introduced, and the principal patron and mathematician, as his publication of the protector of ingenious men. Principia unluckily shows; but the picture On the resignation of Sir John Pringle is high-colored, which represents him as a as President of the Royal Society, Sir Jo-hot-tempered, loud-tongued, bustling perseph Banks was placed in the chair, in sonage-a sort of bravo of science and theo1778, almost by acclamation. He had logy, who took up the first opinion which some obvious qualifications for the office, occurred to him, scorned to rectify it by but he as obviously wanted others. His any after-thought, and plunged from one opulence, his hospitality, and his zeal for absurdity into another, for the sake of conscience, were valuable, and are nearly in-sistency. The eloquence of his attacks dispensable in the president of a body which upon the chair, of whose possession he was concentrates the chief intellectual force of supposed to be foolishly ambitious, was the community. But his favorite pursuit, vaunted a good deal by his partisans. But, botany, has never deserved the name of a as the only evidence of his rhetoric in these science, and inevitably bears a character squabbles ever quoted, is one sentence, it of triviality in the eyes of the mathemati- is like the pretension to wit on the strength cian and the philosopher. The distinction of a single pun, and may be easily cast given to a comparatively young man, known aside. This boasted sentence was uttered, to the world only as a voyager, and a col-in threatening the secession of the mathelector of plants and animals, not unnaturally matical party. "The president will then tended to breed scoffing among the profes- be left with his train of feeble amateurs, and sors of the severe sciences. The feeling that toy (the mace) upon the table-the spread, and the opportunity for its expres- ghost of the Society in which Philosophy sion was soon found. Dr. Hutton, the ma- once reigned, and Newton officiated as her thematical professor at Woolwich, happened minister." to be secretary for foreign correspondence. Horsley's theology was too nearly on a His residence at Woolwich was said to pro- par with his mathematics-he was harsh duce some inconvenience in his intercourse and headlong. The fortunate folly of with the president; and the council passed Priestley in challenging the English clergy a resolution, in 1783, recommending that to a trial of strength in the old arena of "the foreign secretary should reside in Unitarianism, gained him an opportunity of London." The secret history of this trans- crushing an antagonist whose presumption action is, that Hutton was one of the ma- was in proportion to his ignorance. Acthematical party; though we cannot dis- cordingly, the Unitarian was speedily put tinctly ascertain whether he had actually hors-de-combat, and Horsley was rewarded gone so far as to sneer at the president. with a mitre. Upon this, Hutton resigned the office; to accept which, the emolument could not have been his object, the salary being but £20 a-year-a sum that cannot be mentioned without a sense of disgrace to a society reckoning among its members some of the wealthiest men of England.

The president had long felt that the purpose of this violent lover of parallelograms was, to unseat him. The question was therefore brought to a decision, in the shape of a resolution " approving of Sir Joseph Banks as president, and resolving to support him in his office." This resolution was carried by 119 to 43.

Hutton's resignation, or rather dismissal, produced an open war in the society. The Honors began now to gather upon him. mathematicians ranged themselves on the In 1788 he had been made a baronet. In Huttonian side; the cultivators of natural 1795 he received the order of the Bath, history, and the cultivators of nothing, then generally restricted to soldiers and ranged themselves on the side of the presi- diplomatists. In two years after, he was dent. The mathematicians were headed called to the Privy Council. On the death by Horsley, afterwards the bishop-a man of the Duke of Ancaster he was chosen rewhom Lord Brougham characterizes as ex-corder of Boston; but, though often solitremely arrogant, of violent temper, and in- cited to stand an election, he was never a toxicated with an extravagant sense of his member of Parliament. Though professown scientific merits, which his noble bio-ing himself a Tory, he seems never to have grapher pronounces to be altogether insig- taken any active part in politics, preserving nificant, heading this charge with the un-a curious practical neutrality in Lincolnkindest cut of all, namely, that he was "ashire, and giving his interest to Mr. Pelham, priest." Horsley was certainly no great a Whig, and Mr. Chaplin, a Tory. This,

which his noble biographer curiously seems Few men are without their share of those to consider as a happy proof of the absence troubles which characterize the general of all party feelings, we should be apt to condition of human nature. Sir Joseph look upon as a proof of a degenerate wish Banks had his trial, in physical suffering. to consult his own ease, and of a sluggish In the first portion of his life he had been neutrality discreditable to the character of remarkable for rubust health and activity; an Englishman. but, from about his fortieth year, he sufferHowever, he had more honorable dis-ed severely from attacks of gout, which intinctions. In the furious Revolutionary creased so much, that for his last fourteen war-a war of principles and passions, not years he was scarcely able to walk. His less than of public interests, the president robust mind, however, enabled him to enof the Royal Society largely exerted his in-counter his disease by increased and exterest with both governments, to alleviate treme temperance. He gave up all ferthe sufferings of scientific men who hap-mented liquors and animal food. He seems pened to fall into the hands of the belliger- to have derived considerable benefit from ents, and to effect the restoration of scien- D'Huisson's medicine. But his hour was tific property captured by our ships of war. come; and on the 19th of June, 1820, in In 1802 he was chosen one of the foreign the seventy-eighth year of his age, he died members of the Institute of France: and just one year after his honored and royal his letter of thanks, a little too ardent in friend, George III. its gratitude, was said to have involved the Thus passed through the world one of baronet in some vexations peculiarly felt by those men who are among the most useful his courtly temperament. He was instantly in their generation. It would be idle to attacked for his Gallican panegyric, by a pronounce him a genius, a discoverer, or a portion of the Royal Society. Cobbett, profound philosopher. But he served an who was then looking out for a victim, and whose loyalty was at that period peculiarly glowing, flew at him like a tiger-cat; and, last and most dreaded of all, he was said to have received at Windsor some of those frowns, which to a courtier are a total eclipse of the sun. But the nation soon had higher things to think of than a slip of the President's pen, or a little betrayal of his vanity. Napoleon ascended the throne; and, when the thunderbolts began to fall, the squibs and crackers flung from hand to hand of little men are of necessity forgotten. His latter years were signalized by acts of unequivocal public service. He is designated by Lord Brougham, and no one can have a better right to be informed of the fact, as the real founder of the African Association. His lordship also regards him as the real founder of the colony of Botany Bay. He was the first to suggest the transfer of the tropical fruits to the West India islands. British horticulture owed him great services. And the British Museum, during forty-two years of his trusteeship, was the object of his peculiar care, and finally received the bequest of his excellent library and of all his collections.

His career, however, was now, by the course of nature, drawing to its close. Yet, he had lived seventy-eight years in this anxious and disappointing world, in opulence, in peace, and in public estimation. But his lot had been singularly fortunate.

important purpose in society; he suggested philosophical enterprise, he protected the honorable ambition of men whose career, without that protection, might have closed in obscure suffering; he gave the philosophy and literature of his time a leader, and formed it into a substantial shape. In this spirit he employed his life; and he accomplished his purpose with the constancy and determination of a sagacious and systematic mind. He might not be a pillar of the philosophical temple of his country, nor its architrave; but he performed the office of the clamp-he bound together the materials of both pillar and architrave, and sustained the edifice alike in its stateliness and in its security.

Lord Brougham's biography of D'Alembert commences with a brief dissertation on the interest which the mind takes in the study of mathematics. This study he regards as superior in gratification to every other, from its independence of external circumstances. In all other studies, he observes truly, that a large portion of the researches must depend upon facts imperfectly ascertained from the reports of others, and upon knowledge impeded by the capricious chances of things; while in pure science, the principles, the premises, and the conclusions, are wholly within our own power.

In a passage exhibiting the affluence of the noble lord's language, he says, "The

life of a geometrician may well be supposed studies may supply him with examples; but an uninterrupted calm, and the gratification we have room but for one, and that of a which is derived from its researches, is of sufficiently high order.

a pure and also of a lively kind-whether When Napoleon assumed the French he contemplates the truth discovered by throne, in his ambition of being regarded others, with the demonstrative evidence on as the universal patron of science, he apwhich they rest, or carries the science fur-pointed the author of the Mechanique ther, and himself adds to the number of the Céleste a member of his privy council. But interesting truths before known. He may La Place, then and since, the first scientific be often stopt in his researches by the diffi- name of France, was found utterly inadeculties that beset his path; he may be frus- quate to even the almost sinecure duties of trated in his attempts to discover relations, his office. Napoleon soon found that he depending on complicated data, which he could make no use of him. He accordcannot unravel or reconcile; but his study ingly consulted him no longer. "I found is wholly independent of accident, his re- his mind," said he, "like his book, full of liance is on his own powers. Contestation infiniments petits." Or if we look for furand uncertainty he never can know; a ther illustration among the French geomestranger to all controversy, above all mys- ters-the only men among whom the trial tery, he possesses his mind in unruffled can be made, from their opportunities of peace. Bound by no authority, regardless power in the Revolution-there was not of all consequences as of all opposition, he one of them who exhibited any qualification is entire master of his conclusions as of his for the higher duties of public life. Bailly, operations, and feels even perfect indiffer- Condorcet, and their tribe, proved themence to the acceptance or objection of his selves utterly feeble, helpless, and trifling, doctrines, because he confidently looks for- where manliness, activity, and intelligence ward to their universal and immediate ad- of mind were required. The Savans were mission the moment they are compre- swept away like a swarm of mice, or crushhended." ed like musquitoes, when they dared to buzz in the presence of the public. That they were first-rate mathematicians there can be no question; that they quarrelled about their mathematical theories with the bitterness, and not a little in the style of village gossips, is equally certain; and that, though the Encyclopedists had chiefly died off before the Revolution, their successors and imitators were extinguished by their preposterous combination of an avarice of power, and of an inadequacy to exertion, is a fact written unanswerably in the history of their trifling career, and of their early scaffolds. The ridiculous figure made in politics by the first astronomer of France, at this moment, only strengthens the conclusion.

All this is strikingly expressed, yet it is after all but a showy hypothesis. That pure mathematics have nothing to do with external existence, may be easily granted; but that mathematicians are exempt from controversy, is no more a matter of experience than that all mathematical assertions are self-evident. The history of science is a direct contradiction of this halcyon hypothesis. The bitterest controversies, and the most ridiculous too, have been raised on mathematical opinions. Universal experience tends strongly to the proof, that no exclusive exertion of the mind is more fatal to its general vigor, more apt to narrow its range of conception; more distinctly operative, by its very exclusiveness, and by its making minute truths the especial object of the mind, in rendering it incapable of those loftier and broader truths on which depend all the great concerns of society, all the efficient progress of civilization, and all the nobler growth of human powers-than the mere study of mathematics. A spider drawing his web out of his own fibres, and constructing his little lines and circles in his dusty corner, is the fittest emblem of the mere mathematician. In this language, we acknowledge the use of the science; we protest only against its pretence of superiority. Every man's experience of college

The life of D'Alembert is, however, one of the happiest illustrations of the use to which science may be applied, in raising an obscure individual into public fame. Yet, it is not to be forgotten, that D'Alembert's European celebrity commenced only when he had laid aside the exclusive study of mathematics, and devoted himself to general literature, and, shaking off the dust of his closet, he became a man of the world.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert was born in November, 1717, and was exposed as a foundling near the church of St. Jean le Rond in Paris, and thus called by the name of the parish. The commissary of the dis

must acknowledge, that we cannot easily comprehend how any student, within the last hundred years, could have had this " discovery" to make-the Binomial Theorem being one of the very first which meets the eye of the algebraist, in Newton's and every other treatise on analysis. It seems to us very like an English reader's" discovery" of the alphabet, or, at least, of the recondite art of spelling words of two syllables. But D'Alembert was at length to find, that if he was to obtain either fame or fortune, he must seek them in some other road. At this period, infidelity had become the distinction of all who arrogated to themselves intellectual accomplishment. The power of the crown, and the power of the clergy, had hitherto made its expression

trict, taking pity upon the infant's appa- of twenty-four. From this period, he prorently dying condition, instead of sending ceeded for eighteen years, constantly furit to the hospital, where it would have in- uishing the academy with papers, which evitably died, gave it to be nursed by the added greatly to its reputation and his own. wife of a poor glazier. In a few days, In a note on the presumed discovery of however, a person named D'Estouches, a Taylor's Theorem by D'Alembert, the nocommissary of artillery, came forward, ac- ble biographer alludes to what he regards knowledged the child, and made provision as a similar event, the discovery of the for its support. The habits of foreign life" Binomial Theorem" by himself. We are generally so scandalous, that they can scarcely be alluded to without offending our sense of delicacy. The mother of this infant was an unmarried woman, living in the very highest circles of Paris, the sister of Cardinal Tencin, archbishop of Lyons. This woman thus added to her vice the cruelty of exposing her unfortunate off spring to die of cold and hunger in the streets. It does not appear that her profligacy, though notorious, ever affected her position in society. Her coteries were as gay, her circle was as complete, and her rank as high, as ever. In the Paris of those days, "throwing the first stone" was unheard of; its reaction would have been an avalanche; there was no scandal where there was no concealment; there was no crime where there was no conscience; and dangerous; but the new liberalism of the thus danced the world away, until the throne having enfeebled its power, the Scourge of a higher power swept the whole reign of the libeller, the rebel, and the noblesse of France into beggary and exile. skeptic openly commenced. The opulence D'Alembert seems to have taken his sur- of the clergy increased the bitterness of name from that of his nurse, and was sent, their enemies; and the blow which was inwhen twelve years old, to the College of tended to lay the throne in the dust, was La Nation, then in the possession of the nominally aimed at religion. Voltaire had Jansenists. There he learnt mathematics. commenced this crusade half a century beOn leaving the college, he returned to the fore; but the arch-infidel lived beyond the glazier's house, there had one room for his dominion of France, possessed an indepenbedroom and study, lived on the family fare, dent income, had acquired the reputation supported himself on a pension of £50 a- of the wittiest man in Europe, and had esyear left to him by his father, and in that tablished a species of impunity by the punhouse lived for forty years. He once made gency of his perpetual sneers. During this an abortive attempt to study the law and period, French infidelity had been silent medicine, but soon grew weary of both, and through fear, but it was not the less virureturned to mathematics, for which he had lent, active, and general. It appeared in a decided predilection. His application to the result, that almost the whole of the this study, however, by no means pleased French higher orders were either deists or the homely sense of his old nurse. You total unbelievers. All the literary men of will never be any thing better than a philo- France followed the example of Voltaire, sopher," was her usual saying. "And and a scoff at religion was always accepted what's a philosopher?- -a fool, who wears as an evidence of wit. France loves exout his life, to be spoken of after he is dead."

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But D'Alembert had evidently a passion for science; and in his twenty-third year he sent to the Academy of Sciences an analytical paper, which attracted general notice. This was followed by his admission into the society, at the unusually early age

tremes; and, as the popular literature of Paris is now plunged in impurity, fifty years. ago it was characterized by outrageous blasphemy. The only religion which France knew, was certainly not calculated to repress the evil. Its fantastic exhibitions and grim formalities were equally obnoxious to the human understanding. Its persecu

ting spirit insulted the growing passion of would have made him opulent; and his the people for liberty; while its fierce dog- opulence would undoubtedly have given mas, contrasting with its ridiculous tradi-him the means of extensive benevolence, of tions, supplied the largest materials at once relieving private distress, of assisting his for horror and ridicule.