258 M. Blot's Abstract of Mr Napier's 



If such was the state of continental Europe, that of Scotland 

 was still worse. The inhabitants of its Highlands, divided into 

 semi-barbarous tribes, spent their lives amid a succession of wars 

 and brigandage, perpetuated by the interminable quarrels of 

 their savage chiefs. The regal authority, powerless to set at 

 rest their hereditary conflicts, was regarded by such ambitious 

 vassals as nothing else than an instrument of domination and of 

 fortune, which each struggled to obtain for himself by becoming 

 the most formidable. To this we must add the first propagation 

 of those new ideas of religious reformation, entertained by a few 

 from sincere conviction, by many from interested motives, or 

 fanaticism ; while, on the other hand, opinions and interests dia- 

 metrically opposed to these, conspired with equal violence to ex- 

 clude them. In such times, and in such a country, it may rea- 

 dily be supposed, that after the lapse of two centuries, no traces 

 ehould exist of the first years of an infant, however distinguish- 

 ed as a man in the unexplored paths of abstract science. Hence, 

 notwithstanding the most indefatigable research, his Scotch bio- 

 grapher, with the exception of some vague and unimportant indi- 

 cations, has not been able to throw light upon the education of 

 young Napier. To fill this void, he launches into a course of in- 

 terminable digressions, relating, for example, the biography, more 

 or less obscured by time, of six or seven Napiers of Merchiston, 

 the lineal predecessors of the inventor of logarithms, their for- 

 tunes, their alliances, the transactions political, commercial, mi- 

 Ktary or civil, in which they had been actors,* and as these 



• It may be doubted if a French philosopher, however accomplished, caii 

 fairly appreciate this portion of Mr Napier's work. It was not possible to fur- 

 nish a pure biography, in the proper view of such compositions, of the inven- 

 tor of logarithms, whose isolated habits had left scarcely any domestic traces 

 of the man. But it happened that his family charter-chest contained some 

 curious documents connecting the history of his lineage, for centuries, in a re- 

 markable manner with the history of Scotland, and with the personal for- 

 tunes of the ill-fated House of Stuart. His biof^rapher, therefore, indepen- 

 dently of Napier's own history, has compiled with labour and research a do- 

 mestic collection of Scotch historical antiquities, which will be appreciated by 

 a certain class of readers in Scotland, who may not be, perhaps, so much inte- 

 rested in the scientific history of Napier himself. The miserable state of the 

 records in Scotland created a school of which Lord Hailes is the illustrious 

 founder, by means of whose minute researches materials for a complete his- 

 tory of Scotland are still being collected. This cannot be so well under- 



