44 Sir Isaac Newton, son of John Newton, Lord of the Manor of Woolsthorpe, was born in this room on the 25th of December, 1642. "Nature and Nature's Uwt lay bid in night; The following lines have been written upon the house:— "Here Newton dawned, here lofty wisdom woke, The house * is now occupied by a farmer of the name of John Woollerton. It still contains the two dials made by Newton, but the styles of both are wanting. The celebrated apple true, the fall of one of the apples of which is said to hitve turned the attention of Newton to the subject of gravity, was destroyed by wind about four years ago; but Mr. Turnor has preserved it in the form of a chair. The chambers which Sir Isaac inhabited at Cambridge are known by tradition. They are the apartments next to the great gate of Trinity College, and it is believed that they then communicated by a staircase with the Observatory in the Great Tower,—an observatory which was furnished by the contributions of Newton, Cotes, and others. His telescope, represented in Fig. 3, page 29, is * We have already, in a note to the first chapter, referred to onr visit there in the autumn of 1878. On approaching Woolsthorpe, after leaving Colsterworth, we asked a country-man which was Mr. Woollerton's? The reply was, "That house round the corner, Sir, is Sir Isaac Newton's," with an air of " That's what you want, I am sure." A very pleasant walk afterwards through North and South Witbam led us to Market Overton, the birth-place of Newton's mother, and afterwards down to Oakham, the county-town of Rutland, in the vale of Catmoss.—Editor. APARTMENTS AT CAMBRIDGE PAPERS. 809 preserved in the library of the Royal Society of London, and his globe, his universal ring-dial, quadrant, compass, and a reflecting telescope said to have belonged to him, in the library of Trinity College. There is also in the same collection three locks of his silver-white hair. The door of his bookcase is in the Museum of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The manuscripts, letters, and other papers of Newton have been preserved in different collections. His correspondence with Cotes relative to the second edition of the Principia, and amounting to between sixty and a hundred letters, a considerable portion of the manuscript of that work, and five letters to Dr. Keill on the Leibnitzian controversy, are preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.* Newton's letters to Flamsteed, about thirty-four in number, are deposited in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and those of Flamsteed arc at Hurstbourne Park. In the British Museum, and in the Royal Society of London, there are many letters of Newton and his correspondents. Several letters of Sir Isaac, and the original specimen which he drew up of the Principia, exist among the papers of Mr. William Jones (the father of Sir William Jones), which are preserved at Shirburn Castle, in the library of Lord Macclesfield. But the great mass of Newton's papers came into possession of the Portsmouth family through his niece, Lady Lymingtou, and have been safely preserved by that noble family. • All these letters, with others, particularly several to OMenburg, were publishod in 1860 by Mr. Edleeton, Fellow of Trinity College, at the expense of the Muter and Seniors of the Oollego, uujer the title "Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes, &o."— Editor. APPENDIX. No. L Obmkvattons On The Family Of Sir Isaac Newton. In the year 1705, Sir Isaac gave into the Herald's Office an elaborate pedigree, stating, upon oath, thai he had reason to believe that John Newton of Westby, in the county of Lincoln, was his great-grandfather's father, and that this was the same John Newton who was buried in Basingthorpe Church on the 22nd of December 1563. This John Newton had four sons, John, Thomas, Richard, and William Newton of Gunnerly, the last of whom was great-grandfather to Sir John Newton, Bart., of Hather. Sir Isaac considered himself as descended from the eldest of these, he having, by tradition from his kindred ever since he can remember, reckoned himself next of kin (among the Newtons) to Sir John Newton's family. The pedigree, founded upon these and other considerations, was accompanied by a certificate from Sir John Newton, of Thorpe, Bart., who states that he had heard his father speak of Sir Isaac Newton as of his relation and kinsman, and that he himself believed that Sir Isaac was descended from John Newton, son to John Newton of Westby, but knoweth not in what particular manner. The pedigree of Sir Isaac, as entered at the Herald's Office, does not seem to have been satisfactory either to himself or to his successors, as it could not be traced with certainty beyond his grandfather; and it will be seen from the following interesting correspondence, that, upon making farther researches, he had found some reason to believe that he was of Scotch extraction. Extract of a Letter from the Rev. Dr. Reid of Glasgow to Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh, dated \ith of March, 1784. "I Sbnd you on the other page an anecdote respecting Sir Isaac Newton, which I do not remember whether I ever happened to mention to you in conversation. If his descent be not clearly ascertained, (as I think it is not in the books I have seen,) might it not be worth while to inquire if evidence can be found to confirm the account which he is said to have given of himself? Sheriff Cross was very zealous about it when death put a stop to his inquiries. "When I lived in Old Aberdeen above twenty years ago, I happened to be conversing over a pipe of tobacco with a gentleman of that country, who had been lately at Edinburgh. He told me that he had been often in company with Mr. Hepburn of Keith, with whom I hail the honour of some acquaintance. He said that, speaking of Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Hepburn mentioned an anecdote, which he had from Mr. James Gregory, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh, which was to this purpose:— "Mr. Gregory being at London for some time after he resigned the mathematical chair, was often with Sir Isaac Newton. One day Sir Isaac said to him, 'Gregory, I believe you don't know that I am connected with Scotland.'—'Pray how, Sir Isaac?' said Gregory. Sir Isaac said he was told that his grandfather was a gentleman of East Lothian; that he came to London with King James at his accession to the crown of England, and there spent his fortune, as many more did at that time, by which his son (Sir Isaac's father) was reduced to mean circumstances. To this Gregory bluntly replied, 'Newton a gentleman of East Lothian? I never heard of a gentleman of East Lothian of that name' Upon this Sir Isaac said, 'that being very young when his father died, he had it only by tradition, and it might be a mistake,' and immediately turned the conversation to another subject. "I confess I suspected that the gentleman who was my author had given some colouring to this story, and therefore I never mentioned it for a good many years. "After I removed to Glasgow, I came to be very intimately acquainted with Mr. Cross, then Sheriff of Lanark, and one day at his own house mentioned this story, without naming my author, of whom I expressed some diffidence. "The Sheriff immediately took it up as a matter worth being inquired into. He said he was well acquainted with Mr. Hepburn of Keith, (who was then alive,) and that he would write him to know whether he ever heard Mr. Gregory say that he had such a conversation with Sir Isaac Newton. He said he knew that Mr. Keith, the ambassador, was also intimate with Mr. Gregory, and that he would write him to the same purpose. "Some time after, Mr. Cross told me that he had answers from both the gentlemen above mentioned, and that both remembered to have heard Mr. Gregory mention the conversation between him and Sir Isaac Newton, to the purpose above narrated, and at the same time acknowledged that they had made no farther inquiry about the matter. "Mr. Cross, however, continued the inquiry; and, a short time before his death, told me that all he had learned was, that there is, or was lately, a baronet's family of the name of Newton in West Lothian or Mid-Lothian, (I have forgot which:) that there is a tradition in that family, that Sir Isaac Newton wrote a letter to the old knight that then was, (I think Sir John Newton of Newton was his name,) desiring to know what children, and particularly what sons he had, their age, and what professions they intended: that |