Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 229 



gree fertile and inventive, took a rapid and extensive range in pursuit 

 of conjectural analogies, which he submitted to close and patient com- 

 parison with known facts, and tried by an appeal to ingenious and 

 conclusive experiments. He was imbued with the spirit, and was a 

 master in the practice, of the inductive logic ; and he has left us some 

 of the noblest examples of the efficacy of that great instrument of 

 human reason in the discovery of truth. He applied it, not only to 

 connect classes of facts of more limited extent and importance, but 

 to develop great and comprehensive laws, which embrace phasnomena, 

 that are almost universal to the natural world. In explaining those 

 laws, he cast upon them the illumination of his own clear and vivid 

 conceptions; — he felt an intense admiration of the beauty, order, 

 and harmony, which are conspicuous in the perfect Chemistry of Na- 

 ture ; — and he expressed those feelings with a force of eloquence, 

 which could issue only from a mind of the highest powers, and of the 

 finest sensibilities. — With much less enthusiasm from temperament. 

 Dr. WoUaston was endowed with bodily senses of extraordinary acute- 

 ness and accuracy, and with great general vigour of understanding. 

 Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had acquired a 

 powerful command over his attention, and had habituated himself to 

 the most rigid correctness, both of thought and of language. He was 

 sufficiently provided with the resources of the mathematics, to be en- 

 abled to pursue, with success, profound inquiries in mechanical and 

 optical philosophy, the results of which enabled him to unfold the 

 causes of phsenomena, not before understood, and to enrich the arts, 

 connected with those sciences, by the invention of ingenious and 

 valuable instruments. In ChemUtrij, he was distinguished by the 

 extreme nicety and delicacy of his observations ; by the quickness 

 and precision with which he marked resemblances and discriminated 

 differences ; the sagacity with which he devised experiments, and 

 anticii)ated their results ; and the skill with which he executed the 

 analysis of fragments of new substances, often so minute as to be 

 scarcely perceptible by ordinary eyes. He was remarkable, too, for 

 the caution with which he advanced from facts to general conclusions ; 

 a caution which, if it sometimes prevented him from reaching at once 

 to the most sublime truths, yet rendered every step of his ascent a 

 secure station, from which it was easy to rise to higher and more en- 

 larged inductions. — Thus these illustrious men, though differing essen- 

 tially in their natural powers and ac<|uired habits, and moving, inde- 

 pendently of each other, in different paths, contributed to accomplish 

 the same great ends — tlie evolving new elements ; the combining 

 matter into new forms ; the increase of human happiness by the im- 

 provement of the arts of civilized life ; and the establishment of gene- 

 ral laws, tiitit will servo to guide other philosophers onwards, through 

 vast and unexjflored regions of scientific discovery." 



From tiie same work we also copy the annexed view, which con- 

 tains the latest facts known respecting the 



Conipoiimls of I'hfisjiliortis ar.d Ilijdrogcn. 



"The section on these compounds (vol. i p. 'iJi)) having been re- 

 composed 



