forming him that he had that day invested in the funds, in the name of the Royal Society, stock to the amount of 1000%., the interest of which he wished to be employed in the encouragement of experiments in natural philosophy.

When he was nearly in the last agonies, a circumstance occurred which shows that he still preserved his faculties, and gives an interesting proof of the power of his mind over physical suffering. One of his friends having observed, loud enough for him to hear, that he was not at the time conscious of what was passing around him, he immediately made a sign for a pencil and paper, which were given him; he then wrote down some figures, and, after casting up the sum, returned them. The amount was right.

Dr. Wollaston's death occurred on the 22d of December, 1828. A medical enquiry was instituted after his decease, respecting its immediate cause; and from the published report it appears, that an effusion of blood had taken place in the ventricles of the brain, which exhibited a very remarkable appearance. The great body of the optic nerve was converted into a tumour of the size of a hen's egg, was of a greyish colour, and firmer than the brain itself. In the inside it was found to be of a brown colour, soft, and in a half-dissolved state. The nerve contained scarcely any of its proper sub

stance.

At the time of his death, Dr. Wollaston was Senior Fellow. of Gonville and Caius College. His remains were interred at Chiselhurst, in Kent. The funeral was, according to his particular request, exceedingly private, as he had desired that it should be attended only by the descendants of his grandfather.

Dr. Wollaston was never married. There is a large engraved portrait of him, executed in mezzotinto by W. Ward, from a picture by J. Jackson, R. A., which was introduced into a late exhibition at Somerset House, and which has been recently copied in the Second Number of "The National Portrait Gallery of the Nineteenth Century; " from which work, and from "The Gentleman's Magazine," the materials of this sketch have been principally derived.

A new edition of Dr. Henry's " Elements of Experimental Chemistry" contains, in the preface, the following just eulogium on the two eminent philosophers whose loss the country and the world have recently sustained :

"It is impossible to direct our views to the future improvement of this wide field of science, without deeply lamenting the privation which we have lately sustained of two of its most successful cultivators-Sir Humphry Davy and Dr. Wollaston; at a period of life, too, when it seemed reasonable to have expected from each of them, a much longer continuance of his invaluable labours. To those high gifts of nature which are the characteristic of genius, and which constitute its very essence, both those eminent men united an unwearied industry, and zeal in research, and habits of accurate reasoning, without which even the energies of genius are inadequate to the achievement of great scientific designs. With these excellencies, common to both, they were nevertheless distinguishable by marked intellectual peculiarities. Bold, ardent, and enthusiastic, Davy soared to greater heights; he commanded a wider horizon; and his keen vision penetrated to its utmost boundaries. His imagination, in the highest degree fertile and inventive, took a rapid and extensive range in pursuit of conjectural analogies, which he submitted to close and patient comparison with known facts, and tried by an appeal to ingenious and conclusive experiments. He was imbued with the spirit, and was a master in the practice, of the inductive logic; and he has left us some of the noblest examples of the efficacy of that great instrument of human reason in the discovery of truth. He applied it, not only to connect classes of facts of more limited extent and importance, but to develope great and comprehensive laws, which embrace phenomena that are almost universal to the natural world. In explaining those laws, he cast upon them the illumination of his own clear and vivid conceptions; he felt an intense admiration of the beauty, order, and harmony, which are conspicuous in the perfect chemistry of nature; and he expressed those feelings with a force of eloquence which could issue only from a

;

mind of the highest powers, and of the finest sensibilities. With much less enthusiasm from temperament, Dr. Wollaston was endowed with bodily senses of extraordinary acuteness and accuracy, and with great general vigour of understanding. Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had acquired a powerful command over his attention, and had habituated himself to the most rigid correctness, both of thought and of language. He was sufficiently provided with the resources of the mathematics to be enabled to pursue with success profound enquiries in mechanical and optical philosophy, the results of which enabled him to unfold the causes of phenomena not before understood, and to enrich the arts, connected with those sciences, by the invention of ingenious and valuable instruments. In chemistry, he was distinguished by the extreme nicety and delicacy of his observations; by the quickness and precision with which he marked resemblances and discriminated differences; the sagacity with which he devised experiments, and anticipated their results; and the skill with which he executed the analysis of fragments of new substances, often so minute as to be scarcely perceptible by ordinary eyes. He was remarkable, too, for the caution with which he advanced from facts to general conclusions; a caution which, if it sometimes prevented him from reaching at once to the most sublime truths, yet rendered every step of his ascent a secure station, from which it was easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions. Thus these illustrious men, though differing essentially in their natural powers and acquired habits, and moving independently of each other, in different paths, contributed to accomplish the same great ends - the evolving new elements; the combining matter into new forms; the increase of human happiness by the improvement of the arts of civilised life; and the establishment of general laws, that will serve to guide other philosophers onwards through vast and unexplored regions of scientific discovery."

No. XX.

JOHN REEVES, Esq. F. R. S. F.A. S.

FOUNDER OF THE ASSOCIATIONS FOR PROTECTING LIBERTY AND PROPERTY AGAINST REPUBLICANS AND LEVELLERS.

DURING a long, useful, and honourable life, Mr. Reeves took part in so many matters of importance, that, barely to mention his more prominent actions, and name his various works, will completely fill the space to which our notice must be limited.

He was born on the 20th of November, 1752, and received his education on the foundation of Eton; but failing in his expectation of succeeding to King's College, Cambridge, he entered himself of Merton College, Oxford, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts. From thence he was elected to a scholarship at Queen's, became a Fellow there, and took the degree of Master of Arts, May 21. 1778. In the course of his academical pursuits at Eton and at Oxford, he impressed upon the minds of all who knew him a very high opinion both of his heart and of his head; an opinion which the uniform tenour of his subsequent conduct fully justified and confirmed.

It was an observation often made by Judge Blackstone, and which he always expressed with great concern, that "too many of the members of our Inns of Court kept regular terms, and put on the gown, before they seriously applied to such studies as could alone enable them to wear it with due credit." Mr. Reeves was a striking exception to the general justness of this remark. Having entered himself as a student in the Middle Temple, he did not attempt to appear in the

professional robe until he had given proofs of professional knowledge. About a year previous to his introduction at Westminster Hall, he published "A Chart of Penal Law," and "An Inquiry into the Nature of Property and Estates, as defined by the English Law;" both of which pieces obtained a considerable share of public approbation. When, therefore, he solicited, according to form, the rank and privileges of a barrister, the benchers who granted his request might very properly say to him in the words of the old Roman,

"Sume superbiam quæsitam meritis."

Mr. Reeves was called to the bar in 1780, and no doubt was then entertained of his proving one of its most distinguished ornaments. But he soon found the wrangle of altercation very little suited to the natural turn of his temper. Endowed with the happiest talents for investigating truth, and for displaying it with force and evidence, he felt an unconquerable antipathy to the indiscriminate defence of right and wrong. After exerting himself, therefore, with ability and success, upon several important occasions, he gradually withdrew from active practice in the courts.

But in discontinuing his attendance at Westminster Hall Mr. Reeves did not forget the duties of his profession, nor the services which every man of science owes to the great body of society. He published, in 1783, the first volume in quarto of his "History of the English Law," ending with the wise establishments of Edward the First; and in the course of the next year the second volume appeared, continuing the narrative to the close of Henry the Seventh's reign. Several treatises had before been written to elucidate different parts of so interesting a subject; but Mr. Reeves's discussion of it was perfectly new, accurate, and satisfactory. He did not carry his readers back into the dark mist of Saxon antiquities, nor did he vainly endeavour to fill up the chasms of authentic record by ingenious conjecture; but he wisely began his historical details at the time of the Norman invasion, when a new order of things arose,when something like a regular system