The Press.
London, England, 1858-09-25 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 25, 1858.

applause. At a signal the veil which concealed the
statue from public view was withdrawn amid general
cheering, and the band played the National Anthem,
all the company standing.
Lord BROUGHAM then delivered the following
address, which was listened to with marked attention,
and was frequently applauded :
To record the names and preserve the memory of those
whose great achievements in science, in arts, or in arms,
have conferred benefits and lustre upon our kind, has in
all ages been regarded as a duty and felt as a gratification
by wise and reflecting men. The desire of inspiring an
ambition to emulate such examples generally mingles
itself with these sentiments ; but they cease not to ope-
rate even in the rare instances of transcendent merit,
where matchless genius excludes all possibility of imita-
tion, and nothing remains but wonder in those who con-
template its triumphs at a distance, that forbids all
attempts to approach. We are this day assembled to com-
memorate him of whom the consent of nations have
declared that he is chargeable with nothing like a follower's
exaggeration or local partiality, who pronounces the name
of Newton as that of the greatest genius ever bestowed by
the bounty of Providence for instructing mankind on the
frame of the universe, and the laws by which it is
governed :

Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes
Restinsit; stellar exortus uti s3therius aol.—(Luc.)
Iu genius who surpassed mankind as far
As does the midday sun the midnight star.—; Dryden.)
But, though scaling these lofty heights be hopeless, yet is
there some use and much gratification in contemplating
by what steps he ascended. Tracing his course of action
may help others to gain the lower eminences lying within
their reach, while admiration excited, and curiosity satis-
fied, are frames of mind both wholesome and pleasing.
Nothing new, it is true, can be given in narrative, hardly
anything in reflection, less still perhaps in comment or
illustration ; but it is well to assemble in one view various
parts of the vast subject, with the surrounding circum-
stances, whether accidental or intrinsic, and to mark in
passing the misconceptions raised by individual ignorance
or national prejudice, which the historian of science occa-
sionally finds crossing his path. The remark is common
and is obvious, that the genius of Newton did not manifest
itself at a very early age. His faculties were not, like
those of some groat and many ordinary individuals, pre-
cociously developed. Among the former, Clairant stands
pre-eminent, who at nineteen years of age presented to the
Royal Academy a memoir of great originality upon a diffi-
cult subject in the higher geometry, and at eighteen pub-
lished his great work on curves of double curvature, com-
posed during the two preceding years. Pascal, too, at
sixteen, wrote an excellent treatise on conic sections.
That Newton cannot be ranked in this respect with those
extraordinary persons is owing to the accidents which pre-
vented him from entering upon mathematical study before
his eighteenth year ; and then a much greater marvel was
wrought than even the Clairants and the Pascals displayed.
His earliest history is involved in some obscurity, and the
most celebrated of men has, in this particular, been com-
pared to the most celebrated of rivers the Nile, as if the
course of both in its feebler state had been concealed from
mortal eyes. We have it, however, well ascertained that
within four years, between the age of eighteen and twenty-
two, he bad begun to study mathematic science, and had
taken his place among its greatest masters; learnt for the
first time the elements of geometry and analysis, and disco-
vered a calculus which entirely changed the face of the
science, effecting a complete revolution in that and in every
branch of philosophy connected with it. Before 1661 he
had not read Euclid ; in 1665 he had committed to writing
the method of fluzions. At twenty-five years of age he had
discovered the law of gravitation, and laid the foundation
of celestial dynamics, the science created by him. Before
ten years had elapsed he added to his discoveries that of
the fundamental properties of light. So brilliant a course
of discovery in so short a time, changing and reconstructing
analytical, astronomical, and optical science, almost defies
belief. The statement could only be deemed possible by
any appeal to the incontestable evidence that proves it
strictly true. By a rare felicity these doctrines gained the
universal assent of mankind as soon as they were clearly
understood ; and their originality has never been seriously
called in question. Some doubts having been raised re-
specting his inventing the calculus—doubts raised in con-
sequence of his so long withholding the publication of his
method—no sooner was the inquiry instituted than the
evidence produced proved so decisive that all men in all
countries acknowledged him to have been by several years
the earliest inventor, and Leibnitz, at the utmost, the first
publisher, the only questions raised being, first, whether or
not he had borrowed from Newton; and next, whether, as
second inventor, he could have any merit at all—both
which questions have long since been decided in favour of
Leibnitz. But undeniable though it be that Newton made
the great steps of Ibis progress, and made them without
any anticipation or participation by others, it is equally
certain that there had been approaches iu former times
by preceding philosophers to the same discoveries.
Cavalleri, by his Geometry of indivisibles ( 1835 ), Roberval,
by his Method of Tangents (1387), had both given
solutions which Descartes could not attempt; and
it is remarkable that Cavalleri regarded curves as
polygons, surfaces as composed of lines, while Roberval
viewed geometrical quantities as generated by motion ; so
that the one approached to the differential calculus, the
other to fluzions ; and Fermat, in the interval between
them, comes still nearer the great discovery by his de-
termination of maxima and minima, and his drawing of
tangents. More recently Hudden had made public
similar methods invented by Schoetin ; and whit is mii•
terial, treating the subject algebraically, while thoile just
now mentioned had rather dealt with it geometrically.
It is thus easy to perceive how near an approach had