31 
of Edinburgh, Session 1866-67. 
to found a Chair of International Law, with scholarships for the 
most distinguished students. 
In 1841 he married Miss Marshall, and a few months afterwards 
he was, on the resignation of Dr Wordsworth, made Master of 
Trinity. The domestic happiness which he enjoyed in this new 
position was marred by a long and painful illness of Mrs Whewell, 
and his grief on this occasion is said to have been so profound 
that, in order to occupy his mind in this season of affliction, he 
composed his work of “ The Plurality of Worlds,” which was 
published in 1853. A more probable opinion is, that the book 
was written to quiet certain doubts which had arisen in the mind 
of his wife respecting the doctrine of redemption, on the ground 
of the comparative insignificance of our planet, and of the race in 
whose behalf the Deity interposed. But whatever was the motive 
or state of mind under which this singular work was composed, we 
can hardly admit that a mind so richly endowed, and so strong in 
its religious conviction, could have believed in the assertions that 
the nebulae are “dots and lumps of light;” that “the distant 
stars are sparks struck off from the potter’s wheel in the formation 
of the universe that Jupiter is “ a mere sphere of water with a 
few cinders in its centre;” that the ninety asteroids are “bits of 
a planet that had failed in the making;” and that the nineteen 
satellites of the solar system “ are pieces of vapour neatly wound 
into balls.” 
But, however sternly posterity may denounce the paradox, “ that 
our earth is the oasis in the desert of the solar system,” “ the 
really largest planetary body” it contains, and “the only world 
in the universe,” they will forgive its author on account of the 
noble sentiments, the lofty aspirations, and the suggestions almost 
divine, which mark his closing chapter on the future of the uni- 
verse. In the bright noon of his intellectual life, Dr Whewell had 
hazarded the sentiment, “ that science was its own reward,” requir- 
ing neither patronage for its extension, nor liberality to its cultiva- 
tors ; but when a high position rewarded his own acquirements and 
stimulated his own labours, he turned with sympathy to his less 
fortunate fellow- workmen, and looked for their reward to “ a uni- 
versal and perpetual peace,” in which the advancement of human 
knowledge should be the great object of every social and national 
