ANNALS 



OF 



PHILOSOPHY. 



MARCH, 1820. 



Article I. 



Biographical Account of Stephen Hales, D.D. F.R.S. S<;c. 

 Rector of Farringdon, Hampshire, and Minister ofTeddington, 

 Middlesex. 



I3r. hales was bora in the county of Kent on Sept. 7, 1677. 

 He was the son of Thomas Hales and Maiy Wood. His family 

 was one of the oldest and most respectable in the whole county, 

 and his grandfather had been raised to the dignity of a baronet. 



He acquired the rudiments of his education in his father's 

 house. His tutors seem to have confined their instructions to 

 those branches of knowledge which were considered as connected 

 with the ecclesiastical profession to which he was destined. 

 Nothing at this early age announc-ed the great talents which he 

 had received from nature, unless we consider the assiduity with 

 which he devoted himself to his studies, and the correctness of 

 his mode of thinking, as indications of genius. And in fact they 

 often constitute the dawn of a great man's career, making their 

 appearance before any other indication of great abilities can be 

 observed. 



He went to Cambridge at the age of 19, and became a pen- 

 sioner in Bennet College. Here he took his decree, and here 

 he began to show a fondness for mathematics and physics. He 

 devoted himself to these pursuits with such ardour that without 

 any other assistance than his own labour, he made himself suffi- 

 ciently acquainted with the system of Copernicus to represent it 

 in a kind of planisphere, in which the planets were placed in 

 their natural order, and made their revolutions in times propor- 

 tional to the times of their real revolutions. Such a machine 



Vol.. XV. N° JII. L 



