THE name and memory of Sir Isaac Newton was honored by the inauguration of his statue at Grantham, England, Sept. 21, 1858. Lord Brougham delivered an oration upon the occasion, of which the following is the substance:"

We are this day assembled to commemorate him of whom the consent of nations has declared that that man is chargeable with nothing like a follower's exaggeration or local partiality, who pronounces the name of Newton as that of the greatest genius ever bestowed by the bounty of Providence, for instructing mankind on the frame of the Universe, and the laws by which it is governed. (The noble lord was here overpowered by emotion, and paused. In a few seconds he proceeded :)

"Whose genius dimmed all other men's as far

As does the midday sun the midnight star." But though scaling these lofty hights be hopeless, yet is there some use and much gratification in contemplating by what steps he ascended. Tracing his course of action may help others to gain the lower eminences lying within their reach; while admiration excited and curiosity satisfied are frames of mind both wholesome and pleasing. Nothing new, it is true, can be given in narrative, hardly any thing in reflection, less still, perhaps, in comment or illustration; but it is well to assemble in one view various parts in the vast subject, with the surrounding circumstances, whether accidental or intrinsic, and to mark in passing, the misconception raised by individual ignorance or national prejudice, which the historian of science occasionally finds crossing his path. The remark is common and is obvious, that the genius of Newton did not manifest itself at a very early age; his faculties were not, like those of some great and many ordinary individuals, precociously developed. His earliest history is involved in some obscurity; and the most celebrated of men has, in this particular, been compared to the most celebrated of rivers, (the Nile,) as if the course of both in its fee

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bler state had been concealed from mortal eye. We have it, however, well ascer tained that within four years, between the age of eighteen and twenty-two, he had begun to study mathematical science, and had taken his place among its greatest masters, learned for the first time the elements of geometry and analysis, and discovered calculus which entirely changed the face of science, effecting a revolution in that and in every branch of philosophy connected with it. Before 1661 he had not read Euclid; in 1665 he had committed to writing the method of fluxions. At twenty-five years of age he had discovered the law of gravitation, and laid the foundation of celestial dynamics, the science created by him. Before ten years had elapsed he added to his discoveries that of the fundamental properties of light. So brilliant a course of discovery, in so short a time changing and reconstructing analytical, astronomical, and optical science, almost defies belief. The statement could only be deemed possible by an ap peal to the incontestable evidence that proves it strictly true. By a rare felicity these doctrines gained the universal assent of mankind as soon as they were clearly understood, and their originality has never been seriously called in ques tion. The limited nature of man's faculties precludes the possibility of his ever reaching at once the utmost excellence of which they are capable. Survey the whole circle of the sciences, and trace the history of our own progress in each-you find this to be the universal rule. Nor is this great law of gradual progress confined to the physical sciences; in the moral it equally governs. Again, in constitu tional policy, see by what slow degrees, from its first rude elements, the attendance of feudal tenants at their lord's court, and the summons of burghers to grant supplies of money, the great dis covery of modern times in the science of practical politics, has been effected, the representative scheme which enables states of any extent to enjoy popular government, and allows mixed monarchy to be established, combining freedom with

plication received at once from the mighty hand of its immortal author. [Loud applause.] But the contemplation of Newton's discoveries raised other feelings than wonder at his matchless genius. The light with which it shines is not more dazzling than useful. The difficulties of his course, and his expedients alike copious and refined for surmounting them, exercise the faculties of the wise, while commanding their admiration; but the results of his investigations, often abstruse, are truths so grand and comprehensive, yet so plain, that they both captivate and instruct the simple. The gratitude, too, which they inspire, and the veneration with which they encircle his name, far from tending to obstruct future improvement, only proclaim his disciples the zealous because rational followers of one whose example both encouraged and enabled his successors to make further progress. How unlike the blind devotion to a master which for so many ages of the modern world paralyzed the energies of the human mind!

And poets still might dream the sun was drowned,

And all the stars that shine in southern skies Had been admired by none but savage eyes."

Now let it be imagined that the feelings excited by contemplating the achievements of this great man are in any degree whatever the result of national partiality, and confined to the country which glories in having given him birth. The language which expresses her veneration is equaled, perhaps exceeded, by that in which other nations give utterance to theirs; not merely by the general voice, but by the well-considered and well-informed judgment of the masters of science. Leibnitz, when asked at the Royal table in Berlin his opinion of Newton, said that: "Taking mathematicians from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half." "The Principia will ever remain a monument of the profound genius which revealed to us the greatest law of the universe," are the words of La Place. "That work stands preeminent above all other productions of the human mind." "The discovery of

that siniple and general law by the greatness and variety of the objects which it embraces, confers honor upon the intellect of man." Lagrange, we are told by Delambre, was wont to describe Newton as the greatest genius that ever existed, but to add how fortunate he was also, "because there can only once be found a system of the universe to establish." "Never," says the father of the Institute of France, once filling a huge place among the most eminent of members, "never," says M. Biot, "was the supremacy of intellect so justly established and so fully confessed; in mathematical and in experimental science without an equal and without an example, combining the genius for both in its highest degree." The Prin-. cipia he terms "the greatest work ever produced by the mind of man," adding, in the words of Halley, that a nearer approach to the Divine nature has not been permitted to mortals. "In first giving to the world Newton's Method of Fluxions," says Fontenelle, "Leibnitz did. like Prometheus; he stole fire from heaven to bestow it upon men." "Does Newton," L'Hopital asked, "sleep and wake like other men? I figure him to myself as a celestial genius, entirely disengaged from matter." To so renowned a benefactor of the world, thus exalted to the loftiest place by the common consent of all men

-one whose life, without the intermission of an hour, was passed in the search after truths the most important, and at whose hands the human race had only received good, never evil-no memorial has been raised by those nations which erected statues to tyrants and conquerors, the scourges of mankind, whose lives were passed, not in the pursuit of truth but the practice of falsehood-across whose lips, if truth ever chanced to stray toward some selfish end, it surely failed to obtain belief-who, to slake their insane thirst of power or of preeminence, trampled on all the rights, and squandered the blood of their fellow creatures-whose course, like lightning, blasted while it dazzled; and who, reversing the Roman Emperor's noble regret, deemed the day lost that saw the sun go down upon their forbearance, no victim deceived, or betrayed, or op pressed. That the worshipers of such pestilent genius should consecrate no outward symbol of the admiration they freely confessed to the memory of the most illustrious men, is not matter of wonder;

but that his own countrymen, justly proud of having lived in his time, should have left this duty to their successors, after a century and a half of professed veneration and lip-homage, may well be deemed strange. The inscription upon the cathedral, the master-piece of his celebrated friend's architecture, may possibly be applied in defense of this neglect: "If you seek for a monument, look around." If you seek for a monument, lift up your eyes to the heavens, which show forth his fame. Nor, when we recollect the Greek orator's exclamation that the whole earth is the monument of illustrious men, can

we stop short of declaring that the Universe itself is Newton's. Yet, in raising the statue which preserves his likeness, near the place of his birth, and on the spot where his prodigious faculties were unfolded and trained, we at once gratify our honest pride as citizens of the same state, and humbly testify our grateful sense of the divine goodness which deigned to bestow upon our race one so marvelously gifted to comprehend the works of Infinite Wisdom, and to make all his study of them the source of religious contemplation, both philosophical and sublime. [Enthusiastic applause.]

DONATI'S

THE celestial and beautiful stranger, whose imposing presence has attracted the attention and interested the public mind for so many weeks, reached the culminating point and maximum of brightness on last Saturday evening, Oct. 9th, 1858. Innumerable eyes gazed upon the face and form of the celestial visitor with intense interest, which will doubtless be closed in their long sleep before the mighty flight of the comet shall again bring him into this field of vision years hence.

The nucleus was very brilliant, the tail prodigious. A star of the second magnitude might have rivaled the illumination of the comet, but nothing less was worthy to come into comparison therewith. The caudal extremity had a curve, a large curve, such a curve as a scimitar has; but its end was shadowy, faint, tremulous and uncertain. The distance that was interposed between the erratic phenomenon and that other point of light, Arcturus, was visibly increased, even since the previous night. The race between Arcturus and Comet on Wednesday night, was about even. It was a struggle to find which could reach the horizon earlierfor all the world like a "neck-and-neck" pull on the Fashion; but on Saturday, when the Comet was doing its utmost, the star was "distanced" essentially. The Comet had gone off at a tangent, in the

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space of time required for one terrestrial revolution, and without previous notice, and the neighborly approach was already forgotten. The view from twilight until deep dark, was magnificent. The air, clear and cold, intensified the brilliancy of the celestial phenomena, and it was past eight o'clock before the great throng of star-and-comet gazers in this region had an end put to their enjoyment of the spectacle. Now the Comet will grow fainter and recede, gradually, as it came; still visible, but diminishing in splendor. But it has been worth seeing.

The last "statement of an eye-witness," (from the careful watchers in the Harvard Observatory,) published in the Boston Advertiser of Saturday, imparts some interesting information.

"The curvature of the tail was noticed on the morning of the 6th of September. It is highly probable, from this observation, that the plane of curvature does not lie in the plane of the orbit, as has commonly been supposed; for, had this been the case, from the position of the earth at that date, being close to the line of nodes, the tail ought to have been seen straight.

"On the 20th, the first of a series of extraordinary phenomena manifested itself in the region contiguous to the nucleus. A crescent-shaped outline, obscure and very narrow, was interspersed, like a screen, between the nucleus and the sun;