ing, overthrew so many prejudices, introduced so many new opinions as the Novum Organum. Its nicety of observation has never been surpassed; it blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only to illustrate and decorate the truth. But what is most to be admired is the vast capacity of that intellect which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science-all the past, the present, and the future-all the encouraging signs of the passing times-all the bright hopes of the coming age.

Lord Bacon wrote paraphrases of the Psalms, of which it has been said: the "fine gold of David is so thoroughly melted down with the refined silver of Bacon, that the mixture shows nothing of alloy, but a metal greater in bulk, and differing in show from either of the component elements, yet exhibiting, at the same time, a luster wholly derived from the most precious of them."

THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC TREATISES IN ENGLISH.

Here should be mentioned the founder of the school of English writers, that is to say, to any useful or sensible purpose,-Robert Recorde, the physician, a man whose memory deserves, on several accounts, a much larger portion of fame than it has met with. He was the first who wrote on Arithmetic, and the first who wrote on Geometry in English; the first who introduced Algebra into England; the first who wrote on Astronomy and the doctrine of the Sphere in England; and finally, the first Englishman (in all probability) who adopted the system of Copernicus. Recorde was also the inventor of the present method of extracting the square-root; the inventor of the sign of equality; and the inventor of the method of extracting the square-root of multinomial algebraic quantities. According to Wood, his family was Welsh, and he himself a Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, in 1531; he died in 1558 in the King's Bench Prison, where he was confined for debt. Some have said that he was physician to Edward VI. and Mary, to whom his books are mostly dedicated. They are all written in dialogue between master and scholar, in the rude English of the time.

INVENTION OF LOGARITHMS.-GUNTER'S SCALE.

Another great benefactor to science was Baron Napier, of Merchiston, by his great invention of Logarithms, in 1614, which, from his own day to the present hour, has been one of the most active and efficient servants of all the sciences dependent upon calculation; nor could those of them in which the most splendid triumphs have been achieved have been possibly

carried to the heights they have without the assistance of Logarithms.

By reducing to a few days the labor of many months (says Laplace), it doubles, as it were, the life of an astronomer, besides freeing him from the errors and dissent inseparable from long calculations. As an invention it is particularly gratifying to the human mind, emanating as it does exclusively from within itself. Logarithms (says Professor Playfair) have been applied to numberless purposes which were not thought of at the time of their first construction. Even the sagacity of the author did not see the immense fertility of the invention he had discovered: he calculated his tables merely to facilitate arithmetical and chiefly trigonometrical computation; and little imagined that he was at that time constructing a scale whereon to measure the density of the strata of the atmosphere and the heights of mountains, that he was actually computing the areas and lengths of innumerable curves, and was preparing for a calculus, which was yet to be discovered, to make more clear many of the most refined and most valuable of its resources. Of Napier, therefore, if of any man, it may safely be pronounced, that his name will never be eclipsed by any one more conspicuous, or his invention be superseded by anything more valuable.

Napier's Bones, or Rods, are a contrivance of Napier to facilitate the performance of multiplication and division; and might be used with advantage by young arithmeticians in verification of their work.

Of the same period as their invention is Gunter's Scale, the useful wooden logarithmic scale invented by Edmund Gunter, to whom we are also indebted for the sector and the common surveyor's chain, and several printed works: he was also the author of the convenient terms cosine, cotangent, etc.--for "sine,” "tangent," etc., of the complement. "Whatever, in short," it has been observed, "could be done by a well-informed and ready-witted person to make the new theory of Logarithms more immediately available in practice to those who were not skillful mathematicians, was done by Gunter."

THE SCIENCES AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.

An acute writer in the Companion to the Almanac for 1837 observes:-"The University of Cambridge appears to have acquired no scientific distinction in the Middle Ages. Taking as a test the acquisition of celebrity on the Continent, we find that Bacon, Sacrobosco, Greathead, Eastwood, etc., were all of Oxford. The latter University had its morning of scientific splendor, while Cambridge was comparatively unknown, and (with regard, at least, to definite college foundations) hardly beginning to exist: it had also its noon-day illustrated by the names of such men as Briggs, Wren, Wallis, Halley, and Bradley. The age of science at Cambridge is said to have begun with Francis Bacon; and but that we think much of the difference between him and his celebrated namesake (Roger Bacon), lies more in time and circumstances than in talents or feelings: we would rather date from 1600 with the former, than from 1250 with the latter. Praise or blame on the side of either univer

sity is out of the question, seeing that the earlier foundation of Oxford, and its superiority in pecuniary means, rendered all that took place highly probable. We rejoice in the recollections by the production of which we are enabled to show that this country held a conspicuous rank in the philosophy of the Middle Ages; and we cheerfully and gratefully remember that, to the best of our knowledge and belief, we are in a great measure indebted for the liberty of writing our thoughts to the cultivation of the liberalizing sciences at Oxford in the dark ages. With regard to the University of Cambridge, for a long time there hardly existed the materials for any proper instruction, even to the extent of pointing out what books should be read by a student desirous of cultivating astronomy. Of this we have a remarka

ble instance.

Jeremiah Horrocks, who is well known to astronomers as having made a greater step toward the amendment of the lunar theory than any Englishman before Newton, and whose course might be well known to every reader, but that he died at the age of 23, was at Cambridge in 1633 1635. From the age of boyhood he had been wholly given to the desire of making himself an astronomer. But he could find no one who could instruct him, who could help him by joining him in the study-"such was the sloth and languor which had seized all." Horrocks found that books must be used instead of teachers: these he could not obtain in the University; nor could he there even learn to what books he should direct his attention. Nor were the books themselves which Horrocks (having but small means, and desiring the very best) afterward bought, in any one instance that we can discover, printed in England.

A school-book of great popularity may be mentioned here. This is the well-known "Cocker's Arithmetic." The author, born about 1631, was an engraver and a teacher of writing and arithmetic, and the writer of several books of exercises in penmanship, some of them on silver plates. His celebrated "Arithmetic" was not published until after his death, before 1677: in the title-page it is described as "a plain and familiar method, suitable to the meanest capacity, for the full understanding of that incomparable art, as it is now taught by the ablest schoolmasters in City and Country." The first edition appeared in 1677; the fourth in 1682; the thirty-seventh in 1720; there is no copy of either edition in the British Museum, the libraries of the Royal Society, Sion College, or the London Institution: a copy of the edition of 1678 has been sold for 81. 10s. Cocker's Arithmetic was the first which entirely excluded all demonstration and reasoning, and confined itself to commercial questions

only. This was the secret of its extensive circulation: upon it, nine out of ten of the subsequent Arithmetics have been modeled; and every method since the author's time has been "according to Cocker."

BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

Cromwell, the son of Robert Cromwell, and his wife Elizabeth, was born at Huntingdon, in 1599. It is traditionally related that when an infant, his life was endangered by a great monkey at his grandfather's house taking him out of the cradle, and carrying him upon the leads of the house, to the dreadful alarm of the family (who made beds and blankets ready in the forlorn hope of catching him), but at last brought him safely down. It is better established, Oliver was saved from drowning in his youth by Mr. Johnson, the curate of Cunnington.

Cromwell was educated at the Free Grammar-school of Huntingdon by Dr. Beard, whose severity toward him is said to have been more than what was usual even in that age of barbarous school discipline.* He was a resolute, active boy, fond of engaging in hazardous exploits, and more capable of hard study than inclined to it. His ambition was of a different kind, which discovered itself even in his youth. He is said to have displayed a more than common emotion in playing the part of Tactus, who finds a royal robe and a crown, in the old comedy of Lingua, performed at the Free-school of Huntingdon. He is said often, in the height of his fortune, to have mentioned a gigantic figure which, when he was a boy, opened the curtains of his bed, and told him he should be the greatest person in the kingdom. It is also related that Cromwell (being at his uncle's house at Hinchinbrook), when the royal family rested there on their way from Scotland, in 1604, was brought to play with Prince Charles, then Duke of York, quarreled with him, beat him, and made his nose bleed profusely,-which was remembered as a bad omen for the King when Cromwell began to distinguish himself in the Civil Wars.

Before Oliver had completed his seventeenth year, he was removed from the school at Huntingdon to Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge. Though his passion for athletic exercises still continued, so much so that he is said to have acquired the name of a royster in the university, it appears certain that he did not misspend his time there, but that he made a respectable

The frontispiece to the Theatre of God's Judgment is said to be a portrait of this severe schoolmaster. It represents him with two scholars standing behind, a rod in his hand, and As in præsenti proceeding from his mouth.

† Selected and abridged from Southey.

proficiency in his studies. Within a year of this, his father died, and his mother, to whose care he appears to have been left, removed him from college. It has been affirmed that he was placed at Lincoln's Inn, but that instead of attending to the law, he wasted his time "in a dissolute course of life, and good fellowship and gaming But Cromwell's name is not to be found in the registers of Lincoln's Inn, though his son Richard's is. It is, however, probable that Oliver was entered at some other of the inns of court. Returning thence to reside upon his paternal property, he is said to have led a low and boisterous life. However this may have been, he offended at this time by his irregularities both his paternal uncle and his maternal one. But, whatever may have been the follies and vices of Cromwell's youth, it is equally certain that he had strength and resolution enough to shake them off.

In after life Cromwell was not insensible to literary merit. Archbishop Usher received a pension from him; Andrew Marvell and Milton were in his service; and the latter always affirmed of him, that he was not so illiterate as was commonly supposed. He gave 1007. yearly to the Professor of Divinity at Oxford; and it is said that he intended to have erected at Durham a college for the northern counties of England.

During the Commonwealth, an. 1658, appeared that truly excellent work The Practice of Christian Graces, or, the Whole Duty of Man, which, not long after its publication, was translated into the Latin, French, and Welsh languages. Bishop Bull, one of the greatest ornaments of our church, was accustomed to read a chapter out of "The Whole Duty of Man," in addition to the performance of family prayers in his house on Sunday evenings, "for the further instruction of his family, particularly of those who had been deprived of going to church by reason of the necessary services of the house." Bishop Sanderson, Isaak Walton tells us, had some prayers read at night to him and to a part of his family out of "The Whole Duty of Man." Dean Stanhope says, "Happy is the man who can form his style in plain practical preaching, upon the rational, instructive, and familiar way of the Whole Duty of Man ;" and of its style a writer in the Edinburgh Review says, "after a lapse of 170 years, it contains scarcely a word or phrase which has become superannuated." Yet, the real authorship of this work has never yet been settled on strong and decisive evidence. It has been attributed to Bishop Fell, Dr. Allstree, Bishop Chappel, Archbishop Sterne, Lady Pakington, and Dr. Henry Hammond; to Archbishop Frewen, Abraham Woodhead, Obadiah Walker, Mr. Fulman, and Dr. Chaplin. Lady Pakington's claim is founded upon a copy of the work, in her handwriting, being found amongst her papers after her death; but, as this lady was a very devout person, and was much acquainted with the divines of the day, she is very likely to have been favored with a sight of the work before it was printed, and to have been allowed to take a copy of it for her own use. The Editor of the reprint of the work published by Pickering, in 1842, adduces evidence to show that the author was Dr. Sterne, which he considers strong enough to justify belief. Dr. Southey describes "The Whole Duty of Man" as "a good old book, which contains the substance of a course of sermons, addressed in the plainest language to plain people, and setting before them those duties which they are called upon to perform in the ordinary course of life. The author was a person of sound judgment and sober piety, who sought to make his parishioners practical Christians, and not professing ones; and that he was humble-minded there is conclusive proof; for he concealed his name." Until of late years the work was generally to be found among the books of well-regulated households; and we have ever thought better of a family for its possessing a copy of "The Whole Duty of Man."

CHARLES THE SECOND-HIS PATRONAGE OF LETTERS.

Of the childhood and education of Charles II. we find scanty