376 REVIEWS — MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



coveries of Davy and Faraday. Perhaps the least satisfactory portion is 

 that on sidereal astronomy. The account of Sir W. Herschel's labors 

 might have been elaborated with more detail, and now that the author 

 of the "Plurality of Worlds" has rendered the " nebular hypothesis " 

 orthodox, we may venture to say that abetter account (barring Comte's 

 mistake) than the one Professor Forbes refers to is to be found in that 

 tabooed work, "The Vestiges." "We see no reason why the remarka- 

 ble experiments of Plateau should not have been mentioned in connec- 

 tion with it. 



One of the not least advantages of Professor Forbes' s arrangement 

 is the interesting contrasts which the personal characters of these 

 heroes — sometimes martyrs — -of science present. Consider, for instance, 

 Cavendish, "the descendant of one of England's noblest families, and 

 the possessor of enormous wealth, yet neither of these powerful temp- 

 tations could withdraw him even for an hour from the course of study 

 which he had marked out, and which constituted for him at once 

 labor and relaxation, the end of living, and almost life itself." He 

 lived for four-score years almost isolated from human intercourse, 

 showing an entire indifference to the ordinary passions and ambitions 

 of mankind ; indifferent even to scientific fame, and so strangely incom- 

 municative as to leave much of the nature of his long studies only to be 

 discovered from his manuscript remains. Dr. George Wilson has de- 

 scribed him, with characteristic eloquence, as a " wonderful piece of 

 intellectual clock-work. As he lived by rule, so he died by it, predict- 

 ing his death as if it had been the eclipse of some .great luminary, 

 .... and counting the very moment when the shadow of the unseen 

 world should enshroud him in its darkness." Contrast with him 

 Davy, the apothecary's apprentice of Penzance, rising in early man- 

 hood not only to be the acknowledged leader of chemical science, but 

 also a star of fashion in aristocratic circles ; gifted with an ardent and 

 impulsive genius, which enabled him to take theories by storm, and 

 with a fervor of imagination which threw round his great discoveries a 

 poetic glow that dazzled the external world ; disdaining to realise 

 money from his inventions, many of which were singly worth a fortune, 

 careless of health and life itself in untried experiments, and in all 

 stages of his short but varied life " acquitting himself gracefully and 

 well." Add to tbese Wollaston, whose discoveries in chemistry were 

 of hardly less practical value than those of Davy, and who was more- 

 over an original and successful observer in almost every department of 

 philosophy ; yet he was quite unknown to the world at large, and 

 appreciated even by few of his contemporary brethren in science. We 

 borrow the following graphic comparison from the dissertation : — 



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