Читать книгу Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere - John Willis Clark - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Full materials for the life of Dr. Whewell are at last before the public. We say ‘at last,’ because ten years elapsed from his death in 1866 before the first instalment of his biography appeared, and fifteen years before the second. Haste, therefore, cannot be pleaded for any faults which may be found in either of them. Nor, indeed, is it our intention to carp at persons who have performed a difficult task as well as they could. Far rather would we take exception to the strange resolution of Dr. Whewell’s executors and friends to have his life written in separate portions. It was originally intended that there should be three of these published simultaneously: (1) the scientific, (2) the academic, (3) the domestic. As time went on, however, it was found impossible to carry out this scheme; and Mr. Todhunter published the first instalment before anyone had been found to undertake either of the others. At last, after repeated failures, the second and third portions were thrown together, and entrusted to Mrs. Stair Douglas, Dr. Whewell’s niece by marriage. The defects of such a method are obvious; events scarcely worth telling once are told twice; documents that would have been useful to one biographer appear in the work of the other, and the like. For this, however, the authors before us deserve less blame than the scheme which they were compelled to follow.

Few lives, we imagine, have been so many-sided as to need a double, not to say a triple, narrative in order to set them fully before the public; and we assert most distinctly that Dr. Whewell was the last man whose biography should have been so treated. His life, notwithstanding his diverse occupations and his widespread interests, presented a singular unity, due to his unflinching determination to subordinate his pursuits, his actions, and his thoughts to what he felt to be his work in the world, viz. the advancement, in the fullest sense the word can be made to bear, of his College and his University. He himself made no attempt to subdivide his time, so as to carry out some special work at the expense of other occupations. He found time for everything. His extraordinary energy, and his power of absorbing himself at a moment’s notice in whatever he had to do, whether scientific research or University business, enabled him to get through an astonishing amount of work in a single day. Much of what he did must have been very irksome and repulsive to him. He particularly disliked detail, especially that relating to finance. ‘I hate these disgusting details,’ was his way of putting aside, or trying to put aside, economical discussions at College meetings; and it was often hard to make him understand the real importance of these apparently small matters. Again, he always found time to go into society; to keep himself well acquainted with all that was going forward in politics, literature, art, music, science; and to carry on a vast correspondence with relatives, friends, and men of science in England and on the Continent. A considerable number of these letters have of course perished; but the extent of the collection is evident from Mr. Todhunter’s statement that he had examined more than 3,500 letters written to Dr. Whewell, and more than 1,000 written by him. His opinion of the latter, after this wide experience, is well worth quotation:

‘I do not think that adequate justice can be rendered to Dr. Whewell’s vast knowledge and power by any person who did not know him intimately, except by the examination of his extensive correspondence; such an examination cannot fail to raise the opinion formed of him by the study of his published works, however high that opinion may be. The evidence of his attainments and abilities which is furnished by the fact that he was consulted and honoured by the acknowledged chiefs of many distinct sciences is most ample and impressive. United with this intellectual eminence we find an attractive simplicity and generosity of nature, an entire absence of self-seeking and assertion, and a warm concern in the fortunes of his friends, even when they might be considered in some degree as his rivals.’

The academic side of Dr. Whewell’s life has no doubt been imperfectly related in both the works before us; and the due recognition of his merits will have to wait until the intellectual history of the University during the nineteenth century shall one day be written. On the other hand, we owe our warmest thanks to Mrs. Stair Douglas for having brought prominently into notice, as only an affectionate woman could do, the softer side of Dr. Whewell’s character. No one who did not know him as she did could have suspected the almost feminine tenderness, the yearning for sympathy, which were concealed under that rough exterior. These qualities, though much developed by his marriage, were characteristic of him throughout his whole life. The following passage, which has not before been printed, from a letter written in 1836 to the Marchesa Spineto, his oldest and most valued Cambridge friend, while he was busy writing his History of the Inductive Sciences, shows how necessary female sympathy was to him even when he was most occupied:

‘It appears to me long since I have seen you, and I am disposed to write as if your absence were a disagreeable and unusual privation; although it is very likely that if you had been here I might have seen just as little of you and might have felt just as lonely. And perhaps if I send you this sheet of my ruminations, it will find you in the middle of a new set of interests and employments, with only a little bit of your thoughts and affections at liberty to look this way; and so I shall be little the better for the habit you have taught me of depending upon you for unvarying kindness and love. Perhaps you will tell me I am unjust in harbouring such a suspicion, but do not be angry with me if I am; for you know such thoughts come into my head whether I will or no; and then go away the sooner for being put into words.’

University life changes with such rapidity, that no matter how great a man may have been, it is inevitable that he should soon become little more than a tradition to those who succeed him. Few of the present Fellows of Trinity College can have even seen Dr. Whewell; and though his outward appearance has been handed down to posterity by a picture in the Lodge, a bust in the Library, and a statue in the Chapel, neither canvas nor marble, no matter how skilfully they may be handled, can convey the impression which that king of men made upon his contemporaries. These portraits give a fairly just idea of his lofty stature, broad shoulders, and large limbs, but the features are inadequately rendered in all of them. The proportions are probably correct, but the expression has been lost. The artists have been so anxious to render the philosopher, that they have forgotten the man. His expression, except on very solemn occasions, was never so grave as they have made it. His bright blue eye had nearly always a merry twinkle in it, and his broad mouth was ever ready to break into a smile. His nature was essentially joyous; and he dearly loved a good joke, a funny story, or a merry party of friends, in which his laugh was always the loudest, and his pleasure the keenest. Nor did he disdain the pleasures of the table; a good dinner, followed by a good bottle of port, was not without its charm for him, though it may be doubted whether he enjoyed these matters for their own sake so much as for the society they brought with them. He could not bear to be alone, and was not particular into what company he went, provided he could get good conversation, and plenty of it. He used to say that he liked to hear a dinner in ‘full cry’; and, if we may adopt his own simile without offence to the memory of one whom we love and revere, he was himself the leader of the pack. He could hardly be called a good talker; he was too fond of the sound of his own loud cheery voice, and engrossed the conversation too much. He would take up a subject started by somebody else, and handle it in a masterly fashion, as if he were in a lecture room, while the rest sat by and listened. He laid down the law, too, in a style that did not admit of reply. We remember an occasion when the conversation turned on Longfellow’s Golden Legend, then just published, and Whewell was asked to say what he thought of it. ‘I think it is a bad echo of a bad original, Goethe’s Faust,’ thundered out the great man; after which, of course, there was a dead silence. Again, he was no respecter of persons, nor was he too careful to observe the ordinary rules of politeness. If anybody said a silly thing, even if the person were a lady, and in her own house, he thought nothing of crushing her with ‘Madam, no one but a fool would have made that observation’; but his company was so delightful, his stores of information so varied and so vast, his readiness to communicate them so unusual, and his memory so retentive, that these eccentricities in ‘Rough Diamond,’ as a clever University jeu d’esprit called him, were readily forgiven. He was far too well aware of his own supremacy to be afraid of unbending; and years after he became Master of Trinity he has been seen to kneel down on the carpet to play with a Skye terrier. He was a special favourite with young people, especially with young ladies, from the heartiness with which he threw himself into their pursuits and pleasures, talked with them, romped with them, wrote verses and riddles and translated German poems for their amusement, and assisted approvingly at the musical parties which were the fashion when he was a young man. There were indeed several houses in Cambridge and its neighbourhood in which we should have ventured to say that he was ‘a tame cat,’ had there been anything feline in that rugged and vehement nature.

Those who wish to draw for themselves a life-like portrait of Whewell in his best days must take into account the fact that his health was always excellent. There is a legend that as a boy he was delicate; but, if this were ever the case, which we doubt, he put it aside with other childish things. When he came to man’s estate no rebellious liver ever troubled his repose, or made him look upon life with a jaundiced eye. It was his habit to sit up late; but, notwithstanding, he appeared regularly at morning chapel, then at 7 a.m., fresh and radiant, and ready for the day’s work. This vigour of body enabled him to appreciate everything with a keenness which age could not dull, nor the most poignant grief extinguish, except for very brief intervals. He thoroughly appreciated ‘the mere joy of living’; and whatever was going forward attracted him so powerfully that he was never satisfied until he had found out all about it. He went everywhere: to public ceremonials and exhibitions; to new plays, new music, new pictures; to London drawing-rooms and smart country houses; to quiet parsonages and canonical residences; to foreign cities and English cathedrals; always deriving the keenest enjoyment from what he saw, and delighting in new experiences because they were new. There was but one exception to the universality of his interests. When he was a resident Fellow of Trinity, it was the fashion for College Dons to dabble in politics, and more than one of his Trinity friends made their fortune by their Liberal opinions. He did not imitate their example. He always described himself as no politician. As a young man he seemed inclined to take a Liberal line, for he opposed a petition from the University against the Roman Catholic claims in 1821, and in the following year voted against ‘our dear, our Protestant Bankes’ for the same reason. But in those stormy days of the Reform Bill, when so many ancient friendships were destroyed, he took no decided line; and latterly he abstained from politics altogether. We do not mean that he shut his eyes to what was going forward in the world—far from it, but he seemed to consider that one Administration was as good as another, and provided no violent change was threatened, he left the destinies of the Empire to take care of themselves. As he grew older, his mind became engrossed by thoughts of the suffering which even the most glorious achievements must of necessity entail. The events of the Indian Mutiny, for instance, were followed by him with the closest interest; but he was more frequently heard to deplore the severity dealt out to the natives than to admire the heroism of their victims.

Whewell’s natural good health was no doubt maintained by his love of open air exercise. No matter how busy he was, or how bad the weather, he rarely missed his daily ride. On most afternoons he might be seen on his grey horse ‘Twilight,’ usually with his inseparable friend Dr. Worsley, either galloping across country, or joining quieter parties along the roads. He was never a good rider, but a very bold one, as will be seen from the following story, the accuracy of which we once tested by reference to Sebright, the veteran huntsman of the Fitzwilliam hounds. Whewell was staying with Viscount Milton, we believe in 1828. One morning his host said to him at breakfast, ‘We are all going out hunting; what would you like to do?’ He replied, ‘I have never been out hunting, and I should like to go too.’ So he was mounted on a first-rate horse, well up to his weight, and told to keep close to the huntsman. Whewell did as he was bid, and followed him over everything. They had an unusually good run across a difficult country, in the course of which Sebright took an especially stout and high fence. Looking round to see what had become of the stranger, he found him at his side, safe and sound. ‘That, sir, was a rasper,’ he said. ‘I did not observe that it was anything more than ordinary,’ replied Whewell. So on they went, till at last his horse pulled up, quite exhausted, to Whewell’s great indignation, who exclaimed, ‘I thought a hunter never stopped.’

We are not presumptuous enough to suppose that we can add any new facts to those which have been already collected in the volumes before us; but we think that even after their publication there is room for a short essay, which shall bring into prominence certain points in Whewell’s academic career, and attempt to determine the value of what he did for science in general, and for his own College and University in particular. His life divides itself naturally into three periods of about equal length, the first extending from his birth in 1794 to his appointment as assistant-tutor of Trinity College in 1818, the second from 1818 to his appointment as Master in 1841, and the third from 1841 to his death in 1866.

Whewell came up to Cambridge at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, 1812. Those who are familiar with the exciting spectacle presented by the splendid intellectual activity of the Cambridge of to-day—accommodating itself with flexibility and readiness to requirements the most diverse, appointing new teachers in departments of study the most unusual and the most remote on the bare chance of their services being required, flinging open its doors to all comers, regardless of sex, creed, or nationality, and thronged with students whose numbers are increasing year by year, eager to take advantage of the instruction which their elders are equally eager to supply them with—will find it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the totally different state of things which existed at that time. Were we asked to express its characteristic by a single word, we should answer, dulness. It must be remembered that communication in those days was slow; news did not arrive until it was stale; travelling, especially for passengers, was expensive, so that, at least for the shorter vacations, many persons did not leave Cambridge at all; and some remained there during the whole year—we might say, in some cases, during their whole lives. For the same reasons strangers rarely visited the University. The same people dined and supped together day after day, with no novelty to diversify their lives or their conversation. No wonder that they became narrow, prejudiced, eccentric, or that their habits were tainted with the grosser vices which there was no public opinion to repudiate. The undergraduates, most of whom came from the upper classes, were few. In the fifteen years between 1800 and 1815 the yearly average of those who matriculated did not exceed 205: less than one-fourth of those who now present themselves^[2]. The only road to the Honour Degree was through the Mathematical Tripos. The amusements were as little varied as the studies. There was riding for those who could afford it; and a few boated and played cricket or tennis; but the majority contented themselves with a walk. With the undergraduates, as with their seniors, the habit of hard drinking was unfortunately still prevalent. But the great changes through which the country passed between 1815 and 1834 produced a totally different state of things. The old order changed; slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, but still it changed. As the wealth of the country increased, a new class of students presented themselves for education; ideas began to circulate with rapidity; old forms of procedure and examination were given up; academic society was purified from its coarseness and vulgarity, and lost much of its exclusiveness; new studies were admitted upon an all but equal footing with the old ones; and, lastly, the new political principles asserted themselves by gradually sweeping away, one after another, all restrictive enactments. This last change, however, was not consummated until 1871. The other changes with which what may be called modern Cambridge was inaugurated are thus enumerated with characteristic force by Professor Sedgwick in one of his ‘Letters to the Editor of the Leeds Mercury,’ written in 1836, with which he demolished that infamous slanderer of the University, Mr. R. M. Beverley:

‘It is most strange that in a letter on the present state of Cambridge no notice should be taken of the noble institutions which have of late years risen up within it; of the glories of its Observatory; of the newly-chartered body, the Philosophical Society, organized among its resident members in the year 1819, and now known to the world of science by its “Transactions,” the records of many important original discoveries; of the new Collections in Natural History; of the magnificent new Press; of the new School and Museum of Comparative Anatomy; of the noble extension of the collegiate buildings, made at some inconvenience and much personal cost to the present Fellows, and entailing on them and their successors the weight of an enormous debt; of the general spirit of inquiry pervading the members of the academic body, young and old; of the eight or nine new courses of public lectures (established within the last twenty-five years) both on the applied sciences and the ancient languages; of the general activity of the professors, and of their correspondence with foreign establishments organized for objects like their own, whereby Cambridge is now, at least, an integral part of the vast republic of literature and science; of the crowded class at the lecture of Modern History [by Professor Smyth]; of the great knowledge of many of our younger members in modern languages; of the recent Professorship of Political Economy bestowed on a gentleman [Mr. Pryme] who had been lecturing for years, and was a firm and known supporter of Liberal opinions.’

When Whewell came to the University these improvements had not been so much as thought of. He was himself to be the prime mover in bringing several of them about. It must be remembered, however, while we confess to a special enthusiasm for our hero, that he did not stand alone as the champion of intellectual development in the University. Indeed it will become evident as we proceed that he was not naturally a reformer. He had so strong a respect for existing institutions that he hesitated long before he could bring himself to sanction any change, no matter how self-evident or how salutary. As a young man, however, he found himself one of a large body of enthusiastic workers, who, while they differed widely, almost fundamentally, on the methods to be employed, were all animated by the same spirit, and stimulated one another to fresh exertions in the common cause. It was one of the most remarkable characteristics of the period of which Professor Sedgwick has sketched the results, that it was hardly more distinguished for the changes produced than for the men who brought them about.

But to return to the special subject of our essay. Of Whewell’s boyhood, school days, and undergraduateship, few details have been preserved. His father was a master carpenter, residing at Lancaster, where William, the eldest of his seven children, was born in 1794. His father is mentioned as a man of probity and intelligence; but his mother, whom he unfortunately lost when he was only eleven years old, appears to have been a woman of superior talents and considerable culture, who enriched the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of the weekly Lancaster Gazette with occasional contributions in verse. William was about to be apprenticed to his father, when his superior intelligence attracted the attention of Mr. Rowley, curate of the parish and master of the grammar school. The father objected at first: ‘He knows more about parts of my business than I do,’ he said, ‘and has a special turn for it.’ However, after a week’s reflection, he yielded, mainly out of deference to Mr. Rowley, who further offered to find the boy in books, and educate him free of expense. Of his school experiences, Professor Owen, who was one of his schoolfellows, has contributed some delightful reminiscences. After mentioning that he was a tall, ungainly youth, he adds:

‘The rate at which Whewell mastered both English grammar and Latin accidence was a marvel; and before the year was out he had moved upward into the class including my elder brother and a dozen boys of the same age. Then it was that the head-master, noting to them the ease with which Whewell mastered the exercises and lessons, raised the tale and standard. Out of school I remember remonstrances in this fashion: “Now, Whewell, if you say more than twenty lines of Virgil to-day, we’ll wallop you.” But that was easier said than done. I have seen him, with his back to the churchyard wall, flooring first one, then another, of the “walloppers,” and at last public opinion in the school interposed. “Any two of you may take Whewell in a fair stand-up fight, but we won’t have any more at him at once.” After the fate of the first pair, a second was not found willing. My mother thought “it was extremely ungrateful in that boy Whewell to have discoloured both eyes of her eldest so shockingly.” But Mr. Rowley said, “Boys will be boys,” and he always let them fight it fairly out.’

In after years Whewell spoke of the good training he had received in arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration from Mr. Rowley; but it is believed that his recollections of his first school were not wholly agreeable; and probably he was not sorry when he was removed to the grammar school at Heversham, in Westmoreland. This took place in 1810. The reason for it was that he might compete for an exhibition of 50l. per annum, at Trinity College, which he was so fortunate as to obtain. At his second school he paid great attention to classical studies, and practised versification in Greek and Latin.

In October 1812 he commenced residence at Trinity College as a sub-sizar. His first University distinction was the Chancellor’s gold medal for English Verse, the subject being ‘Boadicea.’ In after years he was fond of expressing the theory that ‘a prize-poem should be a prize-poem’: by which he probably meant that the subject should be treated in a conventional fashion, with no eccentric innovations of style or metre. It must be admitted that his own work conformed exactly to this standard. The poem was welcomed with profound admiration in the family circle at home; but his old master took a different view of the question. Professor Owen relates that Mr. Rowley called one day at his mother’s house, and began as follows:

‘ “I’ve sad news for you, Mrs. Owen, to-day. I’ve just had a letter from Cambridge; that boy Whewell has ruined himself, he’ll never get his Wranglership now!” “Why, good gracious, Mr. Rowley, what has Whewell been doing?” “Why, he has gone and got the Chancellor’s gold medal for some trumpery poem, ‘Boadicea,’ or something of that kind, when he ought to have been sticking to his mathematics. I give him up now. Taking after his poor mother, I suppose.” ’

The letters which he wrote home give us some pleasant glimpses of his College life, which he evidently thoroughly enjoyed. For the first time in his life he had access to a good library—that of Trinity College—and he speaks of ‘an inconceivable desire to read all manner of books at once,’ adding that at that very moment there were two folios and six quartos of different works upon his table. The success which he afterwards achieved is a proof that he entered heartily into the studies of the place; and among his friends were men who were studious then, and afterwards became eminent. Among these we may mention Mr, afterwards Sir John, Herschel, Mr. Richard Jones, Mr. Julius Charles Hare, and Mr. Charles Babbage. A correspondent of his, writing so late as 1841, recalls the ‘Sunday morning philosophical breakfasts,’ at which they used to meet in 1815; and there are indications in the letters of similar feasts of reason and flows of soul. It must, on the other hand, be admitted that a few indications of an opposite character may be produced. He admits, in a half-bantering, half-serious way, that he had laid himself open to the charge of idleness; and he describes the diversions of himself and his friends during the long vacation of 1815 as ‘dancing at country fairs, playing billiards, tuning beakers into musical glasses,’ and the like. It need be no matter of surprise that a young man of high spirits and strong bodily frame, brought up in the seclusion of Lancashire, should have taken the fullest advantage of the first opportunity which presented itself of appreciating the lighter and brighter side of existence. This, however, was all. Whewell knew perfectly well where to stop. No scandal ever attached itself to his name; and he ‘wore the white flower of a blameless life’ through a period when the customs prevalent in the University were such as are more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

He proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1816, when he was second Wrangler and second Smith’s Prize-man. On both occasions he was beaten by a Mr. Jacob, of Caius College, who was his junior by two years. It is a Cambridge tradition that Mr. Jacob’s success was a surprise to everybody, for he had intentionally affected to be an idle man, and showed himself on most days riding out in hunting costume, the truth being that he kept his books at a farm-house, where he pursued his studies in secrecy and quiet. He was a young man of the greatest promise; and it was expected that he would achieve a conspicuous success at the Bar. But his lungs were affected, and he died of consumption at an early age. As Mr. Todhunter remarks, his fame rests mainly on the fact that he twice outstripped so formidable a competitor as the future Master of Trinity. Whewell mentions him as ‘a very pleasant as well as a very clever man,’ and adds, ‘I had as soon be beaten by him as by anybody else.’

The labours of reading for the degree over, Whewell had leisure to turn his studies in any direction whither his fancy led him. No doubt he fully appreciated the, to him, unusual position, for he tells his sister that few people could be ‘more tranquilly happy than your brother, in his green plaid dressing-gown, blue morocco slippers, and with a large book before him.’ The time had come, however, when he was to experience the first of the inevitable inconveniences of a College life. Two of his most intimate friends, Herschel and Jones, left Cambridge, and he bitterly deplores their loss. Indeed it probably needed all the attachment to the place, which he proclaims in the same letter, to prevent his following their example. He appears at one time to have thought seriously of going to the Bar. He began, however, to take pupils: an occupation which becomes a singularly absorbing one, especially when the tutor takes the interest in them which apparently he did. One of those with whom he spent the summer of 1818, in Wales, Mr. Kenelm Digby, afterwards author of the Broadstone of Honour, who admits that he was so idle that his tutor would take no remuneration from him, has recorded that—

‘I had reason to regard Whewell as one of the most generous, open-hearted, disinterested, and noble-minded men that I ever knew. I remember circumstances that called for the exercise of each of those rare qualities, when they were met in a way that would now seem incredible, so fast does the world seem moving away from all ancient standards of goodness and moral grandeur.’

This testimony is important, if only for comparison with the far different feelings with which his more official pupils regarded him in after years. In these occupations he spent the two years succeeding his degree; for the amount of special work done for the Fellowship Examination was probably not great. He was elected Fellow in October 1817; and in the summer of the following year was made one of the assistant-tutors. With this appointment the first part of his University career ends, and the second begins.

His connexion with the educational staff of Trinity College, first as assistant-tutor, then as sole tutor, lasted for just twenty years. These were the most occupied of his busy life; and in justification of what we said at the outset of the multifarious nature of his occupations, we proceed to give a rapid chronological sketch of them. His career as an author began, in 1819, with an Elementary Treatise on Mechanics. It went through seven editions, in each of which, as Mr. Todhunter says, ‘the subject was revolutionized rather than modified; and the preface to each expounded with characteristic energy the paramount merits of the last constitution framed.’ The value of the work was greatly impaired by these proceedings, for an author can hardly expect to retain the unwavering confidence of his readers while his own opinions are in constant fluctuation. In 1820 he was Moderator, and travelled abroad for the first time. In 1821 he was working at geology seriously, and took a geological tour in the Isle of Wight with Sedgwick, who had been made Woodwardian Professor three years before. Later in the year he explored the Lake Country, and was introduced to Mr. Wordsworth. Their acquaintance subsequently ripened into a friendship, which appears in numerous letters, and notably in the dedication prefixed to the Elements of Morality. A Treatise on Dynamics was published in 1823, which was treated in much the same fashion as its fellow on Mechanics. The summer vacation was spent in a visit to Paris for the first time, and an architectural tour in Normandy with Mr. Kenelm Digby. In 1824 he took a prominent part in the resistance to the Heads of Colleges in their attempt to nominate to the Professorship of Mineralogy; and later in the year he went again to Cumberland with Sedgwick, ‘rambling about the country, and examining the strata’; visiting Southey and Wordsworth; and, in the intervals of geology, seeing cathedrals and churches. In 1825, as the chair of Mineralogy was about to be vacated by Professor Henslow, promoted to that of Botany, Whewell announced himself a candidate; and by way of preparation spent three months in Germany, studying crystallography at the feet of Professor Mohs, of Freiburg: a subject on which he had already made communications to the Royal Society and to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. This was his first introduction to Germany, in whose language and literature he thenceforward took the greatest interest. He even modified his way of writing English in accordance with German custom, as is shown by the plentiful scattering of capitals through his sentences, and by a certain ponderosity of style which savours of German originals. The dissensions as to the mode of election to the Mineralogical chair caused it to remain vacant for three years; so that Whewell, about the choice of whom there never seems to have been any doubt, had no immediate opportunity of turning to account his newly-acquired knowledge. He therefore, with even more than characteristic energy, turned his attention to two most opposite subjects, Theology, and the Density of the Earth.

In the summer of 1826 he commenced a series of investigations on the latter subject at Dolcoath Mine, Cornwall, in conjunction with Mr. Airy. The essential part of the process was to compare the time of vibration of a pendulum at the surface of the earth with the time of vibration of the same pendulum at a considerable depth below the surface. Unfortunately the experiments, which were renewed in 1828, failed to lead to any satisfactory result, partly through an error in the construction of the pendulum, partly through a singular fatality, by which, on both occasions, they were frustrated by a serious accident. The account he gives of himself, and of the way in which the researches were regarded by the Cornishmen, is too amusing not to be quoted. It is contained in a letter to his friend Lady Malcolm, and is dated ‘Underground Chamber, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, June 10, 1826:

‘I venture to suppose that you never had a correspondent who at the time of writing was situated as your present one is. I am at this moment sitting in a small cavern deep in the recesses of the earth, separated by 1,200 feet of rock from the surface on which you mortals tread. I am close to a wooden partition which has been fixed here by human hands, through which I ever and anon look, by means of two telescopes, into a larger cavern. That larger den has got various strange-looking machines, illumined here and there by unseen lamps, among which is visible a clock with a face most unlike common clocks, and a brass bar which swings to and fro with a small but never-ceasing motion. I am clad in the garb of a miner, which is probably more dirty and scanty than anything you may have happened to see in the way of dress. The stillness of this subterranean solitude is interrupted by the noise, most strange to its walls, of the ticking of my clock, and the chirping of seven watches. But besides these sounds it has noises of its own which my ear catches now and then. A huge iron vessel is every quarter of an hour let down through the rock by a chain above a thousand feet long, and in its descent and ascent dashes itself against the sides of the pit with a violence and a din like thunder; and at intervals, louder and deeper still, I hear the heavy burst of an explosion when gunpowder has been used to rend the rock, which seems to pervade every part of the earth like the noise of a huge gong, and to shake the air within my prison. I have sat here for some hours, and shall sit five or six more, at the end of which time I shall climb up to the light of the sky in which you live, by about sixty ladders, which form the weary upward path from hence to your world. I ought not to omit, by way of completing the picturesque, that I have a barrel of porter close to my elbow, and a miner stretched on the granite at my feet, whose yawns at being kept here so many hours, watching my inscrutable proceedings, are most pathetic. This has been my situation and employment every day for some time, and will be so for some while longer, with the alternation of putting myself in a situation as much as possible similar, in a small hut on the surface of the earth. Is not this a curious way of spending one’s leisure time? I assure you I often think of Sir John’s favourite quotation from Leyden, “Slave of the dark and dirty mine! What vanity has brought thee here?” and sometimes doubt whether sunshine be not better than science.

‘If the object of my companion and myself had been to make a sensation, we must have been highly gratified by the impression which we have produced upon the good people in this country. There is no end to the number and oddity of their conjectures and stories about us. The most charitable of them take us to be fortune-tellers; but for the greater part we are suspected of more mischievous kinds of magic. A single loud, insulated, peal of thunder, which was heard the first Sunday after our arrival, was laid at our door; and a staff which we had occasion to plant at the top of the cliff, was reported to have the effect of sinking all unfortunate ships which sailed past.

‘I could tell you many more such histories; but I think this must be at least enough about myself, if I do not wish to make the quotation from Leyden particularly applicable.’

Whewell had been ordained priest on Trinity Sunday, 1826, and this circumstance had probably directed him to a more exact study of theology than he had previously attempted. The result was a course of four sermons before the University in February 1827. The subject of these, which have never been printed, may be described as the ‘Relation of Human to Divine Knowledge.’ They attracted considerable attention when delivered; and it was even suggested that the author ought to devote himself to theology as a profession, and try to obtain one of the Divinity Professorships; but the advice was not taken. A theological tone may, however, be observed in most of his scientific works; he loved to point out analogies between scientific and moral truths, and to show that there was no real antagonism between science and revealed religion.

In 1828 the new Professor of Mineralogy entered upon his functions, and after his manner rushed into print with an Essay on Mineralogical Classification and Nomenclature, in which there is much novelty of definition and arrangement. He was conscious that he had been somewhat precipitate; for he writes to his friend, Mr. Jones, who was trying to make up his mind on certain problems of political economy, and declined to print until he had done so:

‘I avoid all your anxieties about authorship by playing for lower stakes of labour and reputation. While you work for years in the elaboration of slowly-growing ideas, I take the first buds of thought and make a nosegay of them without trying what patience and labour might do in ripening and perfecting them^[3].’

At the beginning of the year 1830 there appeared an anonymous publication entitled Architectural Notes on German Churches, with Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture. The author need not have tried to conceal his name; in this, as in other similar attempts, his style betrayed his identity at once. The work went through three editions, in each of which it was characteristically altered and enlarged, so that what had appeared as an essay of 118 pages in 1830, was transformed into a work of 348 pages in 1842. Architecture had been from the first one of Whewell’s favourite studies. In a letter to his sister in 1818 he speaks of a visit to Lichfield and Chester for the purpose of studying their cathedrals; many of his subsequent tours were undertaken for similar objects; and his numerous note-books and sketch-books (for he was no mean draughtsman) contain ample evidence of the pains he bestowed on perfecting himself in architectural details. The theory, or ‘ground-idea,’ as his favourite Germans would have called it, which he puts forward, is, that the pointed arch, even if it was really introduced from the East, which he evidently doubts, was improved and developed through the system of vaulting, which the Gothic builders learnt from the Romans. This theory has not been generally accepted; but the mere statement of it may have been of value, as the author suggests, ‘in the way of bringing into view relations and connexions which really exerted a powerful influence on the progress of architecture’; and the sketch of the differences between the classical and the Gothic styles is certainly extremely good. It has been sometimes suggested that the whole book was written in a spirit of rivalry to the Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, by Professor Willis. A glance at the dates of publication is enough to refute this view; for the work of Professor Willis was published in 1835, the first edition of Dr. Whewell’s in 1830. In the course of this summer he made an architectural tour with Mr. Rickman in Devon and Cornwall; and, as if in order that his occupations might be as sharply contrasted as possible, investigated also the geology of the neighbourhood of Bath.

In 1831 we find Whewell reviewing three remarkable books: Herschel’s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy; Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. i.; and Jones On the Distribution of Wealth. As Mr. Todhunter remarks, scarcely any person but himself could have ventured on such a task. These reviews are not merely critical; they contain much of the author’s own speculations, much that went beyond the interest of the moment, and might be considered to possess a permanent value. Herschel was delighted with his own share. He writes to Whewell, thanking him for ‘the splendid review,’ and declaring that he ‘should have envied the author of any work, if a stranger, which could give occasion for such a review.’ Lyell wrote in much the same strain; and we are rather surprised that he did so; for his reviewer not only stubbornly refused to accept his theory of uniformity of action, in opposition to the cataclysmic views of the Huttonians, but treated the whole question in a spirit of good-humoured banter, in which even Herschel thought that he had gone too far. The article on his friend Mr. Jones’ work—which appeared in the British Critic—is rather an exposition of his views, which were original, than a criticism. It was Whewell’s first appearance in print on any question of political economy, except a short memoir in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, called a Mathematical Exposition of some Doctrines of Political Economy; and therefore marks a period when he had added yet one more science to those which he had already mastered. In this year he gave much time to a controversy which was agitating the University on the question of the best plans to be adopted for a new Public Library; and contributed a bulky pamphlet to the literature of the subject, in opposition to his friend Mr. Peacock. The whole question is a very interesting one; but our space will not allow us to do more than mention it, as another instance of the diversity of Whewell’s interests.

The next year (1832) was even a busier one than its predecessor; he was occupied in revising some of his mathematical text-books; in drawing up a Report on Mineralogy for the British Association, described as ‘an example of the unrivalled power with which he mastered a subject with which his previous studies had had but little connexion’; and in writing one of the Bridgewater Treatises, a work which, with most men, would have been enough to occupy them fully during the whole of the three years which had elapsed since the President of the Royal Society had selected him as one of the eight writers who should carry out the intentions of the Earl of Bridgewater. The subject of his treatise is Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology. It is one of Whewell’s most thoughtful and justly celebrated works, on which he must have bestowed much time. During the intervals, however, of its composition, he had not only written the reviews we have mentioned, and others also, to which we can only allude, but had commenced those researches on the Tides, which are embodied in no fewer than fourteen memoirs in the Transactions of the Royal Society, and for which he afterwards received the Royal Medal. No wonder that even he began to feel overworked, and resigned the Professorship of Mineralogy early in the year. He writes to his friend Mr. Jones, whom he was always striving to inspire with some of his own restless activity of thought and composition:

‘I am plunging into term-work, hurried and distracted as usual; the only comfort is the daily perception of what I have gained by giving up the Professorship. If I can work myself free so as to have a little command of my own time, I think I shall be wiser in future than to mortgage it so far. Quiet reflexion is as necessary as fresh air, and I can scarcely get a breath of it.’

His friend must have smiled as he read this, for he probably knew what such resolutions were worth. Whewell might have said, with Lord Byron—