was
regulated with the most scrupulous regard to microscopic accuracy, and
conducted with the utmost neatness of detail. It has been already stated
with what turbulence and apparent confusion the experiments of the
latter were conducted; and yet each was equally excellent in his own
style; and as artists, they have not unaptly been compared to Teniers
and Michael Angelo. By long discipline, Wollaston acquired such power in
commanding and fixing his attention upon minute objects, that he was
able to recognize resemblances, and to distinguish differences, between
precipitates produced by re-agents, which were invisible to ordinary
observers, and which enabled him to submit to analysis the smallest
particle of matter with success. Davy on the other hand obtained his
results by an intellectual process, which may be said to have consisted
in the extreme rapidity with which he seized upon, and applied,
appropriate means at appropriate moments.
“To this faculty of minute observation, which Dr. Wollaston applied with
so much advantage, the chemical world is indebted for the introduction
of more simple methods of experimenting: for the substitution of a few
glass tubes and plates of glass for capacious retorts and receivers, and
for the art of making grains give the results which previously required
pounds. A foreign philosopher once called on Dr. Wollaston with letters
of introduction, and expressed an anxious desire to see his laboratory.
‘Certainly,’ we replied; and immediately produced a small tray
containing some glass tubes, a blow-pipe, two or three watch-glasses, a
slip of platinum, and a few test bottles.” We may conclude, however,
that this was not the whole of Wollaston’s apparatus, nor he in this
quite ingenuous; and the anecdote forms another illustration of his
dislike to admitting any one into his workroom.
To this ingenious turn of mind and love of minute accuracy we owe
several valuable instruments. Of these the most important is his
reflective Goniometer, or angle-measurer, which by calling in the
unerring laws of optics, enables the observer to ascertain within a
small limit of error, the angle contained between two faces of a
crystal, and introduced, in the words of Dr. Fitton, “into
crystallography a certainty and precision, which the most skilful
observers were before unable to attain.” Another of his contrivances is
the sliding Scale of chemical equivalents, an instrument highly useful
to the practical chemist. We also owe to him the Camera Lucida, which
enables persons unacquainted with drawing, to take accurate sketches of
any objects presented to their view. An amusing and characteristic
anecdote of his fondness for producing great results by small means, is
told by Dr. Paris. Shortly after he had witnessed Davy’s brilliant
experiments with the galvanic battery, he met a brother chemist in the
street, and taking him aside, pulled a tailor’s thimble and a small
phial out of his pocket, and poured the contents of the one into the
other. The thimble was a small galvanic battery, with which he instantly
heated a platinum wire to a white heat.
We have already spoken of the profits which he derived from the
manufacture of platinum. This intractable metal, most valuable in the
arts from its extreme difficulty of fusion, and power of resisting
almost all agents, was rendered by these very qualities almost incapable
of being reduced into that malleable form, in which alone it would be
made extensively useful. His method of working it is detailed at length
in his last Bakerian Lecture, published in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1829, and must be read before a person unacquainted
with metallurgy can imagine how tedious and laborious were the processes
by which he succeeded in bringing platinum to bear the hammer. By an
ingenious contrivance, described in the Transactions of 1813, he drew
platinum into wire 1/5000 of an inch in diameter, highly valuable for
the construction of telescopes; and even reduced some portions to the
inconceivable tenuity of 1/30,000. Several of his papers are devoted to
the consideration of platinum, and of the two new metals, palladium and
rhodium, which, in the course of his inquiries, he discovered in small
quantities in the ores of platinum. These also he succeeded in rendering
malleable. Rhodium is remarkable for its hardness, which has caused it
to be used to point the nibs of metallic pens.
During the autumn of 1828 Dr. Wollaston suffered from an affection of
the brain, of which he died, December 22, 1828, retaining his faculties
to the last. During the period of his illness, feeling that his life was
precarious, he devoted himself to communicating, by dictation, his
various discoveries and improvements to the world. Five papers by him
were read during the last session of the Royal Society during that year,
in one of which he alludes affectingly to his illness, as obliging him
to commit his observations to writing more hastily than he was wont.
Another is the Bakerian Lecture on the manufacture of platinum, already
mentioned.
Previous to his death he invested 1000_l._ stock in the name of the
Royal Society, the interest of which he directed to be employed for the
encouragement of experiments in Natural Philosophy. He was never
married, and was Senior Fellow of Caius at his death. He was privately
buried at Chiselhurst in Kent; of which parish his father had been
rector.
Dr. Wollaston’s philosophical character is thus described in the preface
to a late edition of Dr. Henry’s ‘Elements of Experimental
Chemistry:’—“Dr. Wollaston was endowed with bodily senses of
extraordinary acuteness and accuracy, and with great vigour of
understanding. Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had
acquired a powerful command over his attention, and had habituated
himself to the most rigid correctness both of thought and language. He
was sufficiently provided with the resources of the mathematics, to be
enabled to pursue with success profound inquiries in mechanical and
optical philosophy, the results of which enabled him to unfold the
causes of phenomena not before understood, and to enrich the arts
connected with those sciences by the invention of ingenious and valuable
instruments. In chemistry he was distinguished by the extreme nicety and
delicacy of his observations; by the quickness and precision with which
he marked resemblances and discriminated differences; the sagacity with
which he devised experiments and anticipated their results; and the
skill with which he executed the analysis of fragments of new
substances, often so minute as to be scarcely perceptible by ordinary
eyes. He was remarkable, too, for the caution with which he advanced
from facts to general conclusions: a caution which, if it sometimes
prevented him from reaching at once to the most sublime truths, yet
rendered every step of his ascent a secure station from which it was
easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions. Thus these
illustrious men, Wollaston and Davy, though differing essentially in
their natural powers and acquired habits, and moving independently of
each other, in different paths, contributed to accomplish the same great
ends, the evolving new elements; the combining matter into new forms;
the increase of human happiness by the improvement of the arts of
civilized life; and the establishment of general laws that will serve to
guide other philosophers onwards through vast and unexplored regions of
scientific discovery.”
[Illustration]
BOCCACCIO.
The family of this celebrated writer, who claims a distinguished place
among the founders of Italian literature, came from the village of
Certaldo, in the valley of the Elsa, about twenty miles south-west of
Florence. His father, Boccaccio di Chellino, was a Florentine merchant,
who, in his visits to Paris, became acquainted with a Frenchwoman, of
whom Giovanni Boccaccio, the subject of this memoir, was born, A. D.
1313. It is uncertain whether Paris or Florence was the place of his
nativity. He commenced his studies at Florence, under Giovanni da
Strada, a celebrated grammarian; but was apprenticed by his father, when
hardly ten years old, to another merchant, with whom he spent six years
in Paris. Attached to literature, he felt a strong distaste to his
mercantile life. He manifested the same temper after his return to
Florence; upon which his father sent him to Naples, partly upon
business, partly because he thought that mingling in the pleasures of
that gay city might neutralize his son’s distaste to the laborious
profession in which he was engaged. Robert of Anjou, the reigning king
of Naples, encouraged learning, and his court was the most polished of
the age: and during an abode of eight years in that capital, Boccaccio
became acquainted with most of the learned men of Italy, especially
Petrarch, with whom he contracted a friendship, broken only by death.
There also he fell in love with a lady of rank, whose real name he has
concealed under that of Fiametta. Three persons have been mentioned as
the object of his passion: the celebrated Joanna of Naples,
grand-daughter of Robert; Mary, the sister of Joanna; and another Mary,
the illegitimate daughter of Robert, who seems to have the best claim to
this distinction. It was at Naples, that Boccaccio, inspired by a visit
to Virgil’s tomb, conceived his first longings after literary fame. He
determined to give up commerce, and devote himself entirely to study;
and his father consented to this change, but only on condition that he
should apply himself to the canon law. This was a new source of
annoyance. For several years he pored over “dry decisions and barren
commentaries,” as he expresses himself; until he obtained his doctor’s
degree, and was left at liberty to follow his own pursuits.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Hopwood._
BOCCACCIO.
_From a Print by Cornelius Van Dalen._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
After remaining some time at Florence he returned to Naples; where he
employed himself in writing prose and verse, the Decameron and the
Teseide. His father died in 1349: and having turned his inheritance into
money, he travelled to Sicily, Venice, and other parts of Italy,
collecting manuscripts, frequenting universities and libraries, studying
Greek under Leontius Pilatus of Thessalonica, astronomy under Andalone
del Negro, and Roman literature and antiquities. Manuscripts at this
time were very costly; and he soon exhausted his patrimony in these
pursuits. He then applied himself to transcribing works; and, by dint of
expense and labour, collected a considerable library, which he
bequeathed to the Augustine friars of Santo Spirito, at Florence. But
his means were inadequate to gratify his liberal tastes: and at times he
found himself in very straitened circumstances. It is said that he
sometimes availed himself of his skill as a copyist, to eke out his
resources. In Petrarch he found a generous friend and a wise counsellor.
Boccaccio enjoyed a high reputation among his countrymen for learning
and ability; and he was several times employed by them on embassies and
affairs of state. But of all his missions, the most pleasing was that of
repairing to Padua, to communicate to Petrarch the solemn revocation of
the sentence of exile passed on his father during the factions of 1302;
and to inform him that the Florentines, proud of such a countryman, had
redeemed his paternal property, and earnestly invited him to dwell in
his own land, and confer honour on its then rising university. Though
much affected by this honourable reparation, Petrarch did not at the
time comply with their request.