37S BEY1EWS — MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



awarded to him, and the burden of his daily labor for a livelihood 

 lightened by a small pension from Government. We might go on 

 quoting instance after instance to show how the divine gift of Philoso- 

 plry is indifferently contained in vessels of every mould and substance, 

 but shall only give one more — the last and perhaps the greatest (one 

 only excepted) the world has yet received — Thomas Young. Like 

 Dalton, born a Quaker, but, unlike him, in easy circumstances and 

 soon throwing off the technical characteristics of his sect : self-educated, 

 he became in early life " an accurate classical scholar ; perfectly fami- 

 liar with the principal European languages ; well acquainted with 

 mathematics, and with almost every department of natural phil- 

 osophy and natural history ; profoundly versed in medical and anato- 

 mical knowledge, and in possession of more than ordinary personal and 

 ornamental accomplishments."* It is only within the last few years 

 (though Young died in 1829) that the value of his extensive 

 labors has been fully appreciated ; to enter into them would require a 

 separate article ; we can only endorse Professor Forbes' s belief that 

 " since Newton (or before him) Thomas Young stands unrivalled in 

 the annals of British (or any other) Science." 



It is interesting to notice the very different tracks along which the 

 course of discovery has moved. Sometimes, though not often, the exact 

 Baconian method has been followed, a method which it has long been 

 the fashion to applaud as the only one, but which Bacon's latest editor 

 justly characterises as more adapted to the exclusion of error than the 

 detection of truth ; more frequently, an idea, instinctively seized upon, 

 has been worked out to its full establishment as a natural law ; some- 

 times, a single fortunate experiment has given rise to a whole series of 

 discoveries ; while in other cases, some simple law has long been hid- 

 den, though involved in numerous experiments, from the eyes of ob- 

 servers, and has only been dragged to light by one coming after them, 

 reaping the fruit which they had sown. It is not uncommon to hear 

 of the large share which accident, so called, has had in the progress of 

 scientific discovery, but an attentive consideration of this progress dis- 

 pels such a notion. Accidents, it is true, do happen, and are happen- 

 ing every moment : it is only when one happens at the right time and 

 place that results ensue : the seeds of science lie scattered everywhere ; 

 where the soil and circumstances are suited to them, they grow. As 

 the German proverb says — " The world is the same to all, but each eye 

 sees only what it brings with it the power of seeing." We cannot re- 

 sist quoting Professor Forbes' s account (as a model of research) of the 

 invention of the Davy Lamp, often told before but never so well. 



* Peacock— Life of Young. 



