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OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (CoRuu Cox.) 



went to London, where he was admitted to the 

 Royal Academy schools. In 1827 he went to 

 Brussels, and became acquainted with the artist 

 Verboeekhaven, whose style he adopted. He set- 

 tled in London in 1831, where he exhibited at the 

 Suffolk Galleries in 1833 and at the Royal Acad- 

 emy the next year: By this time he had become 

 known as a painter of cattle and rural scenes, 

 and his pictures, appearing regularly at the Royal 

 Academy exhibitions, attracted much attention. 

 He became an associate royal academician in 

 1845 and a full member in 1867. In 1882 he pre- 

 sented his native city with the Sidney Cooper 

 Gallery of Art. He continued active in his pro- 

 fession till very shortly before his death, sending 

 four pictures to the Royal Academy in 1901. He 

 remained ever faithful to his earliest conceptions 

 of what a picture should be, and his later paint- 

 ings differ only in execution from his early ones. 

 His style was neat, but essentially artificial, and 

 was based on seventeenth-century traditions. His 

 art was wholly lacking in the principle of growth ; 

 it pleased persons of simple tastes who delighted 

 in highly finished canvases representing sunny 

 meadows dotted over with grazing cattle, but it 

 never displayed either fresh study of Nature or 

 spontaneity, and at its best was but an extremely 

 clever imitation. Cooper exhibited at the Royal 

 Academy sixty-seven years without a break. His 

 autobiography, entitled My Life, appeared in 1890. 

 Cornu, Alfred, French physicist, born in Cha- 

 teauneuf, Loiret, March 6, 1841; died April 11, 

 1902. He entered the Military School of Paris in 

 1860, and thence went to the School of Mines, 

 which he left in 1866. One year latter he was ap- 

 pointed Professor of Physics at the Ecole Polytech- 

 nique, which chair he filled to the end of his life. 

 Optics was his favorite study, and the pages of 

 the Compte Rendus record papers of his on this 

 subject as early as 1863. Following the work of 

 Jamin, he investigated the relation between vit- 

 reous and metallic reflection, and showed that, 

 while they affect different regions of the spectrum, 

 they are but parts of one and the same phenome- 

 non. Soon after receiving his professorship 

 Cornu began those careful and laborious experi- 

 ments on the speed of light-waves which have be- 

 come classical. His method, although fundament- 

 ally the same as that of Fizeau, was carried out 

 more carefully and with better apparatus, so that 

 he secured a much greater degree of accuracy than 

 his famous predecessor. He was awarded the prix 

 Lacaze in 1878 for this work, and in the same 

 year was admitted to the Academic des Sciences. 

 In 1872 several papers of his on electrostatics, 

 in which he discussed the potential theories of 

 Gauss and Green, then little known in France, at- 

 tracted wide attention. These researches were 

 printed in Vol. I of the Journal de Physique. 

 For the next few years he devoted himself to 

 work on the spectrum. He accurately measured 

 the wave-lengths of the hydrogen rays, and made 

 important observations on atmospheric absorption 

 in the spectrum. He was thus able to fix the in- 

 ferior limit of the ultra-violet end of the spec- 

 trum at low elevations, and found that in the lab- 

 oratory air is opaque to ultra-violet waves of a 

 lesser length than 0.185 p.. He did important and 

 interesting work on meteorological optics. It was 

 he who first pointed out the probable origin of the 

 wonderful twilight glows observed in the sky to- 

 ward the end of 1883 in the volcanic explosions 

 of Krakatoa. They were due to the diffraction 

 caused by the fine powders thrown up for miles 

 into the atmosphere by the mighty forces of the 

 volcano. He did important work on the optical 

 constants of lenses, devised the optical lever for 



the measurement of the curvature of lenses, and 

 perfected, the Jellett prism for polarimetric work. 

 In conjunction with M. Bailie he redetermined 

 the constant of gravitation. Almost every branch 

 of optics is indebted to him for some valuable re- 

 search or ingenious instrument. He also did im- 

 portant work in connection with the electrical syn- 

 chronization of clocks. He took part in the first 

 electrical congress in Paris in 1881. He was twice 

 president of the Academic des Sciences, twice pres- 

 ident of the SocietS de Physique, and was unani- 

 mously elected president of the International Con- 

 gress of Physics in 1900. In 1886 he became a 

 member of the Bureau de Longitudes, and in 1900 

 of the International Commission of Weights and 

 Measures. In 1878 he received the Rumford 

 medal of the English Royal Society, and in 1899 

 the honorary degree of doctor of science from the 

 University of Cambridge. 



Cornwall, James, English educator, born in 

 1812; died in Sydenham Hill, England, Dec. 12, 

 1902. When the famous school established by 

 Joseph Lancaster in the Borough Road, London, 

 was reorganized with a training-school attached, 

 under a Government act of 1846, Dr. Cornwall was 

 its first principal. He resigned this post in 1856, 

 and the rest of his life was passed in retirement. 

 He possessed rare gifts as a teacher and lecturer, 

 and was the author of many schoolbooks and 

 manuals which, though now superseded by later 

 works, were far in advance of their contempora- 

 ries. A school geography by him reached its nine- 

 tieth edition, and his latest work, The Science of 

 Arithmetic, attained more than 20 editions. 



Cowper, William Macquarie, Anglican cler- 

 gyman, born in New South Wales, in 1810; died 

 at Sydney, New South Wales, in June, 1902. He 

 was a son of Archdeacon Cowper, for many years 

 incumbent of St. Philip's, Sydney, and was grad- 

 uated at Oxford in 1833. He was ordained to the 

 priesthood in 1834, and was for a short period 

 curate of St. Petrox's parish, Dartmouth. Return- 

 ing to Australia in 1836, he was for twenty years 

 chaplain to the Australian Agricultural Company 

 at Port Stephen, and in 1856 became president of 

 Moore Theological College and incumbent of St. 

 John's, Bishopthorpe. He succeeded his father at 

 St. Philip's on the latter's death, in 1858, and at 

 the same time was appointed Dean of Sydney, and 

 also archdeacon in his father's stead. In 1869 

 he left St. Philip's for the cathedral parish, of 

 which he remained incumbent till his death. 

 Dean Cowper was an authority on all matters per- 

 taining to the Australian Church. 



Cowrie, William Garden, Anglican prelate, 

 born in Auchterless, Scotland, in 1831 ; died in 

 Wellington, New Zealand, June 25, 1902. He was 

 educated at Cambridge, in 1854 was ordained in 

 the English Church, and served as chaplain to 

 Lord Clyde's army at Lucknow in 1858, to Sir 

 Neville Chamberlain's forces against the Afghans 

 in 1863-'64, and to the camp of the Viceroy of In- 

 dia in 1863. He was rector of Stafford, England. 

 in 1867-'69 and became bishop of New Zea- 

 land diocese of Auckland in the last-named year. 

 From 1895 he was metropolitan of New Zealand. 

 Bishop Cowrie published Notes on the Temples 

 of Cashmere; A Visit to Norfolk Island; and Our 

 Last Year in New Zealand (1887). He was act- 

 ive in promoting university education in New Zea- 

 land, and as governor of St. John's College was in- 

 strumental in making it an efficient training- 

 school for the clergy. To his efforts are due the 

 establishment of the Sailors' Home and the Insti- 

 tution for the Blind. 



Cox, Sir George William, English historian, 

 born in Benares, Hindustan, Jan. 10, 1827; died 



