ERA OF NEWTON, HALLEY, AND HERSCHEL. 



41 



clothes down in on those occasions." Two sun-dials remain which he made when a 

 boy ; but the styles of both are wanting, and one has been recently taken from the 

 wall to be presented to the Royal Society. The room in which he was born has the 

 following inscription upon a tablet of white marble : " Sir Isaac Newton, son of John 

 Newton, Lord of the Manor of Woolsthorpe, was born in this room on the 25th of 

 December 1642." The apple-tree, the fall of one of the apples of which, according to 

 tradition, drew his attention to the subject of gravity, was blown down by a gale some 

 years ago, and a chair was constructed out of its timber. The Royal Society of London 

 possesses his telescope ; the Royal Society of Edinburgh the door of his book-case ; and 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, has a lock of his silver white hair. 



While the foundations of .physical astronomy were laid by Newton, his confidant and 

 friend, the brilliant and active Halley, pursued a remarkably successful career in the 



practical departments of the science. Born 

 in mercantile life, yet independent of it 

 through the wealth amassed by his father, 

 he early embarked his means and energies 

 in the advancement of observation. Leav- 

 ing Hevelius and Flamstead to keep guard 

 over the northern hemisphere, he sailed 

 to St. Helena to inspect the southern ; and 

 in honour of the reigning monarch who 

 patronised the expedition, the oak which 

 had screened him from his pursuers after 

 the battle of Worcester, was raised to a 

 place in the skies, forming the constellation 

 Robur Carolinum. The object of the 

 voyage was to determine the absolute and 

 relative positions of the stars invisible to 

 the European eye ; but owing to the un- 

 propitious climate of the island, only a ca- 

 talogue of 360 was made after more than 

 a year's residence. Upon this voyage the 

 oscillations of the pendulum were observed 

 to decrease in number as the instrument 

 approached the equator ; a fact noticed a 

 few years previous by Richer, and ex- 

 plained by Newton to result from the 

 greater intensity of centrifugal force 

 there, proportionably diminishing the 

 force of gravity. The life of Halley was 

 remarkable for locomotion, devoted to 



Haiiey's Tomb. .various scientific objects. He was twice 



at St. Helena, twice in the Adriatic, once in the West Indies, now with Newton in 

 his study at Cambridge, anon with Hevelius in his observatory at Dantzic, and then with 

 Cassini watching a comet at Paris. Upon the death of Flamstead, he succeeded to the 

 office of astronomer royal, and though then in the sixty -fourth year of his age, he com- 

 menced the observation of the moon through a complete revolution of her nodes, involving 

 a period of nineteen years, and lived to finish it, registering upwards of two thousand 

 observed lunar places. It was while journeying in France towards the close of 1680, 

 that he observed the great comet of that year, on its return from proximity to the sun ; 



