SIR WILLIAM HUGGINS, K.C.B., O.M. 



By H. F. NEWALL, F.R.S. 

 of Cambridge 



The close 'of the life of a great worker brings with it many 

 thoughts. The one on which the mind is perhaps most inclined 

 to dwell is that a great hoard of knowledge and experience is 

 taken out of life ; a seat of judgment is destroyed. The death 

 of Sir William Huggins calls forth this thought with unusual 

 force ; for the greater part of the activity of a long and strenuous 

 life was devoted by him chiefly to the development of one 

 subject along exceedingly fruitful lines. 



There are those who hold that the meeting of a man with 

 an opportunity is the decisive element in any great advance. 

 Others, believing that both men and opportunities are numerous, 

 look for some peculiar bent of genius as the determining factor 

 in the achievement of success. Upholders of either view might 

 reasonably claim the case of Sir William Huggins as a crowning 

 instance. And so, whilst the two aspects of his career remain 

 in view, we are left revering his great achievements and 

 rejoicing in the splendidly happy completeness of a long life's 

 work. 



The great opportunity came to him, after some years of 

 tentative work, in his thirty-fifth year ; from that time onwards 

 the role of student and that of pioneer and leader were blended 

 in him without a break up to the time of his death in his eighty- 

 seventh year. He had, only last autumn, drawn together the 

 threads of his life's work by collecting and editing his scientific 

 papers. He had the splendid satisfaction of feeling that these 

 records, thrown off from year to year through five decades, held 

 their position, with hardly more than twenty editorial foot- 

 notes, as lasting steps of progress in the subject of his choice. 

 In hardly a single branch of it could an historical summary now 

 be made without dwelling on some of his work as of prime 

 importance in the development. 



Carlyle says, " Veracity : it is the basis of all ; and some 



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