Hutton

“ Fitton, in 1839, wrote in the Edinburgh Review, 'The original work of Hutton (in two volumes) is in fact so scarce that no very great number of our readers can have seen it. No copy exists at present in the libraries of the Royal Society, the Linnean, or even the Geological Society of London [26] !' He also points out that Hutton's work, and even the more lucid Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, [Pg 31] were almost unknown on the continent, owing to the isolation of Great Britain during the war ”

“ HUTTON, Sir RICHARD (1561?–1639) , judge, second son of Anthony Hutton, of Hutton Hall, Penrith, Cumberland, by Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Musgrave of Hayton in the same county, born about 1561, read divinity for a time at Jesus College, Oxford, with a view to taking holy orders, but changed his mind and entered Gray's Inn in 1580, being already a member of Staple Inn, in the hall of which his arms are emblazoned. ”

“ Nathan Hutton is a well remembered old postilion. He was a tall, spare man, and lived in a small log house on the roadside, a short distance west of the old Johnson tavern, and four and a half miles east of Brownsville. At the foot of the hill below his house, he re-enforced the coaches with his postilion both ways, east and west, up Colley’s hill, going west, and the equally long hill, coming east from that point. When he wanted a man or horse to be faithful to duty he exhorted him to “stand by his ’tarnal integrity.” ”

“ Hutton Lodge, on Hutton’s Island, had been built in the palmy days of the family’s prosperity.
It was to this lodge that Captain Hugh Hutton of Revolutionary memory had retired with his sole female relative, his sister-in-law, Miss Josephine Cotter. And here, after his death, had the good woman continued to live.
And here was Hugh Hutton’s home whenever his ship 29would be in port. And finally, it was to this lodge, or cottage, as he called it, that Miss Joe conducted her young charge, the widowed bride. ”

“ Julie colored a little.
"Well, you might--not many. And, Hutton, you're sure we can't disturb Lady Henry?"
Hutton's expression was not wholly confident.
"Her ladyship's very quick of hearing, miss. But I'll shut those doors at the foot of the back stairs, and I'll ask every one to come in quietly."
"Thank you, Hutton--thank you. That'll be very good of you. And, Hutton--"
"Yes, miss." The man paused with a large vase of white arums in his hand.
"You'll say a word to Dixon, won't you? If anybody comes in, there'll be no need to trouble Lady Henry about it. I can tell her to-morrow." ”

“ To Shafto Hutton dedicated his first book, 'The Schoolmaster's Guide,' 1764. At the same date Hutton made his first contribution to the 'Ladies' Diary,' of which he was editor from 1773 to 1818. Hutton's reputation as a mathematical teacher grew rapidly; among his pupils were John Scott, afterwards Lord-chancellor Eldon, and Elizabeth Surkes, subsequently the lord chancellor's first wife. Hutton also worked as a surveyor, and was in 1770 employed by the mayor and corporation of Newcastle to draw up an accurate map of the city and its suburbs. ”

“ When Hutton addressed himself to a deep topic of abstract speculation, he "saw so very far into it" that even his most earnest admirers could not follow the visual act. When he handled the more commonplace subjects of thought or action with which ordinary men concern themselves, he seemed to miss the most obvious and palpable points. ”

“ In contemplating the stupendous results achieved by such apparently feeble forces, Hutton felt that one great objection he had to contend with in the reception of his theory, even by the scientific men of his day, lay in the inability or unwillingness of the human mind to admit such large demands as he made on the past. ”

“ HUTTON, MATTHEW (1639–1711) , antiquary, born in 1639, was the third son of Richard Hutton of Nether Poppleton, Yorkshire, by his second wife, Dorothy, daughter of Ferdinando, viscount Fairfax of Cameron in Scotland, and was thus the great-grandson of Matthew Hutton [q. v.] , archbishop of York. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, of which he was a fellow, and graduated M.A. and D.D. In March 1677 he became rector of Aynhoe in Northamptonshire (Bridge, Northamptonshire, i. 139) . He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Roger Burgoine, knt. ”

“ Hutton, Birmingham’s most famous and completest historian of the past, claims for this city, whose rise has been so phenomenal during the last half century, that history proves its progress has been continuous, and that the town has never suffered a decline. ”

“ It is only just to add that for the violent prejudices excited by some of his contemporaries against Hutton's writings—as being directed against the theological tenets of the day and therefore subversive of religion—there is really no foundation whatever; and every candid reader of the Theory of the Earth must acquit its author of any such design. The passage quoted on page 51 could only have been written by Lyell at a time when he was still unacquainted with Hutton's works, and was misled by common report concerning them. ”

“ Hutton is a true and tried friend. Much that I hold sweetest, much that I hold most precious, I owe to her. She has oftenest advised and helped me in my progress through college. When I find my work particularly difficult and discouraging, she writes me letters that make me feel glad and brave; for she is one of those from whom we learn that one painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier. ”

“ He contributed 'The Political Character of the Working Class' to 'Essays on Reform' (London, 1867, 8vo) , and 'Reciprocity' to a volume of 'Lectures on Economic Science,' published by the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (London, 1870, 8vo) . In 1899 a volume of selections from Hutton's writings in the 'Spectator,' entitled 'Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought,' was, published under the editorship of his niece, Miss Elizabeth Mary Roscoe. William Watson's 'Lachrymæ Musarum and other Poems' (London, 1893, 8vo) was dedicated to Hutton and Townsend. ”

“ The great transportation or travelling of the materials of the strata, supposed by Dr Hutton, - 172 - has been treated as absurd by some of his opponents, particularly De Luc and Kirwan. These philosophers seem not to have observed, that their own system, and indeed every system which derives the secondary strata from the primary, involves a transportation of materials, hardly less than is supposed in the Huttonian theory, and a degradation of the primeval mountains, in many instances much greater. ”

“ Hutton could never quite make out.
"But perhaps you won't have to go to Llandrindod after all," Miss Spence was saying. "If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off."
"I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better to-day."
Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver or a weak heart. ”

“ That was all very well for a subordinate and a younger man, but it would not have been half so satisfactory in the case of an equal partnership. Hutton was occupied with pure literature—especially poetry—and with theology and with home politics. Townsend, on the other hand, though he was a great reader and lover of books, and a man of real religious feeling, was specially interested in Asia and the Asiatic spirit and foreign affairs. ”

“ Though professing merely to set forth his friend's doctrines, Playfair's treatise was in many respects an original contribution to science of the highest value. It placed for the first time in the clearest light the whole philosophy of Hutton regarding the history of the earth, and enforced it with a wealth of reasoning and copiousness of illustration which obtained for it a wide appreciation. ”

“ The Lyellian doctrine of metamorphism had its origin in Hutton, for he showed that invading igneous granite had altered, through its heat and expanding power, the originally waterlaid sediments, and that the schists of the Alps had been born of the sea like other stratified rocks.
Hutton is the father of the Uniformitarian principle, for he “started with the grand conception that the past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now, or to have happened only recently. The dominant idea in his philosophy is that the present is the key to the past.” ”

“ James Hutton, of Edinburgh, physician, farmer, and manufacturing chemist—patient, enthusiastic, level-headed devotee of science. Inspired by his love of chemistry to study the character of rocks and soils, Hutton had not gone far before the earth stood revealed to him in a new light. He saw, what generations of predecessors had blindly refused to see, that the face of nature everywhere, instead of being rigid and immutable, is perennially plastic, and year by year is undergoing metamorphic changes. ”

“ The same energies and forces have always been and have acted by law in much the same manner as at the present time. With his true scientific spirit Hutton would have nothing to do with convulsions or with the origin of the globe; he did not want to guess or speculate, but to argue logically on facts which anybody could observe. He took geology out of the age of the marvellous and laid the foundations of the present aspect of the science. ”

“ A distinguishing feature of the Huttonian philosophy is to be seen in the breadth of its conceptions regarding the geological operations continually in progress on the surface of the globe. Hutton saw that the land is undergoing a ceaseless process of degradation, through the influence of the air, frost, rain, rivers and the sea, and that in course of time, if no countervailing agency should intervene, the whole of the dry land will be washed away into the sea. But he also perceived that this universal erosion is not everywhere carried on at the same rate ”

“ Hutton maintained life to be something immaterial and independent of matter, which, however, it required in order to display itself. He was an original thinker and was often involved in controversy, where he fought strenuously but fairly. ”

“ This liberty is not more necessary to Dr Hutton than to other theorists. No ingenuity has been able to reconcile the natural history of the globe with the opinion of its recent origin; and accordingly the cosmologies of Kirwan and De Luc, though contrived with more mineralogical skill, are not less forced and unsatisfactory than those of Burnet and Whiston. ”

“ Thus the area of Dr Hutton’s centre will be enlarged, till the earth and moon will come in contact, if our plan hereafter mentioned should not check such progression. But we forbear, lest when it is ascertained that “the present continents are all going to decay and their materials descending into the ocean,” it may cause some disagreeable sensations among our friends, who are speculators in American lands, whose property, it seems, according to Dr Hutton’s theory, is about to take French leave of its worthy proprietors. ”

“ He was kind to animals, and often set their broken limbs. In 1875 Miss Constance Innes, daughter of Charles Leslie, was thrown from her horse and broke her arm. After many months; having, as she believed, a permanently stiff arm, she went to Hutton, who restored it to its use, and on 26 July 1876 she became his wife. On 16 July 1887, at 36 Queen Anne Street, London, a servant gave him some laudanum instead of a black draught. He died soon afterwards at University College Hospital. A verdict of death from misadventure was returned at the inquest. He left one child, Gladys Hutton. ”

“ But two links are still wanting to complete the chain of Hutton's hypothesis. Through what agency has the ooze of the ocean-bed been transformed into solid rock? and through what agency has this rock been lifted above the surface of the water to form new continents? Hutton looks about him for a clew, and soon he finds it. Everywhere about us there are outcropping rocks that are not stratified, but which give evidence to the observant eye of having once been in a molten state. Different minerals are mixed together; pebbles are scattered through masses of rock like plums in a pudding ”

“ It forms a complete contrast to the theory of Dr Hutton, where nothing is to be seen beyond the continuation of the present order; where no latent seed of evil threatens final destruction to the whole; and where the - 486 - movements are so perfect, that they can never terminate of themselves. This is surely a view of the world more suited to the dignity of Nature, and the wisdom of its Author, than has yet been offered by any other system of cosmology. ”

“ Unfortunately, Hutton's theory was linked to the extravagancies of what was known at that day as [Pg 18] 'Vulcanism' or 'Plutonism,' in contradistinction to the 'Neptunism' of Werner. Hutton, while rejecting the Wernerian notion of "the aqueous precipitation of basalt," maintained the equally fanciful idea that the consolidation of all strata—clays, sandstones, conglomerates, limestones and even rock-salt—must be ascribed to the action of heat, and that even the formation of chalk-flints and the silicification of fossil wood were due to the injection of molten silica! ”