NEWSTEAD ABBEY NEWTON. 



213 



printing establishments, 1500 presses ; in Paris, 81 

 printing establishments, or 850 presses). In Paris 

 alone, containing 890,000 inhabitants, there are 176 

 periodical works. As curiosities in this branch of 

 literature, we may mention the newspaper established 

 in Egypt by authority of Mohammed Pacha, printed 

 at Boulac, near Cairo, and containing a report of all 

 public transactions of consequence. February 21, 

 1828, appeared the first number of the Cherokee 

 Phoenix, a weekly paper, published at New Echota, 

 Georgia, partly in English, partly in Cherokee Indian. 

 In British India six gazettes are published in the 

 Bengal dialect. 



NEWSTEAD ABBEY, celebrated as the resi- 

 dence of lord Byron, is situated in Nottinghamshire, 

 136 miles north-west of London, four miles from Mans- 

 field. It was an Augustin monastery, founded by 

 Henry II., and granted to John Byron by Henry 

 VIII., at the time of the suppression of the monas- 

 teries. It has continued in the family ever since. 

 Though much fallen to decay, it is still completely 

 an abbey, and the greatest part of it is still standing 

 in the same state as when it was first built. There 

 are two tiers of cloisters, with numerous cells and 

 rooms, and many of the original rooms are still in use. 

 Of the abbey church, only one end remains. The 

 house and gardens are entirely surrounded by a wall, 

 with battlements ; in front is a large lake, bordered 

 with castellated buildings ; all this is surrounded 

 with bleak and barren hills, with scarce a tree to be 

 seen for miles. Lord Byron, in his will, directed it 

 to be sold. The " uses vile" to which it was con- 

 demned by the noble bard, seem but too truly de- 

 picted in his Childe Harold (i. 7). 



Monastic dome ! condemned to uses vile ! 

 Where superstition once had made her den, 

 Now Paphian girln were known to sing and smile ; 

 And monks might deem their time was oome aj;en, 

 If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men. 



NEW STYLE. See Calendar, and Epoch. 



NEW TESTAMENT. See Bible. 



NEWTON, SIR ISAAC, the most distinguished 

 mathematician and philosopher of modern times, was 

 born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, December 25, 

 1642 (O. S.), and, at his birth, was so small and 

 weak that his life was despaired of. On the death 

 of his lather, which took place while he was yet an 

 infant, the manor of Woolsthorpe became his heri- 

 tage. His mother sent him, at an early age, to the 

 village school, and, in his twelfth year, to the town 

 of Grantham. While here, he displayed a decided 

 taste for philosophical and mechanical inventions; 

 and, avoiding the society of other children, provided 

 himself with a collection of saws, hammers, and other 

 instruments, with which he constructed models of 

 many kinds of machinery. He also made hour- 

 glasses acting by the descent of water ; and, a new 

 wind-mill, of a peculiar construction, having been 

 erected in the town, he studied it until he succeeded 

 in imitating it, and placed a mouse inside, which he 

 called the miller. Some knowledge of drawing 

 being necessary in these operations, he applied him- 

 self, without a master, to the study ; and the walls of 

 his room were covered with all sorts of designs. 

 After a short period, however, his mother took him 

 home, for the purpose of employing him on the 

 farm, and about the affairs of the house, and sent 

 him, several times, to market, at Grantliam, with 

 the produce of the farm. A trusty servant was sent 

 with him, and the young philosopher left him to 

 manage the business, while he himself employed his 

 time in reading. A sun-dial which he constructed, 

 on the wall of the house at Woolsthorpe, is still 

 shown. This irresistible passion for study and 

 science finally induced his mother to send him back 



to Grantham, where he remained till his eighteenth 

 year, when he was entered at Trinity college, Cam- 

 bridge (1660). A taste for mathematical studies 

 had, for some time, prevailed there ; the elements of 

 algebra and geometry usually formed a part of the 

 course, and Newton had the good fortune to find the 

 celebrated doctor Barrow professor. In order to 

 prepare himself for the lectures, Newton read the 

 text-books in advance : these were Sanderson's 

 Logic and Kepler's Treatise on Optics ; the Geome- 

 try of Descartes was also one of the first books that 

 he read at Cambridge. He next proceeded, at the age 

 of about twenty-one, to study the works of Wallis, 

 and appears to have been particularly delighted with 

 the celebrated treatise of that author entitled Arith- 

 metica Infinitorum. Wallis had given the quadra- 

 ture of curves whose ordinates are expressed by any 

 integral and positive power of 1 < 2 , and had observed 

 that if, between the areas so calculated, we could 

 interpolate the areas of other curves, the ordinates of 

 which constituted, with the former ordinates, a geo- 

 metrical progression, the area of the curve, whose 

 ordinate was a mean proportional between 1 and 

 1 # 2 , would express a circular surface, in terms of 

 the square of its radius. In order to effect this inter- 

 polation, Newton began to seek, empirically, the 

 arithmetical law of the co-efficients of the series 

 already obtained ; and, having done this, he rendered 

 it more general by expressing it algebraically. Per- 

 ceiving that this interpolation gave him the expres- 

 sion, in series, of radical quantities, composed of 

 several terms, he directly verified this induction by 

 multiplying each series by itself the number of times 

 required by the index of the root, and found, in fact, 

 that 'this multiplication reproduced exactly the quan- 

 tity from which it had been deduced. Having thus 

 ascertained that* this form of series really gave the 

 development of radical quantities, he was led to con- 

 sider that they might be obtained still more directly, 

 by applying to the proposed quantities the process 

 used in arithmetic for extracting roots. This gave 

 him, again, the same series, but made them depend 

 on a much more general method, since it permitted 

 him to express, analytically, any powers whatever of 

 polynomials, their quotients, and their roots, by con- 

 sidering and calculating these quantities as the 

 developments of powers corresponding to integral 

 negative, or fractional exponents. Indeed, in the 

 generality and in the uniformity given to these 

 developments the discovery of Newton really con- 

 sists; for Wallis had remarked before him, with 

 regard to monomial quantities, the analogy of quo- 

 tients and roots with integral powers, expressed 

 according to the notation of Descartes; and Pascal 

 had given a rule for forming, directly, any term of 

 the development of binomial powers, the exponent 

 being an integer. Thus was discovered the cele- 

 brated formula, known as Newton's Binomial Theo- 

 rem (q. v.). Newton further perceived, that there 

 is hardly any analytical research, in which the use 

 of it is not necessaiy, or at least possible, and imme- 

 diately made a great number of the most important 

 applications of it. Thus he obtained the quadrature 

 oi the hyperbola, and of many other curves, and also 

 extended his formulae to the surfaces of solids, the 

 determination of their contents, and the situation of 

 their centres of gravity. Wallis, in his Arithmet. Infin. 

 (1665), had shown that the area of all curves may be 

 found, whose ordinate is expressed by any integral 

 power of the abscissa, and had given the expression 

 for this area in terms of the ordinate. Newton, by 

 reducing into series the more complicated functions 

 of the abscissa, which represent the ordinates, changed 

 them into a series of monomial terms, to each of which 

 he was able to apply the rule of Wallis. He thus 



