and confusion the abjuration which will never be given while I retain possession of my faculties; let me die in peace, as my mother has just died!' Her sons were silent, and after an interval, during which she had left the room, she asked them again, Will you not promise me not to trouble my last moments?' 'No,' replied her eldest son, the priest, who had, no doubt, discussed the matter with his brothers, and perhaps with his father; we cannot make that promise.' This answer has given her a terror, which I share with her; every night I have dreamt of it. This morning I advised her to take advantage of the increase of fortune which has come to her through my mother's death to set apart a fixed sum for a journey to Geneva, that, whenever she is warned of the approach of death, she may come to us, and end her days in peace. But what poison these priests infuse into people's minds! If it is true that Voltaire, in the initials found in several of his letters, écr. l'inf. meant écrasez l'infame, i.e. Catholicism, was he not in the right? That religion is not one to be judged from a distance, or from books; those only can fully understand the horror inspired by it who have watched its operations in the internal relations of a family, and been actually submitted to its influence. My sister, however, tries to put her sons' behaviour in the best light before me, and makes the most of the signs of feeling shown by them. True, they have mourned for her loss, but so they would have done if it had been that of a dog or a horse; their religion teaches them, indeed, that it is much better to have no soul, as an animal, than to have one only to lose it, as a heretic. I have tried in vain to persuade her to visit her daughter in the convent; she is convinced that it would be impossible to speak to a nun without either offending her or distorting the truth. If she does not go to Florence, neither shall I; you are all I want to see, my darling; every one else I only wish to avoid. Perhaps I shall be able to start before receiving your answer to this letter; be careful, therefore, to write

it so that my sister may open and read it if I am gone. How I long to be with you! but I must stay a little with her, since my presence brings her some support, and some consolation."

There are several different kinds of interest in that letter; it has its value as the picture of an Italian householdperhaps as correct a picture now as it was when it was first taken-but the predominant interest is the light it throws on the historian of France. One requisite for a complete fulfilment of that character was certainly wanting to the man who wrote that account of Madame Forti's request to her children -he could not sympathise with bigotry. We may almost say he could not understand bigotry. Certainly it takes no great stretch of tolerance to acknowledge that, whether or not that feeling would be silenced in the breast of a son watching his mother's death-bed by a mightier logic than ours, it could only be strengthened and intensified by this deliberate and uncalled-for defiance. To take in what an ultramontane Roman Catholic means by any one dying a Protestant, is to see that he ought never to forego his right to do his utmost to prevent it. And whoever cannot see this cannot be just to Catholicism. But if, on the one hand, we see what deductions to make from the value of Sismondi's judgment on a great national struggle, by observing his incapacity for strict justice when confronting this struggle as it divided his own family; on the other hand, this very incapacity, thus exhibited in its true nature, as the suffusion of thought with feeling, acquires a certain value of its own.

Any estimate of the two great bodies which divide Christendom, resting exclusively on a sympathy with individual freedom, is a very incomplete one; but any estimate which wholly excludes this point of view would be still more incomplete.

If it would be dangerous to test, by its influence on domestic happiness, any religion professedly derived from Him who "set a man at variance against his

father," it would be yet more dangerous for presumptious mortals wholly to ignore this result in forming their judgment on the claims of this religion to Divine authority, and neglect in this judgment the fact that a particular creed, honestly and consistently translated into life, makes it impossible for a son to grant his mother's entreaty, that in her last hours she may be left alone with God. This lively sympathy with individual claims, which clouded at times Sismondi's just appreciation of the aspect of large questions, is his strength and weakness as a historian. We can never forget that a nation is made up of individuals, each one of whom can suffer profoundly. Hence his histories are always real, always human; but the exclusive contemplation of this side of national life is enough to account for the depressing effect of the larger part of his writings, and condenses itself into the doubt, expressed in some verses written towards the close of his life, whether the record of so many crimes is really the fitting occupation of a lifetime. The conviction which should balance this feeling, that, encircling this individual life, and not in any degree interfering with it, is the life of the nation, that history has to trace the purpose of Heaven towards the larger unity, and therefore in some sense to accept success as an indication of that purpose this conviction did not enter into Sismondi's mind. Putting genius out of the question, and regarding merely the moral attitude of the two writers, I should call him the antitype of Mr. Carlyle. The two historians represent the two views of history which perhaps no one original mind could combine, but which we need to combine by studying both ends of such a contrast, if we desire to learn the meaning of the great epic. And Englishmen, who are apt to look upon all history as a "parallelogram of forces," may not unprofitably lean rather to the side which this view excludes, and remember that, though energy has a natural affinity with truth, the two things are separable, and that we may

follow the path of success without dig ging a channel for our sympathies to flow into. Perhaps Sismondi tende! too much in the opposite direction. His sympathies were always with the oppressed and the vanquished; weakness of every kind had a claim upon him, to which he was never slow to respond. "The man who gave nine of ten hours a day to the past," wrote one who knew him, "was able to bring "himself entirely into the present when "ever a misfortune was to be redressed," and an instance recorded in the following letter of this expansive feeling, as exhibited towards the sorrows of a child, forms a fitting conclusion to the foregoing notice :

"Monsieur Sismondi, mamma tells me you have taken care of several things for me, and I thank you for it; you have been very kind to me, and I wanted kindness very much. I wo so much to go home; we are so dil here; even hearing Talma is not enough of a pleasure to prevent my feeling s dull. I don't know what I should have done if you had not come to Lfor you were the only person who spoke a word to me; now I am quite deserted; nobody speaks to me. I am rather angry with

; after having told her she was the only person I loved best after mamma, I thought she would have a little more confidence in me. I don't want her to tell me any secrets that would be wrong, but to talk to me about what I do know; and not to turn off all my questions with a joke, and treat me as a person to be scolded and taken care of, who must not venture to think whether the people she cares for are happy or happy. How different you were! how you tried to comfort me! you did not hide these misfortunes from me, but showed me how to behave under them, and made me hope I should some day be useful to mamma. grateful to you for your kindness at this time. Good-bye, Monsieur Sismondi."

I am so

Conceive the delight of a little maid whose elders regarded her as a “person”

to be scolded and taken care of, at falling in with a real grown-up gentleman, who would talk rationally to her, and hold out hopes of her being useful to mamma! That makes a good place to leave off. His tenderness for all that was weak was a part of his nature on which it is well to rest; it came out to

the poor as much as to children, and the present writer recalls, after more than twenty years, the emphasis of unquestionable sincerity with which a humble friend, who showed his house and garden, summed up his eloge with the deeply-felt words, "He was a good man."

THE name of "Whewell," confined to a few households in the North of England, had never been borne by any one of note till he whose death we are now deploring made it famous among all English-speaking men. He himself believed it to be identical with "Wyvill," but we are not aware that there is any ground, beyond this questionable etymology, for connecting his lineage with that of a family which dates from the chivalry of the Middle Ages. Be that as it may, the proudest "Sir Marmaduke of them all need not have blushed to acknowledge, as his descendant, one who was so stalwart in body, so fearless in spirit, so ready to maintain the right, to redress the wrong, and to do battle with all comers for his country and his faith.

She is

William Whewell was born at Lancaster on May 24th, 1794. His father, a house-carpenter-not, as has been said, a blacksmith—was a man of probity and intelligence. His intellectual strength came from the mother's side. still remembered as a person of remarkably powerful and cultivated mind, though she never attempted any literary task beyond the humble one of contributing annually enigmas and charades. to the Lady's Diary. Of such trifles her son was fond to the last. To both his parents he was always dutiful and affectionate. The family consisted of two sons and three daughters. The other son, a child of remarkable promise, died at the age of ten. From his earliest No. 78.-VOL. XIII.

years, William Whewell was passionately fond of books. At a very early age he had read through all the volumes in his father's little library, which included, among others, the "Spectator." Addison may thus have contributed to form his excellent English style. He was always reading. He who as a man took such keen interest in all the serious pursuits of men, as a boy never shared in the amusements of boys. This was attributed-and the cause will surprise those who only knew him in his robust and vigorous manhood-to the bodily langour produced by ill-health. He sufred from an obstinate derangement of the digestive organs, which was finally removed by the treatment of a Cambridge physician. He was educated first at the grammar-school of his native place, and afterwards at Heversham, whither he removed in order to be qualified for holding an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge, connected with that school. Having gained this exhibition, then worth about 50l. a year, he commenced residence at Trinity as a sub-sizar in October, 1812. The same exhibition had been held fifty-eight years before by Watson, subsequently Bishop of Llandaff. There are those still living who remember Whewell as he first appeared at Cambridge, a tall, ungainly youth, with grey worsted stockings and country-made shoes. But he soon became known in the college as the most promising man of his year.

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He was elected in due course to a foundation sizarship and to a scholarship. In his second year he gained the Chancellor's medal for the best English poem, on the subject of Boadicea. In the mathematical tripos of 1816 he graduated as second wrangler, the first place being gained, contrary to general expectation, by Jacob of Caius College. The Smith's Prize examination gave the same result. Whewell is said to have consoled himself by an apt quotation: "Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he hath supplanted me these two times?" His rival abandoned science for law. In the same year, Graham, of Christ's, afterwards Bishop of Chester, was fourth wrangler and senior medallist; Hamilton, of Trinity, the present Dean of Salisbury, was ninth wrangler; Sheepshanks, founder of the exhibition which bears his name, tenth; and Blunt, of St. John's, the loved and lamented Margaret professor, fifteenth. Fourth in the the senior optimes was Elliott, author of "Hora Apocalyptica." Another honoured name, which does not appear on the mathematical tripos of the year, was that of Julius Charles Hare. He was elected fellow the year after Whewell, and was one of his dearest friends. Twenty years later, in dedicating to him his "Sermons on the Foundation of Morals," Whewell writes: "I turn to the speculations which these pages contain with a more cheerful "and kindly spirit, because they carry

me back to the days in which you "still resided in our much-loved Trinity "College; when I had the delight of "constant intercourse with you, and "such themes were not unfamiliar to 66 our conversation."

Whewell was elected Fellow of Trinity in 1817, and soon afterwards commenced lecturing on mathematics as assistant-tutor, at the moderate salary of 751. per annum. His earliest book seems to have been a "Syllabus of an Elementary Treatise on Mechanics," published in 1821. This was followed by "A Treatise on Dynamics," 1823. These two works were the bases of many successive volumes on mechanics, vari

ously recast, expanded, and subdivided by their author. In conjunction with Peacock, afterwards Dean of Ely, who was three years his senior, he laboured zealously in reforming what he considered to be the defects in the system of mathematical teaching then followed at Cambridge. His text-books were deficient in arrangement and method, and have long since been superseded; but at the time they exercised a very beneficial influence on University studies. Only five years after taking his B.A. degree he was elected fellow of the Royal Society, which in 1827 awarded him the gold medal-the "Royal," not the "Copley" medal-for his investiga tions on the subject of Tides.

As tutor, I am told that his multifarious literary and scientific pursuits somewhat impaired his efficiency. To be a thoroughly good tutor, a man must be content to write only on fleshly tablets. Whewell's heart was with his books and his speculations rather than with his pupils. Yet it cannot be doubted that his example was a great stimulus to them, while his growing reputation continued to attract students to his "side." On all important occasions he was both kind and just, but he was impatient of minor details, and an unwilling listener to what he thought trivial complaints. Add to this that he wanted the royal faculty of remembering faces. His memory, wonderfully accurate as regarded books, failed him as regarded men. Thus, his

pupils were sometimes mortified at finding that he did not recognise them. The same thing happened to the Fellows of his College after he became Master, and not unnaturally gave great offence to men who coveted his friendship in proportion as they admired his genius.

He was ordained soon after taking his M.A. degree. He became tutor in 1823, and continued to discharge all the duties of the office alone till 1833, when he associated with himself Mr. Perry, the present Bishop of Melbourne. He remained tutor till 1839. During all this time he took an active share in College and University business. He

never refused to serve on syndicates and committees, mastering every subject with wonderful rapidity. He was one of the founders of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and was an active correspondent of other scientific societies elsewhere. The long catalogue of his contributions to their "Transactions" attests his ardour in diffusing knowledge of all kinds, and I have before me, as I write, evidence of his industry in accumulating it. This consists of a vast body of notes on the books which he read from the year 1817 to 1830-books in almost all the languages in Europe, histories of all countries, ancient and modern, treatises on all sciences, moral and physical. Among the rest is an epitome of Kant's "Kritik der reinen. Vernunft," a work which exercised a marked influence on all his speculations in mental philosophy.

He was made Professor of Mineralogy in 1828, and held the office till 1832, when he found a worthy successor in Mr. Miller.

He was one of the most active founders and promoters of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. At the request of that body he undertook a new series of experiments on tidal phenomena, which displayed in a high degree his ingenuity and acuteness, and led to important discoveries. But it is rather as a historian of science than as an original investigator that his name will be remembered. In 1837, he published his magnum opus, the "History of the Inductive Sciences." In the composition of this work he sought and received assistance from a number of men eminent in their respective departments. The letters written to him on this occasion have been carefully preserved among his papers, and will, it is hoped, be published. For range of knowledge, for depth and grasp of thought, for lucidity of style, the "History" has few rivals in modern times. It will doubtless long continue to be the standard English book on the subject, enriched and amended by the comments of successive editors. In a book which takes a bird'seye view of all science, numerous inaccu

racies must of course be apparent to microscopic investigators, and further corrections and qualifications will be required by the growth of each branch.

"The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," which he regarded as the moral of the former work, was published in 1841. It was not so successful as its predecessor. Many thinkers were unable to accept the ultra-Platonic hypothesis on which it was based, but none could fail to find in it much that was suggestive and instructive if not convincing, and many brilliant guesses at truth, if not clear discoveries of it.

The excellence of the book as a whole is wonderful, if we consider the rapidity with which it was composed. We learn on good authority that it was sent to the press chapter by chapter as it was written. He worked with the hot haste of a parliamentary reporter. For this haste there was no apparent reason; no reason indeed, except such as sprang from his own ardent temperament. Other yet unexplored fields of knowledge were tempting him, and he was eager to be done with the mechanical drudgery imposed by the task in hand. He had none of that "long patience which, according to Cuvier, is "genius." But few will deny that he had genius, and his example alone would suffice to prove that Cuvier's definition is not universally true.

In 1837, he preached before the University four sermons on the foundation of morals, in which he developed and illustrated the doctrine of Butler, which rests moral obligation on the teaching of adivinely-given and divinely-enlightened conscience. This doctrine was not with. him a school thesis, but a profound and, if I may use the term, passionate conviction. Butler was the master whom he followed in moral speculation, as Bacon and Newton were his masters in other branches of philosophy. He was an ardent opponent of the utilitarian theory, and laboured long, and at last successfully, to oust Paley from among the text-books of University teaching. With this object, probably, he accepted, in 1838, the Professorship of Moral