mixed up as they were with the coarse and erudite jests made use of by Leibnitz. To this taste, however, of the princess for serious matters we owe our acquaintance with a work of Newton, very different from those that we have hitherto mentioned. Conversing one day on some historical subject, Newton explained to her a system of chronology, which he had formerly composed, simply for amusement. The princess was so much pleased with it, that she requested a copy, for her own use, on which latter condition Newton complied with her request: he, however, gave also a copy to the Abbé Conti, who had made himself remarkable by interfering in the disputes between Leibnitz and Newton. No sooner was the Abbé in Paris, than he communicated this manuscript to the world. It was immediately translated and printed, not only without the consent or knowledge of Newton, but even accompanied with a refutation by Fréret. Newton had thus the mortification to hear at the same time of the publication and reply, without having had any suspicion of the transaction; and was hence obliged, though contrary to his original intention, at least to give a more correct edition; but he was only able to prepare one: it did not appear till after his death in 1728.

This leads us to speak of another work of Newton, which, though appearing to differ much in its title from the one we have just mentioned, is, like it, an historical memoir; the title is, "Observations upon the Prophecies of Holy Writ, particularly the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John." Notwithstanding the singularity such a subject appears to offer, when treated of by a mind like that of Newton, we venture to affirm, that more persons have spoken of this dissertation than have given themselves the trouble to read it; it therefore becomes our duty here to point out more particularly the object which Newton had in view, and his manner of proceeding. The ground work of his reasoning is concisely expressed by the following words in the work itself:*

the prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men's curiosities, by enabling them to foreknow things; but that after they were fulfilled, they might be interpreted by the event; and his own Providence, not the interpreters', be then manifested thereby to the world. Now," says Newton, "for understanding the prophecies, we are in the first place to acquaint ourselves with the figurative language of the prophets; this language is taken from the analogy between the world natural and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic." He then successively enters into all the details of this connexion; first of all considering the heavens and the earth as representing thrones and people; then taking the astronomical phenomena, the rain, the hail, the meteors, the animals, the vegetables, their different parts, their different actions, and those of man himself; and finally, every thing in the material world, as having a peculiar mystic signification which he fixes and defines : "for instance," says he, "when a beast or man is put for a kingdom, his parts and qualities are put for the analogous parts and qualities of the kingdom: as the head of a beast for the great men who precede and govern; the tail for the inferior people who follow and are governed; the heads, if more than one, for the number of capital parts, or dynasties or dominions in the kingdom, whether collateral or successive, with respect to the civil government; the horns on any head for the number of kingdoms in that head, with respect to military power; seeing for understanding and policy; and in matters of religion for too, bishops; speaking for making laws; the mouth for a lawgiver, &c. &c." + Down to this point we find, in fact, nothing new, except the precise and, in some degree, systematic explanation of the method of interpretation: for at bottom this method is that which has been employed by all commentators; and it is really impossible to employ any other, in applying a prophecy which is not explicit in its terms. The distinguishing character of Newton's work is, that having thus made his glossary beforehand, it often suffices him for explaining a prophecy, to place the figu

Prophecies, part 1. chap. 2. t Prophecies, part 1. chap. 2. p. 8. D

to the explanations: by these means he makes a quicker and more extended progress. We will not follow him in the vast career he proposed to go over. Furnished with what he considered a key to prophetical language, he successively questions Daniel and St. John, and endeavours to produce, from their prophecies, the historical events that have taken place since their time. His work is immense; it embraces not only the principal epochs, and the most important events, in the ancient and in a part of the middle ages, but also a multitude of particular facts, of chronological observations, and of researches on civil or ecclesiastical antiquities, showing deep and extensive knowledge, taken from the most authentic sources. To give an idea of the detailed applications by which Newton has allowed himself to be carried away in this singular composition, and at the same time not to leave unnoticed the spirit of prejudice of which unhappily it bears the stamp, we will extract a passage in the seventh and eighth chapters of the first part. Newton has explained the ten horns of the fourth beast of Daniel by the ten kingdoms which the barbarians founded on the ruins of the Roman empire in the west, and has rapidly traced the history of each of these kingdoms, in order to show how it agrees with the prophecies. It remains to explain the eleventh horn of the same beast: the words of scripture are: "Now Daniel considered the horns, and behold there came up among them another horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots; and behold in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things, and his look was more stout than his fellows, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them: and one who stood by, and made Daniel know the interpretation of these things, told him, that the ten horns were ten kings that should arise, and another should arise after them and be diverse from the first, and he should subdue three kings, and speak great words against the Most High, and wear out the saints, and think to change times and laws and that they should be given into his hands until a time and times and half a time." "Now," says Newton, "kings are put for kingdoms as above; and therefore the little horn is a little kingdom. It was a horn of the

his first horns; and therefore we are to look for it among the nations of the Latin empire, after the rise of the ten horns. But it was a kingdom of a different kind from the other ten kingdoms, having a life or soul peculiar to itself, with eyes and a mouth. By its eyes it was a seer; and by its mouth speaking great things, and changing times and laws, it was a prophet as well as a king. And such a seer, a prophet, and a king, is the church of Rome." Newton then supports this analogy by an historical account of the rise and progress of the papal power, the details of which he, in succession, compares with the prophecy. Newton carries this investigation no further than the last half of the eighth century, because," says he, "the Pope, by acquir ing temporal power, is clearly designated by the prophet:" but carried beyond the limits previously assigned by himself to interpreters, he goes on to predict the epoch of the fall, or at least decline of this temporal power, for translating the expression of Daniel, "a time and times and half a time," by 1260 solar years, and indicating the year 800 as about the point to count from, he fixes the fatal term to be about the year 2060. We must remark, that this conclusion is not, in his work, as in those of some other protestant writers, dictated by any sectarian or party feeling; he states it with all the calm of entire conviction, and with all the simplicity of an evident demonstration. It appears to be not Newton, but St. John and Daniel, who attack the power of modern Rome, who characterize it by injurious terms, and finally predict its ruin.

It will, doubtless, be asked, how a mind of the character and force of Newton's, so habituated to the severity of mathematical considerations, so accus tomed to the observation of real phenomena, so methodical, and so cautious, even at his boldest moments in physical speculation, and consequently so well aware of the conditions by which alone truth is to be discovered, could put together such a number of conjectures, without noticing the extreme improbability that is involved in all of them, from the infinite number of arbitrary postulates on which he endeavours to establish his system. The answer to this question must be taken entirely from the ideas and the habits of the age

in which Newton lived. Not only was Newton profoundly religious, but his whole life was spent, and all his affections were concentrated in a circle of men, who, holding the same doctrines, consisidered themselves bound by their station or profession to defend and propagate them. The English philosophers of that period took pleasure in combining the researches of science with theological discussion; to which they were the more inclined, because the cause of protestantism had identified itself with political liberty; and men studied the bible to find weapons against despotism. The choice of Newton by the University of Cambridge as one of the delegates sent to King James, shows clearly that he shared in such sentiments; nor is it a more surprising fact, that Newton wrote upon the Apocalypse, than that R. Boyle, one of the greatest natural philosophers of the same period, published a treatise, entitled "The Christian Virtuoso," of which the object is to show that experimental philosophy conduces to a man being a good Christian,than that Wallis, the celebrated mathematician, composed a number of tracts on religious subjects,-than that Barrow who reckoned Newton himself among his pupils, and who resigned in his favour the mathematical chair, consecrated his latter years to theology, in order to take the degree of doctor in that faculty-that Hooke, whom we have so often mentioned, composed a work on the Tower of Babel-that Whiston, Newton's pupil and successor at Cambridge, also composed an essay "on the Revelation of St. John," and other treatises on pure theology-that Clarke, another still more illustrious pupil of Newton, the faithful translator of his Optics, the zealous promoter and ingenious defender of his philosophy, was at the same time the most profound theologian and sublime preacher in England; and finally, that Leibnitz himself, to take no other example, in the course of his literary life, voluntarily made numerous excursions into the provinces of natural theology, revelation, and biblical criticism; that he commented on the story of Balaam, treated in various ways the question of grace, and with the laudable intention of uniting Protestants and Catholics, discussed with Bossuet the principal doctrinal points which separate the two churches. This alliance of the exact sciences with religious controversy, at that time so

general, is the natural mode of accounting for the theological researches of Newton, however singular they might appear at the present day. There is another tract belonging to the same class of writings, which we must also mention, not only from the importance of the subject in a religious point of view, but also because it affords us a new opportunity of seeing the extensive knowledge which Newton possessed in these matters. The title is "An historical account of two notable corruptions of the Scriptures," in fifty pages 4to.; it contains a critical discussion of two passages in the Epistles of St. John and St. Paul, relating to the doctrine of the Trinity, which Newton supposes to have been altered by the copyists. From the nature of the subject, and from certain indications at the beginning of the pamphlet, it probably was composed when the works of Whiston and of Clarke on the same subject drew upon them the attacks of all the English theologians, that is, about 1712-13. It is certainly very remarkable that a man of the age of seventy-two or seventy-five should be able to compose rapidly, as he himself insinuates, so extensive a piece of sacred criticism, and of literary history, in which the logically connected arguments are always supported by the most varied erudition. At this period of Newton's life, the reading of religious works had become one of his most habitual occupations; and after he had performed the duties of his office, they formed, along with the conversation of his friends, his only amusement. He had now almost ceased to think of science, and as we have already remarked, since the fatal aberration of his intellect in 1693, he gave to the world only three really new scientific productions. One of these had probably been prepared some time previously, and the other must have occupied but little time: the first, published in the Philosophical Transactions, consists of only five, though very important, pages. It contains a comparative scale of temperatures, from the point of melting ice to that of the ignition of charcoal; the lower degrees are observed by means of a thermometer of linseed oil, the scale of which is divided into equal parts; the zero corresponds to the melting point of ice, and the 81st degree to the melting point of tin. The higher degrees are calculated according to the law of cooling in a metallic mass, by supposing the instan

taneous decrease in temperature to be proportional to the temperature itself, and by observing the time of the arrival of the fluid at each degree of temperature intended to be marked. These two methods of observation are connected by applying them to the same temperature for instance, to the fusion of tin, which is the highest in the one series, and the lowest in the other.

We have thus in this paper three important discoveries-first, a method of comparing thermometers, by determining the extreme terms of their scale from phenomena taking place at constant temperatures-secondly, the determination of the laws of cooling in solid bodies at slightly elevated temperatures; and thirdly, the observation of the constancy of temperature in the phenomena of melting and boiling-a constancy which has since become one of the foundations of the modern theory of heat: this important fact is established in Newton's treatise, by numerous and various experiments, made not only on compound bodies, and the simple metals, but on various metallic alloys, which shows us that Newton clearly perceived their importance. There is reason to believe that this paper was one of those composed before the fire in his laboratory.

a

The second paper we must mention, also dated 1700, was communicated by Newton to Halley, and was plan for an instrument of reflection to observe with at sea, without the observer being disturbed by the motion of the ship. It has been pretended that this idea, since so generally and so usefully employed by navigators, had been invented a long time previously by Hooke. It is true that in the history of the Royal Society for 1666, there is mentioned an instrument proposed by Hooke, to measure angles by means of the reflection of light; this announcement, however, is unaccompanied by any description to enable us to judge of the nature of the instrument; and if we endeavour to supply this defect by consulting the works of Hooke, written after this period, we shall find, that though he often makes use of reflection, it is always when applied to large fixed instruments; an idea which has no relation to that of employing reflection in moveable instruments, in order to render the angular distance of remote objects under observation independent of small changes of place in the centre of obser

vation from which they are viewed. There is no reason to believe that any one formed this happy and important idea before Newton, though the inexplicable silence of Halley, with regard to Newton's letter to him, left to another man, Hadley, the honour of again conceiving it (in 1731), and of so happily executing it, that mariners have given the name of Hadley's Quadrant to this ingenious and useful invention.

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The last labour of Newton that remains to be mentioned, was of another sort, and composed on a totally different occasion. In 1696, J. Bernoulli proposed to the mathematicians of Europe, to discover a curve, down which a heavy body should descend in the quickest time possible, between two given points at unequal heights. Newton having received this problem, presented on the next day a solution of it, but without any demonstration, merely saying that the required curve must be a cycloid, for the determination of which he gave a method. This solution appeared anonymously in the Philosophical Transactions, but J. Bernoulli immediately guessed the author; tanquam,' says he, ex ungue Leonem.” This method of defiance, then in vogue, was again presented some years later to Newton, but by a more formidable adversary, and in a case where victory was of still more importance. In 1716, when the dispute about the invention of the infinitesimal analysis was at his height, Leibnitz wishing to show the superiority of his calculus over Newton's method of fluxions, sent, in a letter to the Abbé Conti, the enunciation of a certain problem, in which it was required to discover a curve such as should cut at right angles an infinity of curves of a given nature, but all expressible by the same equation; "he wished," he said, “to feel the pulse of the English analysts." Of course the question was a very difficult one. It is said that Newton received the problem at four in the afternoon as he was returning from the Mint, and, that though extremely fatigued with business, yet he finished the solution before retiring to rest. It has been, however, justly remarked, that Newton only gave the differential equation for the problem, and not its integral, in which the real difficulty consists. This was his last effort of the kind; and he soon entirely ceased to occupy himself with mathematics: so that during the last ten years of his life, when consulted

about any passage in his works, his reply was, "Address yourself to Mr. De Moivre, he knows that better than I do." And then, when his surrounding friends testified to him the just admiration his discoveries had universally excited, he said, "I know not what the world will think of my labours, but, to myself, it seems that I have been but as a child playing on the sea-shore; now finding some pebble rather more polished, and now some shell rather more agreeably variegated than another, while the immense ocean of truth extended itself unexplored before me."*

This profound conviction of the numerous discoveries that still remained to be made, did not, however, bring him again on that sea where he had advanced so much farther than any other man. His mind, fatigued by long and painful efforts, had need of complete and entire repose. At least we know, that thenceforward he only occupied his leisure with religious studies, or sought relief in literature or in business. Newton, the greatest of mankind in science, was, if we may dare to say so, but an ordinary man in other pursuits; he never distinguished himself in parliament, to which he was twice summoned; and in one instance he appears to have acted with inexplicable timidity: In 1713, a bill was brought in for encouraging the discovery of a method for finding the longitude at sea. Whiston, the author of the bill, and who himself tried to gain the reward proposed in it, obtained the appointment of a committee for discussing the measure; and four members of the Royal Society were invited to attend-Newton, Halley, Cotes, and Dr. Clarke: the three latter gave their opinions verbally, but Newton read his from a paper he had brought with him, without being understood by any one; he then sat down and obstinately kept silence, though much pressed to explain himself more distinctly. At last Whiston, seeing the bill was going to fail, took on himself to say, that Mr. Newton did not wish to explain more through fear of compromising himself, but that he really approved of the measure. Newton then repeated word for word what Whiston had said, and the report was brought up. This almost

puerile conduct, on such an occasion, tends to confirm the fact of the aberration of Newton's intellect in 1695, though it might have been merely the effect of excessive shyness, produced by the retired and meditative habits of his life. For, to judge from a letter of Newton, written some time before the disastrous epoch, in which he points out the conduct to be pursued by a young traveller, it would appear that he was very ignorant of the habits of society.

From the manner in which his life was spent, we may easily conceive that he was never married, and (as Fontenelle says) that he never had leisure to think about it; that being immersed in profound and continual studies during the prime of his life, and afterwards engaged in an employment of great importance, and ever quite taken up with the company which his merit drew to him, he was not sensible of any vacancy in life, nor of the want of domestic society. His niece, who with her husband lived in his house, supplied the place of children, and attended to him with filial care. From the emoluments of his office-from a wise management of his patrimonyand from his simple manner of living, Newton became very rich, and employed his wealth in doing much good. He thought, says Fontenelle, that a legacy is no gift, and therefore left no will-it was always out of his present fortune that he proved his generosity to his relations, or to the friends whom he knew to be in want. His physiognomy might be called calm rather than expressive, and his manner languid rather than animated: his health remained good and uniform till his eightieth year; he never used spectacles. About that age he began to suffer from an incontinence of urine; but notwithstanding this infirmity, he still had, during his five remaining years, long intervals of health, or at least of freedom from pain, obtained by a strict regimen and other precautions, which till then he had never had occasion for. He was now obliged to rely upon Mr. Conduit, who had married his niece, for the discharge of his official duties at the Mint. Newton was useful to Conduit, even after death: for the honourable confidence that existed between them gave him a sort of claim to the office, which the king eagerly confirmed.

Biographia Britannica, p. 3242,