452 MEMOIBS OP THE LIFE, WHITINGS AND 



bodies on each other, in the peculiar circumstances in winch they exist. 

 For at different periods, metals must have been arrested by the direct 

 and intense action of certain fluids, and by the proximity of large 

 masses of other substances ; and the progress of combination on de- 

 composition in the several stages of varying activity may have im- 

 pelled them to take a direction more or less partial, or altogether ex- 

 ceptional." 



We submit the above, without comment, to the discrimination of 

 the industrious reader. If his powers of endurance have carried hira 

 fairly through its perusal, he will be able to form for himself a just 

 estimate of the character and value of this new Eeport on our mi- 

 ning districts of the West. Before closing, however, the present no- 

 tice, we wish, in justice to ourselves, to state distinctly, that we have 

 searched the Eeport again and again, with a view to obtain for quo- 

 tation in favor of its author, the mention of even a single important 

 fact previously unknown, or any piece of information whatever, of a 

 really useful or scientific character. But we declare in all honesty, 

 that we have been unable to meet with anything of the kind. Our 

 judgment, nevertheless, and we truly hope so, may have been here at 

 'fault. 



E. J. C. 



Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. 



By Sir David Brewster, K. H., &c, &c. Edinburgh : Thomas 



Constable & Co., 1855. 

 In the year that saw the death of Galileo and the outburst into 

 shot and steel of the quarrel between Charles Stuart and the Com- 

 mons of England, there was born a premature and weakly infant, 

 little enough to go into a quirt mug, and momently expected to die 

 before the gossips could return with tonics ; the child of a widow 

 whose husband had died a few months before, having been a well-to- 

 do yeoman in the Lincolnshire hamlet of Woodthorpe, which has lain 

 in its quiet valley from Saxon times till now, within sight of Gran- 

 tham's tall steeple. Not death, howevsr, but a long and glorious 

 life was this child's destiny, for this was he for whom the world had 

 been waiting some thousands of years to open up the deeps of Phi- 

 losophy : he of whom in after-time Pope sang, 



" Nature and Nature's laws lay Lid in night, 

 " God said ' Let Newton be !' and all was light." 

 The steps of his public career from boyhood to the summit of 

 human greatness may be briefly traced. A quiet dreamy boy, not 

 over-fond of school, but always working in his own way, with a turn 



