Semi-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1853-18??, 1858-10-16
From Mr.. limbs School Days Of Eminent Men,
SIR ISAAC MENTIONS SCHOOL AND COL.
LEGE DAYS


SIR ISAAC MENTIONS SCHOOL AND COL
LEGE DAYS.
The childhood and education of that master mind
which, by the establishment of the theory of gravi
| tation ''immortazed his name and perpetuated the
intellectual glory Of his country" next demand our
attention. Isaac Newton was born in 1642 IN the
Manor house of Woosthorde, close to the village OF
Colsterworth, about six miles south OF Grantham
in Lincolnshire He was posthumous child, and
was of such diminutive size when born that he
might have been put into quart mug. At the u.s.
ual age he sent to two small day schools a.
Skillinpton and Stoke, two hamlets near Wools-
thorpe and here he was taught reading, writing,
and arithmetic. At the age of twelve he was sent
to the grammar school at Grantham. According to
his own confession, Newton extremely :natten-
tive to his studies and stood very low in the school,
When he was last in the lowermost form but one,
the boy above him, they were gong to school.
kicked him on the stomach; Newton subsequently
challenged the boy to fight; the combat took place
in the churchyard and Newton was the victor; his
antagonist still stood above him in the FORM but after
many a severe struggle. Newton not only gained the
individual victory, but rose to the highest place in
the school,
Newton had not been long at school before he ex-
hbi.ed taste for mechanical inventions. With the
aid of little saws. hammers, hatchets, and other
tools, during his play hours he constructed models
of known machines, and amusing contrivances; as
a windmill water.clock, and carriage to be NOV
ed by the person who sat in it; snd by watching
the workmep in erecting windmill near Grantham,
Newton acquired such knowledge of its mechanism,
that he completed a large working model of it,
which was frequently placed upon the top OF the
house in which Newton lived at Grantham, and was
put in motion by the action OF the wind upon its
sails Although Newton was at this time a " sober,
silent, and thinking lad " who never took part in the
games of his school-fellows, but employed all his
leisure hours in knocking and hammerng in his
lodging ROOM" yet he occasionally taught the boys
to "play philosophically." He introduced the
flying Of paper kites and is said to have investigated
their best forms and proportions, as well as the
number and position of the points to which the
string should be attached lie constructed also
lanterns of "crimped paper" in which he placed
CANDLE to light him to school in the dark winter
mornings and in dark nights he tied them to the
tails of his kites, which the terrified country people
took for comets.
Meanwhile, in the yard Of the house where he
lived, Newton frequently observed to watch the
motion of the sun he drove wooden pegs into the
walls and roofs of the buildings, gnomons, to
mark by their shadows the hours and half hours OF
the day. 1t does not appear that he knew how to
adjust these lines to the latitude Of Grantham but
he is said to have succeeded after some years OBJ
servation, in making them so exact that anybody
could tell what o'clock it bv ISaac's DIAL it
was called; and probably about this time he carved
two dials on the walls of his own house at Wools-
thorpe, one Of which is now in the museum Of the
Royal Society Newton also became expert with
his pencil his room furnished with pictures,
drawn, some from prints and others from life. in
frames made by himself; among the portraits were
several of the Kings heads; Dr. Dome; Mr.. Stokes,
his teacher at Grantham; and King Chares also.
drawings of birds, beast, men, ships. and mathe-
matical diagrams, executed with charcoal on the
walls, which remained till the house pulled
down in It'll" Although Newton stated that he
"exceed particularly in making verses" no authen.
tic specimen Of his poetry has been preserved and
in latter days he often expressed dislike for poetry
During the seven years which he spent in Grantham,
the society of his school fellows he preferred that
OF the young ladies' who lived in the same house,
and he often made little tables, cupboards &c, for
them to set their dolls and trnkets upon. One of
these ladies' when she had reached the age Of eigh
ty-two, confessed that Newton had bee" in love
with her. but that smaness of income prevented
their marriage.
When Newton had reached his fifteenth year he
was recalled from the school at Gran.han to take
charge of his mothers farm; he was thus frequent
ly sent to Grantham market to dispose of grain and
other agricultural produce which, however, he gen
orally left to old farm servant who accompanied
him, and Newton made his way to the garnet Of the
house where he had lived to amuse himself with
parcel Of old books left there; and afterwards he
would entrench himself on the wayside between
Woolsthorpe and Grantham. devouring some favor
lite author till his companions return from market.
And when his mother sent him into the fields to
watch the sheep and cattle, he would perch himself
under tree with a book in his hand or shaping
models with his knife, watching the movements
of undershot water wheel. One Of the earliest
scientific experiments which Newton made in
1868, on the day Of the great Storm when Cromwell
died. and when he himself had Just entered his six
teenth year.
Newton's mother was now convinced that her son
was not destined to be farmer; and this, with his
10 fiDdi un6er a hedve in
solution of mathematical problem let to his being
again sent to Grantham school, and then to Trinity
College, Cambridge, which thence became the real
birthplace Of Newton's genius. We have not space
to detail how he mastered Sanderson's Logic, and
Helpers Optics, before he attended his tutors lee
lures upon those works how he bought book Of
Judicial Astrology at Stourbridge Fair, and to
derstand its trigonometry, purchased an English Eu
Glide, which he threw aside for DESCRIBES &C.
ometry; his ong-continued observations upon q
comet in 1864; his first discovery of fuxions in
1865; his first study of gravity, suggested to him
his garden at Woolsthorpe; his purchase of glass
prism at Stourbridge Fair; his first application to
optical discoveries; his construction Of telescopes,
&C. These particulars of Newtou's early years have
been abridged from Sir David Brewsters enlarged
life of the great philosopher
But we cannot leave him without remarking that,
late in life ascrbng whatever he had accomplished
to the effect of patient and continuous thought rath
er than to any peculiar genius with which nature
had endowed him. he looked upon himself and his
labors in very different light from that in which
he and they were regarded by mankind. ~ know
not" he remarked a short time before his death,
&c what may appear to the world, but to myself
seem to have been only like boy playing on the
sea-shore and divertng myself now and then finding
smoother pedde or prettier shell than ordinary,
whilst the great of truth lay all undiscovered
before me-" How touching is this sense of humility
and contrast of the ttlenesa of human knowledge
with the extent of human ignorance
The LAST INTERVIEW BETWEEN BENTON AND BUC.
HANAN-Mrs. Jacobs, the daughter of the late COL
Benton, gives the following account of her fathers