MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 45 



resources of the calculus, and occupying the heights to which the labors of 

 Kuler, Clairant D'Alembert, and La Grange have enabled us to ascend, adopt- 

 ing the Newtonian fraction of 1-230 as the accurate solution of this specula- 

 tive problem. New admeasurements have been undertaken upon a vast scale, 

 patronized by the munificence of rival Governments, new experiments have 

 been performed with approved apparatus of exceeding delicacy, new obser- 

 vations have been accumulated with glasses far exceeding any powers pos- 

 sessed by the resources of optics in the days of him to whom the science of 

 optics, as well as dynamics, owes its origin, the theory and fact have thus 

 been compared and reconciled together in more perfect harmony; but that 

 theory has remained unimproved, and the great principle of gravitation, with 

 most sublime results, now stands in the attitude, and of the dimensions, and 

 with the symmetry, which both the law and its application receive at once 

 from the mighty hand of its immortal author. But the contemplation of 

 Newton's discoveries raised other feelings than wonder at his matchless ge- 

 nius. The light with which it shines is not more dazzling than useful. The 

 difficulties of his course, and his expedients alike copious and refined for 

 surmounting them, exercise the faculties of the wise, while commanding 

 then; admiration ; but the results of investigations, often abstruse, are truths 

 so grand and comprehensive, yet so plain, that they both captivate and 

 instruct the simple. The gratitude, too, which they inspire, and the venera- 

 tion with which they encircle his name, far from tending to obstruct future 

 improvement, only proclaim his disciples the zealous because rational follow- 

 ers of one whose example both encouraged and enabled his successors to 

 make further progress. How unlike the blind devotion to a master which 

 for so many ages of the modern world paralyzed the energies of the human 

 mind ! 



" Had we still paid that homage to a name 



AVhich only God and nature justly claim, 



The Western seas had been our utmost bound, 



And poets still might dream the sun was drowned, 



And all the stars that shine in Southern skies 



Had been admired by none but savage eyes." 



Nor let it be imagined that the feelings excited contemplating the achieve- 

 ments of this great man are in any degree whatever the result of national 

 partiality, and confined to the country which glories in having given him 

 birth. The language which expresses her veneration is equalled, perhaps 

 exceeded, by that in which other nations give utterance to theirs ; not merely 

 by the general voice, but by the well-considered and well-informed judgment 

 of the masters of science. Leibnitz, when asked at the Royal table in Berlin 

 his opinion of Newton, said that, " Taking mathematicians from the begin- 

 ning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was 

 much the better half." " The Prindpia will ever remain a monument of 

 the profound genius which revealed to us the greatest law of the universe," 

 are the words of La Place. " That work stands preeminent above all other 

 productions of the human mind." " The discovery of that simple and 

 general law, by the greatness and variety of the objects Avhich it embraces, 

 confers honor upon, the -intellect of man." La Grange, we are told by 

 Delambre, was wont to describe Newton as the greatest genius that ever 

 existed, but to add how fortunate he was also, " because there can only once 

 be found a system of the universe to establish." " Never," says the father 



