he chanced to be when the idea struck him, and to have run about in that state through the streets of Syracuse, exclaiming, in his native Greek, Eureka! Eureka! (I have found it! I have found it!) No better example can be given, than is afforded by this anecdote, of the manner in which the most common and apparently insignificant fact will sometimes yield to the contemplation of genius the richest produce of philosophy. It was the simple circumstance of the water chancing to run over the sides of the bath that revealed to him what he sought. His friend and patron Hiero, king of Syracuse, had set him a problem to solve. It was suspected that a crown, which Hiero had employed an artist to make for him out of a certain quantity of gold, was composed partly of some inferior metal. The weight was the same with that of the gold, but the bulk was apparently too great. The question really was merely to obtain an exact measure of the bulk; for, of course, the bulk of any given weight of pure gold was known, or could easily be ascertained. If the crown could have been melted and the metal reduced to a regular shape, there would have been no difficulty; but it was necessary that its exact bulk should be determined without breaking it up. As soon as Archimedes saw how a portion of the water in the bath was displaced by the immersion of his body, he perceived that he had found what was wanted; the quantity of water, or any other liquid, which the crown similarly immersed should displace would at once give the bulk of the crown. All the rest was matter of the simplest calculation. Assuming the alloy, when it was found that there was an alloy, to be silver, the exact proportions in which the two metals had been mixed together would be an easy and immediate deduction from the comparison of the bulk of the crown, ascertained in the manner that has been described, with that of the same weight of gold on the one hand and that of the same weight of silver on the other. The discovery consisted solely in the manner of ascertaining the bulk of the crown, or of any other body however irregular in figure. This, indeed, is not the method of finding the specific gravity of bodies that is now commonly employed; the modern method, by means of the contrivance called the hydrostatic balance, is not even founded upon the same principle with that discovered by Archimedes. But it is evident that his would equally answer, at least for all such cases as the one which was first solved by it. It was not the specific gravities of gold and silver which Archimedes discovered on this occasion, but only a way of ascertaining the specitic gravity of irregularly-shaped bodies. It is said that Hiero, who was himself a man of science, was so much struck with the decisive solution of his problem, that he declared he should never from that moment be able to refuse his belief to anything that Archimedes might tell him.

The illustrious LEIBNITZ, when only in his sixteenth year, conceived the brilliant idea of reducing the elements of thought to a species of

alphabet, which should consist of the representatives or characters, as it were, of all our simplest ideas, and serve to express distinctly their different combinations, just as the sounds of speech are expressed by the common letters. Without attempting to maintain the practicability of this notion, it is impossible to deny that it evidenced great subtilty and originality of mind in the young metaphysician: and we can well conceive the delight with which such a conception must have been contemplated by a spirit like his, ardent in the pursuit both of knowledge and of distinction; and beholding, as it were, in this dazzling speculation a new and untraversed continent of thought in the distance, wherein it might spend its first strength, and rear for itself immortal trophies. In a paper, written many years after, his History (in Latin) of a Universal Language, Leibnitz himself describes to us what he calls the infantine joy which this idea brought with it, when it first suggested itself to him, filling his mind, as it did, with the hope and confused vision of the great discoveries to which it promised to conduct him; and although, in the multiplicity of his subsequent pursuits, he had never been able to accomplish the high enterprise which he had so early planned, he declares that, the deeper he had carried his reflections and inquiries, he had only become the more convinced of its practicability. Such allurement is

there even in the veiled countenance of a new truth!

But beyond all, perhaps, that a discoverer ever felt, must have been the surprise and rapture of Galileo, when, having turned for the first time to the heavens the wonderful instrument which his own ingenuity had invented, he beheld that crowd of splendours which had never before revealed themselves to the eye, nor even been dreamed of by the imagination, of man. While Galileo resided at Venice, a report was brought to that city, that a Dutchman had presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an instrument, by means of which distant objects were made to appear as if they were near; and this was all that the rumour stated. But it was enough for Galileo. The philosopher immediately set himself to work to find out by what means. the thing must have been effected; and in the course of a few hours satisfied himself that, by a certain arrangement of spherical glasses, he could repeat the new miracle. In the course of two or three days, he presented several telescopes to the Senate of Venice, accompanied with a memoir on the immense importance of the instrument to science, and especially to astronomy. He afterwards greatly improved his invention; and brought it to such a state of perfection, that he was in a condition to commence, by means of it, the examination of the far-off firmament itself. It was then that, to his unutterable astonishment, he saw, as a celebrated French astronomer has expressed it, "what no mortal before that moment had seen— the surface of the moon, like another earth, ridged by high mountains, and furrowed by deep valleys-Venus, as well as it, presenting phases

C

demonstrative of a spherical form; Jupiter surrounded by four satellites, which accompanied him in his orbit; the milky way; the nebulæ; finally, the whole heaven sown over with an infinite multitude of stars, too small to be discerned by the naked eye." (Biographie Universelle : Art. "Galileo.") Half a century afterwards our own Milton, who had seen Galileo, thus sung some of these new wonders in immortal numbers:

"The moon, whose orb,

Through optic glass, the Tuscan artist views

At evening from the top of Fesolé,

Or in Valdarno, to desory new lands,

Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe."

A few days-what days of intoxicating delight they must have been !were spent by Galileo in rapidly reviewing the successive wonders that presented themselves to him; and then he proceeded to announce his discoveries to the world by the publication of a paper, which he entitled the Nuncius Sidereus, or Herald of the Heavens, which he continued from time to time, as he found new objects to describe. From this period the examination of the heavens became the sole object of Galileo's thoughts, and the occupation of his life. He wrote, he talked of nothing else.

Every mind which is yet a stranger to science, is, in some respects, in the same situation with Galileo, before he turned his telescope to the heavens; and such a mind has a world of wonders to learn, many of which are as extraordinary as those which then revealed themselves to the philosopher. It has, in fact, to behold all that he beheld; not certainly, like him, for the first time that any one of the human race had been admitted to that high privilege, but yet for the first time, too, in so far as itself alone is concerned. The thrilling consciousness of discovery was Galileo's alone; the novelty and sublimity of the sight remain the same for all by whom it has been yet unenjoyed. And so it is with every other sort of knowledge. Although it may have been in reality discovered for the first time a thousand years ago, it remains as new a pleasure as if it had only been found out yesterday, for him who has not yet acquired it. Such pleasures, in truth, are the only ones that admit of being indefinitely multiplied. The enjoyments of sense, to say nothing of their comparatively brief endurance, their certainty to pall upon repetition, and the positively injurious and destroying tendency of many of them, are, from the nature of things, necessarily extremely limited in point of number; for the senses themselves are but few, and no one of them has many varieties of enjoyment to communicate. What were even the highest pleasures brought us by the eye, or the ear, apart from that character which they derive from the moral or intellectual associations they awaken? Momentary excitements for the child, but

hardly the gratifications even of a moment to the man-as is abundantly evidenced by the case of many a one in whom the mere corporeal organ is as perfect as usual, but who, nevertheless, hardly receives from it any pleasure worth naming, owing to the uncultivated state of those mental faculties, which are truly the great creators and bestowers of human happiness. But when did we hear of any one who, having fairly commenced the pursuit of literature or science, ever became tired of it; or would not have gladly devoted his whole life to it, if he could? There may be other passions to which men will deliver themselves up, in the first instance, with greater precipitation and impetuosity; there is none, of a merely terrestrial nature, assuredly, which will detain them so long, or eventually absorb their being so entirely, as the passion for knowledge. We have numberless instances of persons, in every rank of life, who, for the sake of gratifying it, have contended with, and overcome, such difficulties and impediments of all sorts as certainly would have worn out the strength of almost any other impulse with which we are acquainted. But this is an impulse which, we may venture to affirm, when once truly awakened, no discouragements that the most unfavourable circumstances have interposed have ever been able effectually to subdue.

The late Professor HEYNE, of Göttingen, was one of the greatest classical scholars of his own or of any age, and during his latter days enjoyed a degree of distinction, both in his own country and throughout Europe, of which scarcely any contemporary name, in the same department of literature, could boast. Yet he had spent the first thirty-two or thirty-three years of his life, not only in obscurity, but in an almost incessant struggle with the most depressing poverty. He had been born amidst the miseries of the lowest indigence, his father being a poor weaver, with a large family, for whom his best exertions were often unable to provide bread. In an account which he has given of his early life, he himself says, "Want was the earliest companion of my childhood. I well remember the painful impressions made on my mind by witnessing the distress of my mother when without food for her children. How often have I seen her, on a Saturday evening, weeping and wringing her hands, as she returned home from an unsuccessful effort to sel the goods which the daily and nightly toil of my father had manufactured!" His parents managed, however, to send him to a children's school in the suburbs of the small town of Chemnitz, in Saxony, where they lived; and he soon exhibited an uncommon desire of acquiring information. He made so rapid a progress in the humble branches of knowledge taught in the school, that, before he had completed his tenth year, he was paying a portion of his school fees by teaching a little girl, the daughter of a wealthy neighbour, to read and write. Having learned everything comprised in the usual course of the school, he felt a strong

desire to learn Latin. A son of the schoolmaster, who had studied at Leipsic, was willing to teach him at the rate of fourpence a week; but the difficulty of paying so large a fee seemed quite insurmountable. One day he was sent to one of his godfathers, who was a baker in pretty good circumstances, for a loaf. As he went along, he pondered sorrowfully on this great object of his wishes, and entered the shop in tears. The good-tempered baker, on learning the cause of his grief, undertook to pay the required fee for him, at which, Heyne tells us, he was perfectly intoxicated with joy; and as he ran, all ragged and barefoot, through the streets, tossing the loaf in the air, it slipped from his hands and rolled into the gutter. This accident, and a sharp reprimand from his parents, who could ill afford such a loss, brought him to his senses. He continued his attendance for about two years, when his teacher acknowledged that he had taught him all he himself knew. His father now pressed him to adopt some trade, but the boy felt an invincible desire to go on with his literary education; and fortunately his mother, proud of the talents of her son, was not unwilling that, if it were possible, he should be allowed to gratify his own anxious desires, and continue his studies. He had another godfather, who was a clergyman in the neighbourhood; and this person, upon receiving the most flattering accounts of Heyne from his last master, agreed to be at the expense of sending him to the principal seminary of his native town of Chemnitz. His new patron, however, although a well-endowed churchman, doled out his bounty with most scrupulous parsimony; and Heyne, without the necessary books of his own, was often obliged to borrow those of his companions, and to copy them over for his own use. At last he obtained the situation of tutor to the son of one of the citizens; and this for a short time rendered his condition more comfortable. But the period was come when, if he was to proceed in the career he had chosen, it was necessary for him to enter the university; and he resolved to go to Leipsic. He arrived in that city accordingly, with only two florins (about four shillings) in his pocket, and nothing more to depend upon except the small assistance he might receive from his godfather, who had promised to continue his bounty. He had to wait so long, however, for his expected supplies from this source, which came accompanied with much grudging and reproach when they did make their appearance, that, destitute both of money and books, he would have been without bread too, had it not been for the compassion of the maid-servant of the house where he lodged. What sustained his courage in these circumstances (we use his own words) was neither ambition nor presumption, nor even the hope of one day taking his place among the learned. The stimulus that incessantly spurred him on was the feeling of the humiliation of his condition—the shame with which he shrank from the thought of that degradation which the want of a good education would impose