EULOGY ON THOMAS YOUNG. 



13fl 



turn are skimmed over in a lew minutes, we may conceive what value 

 would be attached to one who was a true living- library, from whom exery 

 one could tind, at a moment, an exact, precise, substantial answer on 

 all kinds of questions Avhich they could propose to him. Young was 

 much occupied with the tine arts. Many of his memoirs testify the pro- 

 found knowledge which he had happily acquired of the theory of music. 

 He carried out also to a great extent the talent of executijig it ; and 1 

 believe it is certain that of all known instruments, even including the 

 Scottish bagpipe, only one or two could be named on which he could 

 not play. His taste for painting developed itself during a visit which 

 he paid to Germany. There the magnificent collection at Dresden ab- 

 sorbed his attention entirely ; for he aspired not solely to the easy credit 

 of connecting together, without mistake, the name of such or such au 

 artist with such or such a painting; the defects and the characteristic 

 qualities of the greatest masters, tbeir frequent changes of manner, the 

 material objects which they introduced into their works, the modifica- 

 tions which those objects and the colors underwent in progress of time, 

 among other i)oints, occupied him in succession. Young, in one word, 

 studied painting in Saxony as he had before studied languages in his 

 own country, and as he afterward studied the sciences. Everything, 

 in fact, was a subject of meditation and research. The university 

 contemporaries of the illustrious physicist recalled a laughable instance 

 of this trait of his mind. They related that entering his room one day, 

 when for the first time he had taken a lesson in dancing the minuet, at 

 Edinburgh, they found him occupied in tracing out minutely with the 

 rule and compasses the route gone through by the two dancers, and the 

 different improvements of which these figures seemed to him susceptible. 

 Young borrowed with happy effect from the sect of the Friends, to 

 which he then belonged, the opinion that the intellectual faculties of 

 children differ originally from each other much less than is commonly 

 supposed. "Any man can do what any other man has done," became 

 his favorite maxim. And further, never did he personally himself recoil 

 before trials of any kind to which he wished to subject his system. The 

 first time he mounted a horse in company with the grandson of Mr. Bar- 

 clay, the horseman who preceded them leaped a high fence. Y'oung 

 wished to imitate him, but he fell at ten paces. He remounted without 

 saying a word, made a second attempt, was again unseated, but this 

 time was not thrown further than on the horse's neck, to Avhicli he 

 clung. At the third trial the young learner, as his favorite motto taught, 

 succeeded in executing what another had done before him.* This experi- 

 ment need not have been referred to here, but that it had been repeated 

 at Edinburgh, and afterward at Gottingen, and carried out to a further 

 extent beyond what might seem credible. In one of these two cities 

 Young soon afterward entered into a trial of skill with a celebrated 

 rope-dancer ; in the other, (and in each case the result of a challenge,) 

 he ac(iuired the art of executing feats on horseback with remarkable 

 skill, even in the midst of consummate artistes, whose feats of agility 

 attract every evening such numerous crowds to the circus of Franconi. 

 Thus, those who are fond of drawing contrasts may, on the one side, 

 represent to themselves the timid Xewton,t nex'er riding in a carriage, 

 so much did the fear of being upset preoccupy him, without holding to 



* This anecdote seems at variance with what is stated on the authority of a Cam- 

 bridjTe contemporary of Young in Dr. Peacock's Life, (p. 119,) that he only- once there 

 attempted to follow the hounds, when a severe fall prevented any further exbibitioua 

 of the kind. — TraNSLatoij. 



t This practice has been described as that of Newton's, but the motive assigned by 

 Arago is novel. 



