having this honour, and being a shy man, did not encourage the correspondence, because he did not consider himself as of kin to Sir Isaac, &c."

"2d, Information communicated to me by Hay Newton, Esq., of that ilk, 18th August, 1800."

"The late Sir Richard Newton of Newton, Bart., chief of that name, having no male children, settled the estate and barony of Newton in East Lothian county upon his relation Richard Hay Newton, Esq., son of Lord William Hay."*"It cannot be discovered how long the family of Newton have been in possession of the barony, there being no tradition concerning that circumstance further than that they came originally from England at a very distant period, and settled on these lands."-"The celebrated Sir Isaac Newton was a distant relation of the family, and corresponded with the last baronet, the above-mentioned Sir Richard Newton."

The preceding documents furnish the most complete evidence that the conversation respecting Sir Isaac Newton's family took place between him and Mr. Gregory; and the testimony of Lord Henderland proves that his own uncle, Richard Newton of Newton, the immediate successor of Sir Richard Newton, with whom Sir Isaac corresponded, was perfectly confident that such a correspondence took place.

All these circumstances prove that Sir Isaac Newton could not trace his pedigree with any certainty beyond his grandfather, and that there were two dif ferent traditions in his family,—one which referred his descent to John Newton of Westby, and the other to a gentleman of East Lothian who accompanied King James VI. to England. In the first of these traditions he seems to have placed most confidence in 1705, when he drew out his traditionary pedigree; but as the conversation with Professor James Gregory respecting his Scotch extraction

* This entail was executed in 1724, a year or two before Sir Richard's death.-D. B.

took place twenty years afterward, namely, between 1725 and 1727, it is probable that he had discovered the incorrectness of his first opinions, or at least was disposed to attach more importance to the other tradition respecting his descent from a Scotch family.

In the letter addressed to me by the learned George Chalmers, Esq. I find the following observations respecting the immediate relations of Sir Isaac. "The Newtons of Woolsthorpe," says he, "who were merely yeomen farmers, were not by any means opulent. The son of Sir Isaac's father's brother was a carpenter called John. He was afterward appointed gamekeeper to Sir Isaac, as lord of the manor, and died at the age of sixty in 1725. This John had a son, Robert, (John?) who was Sir Isaac's second cousin, and who became possessed of the whole land estates at and near Woolsthorpe, which belonged to the great Newton, as his heir-atlaw.* Robert (John ?) became a worthless and dissolute person, who very soon wasted this ancient patrimony, and falling down with a tobacco-pipe in his mouth when he was drunk, it broke his throat, and put an end to his life at the age thirty years, in 1737."

No. II.

LETTER FROM SIR ISAAC NEWTON TO FRANCIS ASTON, ESQ., A YOUNG FRIEND WHO WAS ON THE EVE OF SETTING OUT UPON HIS TRAVELS.

MR. ASTON was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1678. He held the office of Secretary between 1681 and 1685; and he was the author of some observations on certain unknown ancient characters, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1693.

* See p. 291,

This letter has been referred to in pages 270 and 303, and was written when Newton was only twenty-six years of age. It is in every respect an interesting document.

"Trinity College, Cambridge, May 18, 1669.

"SIR, "Since in your letter you give mee so much liberty of spending my judgement about what may be to your advantage in travelling, I shall do it more freely than perhaps otherwise would have been decent. First, then, I will lay down some general rules, most of which, I believe, you have considered already; but if any of them be new to you, they may excuse the rest; if none at all, yet is my punishment more in writing than yours in reading.

"When you come into any fresh company, 1. Observe their humours. 2. Suit your own carriage thereto, by which insinuation you will make their converse more free and open. 3. Let your discours be more in querys and doubtings than peremptory assertions or disputings, it being the designe of travellers to learne, not to teach. Besides, it will persuade your acquaintance that you have the greater esteem of them, and soe make them more ready to communicate what they know to you; whereas nothing sooner occasions disrespect and quarrels than peremtorinesse. You will find little or no advantage in seeming wiser or much more ignorant than your company. 4. Seldom discommend any thing though never so bad, or doe it but moderately, lest you bee unexpectedly forced to an unhansom retraction. It is safer to commend any thing more than it deserves, than to discommend a thing soe much as it deserves; for commendations meet not soe often with oppositions, or, at least, are not usually soe ill resented by men that think otherwise, as discommendations; and you will insinuate into

men's favour by nothing sooner than seeming to approve and commend what they like; but beware of doing it by a comparison. 5. If you bee affronted, it is better, in a forraine country, to pass it by in silence, and with a jest, though with some dishonour, than to endeavour revenge; for, in the first case, your credit's ne'er the worse when you return into England, or come into other company that have not heard of the quarrell. But, in the second case, you may beare the marks of the quarrell while you live, if you outlive it at all. But, if you find yourself unavoidably engaged, 'tis best, I think, if you can command your passion and language, to keep them pretty evenly at some certain moderate pitch, not much hightning them to exasperate your adversary, or provoke his friends, nor letting them grow overmuch dejected to make him insult. In a word, if you can keep reason above passion, that and watchfullnesse will be your best defendants. To which purpose you may consider, that, though such excuses as this,-He provok't mee so much I could not forbear, may pass among friends, yet amongst strangers they are insignificant, and only argue a traveller's weaknesse.

"To these I may add some general heads for inquirys or observations, such as at present I can think on. As, 1. To observe the policys, wealth, and state-affairs of nations, so far as a solitary traveller may conveniently doe. 2. Their impositions upon all sorts of people, trades, or commoditys, that are remarkable. 3. Their laws and customs, how far they differ from ours. 4. Their trades and arts wherein they excell or come short of us in England. 5. Such fortifications as you shall meet with, their fashion, strength, and advantages for defence, and other such military affairs as are consider6. The power and respect belonging to their degrees of nobility or magistracy. 7. It will not be time mispent to make a catalogue of the names and

able.

excellencys of those men that are most wise, learned, or esteemed in any nation. 8. Observe the mechanisme and manner of guiding ships. 9. Observe the products of nature in several places, especially in mines, with the circumstances of mining and of extracting metals or minerals out of their oare, and of refining them; and if you meet with any transmutations out of their own species into another (as out of iron into copper, out of any metall into quicksilver, out of one salt into another, or into an insipid body, &c.), those, above all, will be worth your noting, being the most luciferous, and many times lucriferous experiments too, in philosophy. 10. The prices of diet and other things. 11. And the staple commoditys of places.

"These generals (such as at present I could think of), if they will serve for nothing else, yet they may assist you in drawing up a modell to regulate your travells by. As for particulars, these that follow are all that I can now think of, viz. Whether at Schemnitium, in Hungary (where there are mines of gold, copper, iron, vitrioll, antimony, &c.), they change iron into copper by dissolving it in a vitriolate water, which they find in cavitys of rocks in the mines, and then melting the slimy solution in a strong fire, which in the cooling proves copper. The like is said to be done in other places, which I cannot now remember; perhaps, too, it may be done in Italy. For about twenty or thirty years agone there was a certain vitrioll came from thence (called Roman vitrioll), but of a nobler virtue than that which is now called by that name; which vitrioll is not now to be gotten, because, perhaps, they make a greater gain by some such trick as turning iron into copper with it than by selling it. 2. Whether, in Hungary, Sclavonia, Bohemia, near the town Eila, or at the mountains of Bohemia near Silesia, there be rivers whose waters are impregnated with gold; perhaps, the gold being dissolved by some corrosive