attached to his new occupation, that he abandoned his old habits entirely, and now spent every hour in study, or in watching the stars by means of instruments of his own invention, from the top of an old tower in his father's house. This mode of employing his time obtained for him at first, it is said, among his ignorant and astonished neighbours, the reputation of being a magician. He was afterward sent by his father to complete his studies at Paris, where he was introduced to Reaumur, the celebrated naturalist, and the inventor of the thermometer known by his name; and he soon became, under Reaumur's guidance, an adept in the different departments of his favourite science. It is a curious circumstance, however, and shows at once his ardour in the pursuit of knowledge, and the penalty he was long afterward obliged to pay for his early negligence, that he actually submitted, when more than fifty years old, to take his first lessons in Latin from his son's tutor, in order to be able to read some mathematical works written in that language, which he wished to consult.

Another French mathematician, the ingenious PAUCTON, Whose "Metrology," or treatise on weights and measures, although first published nearly half a century ago, is still considered one of the most val uable extant, had, owing to the poverty of his parents, scarcely received any education at all till after he had reached his eighteenth year. He was at last noticed by a charitable ecclesiastic, who gave him lessons for about two years; after which he completed his studies at Nantz. Paucton eventually obtained the professorship of mathematics at Strasburg; but his labours here must have been but indifferently recompensed; for when the city was threatened with a blockade by the Austrians, and the magistrates had issued orders that every inhabitant who could not supply himself beforehand with a sufficient store of provisions for the siege should Van 1-E

quit the place, Paucton, being too poor to afford the necessary outlay, was obliged to take his departure with his wife and three children. He was afterward, however, patronised by the French government, and had the prospect of passing his latter days in comfortable circumstances, when he died in 1768, at the age of sixty-two.

CHAPTER IV.

Early Age of Great Men. Short Term of their Lives. New ton; Gregory; Torricelli; Pascal; Cowper; Burns; Byron; Sidney; Beaumont; Otway; Collins; Mozart; Raphael; Correggio; Politian; Mirandola.

CONSIDERABLE as are the disadvantages which those persons have to contend with who begin their acquaintance with books only late in life, it ought not to be forgotten, on the other hand, that all the chances of the race are not against them. The time they have lost, and are anxious to redeem, of itself gives a stimulus that will make up for many disadvantages. Then, although they have not yet learned much from books, they have nevertheless learned of necessity a great deal from other sources; and they come to their studies, too, with faculties which, if not quite so pliant as those of childhood, have much more vigour and comprehension. as for the comparative shortness of the space which they may reasonably count upon as being still left to them for their new pursuit, after the years they have already spent, as it were, in sleep, we would remark that in a right view of the subject, this is truly a little matter.

And

Between the ultimate point of discovery and the

place we now occupy on the ascent towards it, the steps are so inconceivably many, that, with regard to us, they may be most truly described as interminable. So far as we have experience, or can conceive, of knowledge, it is an expanse ever widening before us and around us. Its horizon seems not only always as distant as ever, but always becoming more distant the more we strive to approach it. For every one discovery is merely the opening of a road to other discoveries; and the lifting of us at the same time to a new eminence, from which we see a broader domain than before, both of the known and of the unknown. It is the attainment of a comparatively small portion of knowledge only, that even the longest life can compass; and the shortest is sufficient for the attainment of some portion. In other words, the pleasure belonging to the acquisition of knowledge is one which all may enjoy who choose, let the time of life at which they commence the persuit of it be what it may. In so far, therefore, as we are to be allured by this temptation, it matters not, as we have said, whether we find ourselves in the morning or in the evening of our days, when we would yield ourselves up to its influence. If we were even certain that we had but a few years longer to live, it would still offer, for what leisure we could spare from other duties, the most delightful as well as the most ennobling of all occupations.

Such considerations we would address to the generality of those whose attention may not have been attracted to literature till late in life. But even to him who feels within himself the ambition, and something of the power of high intellectual achievement, and only regrets that so many of his years have been lost in other pursuits before he has had any opportunity of turning to this, we would say that the field in which he thirsts to distinguish himself is still open for his admission, and its best

prizes waiting to be won by him, if only his ardour and courage do not fail. When there is a real su.. periority of faculties, it is wonderful how much has often been accomplished even in a very few years devotedly given to the pursuit of eminence. Some of the greatest men that ever lived have either died early, or might have done so for their fame. NEWTON himself had completed many of his grand discoveries, and laid the foundation of them all, before he had reached his twenty-fifth year; and, although he lived to a great age, may be said to have finished all that was brilliant in his career at the early period of forty five. After this, it has been remarked, that he wrote nothing, except some further explanations and developments of what he had previously published. But to go to other great names: JAMES GREGORY, the celebrated inventor of the reflecting telescope, was suddenly struck blind in his thirtyseventh year, while observing the satellites of Jupiter, and died a few days after. TORRICELLI, whose famous discovery of the barometer we have already mentioned, and who had deservedly acquired the reputation of being, in every respect, one of the greatest natural philosophers of his time, after the world had lost the illustrious Galileo, died at the age of thirty-nine. Pascal, who first showed the true use and value of Torricelli's discovery, and who has ever been accounted, for his eminence both in science and in literature, one of the chief glories of France, as he would have been of any country in which he had appeared, was cut off at the same early age. Nay, in his case, the wonder is greater still; for he passed the last eight years of his life, as is well known, in almost uninterrupted abstinence from his wonted intellectual pursuits. Under the influence of certain religious views, operating upon a delicate and excitable temperament, and a frame exhausted by long ill-health and hard study, he most mistakenly conceived these pur

suits to be little better than an abuse of his time and faculties; as if it were criminal in man to em ploy those powers which his Creator has given him, in a way so well fitted to purify and elevate his nature, and to fill him with sublimer conceptions, both of the wonderful universe around him, and of the Infinite Mind that formed it. It ought not to be forgotten, however, that it was during this period of depression and seclusion that he wrote and published his celebrated "Provincial Letters," an attack upon the casuistry of the Jesuits, which, strange to say, is a work not only distinguished by all that is admirable in style and reasoning, but abounding in the most exquisite wit and humour, which the splendid enthusiast intermingles with his dexterous and often eloquent argumentation, apparently with as much light-heartedness, as natural an ease, as if he had been one, the flow of whose spirits had scarcely yet known what it was to be disturbed either by fear or sorrow. So false a thing, often, is the show of gayety-or, rather, so mighty is the power of intellectual occupation-to make the heart forget for the time its most prevailing griefs, and to change its deepest gloom to sunshine. Thus, too, it was that CowPER owed to his literary efforts almost the only moments of exemption he enjoyed from a depression of spirits extremely similar, both in its origin and effects, to that under which Pascal laboured; and, while the composition of his great poem "The Task," and his translations of the iliad and Odyssey, suspended for months and even years the attacks of his disease, his inimitable "John Gilpin," for a shorter interval, transformed his mel ancholy into joyous merriment. Cowper affords us also another example of how much may be done in literature, and towards the acquirement of a high name in one of its highest departments, by the dedication to it of only a comparatively small portion of a lifetime. He had received a regular educa