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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
combination. “Were the nations of the earth,” says he, “to 
employ for the promotion of human knowledge a small fraction 
only of the means, the wealth, the ingenuity, the energy, the com- 
bination which they have employed in every age for the destruction 
of human life and human means of enjoyment, we might soon 
find that what we hitherto knew is little compared with what man 
has the power of knowing.” Would that these words were placed 
in letters of gold above the portal of every college in the empire, 
and pondered by every student to whom the name of statesman, and 
patriot, and Christian, is dear. 
Though happy in his domestic relations, they were to Dr 
Whewell the cause of the deepest sorrow. The ill health of Mrs 
Whewell had for several years been a source of great anxiety and 
care, and in December 1855 he mourned her loss in a volume of 
elegiac verses, printed for private circulation. In 1858 he married 
Lady Affleck, the widow of Sir Archibald Affleck, and after eight 
years of uninterrupted happiness, he had again, in 1865, to resign 
himself to another domestic bereavement. 
After some months of sorrow and seclusion, Dr Whewell was so 
far able to resume his studies, as to write the article on “ Comte 
and Positivism,” which appeared in “ Macmillan’s Magazine ” for 
March 1866; and he prepared for “Frazer’s Magazine ” a paper “ On 
Grote’s Plato,” which was destined to be the last of his works. 
On the 24th February 1865, when taking a ride, he met his own 
carriage with ladies who were his guests, and turned to follow them 
home. His horse became excited and ran off, and losing all con- 
trol over it, owing to a weakness in his left arm from a previous fall 
from horseback, he fell upon his horse’s neck and then to the ground 
upon his head. A concussion of the brain, which had previously 
been in a shrunk state, terminated fatally on the 6th March 1866, 
in the 72d year of his age. 
The great talent? and acquirements of Dr Whewell were as 
highly appreciated in foreign countries as in his own. His Sylla- 
bus of Mechanics, and his “ Mechanical Euclid,” were translated 
into German. He was a corresponding member, in the section of 
Philosophy, of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in the 
Imperial Institute of France, and an honorary or corresponding 
member of various academies in Europe and America. 
