236 THE KOYAL INSTITUTION. [CHAP. IV. 



He says, c Speaking of Newton's views, it will be suffi- 

 cient for our present purpose to enumerate the respective 

 explanations of the principal phenomena of light as they 

 are furnished by the Newtonian system, and by the theory 

 lately submitted to the Eoyal Society'; and (p. 117) he 

 says, ' The colours of thin and of thick plates, and the 

 fringes produced by inflection, are referred by Newton 

 to the very complicated effects of an undulating medium 

 on the corpuscles of light, but without any attempt to 

 accommodate the explanations to the measures obtained 

 from his own accurate and elegant experiments ; those 

 of striated surfaces he has not noticed. But the 

 general law by which all these appearances are governed 

 may be very easily deduced from the interference of 

 two coincident undulations which either co-operate or 

 destroy each other in the same manner as two musical 

 notes produce an alternate intermission and remission 

 in the beating of an imperfect unison. 



' The young gentleman of Edinburgh,' afterwards 

 known as Lord Brougham, in the ' Edinburgh Eeview,' 

 January 1803, criticised the Eoyal Society papers. 



It is difficult [he said] to argue with an author whose mind 

 is filled with a medium of so fickle and vibratory a nature. 

 Were we to take the trouble to refute him, he might tell 

 us, My opinion is changed, and I have abandoned that hy- 

 pothesis, but here is another for yon. We demand if the 

 world of science which Newton once illuminated is to be 

 as changeable in its modes as the world of taste, which is 

 directed by the nod of a silly woman or a pampered fop ? 

 Has the Eoyal Society degraded its publications into 

 bulletins of new and fashionable theories for the ladies who 

 attend the Eoyal Institution ? proh pudor I Let the 



