THE 



EDINBURGH 

 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Art. I. — Memoir of the Life of M. Le Chevalier Fravn- 

 HOFER, the Celebrated Improver of the Achromatic Tele- 

 scope, and Member of the Academy of Sciences at Munich. 



Of all the losses which science is occasionally called to sus- 

 tain, there is none which she so deeply deplores as that of an 

 original and inventive genius, cut off in the maturity of in- 

 tellect, and in the blaze of reputation. There is an epoch in 

 the career of a man of genuine talent when he embellishes and 

 extends every subject over which he throws the mantle of his 

 genius. Imbued with the spirit of original research, and fa- 

 miliar with the processes of invention and discovery, his mind 

 teems with new ideas, which spring up around him in rapid 

 and profuse succession. Inventions incompleted, ideas un- 

 developed, and speculations immatured, amuse and occupy 

 the intervals of elaborate inquiry, and he often sees before 

 him in dim array a long train of discoveries which time and 

 health alone are necessary to realize. The blight of early ge- 

 nius that has put forth its buds of promise, or the stroke 

 which severs from us the hoary sage when he has ceased to 

 instruct and adorn his generation, are events which are felt 

 with a moderated grief, and throughout a narrow range of 

 sympathy ; but the blow which strikes down the man of genius 

 in his prime, and in the very heart of his gigantic conceptions, 

 is felt with all the bitterness of sorrow, and is propagated 

 far beyond the circle on which it falls. When a pillar is torn 

 from the temple of science, it must needs convulse the whole 



VOL. VII. NO. I. JULY I827. A 



