ASTRONOMERS AND ASTRONOMY. 



courage, and he showed entire sub- 

 mission to their guidance. The 

 operation he had to undergo was 

 not one which admitted of allevia- 

 tion of its pains by the administra- 

 tion of anaesthetics. It required 

 not merely endurance, but firmness 

 and active fortitude ; and the patient 

 was expected to be something more 

 than that negative term implies. 

 Nor was the expectation disap- 

 pointed. His face wore even a 

 smile, as before putting himself 

 in Mr. Fergusson's hands- he re- 

 cognized an old school-fellow among 

 the non-medical attendants, and 

 saluted him with a sobriquet of 

 the play-ground. Throughout the 

 operation he rendered every assist- 

 ance, by deliberate acts implying 

 real heroism. Chloroform was pur- 



posely withheld, that the sufferer, 

 with 3 every sensation and faculty 

 alive, might assist, and literally 

 become an operator upon himself." 

 The wound had scarcely healed, 

 when the disease returned, and 

 another operation was performed ; 

 on this occasion under the effects 

 of chloroform. When he partially 

 awoke from the state of insensibility 

 thus induced, his resolute firmness 

 was strangely mingled with gleams 

 of his native humour. He remem- 

 bered afterwards that whilst his 

 friends were anxiously applying a 

 ligature to a divided artery, he was 

 seized with a strong desire to let it 

 "spout" on the white neckcloth of 

 one of them. This genial man and 

 ingenious physiologist, sank under a 

 third recurrence of the fatal disease. 



ASTRONOMERS AND ASTRONOMY, 



SIR ISAAC NEWTON AND THE ROYAL 

 SOCIETY. 



In 1671, Mr. Isaac Newton, Pro- 

 fessor of Mathematics at Cambridge, 

 was proposed as a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society by Seth Ward, Bishop 

 of Sarum. Newton, then in his 

 thirtieth year, had made several 

 of his greatest discoveries. He had 

 discovered the different refrangi- 

 bility of light. He had invented 

 the reflecting telescope. He had 

 deduced the law of gravity from 

 Kepler's theorem ; and he had dis- 

 covered the method of fluxions. 

 When he heard of his being pro- 

 posed as a Fellow, he expressed to 

 Oldenburg, the secretary, his hope 

 that he would be elected, and added, 

 that "he would endeavour to testify 

 his gratitude by communicating 

 what his poor and solitary endea- 

 vours could effect towards the pro- 

 moting their philosophical design." 



The communications which Newton 

 made to the Society, excited the 

 deepest interest in every part of 

 Europe. His little reflecting tele- 

 scope, the germ of the colossal in- 

 struments of Herschel and Lord 

 Eosse, was deemed one of the won- 

 ders of the age. (Brewster, North 

 British Review.) 



NEWTON'S METHODS. 

 The doctrine of universal gravi- 

 tation is one of the greatest of hu- 

 man discoveries. The following 

 remarks by Mr. Whewell tend to 

 enhance the admiration and wonder 

 with which the immortal discoverer 

 will always be regarded. "No one 

 for sixty years after the publication 

 of the Principia, and, with New- 

 ton's methods, no one up to the 

 present day, ha* .-uldcd anything of 

 any value to his deductions. We 

 know that he calculated all the 

 principal lunar inequalities ; in 



