700 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



HEXRY W. BELLOWS. 



TnE death of Dr. Bellows, so un- 

 expected, and while yet apparently in 

 the full vigor of his remarkable powers, 

 is not only a painful shock to his nu- 

 merous friends, but will he widely felt 

 as a public calamity. He has heen for 

 many years prominent and influential 

 in the management of important phil- 

 anthropic movements, and he has also 

 heen the virtual head of perhaps the 

 most cultivated, and certainly the most 

 liberal, of the religious denominations 

 of the country. "We have no design 

 here to give any account of his life and 

 labors, the task having been already 

 well performed by the newspaper press. 

 But there was one aspect of his mental 

 character to which it may be proper 

 for us to bear testimony. 



Dr. Bellows was a man of great 

 independence of thought, and, though 

 practically the leader of a religious sect, 

 and profoundly interested in maintain- 

 ing and extending its organizations, he 

 was yet deeply interested in the most 

 radical tendencies of inquiry. He sym- 

 pathized with the spirit of thorough- 

 going research in every field of investi- 

 gation, with an assured faith that, so 

 long as truth is earnestly sought, the 

 results must always be beneficent and 

 valuable. In a very recent conversation 

 with him, he spoke of having read with 

 great pleasure, and a very considerable 

 degree of accord, the new work of Re- 

 nan, " Marcus Aurelius," the last of that 

 author's series on the " Origins of Chris- 

 tianity." He also referred to Spencer's 

 "Data of Ethics," which he had care- 

 fully read at the time of its appearance, 

 and expressed much interest in the au- 

 thor's further elucidation of the subject. 

 He said, in substance : " I accept that 

 work as a very important contribution 

 to ethical science, and I am fundament- 

 ally in agreement with it. There are 

 parts of it that need further clearing 

 up, and that I could better appreciate 

 if I were more familiar with the scien- 

 tific evidence of the doctrine of evolu- 



tion. But Spencer's main position, that 

 morality must be grounded in nature, 

 and its principles confirmed by an ex- 

 tending knowledge of nature, it seems 

 to me, is impregnable; and he has cer- 

 tainly gone far toward constructing a 

 stable basis of ethical doctrine." 



"We mention these facts to show that 

 Dr. Bellows did not share the alarm 

 felt by many at the progress of rational- 

 ism ; that he was hospitable to advanced 

 opinions, even in his own sphere of 

 thought, and welcomed and prized them 

 as hopeful indications of a sound and 

 healthful progress in the higher depart- 

 ments of philosophic inquiry. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Uranometria of the Southern Heavens. 

 Brightness and Position of Every Fixed 

 Star down to the Seventh Magnitude, 

 within One Hundred Degrees of the 

 South Pole. By Benjamin Apthorp 

 Gocld. With an Atlas. Buenos 

 Ayres: Paul Emile Conti. New York : 

 D. Appleton & Co. Pp.383. Price, $20. 



In the excellent sketch of Dr. Gould 

 which we publish, a reference will be found 

 to his recent contributions to the astronomy 

 of the southern hemisphere. At the invi- 

 tation of the Argentine Republic he estab- 

 lished and assumed charge of the observatory 

 at Cordova in 1870, and took with him from 

 this country four assistants to aid in carry- 

 ing out the grand project of fixing the posi- 

 tions and grades of brightness of all the 

 southern stars visible to the naked eye at 

 his station. The work thus taken up was 

 an extension to the southern heavens of 

 the system of observations made by Arge- 

 lander, of Bonn, upon the northern heav- 

 ens, and published in 1843 in his celebrat- 

 ed " Uranometria Nova." The work of Ar- 

 gelander represents 3,256 stars from the 

 first to the sixth magnitude, which are to 

 be seen above the horizon of Bonn. Dr. 

 Gould's problem was to extend this enu- 

 meration over the whole southern sky, keep- 

 ing accurately to Argelander's standard. 

 But the extraordinary transparency of the 

 southern atmosphere makes visible grades 

 of stars which can not be seen in the North ; 



