William Walker

“ Perhaps no class of men have deserved more of their country and of mankind than the great inventors and discoverers in astronomy, chemistry, engineering and other departments of science; yet very little is known of many of them in proportion to the acknowledged good which has resulted from their labours. We possess works of art commemorating the achievements of heroes in the field, and of statesmen in parliament, but until now no work of any magnitude has ever been executed in honour of men whose doings have laid the foundation of our commercial prosperity. ”

“ While acquiring these sentiments, Lord Stanhope was at the same time pursuing a course of training which subsequently made him so remarkable, as a man of science and letters. Natural philosophy was his chief study; and the knowledge which he acquired of this subject was decisively shewn by his gaining, at the early age of eighteen, a prize offered by the Stockholm Society of Arts for the best essay, written in French, on the pendulum; and this essay was the more remarkable, as being the fruit not only of mere reading, but of numerous original experiments, performed by him in person. ”

“ Walker, of 64, Margaret-street, Cavendish-square, has, after an extended period of labour, produced an engraving which must remain an enduring record of our greatest era in science—the early part of the present century. At that epoch of time, steam, under the hands of Watt, Symington, and Trevithick, was commencing its marvellous career; astronomy and chemistry began to reveal their long-hidden secrets; while the discovery of vaccination, by Jenner, had already rescued thousands from death to enjoy the blessings left as a legacy by many a silent worker in science.... ”

“ In 1773 he entered into partnership with this great scientific inventor, and induced him to settle at Soho and superintend personally the erection of his new steam-engines. This bold but clear-sighted act of Boulton was destined to crown with honour a reputation, already rising, and built upon the firm foundation of uprightness and integrity. "Had Watt searched all Europe," says Playfair, "he could not have found another man so calculated to introduce the machine to the public in a manner worthy of its reputation." ”

“ With all the incitements which his age, his figure, and his station naturally presented to leading a life of idleness, and with a fortune which placed the more vulgar gratifications of sense or of ordinary ambition amply within his reach, he steadily devoted himself to scientific pursuits, and only lived for the studies of a naturalist. He remained out of Parliament, went little into any society but that of learned men, while his relaxation was confined to exercise and to angling, of which he was so fond, that he would devote days and even nights to it. ”

“ In measuring the amount and importance of his contributions to chemical knowledge, it must be borne in mind, that in his season of greatest mental activity, he never enjoyed that uncontrolled command of time and that serene concentration of thought which are essential to the completion of great scientific designs. In more advanced life, when relieved from the duties of an extensive medical practice and other equally pressing avocations, growing infirmities and failing bodily power restrained him to studies not demanding personal exertion, and even abridged his season of purely mental labour. ”

“ He may be said to have been, in a great measure, the author of our modern iron aristocracy, who still manufacture after the processes which he invented or perfected, but for which they never paid him one shilling of royalty. These men of gigantic fortunes have owed much, we might almost say everything, to the ruined projector of 'the little mill at Fonltey.' Their wealth has enriched many families of the older aristocracy, and has been the foundation of several modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from which they were hewn, is already all but forgotten ”

“ Grateful are we to men like Mr. Walker, who has thus gathered together in groups the world's workers, with their images and superscriptions, that men may know their benefactors, and render to their memory that justice which was too rarely accorded to their lives. So, all honour to the work of both the father and the son, the picture and the book, in teaching the men of the present what they owe to men of the past. ”

“ The size of the egg of the cuckoo does not vary much from that of the bird in whose nest it is deposited. When the young sparrow, therefore, and the intruder first come into life, they are pretty much on an equality; but unhappily for the foster-brethren, this equality does not last long: the cuckoo's growth rapidly outstrips that of his companions, and he immediately exercises his new powers with abundant selfishness and cruelty. ”

“ We may fairly commence the following remarks with unqualified praise of a work of art, which is intended to honour the distinguished men of science who were living in Great Britain early in the present century, and who, with one surviving exception, having passed into a deathless fame, are yet remembered by philosophers equally great, who were their contemporaries. ”

“ The objects of this institution, now one of the recognised scientific establishments of the world, and which can boast of having given employment to such men as Young, Davy, Brande, and Faraday, were "to diffuse the knowledge and facilitate the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, and to teach by courses of philosophical lectures and experiments the application of science to the useful purposes of life." ”

“ That amid circumstances so unfriendly to original and sustained achievements in science, he should have accomplished so much, bears testimony to that energy of resolve, that unsubdued ardour of spirit which ever glowed within him, urging him steadily onwards in the career of honourable ambition, and prompting exertions more than commensurate with the decaying forces of a frame that had never been vigorous. ”

“ To describe all Bentham's subsequent improvements, not only in machinery, but also in the economy of the management of the dockyards, would take too much space. By his energetic efforts and inventive genius, the wood mills, metal mills, and millwrights' shop were established at Portsmouth. In 1800, he proposed to the Admiralty a steam dredging-machine, of which he gave drawings, similar to the ones now in such general use; and the efficacy of this invention has since realized the most sanguine hopes of its designer. ”

“ These great and arduous enquiries occupied Herschel during nearly the whole of his scientific career, extending to almost half a century, and, excepting the continuation of his labours by his illustrious son, Sir John, little has been added to our knowledge of 'the constitution of the heavens' since his death.
As an optician, Herschel deserves equal notice for the wonderful improvements which he effected in the dimensions and magnifying power of telescopes, and by the skill with which he applied them to celestial observations. ”

“ The optical principle upon which it depends is a very beautiful one, and the invention of Kater, with several improvements in point of form, has become the auxiliary of nearly every observatory in the world, being one of those small but happy improvements which affect materially the progress of science. Most of the learned societies in Great Britain and on the Continent testified at different times their sense of the value of his services, by enrolling him among their members. ”

“ This is of a verity a picture of great men—men whose instinct it was to work for the world and fight against misery: some of them wealthy and some of them poor; with visions perchance of wealth to come, but still working for the world's welfare as the only path through which to ensure their own,—the race of path-finders who are ever setting copies for the English nation to work by, and thus gain more results by the development of national energy. ”

“ Even in chemistry, the science which he best knew, and in which he made so important a figure, he was only half-taught, so that he presents one of the memorable examples of knowledge pursued, science cultivated, and even its bounds extended, by those whose circumstances made their exertions a continued struggle against difficulties which only genius like theirs could have overcome. ”

“ In the year 1779 Playfair contributed to the 'Transactions' of the Royal Society of London a paper on the 'Arithmetic of Impossible Quantities,' which exhibits, within a very small compass, a striking example of the rare and admirable talent of detaching the sound spirit of science from what may be termed its mysticism. ”

“ There is probably no work, certainly none so well within the reach of the general public, which gives anything like as full and yet concise an account of the great men of science who lived and flourished half a century ago. ”

“ William Henry, the distinguished chemical philosopher, was born at Manchester. His father, Mr. Thomas Henry, was a zealous cultivator of chemical science. The earliest impressions of Henry's childhood were, therefore, such as to inspire interest and reverence for the pursuits of science; and he is said, when very young, to have sought amusement in attempting to imitate, with such means as were at his disposal, the chemical experiments which his father had been performing. ”

“ Young to attain so great knowledge on such various subjects. He himself had little faith in any peculiar aptitude being implanted by nature for any given pursuits. His favourite maxim was, that whatever one man had done another might do, and that the original difference between human intellects was much less than it was supposed to be; in this respect he resembled his great predecessor Newton, and his cotemporary Dalton, both of whom had unbounded confidence in the powers of patient thought. ”

“ Jenner had several attacks of severe illness during his life, but he notwithstanding attained to a good old age. Till the last day of his life he was occupied in the most anxious labours to diffuse the advantages of his discovery both at home and abroad; and he had the satisfaction of knowing that vaccination had even then shed its blessing over every civilised nation of the world, prolonging life, and preventing the ravages of one of the most terrible scourges to which the human race was ever subject. ”

“ Francis Ronalds was born in London, in the year 1788. From a very early period in life he devoted himself to the advancement of electrical science, a course he has consistently pursued during a large portion of his life, which has not yet we are glad to be able to state drawn to its close. He is the inventor of an electric telegraph, electrical machine, electrometer, a new mode of electrical insulation, a pendulum doubler, an electric clock, several meteorological and magnetical instruments and other mechanical contrivances. ”

“ The materials which he had been indefatigable in collecting during this voyage, and the vast store of facts and observations in relation to their structure and affinities which he had accumulated, opened out to him new views upon a multitude of botanical subjects, which he was enabled by his position in the Linnean Society to enlarge, and to perfect, and ultimately to lay before the world in a series of masterly publications, which at once stamped upon him the character of the greatest and most philosophical botanist that England had ever produced. ”

“ In 1825 Baily retired from the Stock Exchange, having acquired a considerable fortune, and shortly afterwards took a house in Tavistock Place, giving his whole attention to the furtherance of astronomical science. Here, he executed that grand series of labours which has perpetuated his name, and the building in which the Cavendish experiment of weighing the earth was repeated, its bulk and figure determined, and the standard of British measure perpetuated, must continue to be a source of interest to scientific men for many generations to come. ”