OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : MAY 27, 1862. 15 



Having published, some thirty years ago, a small volume on the His- 

 tory of England under the Anglo-Saxon Period, and an elaborate work 

 on the Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, he was en- 

 gaged in his last years on a " History of Normandy and England." 

 Of this work he lived to complete three volumes, to publish two, and 

 to make progress in at least a fourth. The double aspect of his sub- 

 ject would enable him to develop and enforce his leading ideas on 

 early French and early English history. The published volumes 

 deal only with the Continental side. The English portion, for which 

 his wide and deep studies had liberally furnished him, will, it is to be 

 hoped, soon be brought out. The work, so far as it has appeared, 

 abounds in the fruits of learning, and bears perpetual witness to the 

 Christian zeal and moral thoughtfulness of its author. That it has not 

 won for him the highest honors of an historian, but has left his reputa- 

 tion to rest mainly, as before, on his great antiquarian labors, is owing 

 less to a want of unity of thought (although the plan of the history has 

 been in some respects excepted to) than of unity and proportion in the 

 execution. He has too readily yielded to the temptation to digress and 

 moralize ; his imagination is not sufficiently curbed by severe taste ; 

 and his style is occasionally eccentric, even to the verge of the gro- 

 tesque. His plea that a history is not strictly a work of art is not a 

 full absolution for these peculiarities. But even in the part already 

 published, as well as in many of Sir Francis's earlier essays, there is 

 abundant life ; and the reader meets with striking thoughts, sometimes 

 expressed with great felicity and point. 



In fine, if not a great historian. Sir Francis Palgrave, as a great his- 

 torical antiquary, has contributed invaluable materials to history, and 

 he has left behind him a most honorable example of fifty years of ac- 

 complished, disinterested, and devoted study. 



Professor Peter Barlow was born in Norwich, in 177G, and 

 educated in that city. His strength of character and mathematical 

 genius displayed themselves* at an early age. In 1806 he was ap- 

 pointed one of the mathematical professors at the Royal Military 

 Academy at Woolwich, which office he held forty-one years. He 

 was the author of numerous works, among which are his well-known 

 treatises on the " Theory of Numbers," " The Strength of Materials," 

 and his " Essay on Magnetism." He was the author of most of the 

 articles on subjects of practical mechanics and the useful arts in the 

 Encyclopcedia Metropolitana. These papers have been collected and 



