38 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



of modern Chemistry. The blessed effects of its proper exhibition in tho 

 diminution of the sum of human agony are indescribable. But that divine- 

 like application was not present to the mind of the scientific chemist who 

 discovered the anaesthetic product, any more than was the gas-lit town to 

 the mind of Priestley, or the condensing engine to that of Black. 



ADDRESS OF LORD BROUGHAM AT THE INAUGURATION OF A 

 STATUE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 



The following eloquent and suggestive address was delivered by Lord 

 Brougham, September 21, 1858, on the occasion of inaugurating a statue to 

 Sir Isaac Newton, at Grantham, the great philosopher's birthplace. Al- 

 though somewhat foreign to the general subject-matter of the Annual, we 

 think its publication will be most acceptable to our readers. Rising from a 

 venerable arm-chair, in which Newton sat when he composed the Principia, 

 the learned Ex-Chancellor spoke as follows : 



To record the names and preserve the memory of those whose great 

 achievements in science, in arts, or in arms, have conferred benefits and 

 lustre upon our kind, has, in all ages, been regarded as a duty, and felt as a 

 gratification, by wise and reflecting men. The desire of inspiring an ambi- 

 tion to emulate such examples, generally mingles itself with these senti- 

 ments; but they cease not to operate, even in the rare instances of transcend- 

 ent merit, where matchless genius excludes all possibility of imitation, and 

 nothing remains but wonder in those who contemplate its triumphs at a dis- 

 tance that forbids all attempts to approach. We are this day assembled to 

 commemorate him of whom the consent of nations has declared that he is 

 chargeable with nothing like a follower's exaggeration or local partiality; 

 who pronounce the name of Newton as that of the greatest genius ever 

 bestowed by the bounty of Providence for instructing mankind on the frame 

 of the universe, and the laws by Avhich it is governed : 



" In genius who surpassed mankind as far 

 As does the midday sun the midnight star." DRYDEN. 



But, though scaling these lofty heights be hopeless, yet is there some use 

 and much gratification in contemplating by what steps he ascended. Trac- 

 ing his course of action may help others to gain the lower eminences lying 

 within their reach, while admiration excited and curiosity satisfied are frames 

 of mind both wholesome and pleasing. Nothing new, it is true, can be given 

 in narrative, hardly anything in reflection, less still, perhaps, in comment or 

 illustration; but it is well to assemble in one view various parts of the vast 

 subject, with the surrounding circumstances, whether accidental or intrinsic, 

 and to mark in passing the misconceptions raised by individual ignorance or 

 national prejudice which the historian of science occasionally finds crossing 

 his path. The remark is common and is obvious, that the genius of Newton 

 did not manifest itself at a very early age. His faculties were not, like those 

 of some great and many ordinary individuals, precociously developed. 

 Among the former, Clairaut -stands preeminent, who at nineteen years of 

 age presented to the Royal Academy a memoir of great originality upon a 

 difficult subject in the higher geometry, and at eighteen published his great 

 work on curves of double curvature, composed during the two preceding 

 years. Pascal, too, at sixteen, wrote an excellent treatise on conic sections. 



