SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERERS AND MECHANICIANS.
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.
[Illustration: JAMES WATT. SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.]
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.
[Illustration: ORIGIN OF THE STOCKING-LOOM.]
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
10,000_l._ 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.
[Illustration: JAMES WATT—WHEN A BOY—PLAYING WITH THE TEA-KETTLE.]
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,
[Illustration: COLUMBUS]
[Illustration: RETURN OF 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,
[Illustration: 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.