subjects were known to his friends to be various and extensive. Indeed, he spent his life, if any man ever did, in the pursuit of knowledge, making it his only amusement, as well as his only business. The simple and inexpensive habits of life which he had formed in his earlier years underwent no change on his coming into possession of his large fortune. He had accustomed himself from his youth to the utmost regularity in all his movements; and his practice in this respect, to his last days, nothing was ever sufficient to derange. What might be called his public scene was the Royal Society, the meetings of which he attended punctually as long as his strength permitted. With this exception, he was but little seen abroad; and, perhaps, the seclusion in which he lived made his name less popularly known in his own country than it would otherwise have been, notwithstanding his eminent merits. His fame, however, was more than British it was European. Continent, where he was regarded without reference to his private habits, and only as the author of many admirable scientific disquisitions and of some great discoveries, his name stood very high. The chief men of science in France gave the strongest proof of the estimation in which they held him, when, in 1803, they elected him one of the eight Foreign Associates of the Institute.

On the

One valuable service which Mr Cavendish's wealth enabled him to render to the students of science and literature of his time, was the establishment of an extensive library, which, with great liberality and public spirit, he threw open for the accommodation both of his friends and of all other persons engaged in intellectual pursuits who were properly recommended to him- allowing them not only to consult the books, but to carry them home. In the

himself and the others whom he admitted to share it with him. When he wanted a book for his own perusal, the same application for it was made to the librarian, and the same receipt given for it, as if it had been borrowed by any other reader. Towards the close of his life, after the death of the person who had been accustomed to take charge of the collection, he even used to attend himself on a certain day of every week to give out the books to applicants.

This eminent person died in 1810, full of years and honours. Even in his last moments something of his love of watching and scrutinizing the phenomena of nature showed itself; he insisted upon being left to die alone, apparently that he might be able to observe the symptoms of approaching dissolution with the more undisturbed attention. Accordingly, when his servant, whom he had sent out of the room, returned sooner than he had desired, he immediately ordered him again to retire; and when the man came back the second time, he found that his master had breathed his last. In his attachment to philosophy, Mr Cavendish was all his life so independent of other sources of pleasure, that his fortune, rather possessed than enjoyed, and not expended in the maintenance of any of the show and luxury in which a large revenue usually dissipates itself, had accumulated so greatly, that at the time of his death it is said to have amounted to twelve hundred thousand pounds. He may well be described, therefore, to have been, as a French writer has quaintly expressed it, the richest of all the learned of his time, as well as probably the most learned of all the rich.*

* M. Biot, in Biographie Univ. vii, 456.

CHAPTER V.

Other Individuals of rank distinguished in Literature and Science Marquis of Worcester, &c. Self-educated cultivators of Science Parkes; Davy.

THE preceding notices are abundantly sufficient to prove both how frequently men of wealth and rank have resisted all other allurements, to devote themselves to intellectual pursuits, and how many important contributions such persons have been enabled to make to literature, science, and the arts. Yet it would be very easy to add to the list we have given, from a very cursory survey of the history of improvements and discoveries. Thus, to confine ourselves to the arts and sciences only, we might mention, among our own countrymen, the celebrated MARQUIS OF WORCESTER, author of the Hundred Inventions, among which we find the first suggestion of the steam engine; his contemporary, Viscount Brouncker, the 'first President of the Royal Society, and noted as the perfecter of the theory of fractional arithmetic; the Earl of Macclesfield, to whom we are principally indebted for the reformation of the calendar, and the introduction of the new style in England; the late Lord Stanhope, the inventor of the printing press known by his name, as well as of many other most ingenious and valuable contrivances; and various others, all memorable either as inventors, or as the authors of some decided step in the progress of improvement. Among foreigners, too, Prince Rupert, as already noticed, has been considered the discoverer of the art of mezzotinto engraving. Baron Hermelin,

a nobleman of Sweden, who died in 1820, was the father of the modern and greatly improved system of working the mines of that country, which he expended many years of exertion and large sums of money in introducing and establishing. The modern art of fortification is the creation of the French Marshal VAUBAN, a man of rank and wealth, who, although he spent his life as a soldier, found leisure to write numerous works, which have been printed, as well as twelve large volumes in manuscript which he left behind him, entitled 'Mes Oisivetes,' My Idie Hours. The most elaborate and splendid, though not the most correct work on Natural History that was ever written, and the one which, with all its errors, has, perhaps, more than any other, contributed to spread a taste for that science, was the production of another French nobleman, the celebrated Count de BUFFON. A German nobleman, the Baron von CANSTEIN, is noted for having discovered and practised at Halle, in the beginning of the last century, a new mode of printing, which appears to have been the same with that now called stereotype. This invention is singular for its vicissitudes of notoriety and oblivion. The Chinese have had a long acquaintance with the art of printing from blocks or plates, instead of moveable types, and among them it is to this day the only method in use. It was probably also the first form which the art of printing assumed in Europe, was then forgotten for many years till it was revived in the middle of the sixteenth century at Augsburg, where some of the plates that were used for the purpose are still preserved, - was again introduced at Leyden about half a century later, was a few years after re-invented by Canstein, was practised at Edinburgh in 1744 by William Ged, who was quite ignorant of what had been done by his predeand lastly, after his attempts had ceased to

cessors,

be remembered, was taken up anew by the late ingenious Dr Alexander Tilloch and Fowlis, the Glasgow printer, who, however, did little more than merely take out a patent for what they deemed their discovery. And even now, after it has been practised on a larger scale than ever, it does not appear to be gaining ground in general estimation, principally from its inapplicability to works which require improvement in successive editions. If such works are largely corrected, the saving in the plates is in a great degree lost. If that saving is principally regarded, and antiquated opinions or positive errors are multiplied through a paltry economy, the invention is a positive incumbrance to learning, and is therefore of little worth. Unquestionably the proper range of its application is very limited,

It ought to be observed, that the several block or plate-printers we have mentioned did not all pursue the same method. Faust, for instance, on the invention of printing, employed merely wooden blocks, such as are used by the Chinese, on which the characters were cut out, as is done still in wood-engraving; the Augsburg printers appear to have set up their types in the usual manner, and then to have converted them into a solid plate by pouring melted metal upon the back of the congeries; and the present method, as is well known, is, after having set up the types, to take an impression from them in plaster of Paris, or some other composition, and to cast or found the plate in this as a mould. It does not very clearly appear what was the plan which Canstein followed; but it is known that he printed a great many volumes, and sold them very cheap. A copy of the New Testament, for instance, he used to sell for fourpence; but, as he was very pious, it is not improbable that he distributed the Scriptures at less