AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA (continued 19)

During this period he was chiefly engaged in mathematical pursuits: he wrote and published several works, which were favorably received; and he invented and improved some useful instruments and machines. By continued application, his health began to be impaired, and he at length found it necessary to return to his native country—​a step somewhat accelerated by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which rendered him liable to molestations, although assured of the fullest privilege to follow his own religious opinions. He accordingly left the French metropolis in 1681; passed the remainder of his days in his own country, and in the pursuit of his favorite subjects; and died at the Hague on the 8th of June 1683, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. ‘This illustrious man,’ continues our authority, ‘gave his whole time to science; he loved a quiet studious life, and found sufficient enjoyment in pursuing curious and useful researches. He was modest, amiable, cheerful, and in all respects as estimable in private life as he was eminent in science. It is not a little singular that the discovery of the real nature, or at least of the true figure, of the luminous ring which encompasses the planet Saturn, should have been made by the same individual who invented the pendulum clock and the micrometer.’ His inventions, however, were more of a mathematical and mechanical than of an astronomical character; and we safely predict, that had Hüygens lived in the present day, he would have risen to superlative fame as a mechanician and engineer.

HALLEY.

Dr. Edmund Halley, a name well known in the annals of astronomy, was the only son of a soap-boiler in London, and was born in 1656. He received the rudiments of his education at St. Paul’s School in his native city; and in his seventeenth year, became a commoner in Queen’s College, Oxford. At first he applied himself to the study of the languages and sciences, but at length gave himself wholly up to that of astronomy; and before he had attained his nineteenth year, published a method of finding the aphelia and eccentricity of planets, which supplied a defect in the Keplerian theory of planetary notions. By some observations on a spot on the sun’s disk in the summer of 1676, he established the certainty of the motion of that body round its own axis; and in the same year fixed the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope, by his observations of the occultation of Mars by the Moon. Immediately after, he went to St Helena, where he staid till 1678, completing a catalogue of the fixed stars of the southern hemisphere, which was published in the following year, and gained for its author the appellation of the ‘Southern Tycho.’ In 1679 he was called upon to settle a dispute between the English philosopher Hooke and the celebrated Hevelius, respecting the use of optical instruments in astronomy, and for this purpose went to Dantzic, where with honorable impartiality, he decided against his own countryman. In 1680 he made the tour of Europe, making the acquaintance of Cassini at Paris, and completing his observations from the Royal Observatory of France on the comet which now bears his name. After spending the greater part of 1681 in Italy, he returned to England, and settled at Islington, where he fitted up an observatory for his astronomical researches.

In 1683 he published his Theory of the Variation of the Magnetical Compass, in which he endeavored to account for the phenomenon, by the supposition of the whole globe being one great magnet, having four circulating magnetical poles or points of attraction. His theory, though unsatisfactory, is ingenious. The doctrines of Kepler relative to the motions of the planets next engaged his attention; and finding himself disappointed in his endeavors to obtain information on the subject from Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren, he went to Cambridge, where Newton, then mathematical professor, satisfied his inquiries. In 1691 he was candidate for the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford—​a chair which he would have obtained, had he not refused to profess his thorough belief in all the doctrines of the Christian religion, as taught by the church of England. For the purpose of making further observations relative to the variation of the compass, he set sail on a voyage in 1699 (having obtained the command of a vessel from King William, who was anxious to promote the cause of geographical and astronomical science); and after traversing both hemispheres, and making important observations at numerous stations, he returned to England in September 1700. As the result of his researches, he published a general chart, showing at one view the variation of the compass in all those seas where the English navigators were acquainted; and thus laid the foundation of that department of science which has since received the attention of the greatest philosophers. His next employment, under the patronage of the king, was to observe the tides in the English Channel, with the latitudes and longitudes of the principle headlands; observations which were shortly after published in a large map of the Channel. In 1703, he was engaged by the emperor of Germany to survey the coast of Delmatia; and returning in November of that year to England, he was elected Savilian professor of geometry on the death of Dr. Wallis, and was also honored with the diploma of LL.D.; a title somewhat more in consonance with his pursuits than that of ‘Captain,’ by which he had been styled from the time of his appointment to the command of the surveying vessel furnished him by King William. Dr. Halley now gave his mind more entirely to mathematics, translating into Latin from the Arabic and Greek several treatises, which he afterwards published with supplementary matter, such as those of Appolonius and Serenus.

In 1719 he received the appointment of astronomer-royal at Greenwich, where he afterwards chiefly resided, devoting his time to completing the theory of the motion of the moon, which notwithstanding his age, he pursued with enthusiastic ardor. In 1721 he began his observations, and for the space of eighteen years, scarcely ever missed taking a meridian view of the moon when the weather was favorable. He died at Greenwich in 1742, at the advanced age of eighty-six, having spent one of the most active and useful lives on record. His honors and titles were numerous, but no more than his multifarious occupations and achievements entitled him to. In all he exhibited the same promptness of resolve and incessant assiduity, willing to assist or be assisted; and never deigning it beneath him to confess when ignorant, nor to receive information from any quarter, however humble. Whether as Captain Halley, as secretary to the Royal Society, consulting engineer to the emperor of Germany, or astronomer-royal, he was the same ardent, prompt, and indefatigable laborer. His publications and papers were numerous; he gave important assistance to Dr. D. Gregory in the preparation of the conic sections of Appolonius; and to Halley are we also indebted for the publication of several of the works of Sir Isaac Newton, who had a particular friendship for him, and to whom he frequently communicated his discoveries.

FERGUSON.

We pass by several authors and observers who contributed during the time of Hüygens and Halley, to the advancement of astronomy, to notice the life of an individual whose career, while beneficial to the science under review, furnishes an ever-memorable instance of the acquirement of knowledge under the most pressing difficulties and obstructions. The most of those to whom we have adverted were men in independent circumstances, or at least so situated as to obtain at once a liberal education and the patronage and support of the great and wealthy. James Ferguson, the ingenious experimental philosopher, mechanist, and astronomer, to whom we allude, had no such advantages. He was born in 1710, a few miles from Keith, a village in Banffshire, in the north of Scotland. His parents were of the poorest order, but honest and religious, and, by toilsome labor in the cultivation of a few rented acres, contrived to rear to manhood a large family of children. Of the manner in which James acquired the rudiments of education, and how he struggled to rise from obscurity to distinction, we have a most interesting account in a memoir by himself, which we cannot do better than quote in an abridged form.

After mentioning how he learned to read with a very scanty aid from an old woman and his father, and that little more than three months’ tuition at the grammar school of Keith was all the education he ever received, he thus proceeds:—​‘My taste for mechanics was soon developed; but as my father could not afford to maintain me while I was in pursuit only of these matters, and as I was rather too young and weak for hard labor, he put me out to a neighbor to keep sheep, which I continued to do for some years; and in that time I began to study the stars in the night. In the daytime I amused myself by making models of mills, spinning-wheels, and such other things as I happened to see. I then went to serve a considerable farmer in the neighborhood, whose name was James Glashan. I found him very kind and indulgent; but he soon observed, that in the evenings, when my work was over, I went into a field with a blanket about me, lay down on my back, and stretched a thread with small beads upon it, at arms-length, between my eye and the stars, sliding the beads upon it till they hid such and such stars from my eye, in order to take their apparent distances from one another; and then, laying the thread down on a paper, I marked the stars thereon by the beads, according to their respective positions, having a candle by me. My master at first laughed at me; but when I explained my meaning to him, he encouraged me to go on; and, that I might make fair copies in the daytime of what I had done in the night he often worked for me himself. I shall always have respect for the memory of that man.

‘I soon after was introduced by a schoolmaster whom I knew to a Mr. Cantley, an ingenious man, who acted as butler to Thomas Grant, Esq., of Achoynaney, and from whom I received some instruction, particularly in decimal arithmetic, algebra, and the first elements of geometry. He also made me a present of ‘Gordon’s Geographical Grammar,’ which at that time was to me a great treasure. There is no figure of a globe in it, although it contains a tolerable description of the globes, and their use. From this description I made a globe in three weeks at my father’s, having turned the ball thereof out of a piece of wood, which ball I covered with paper, and delineated a map of the world upon it, made the meridian ring and horizon of wood, covered them with paper, and graduated them: and I was happy to find that by my globe, which was the first I ever saw, I could solve the problems. But this was not likely to afford me bread; and I could not think of staying with my father, who, I knew full well, could not maintain me in that way, as it could be of no service to him; and he had, without my assistance, hands sufficient for all his work.’

Thinking it would be a very easy matter to attend a mill, and that he would have plenty of leisure for study, poor Ferguson next engaged himself to a miller; but the fellow turned out to be a harsh, ignorant drunkard, who required every moment of the boy’s time, starving and ill-using him besides, so that at the end of a year he had to betake himself to the roof of his father. He next hired himself to a farmer; but here, again, he was worked beyond the strength of his naturally delicate constitution: illness ensued, and he had again to seek the paternal refuge. ‘In order to amuse myself in this low state, I made a wooden clock, the frame of which was also of wood; and it kept time pretty well. The bell on which the hammer struck the hours was the neck of a broken bottle. Having then no idea how any timekeeper could go but by a weight and a line, I wondered how a watch could go in all positions, and was sorry that I had never thought of asking Mr. Cantley, who could very easily have informed me. But happening one day to see a gentleman ride by my father’s house, which was close by a public road, I asked him what o’clock it then was; he looked at his watch, and told me. As he did that with so much good-nature, I begged of him to show me the inside of his watch; and though he was an entire stranger, he immediately opened the watch, and put it into my hands. I saw the spring-box with part of the chain round it, and asked him what it was that made the box turn round; he told me that it was turned round by a steel spring within it. Having then never seen any other spring than that of my father’s gun-lock, I asked how a spring within a box could turn the box so often round as to wind all the chain upon it. He answered that the spring was long and thin, that one end of it was fastened to the axis of the box, and the other end to the inside of the box; that the axis was fixed, and the box was loose upon it. I told him I did not yet thoroughly understand the matter. ‘Well my lad,’ says he, ‘take a long thin piece of whalebone, hold one end of it fast between your finger and thumb, and wind it round your finger, it will then endeavor to unwind itself; and if you fix the other end of it to the inside of a small hoop, and leave it to itself, it will turn the hoop round and round, and wind up a thread tied to the outside of the hoop.’ I thanked the gentleman, and told him I understood the thing very well. I then tried to make a watch with wooden wheels, and made the spring of whalebone; but found that I could not make the watch go when the balance was put on, because the teeth of the wheels were rather too weak to bear the force of a spring sufficient to move the balance, although the wheels would run fast enough when the balance was taken off. I enclosed the whole in a wooden case very little bigger than a breakfast teacup; but a clumsy neighbor one day looking at my watch, happened to let it fall, and turning hastily about to pick it up, set his foot upon it, and crushed it all to pieces; which so provoked my father, that he was almost ready to beat the man, and discouraged me so much, that I never attempted to make such another machine again, especially as I was thoroughly convinced I could never make one that would be of any real use.’

He now turned his attention to the repairing and cleaning of clocks, and in this way managed for some time to make a livelihood. While traveling the country for this purpose, he happened to attract the notice of Sir James Dunbar of Durn, who bestowed upon him the warmest patronage, and requested him to make his mansion his home. While there, geometry, mechanics, and astronomy, alternately engaged him. ‘Two large globular stones stood on the top of his gate; on one of them I painted with oil colors a map of the terrestrial globe, and on the other a map of the celestial, from a planisphere of the stars which I copied on paper from a celestial globe belonging to a neighboring gentleman. The poles of the painted globe stood toward the poles of the heavens; on each the twenty-four hours were placed around the equinoctial, so as to show the time of the day when the sun shone out, by the boundary where the half of the globe at any time enlightened by the sun was parted from the other half in the shade; the enlightened parts of the terrestrial globe answering to the like enlightened parts of the earth at all times; so that, whenever the sun shone on the globe, one might see to what places the sun was then rising, to what places it was setting, and all the places where it was then day or night throughout the earth.’

While enjoying the hospitality of Durn, he was introduced to Lady Dipple, Sir James’ sister, who also extended to him the warmest patronage. This lady, seeing his taste for design, employed him in drawing patterns for needlework on gowns, aprons, etc., recommending his work to her acquaintances, and in a short while created, as it were, a flourishing domestic trade for the young philosopher. On removing to Edinburgh, she advised Furguson to accompany her household, in which he would have the benefit of another year’s hospitality, assured that, in the more extensive field of the metropolis, he would have a much better opportunity of rising into notice. Thither he accordingly went; was introduced into new families of distinction; drew and designed for fancy needlework; and latterly turned his attention to miniature painting, in which he so far excelled, that for six-and-twenty after, it was the business to which he trusted for a maintenance. But while engaged in painting, and enjoying the estimation of those who had been his patrons, ‘I somehow or other took a violent inclination to study anatomy, surgery, and physic, all from reading of books and conversing with gentlemen on these subjects, which for that time put all thoughts of astronomy out of my mind; and I had no inclination to become acquainted with any one there who taught either mathematics or astronomy, for nothing would serve me but to be a doctor.

‘At the end of the second year I left Edinburgh, and went to see my father, thinking myself tolerably well qualified to be a physician in that part of the country, and I carried a good deal of medicines, plasters, etc., thither; but to my mortification, I soon found that all my medical theories and study were of little use in practice. And then finding that very few paid me for the medicines they had, and that I was far from being so successful as I could wish, I quite left off that business, and began to think of taking to the more sure one of drawing pictures again. For this purpose I went to Iverness, where I had eight months’ business. When I was there, I began to think of astronomy again, and was heartily sorry for having quite neglected it at Edinburgh, where I might have improved my knowledge by conversing with those who were very able to assist me.’

Having spent some time in astronomical pursuits at Inverness, Furguson returned to Edinburgh, where he made himself known to Mr. Maclaurin, professor of mathematics, by whom he was kindly patronized, and instructed in points wherein he was deficient. Being greatly delighted with the orrery of the professor, he set about constructing one after a somewhat different principle, and succeeded so well in the undertaking that his patron not only commended it to the young men attending his class, but desired the constructor to read them a lecture on it. This so far encouraged the young philosopher, that he instantly set about the construction of another more complex, and of higher finish. This was purchased by Sir Dudley Rider when Ferguson first went to London; and he mentions in his memoir, that altogether eight orreries were constructed chiefly by his own hand, and that in no two of them was the wheelwork alike. We now follow him to London, whither he went in May 1743.

‘I had a letter of recommendation from Mr. Baron Eldin at Edinburgh to the Right Hon. Stephen Poyntz, Esq., at St. James’, who had been preceptor to his Royal Highness the late Duke of Cumberland, and was well known to be possessed of all the good qualities that can adorn a human mind. To me his goodness was really beyond my power of expression; and I had not been a month in London, till he informed me that he had written to an eminent professor of mathematics to take me into his house, and give me board and lodging, with all proper instructions to qualify me for teaching a mathematical school he (Mr. Poyntz) had in view for me, and would get me settled in it. This I should have liked very well, especially as I began to be tired of drawing pictures; in which, I confess, I never strove to excel, because my mind was still pursuing things more agreeable. He soon after told me he had just received an answer from the mathematical master, desiring I might be sent immediately to him. On hearing this, I told Mr. Poyntz that I did not know how to maintain my wife during the time I must be under the master’s tuition. ‘What!’ says he, ‘are you a married man?’ I told him I had been so ever since May, in the year 1739. He said he was sorry for it, because it quite defeated his scheme, as the master of the school he had in view for me must be a bachelor.

‘He then asked me what business I intended to follow. I answered that I knew of none besides that of drawing pictures. On this he desired me to draw the pictures of his wife and children, that he might show them, in order to recommend me to others; and told me that when I was out of business, I should come to him, and he would find me as much as he could—​and I soon found as much as I could execute; but he died in a few years after, to my inexpressible grief.

‘Soon afterwards it appeared to me, that although the moon goes round the earth, and that the sun is far on the outside of the moon’s orbit, yet the moon’s motion must be in a line—​that is, always concave towards the sun; and upon making a delineation representing her absolute path in the heavens, I found it to be really so. I then made a simple machine for delineating both her path and the earth’s on a long paper laid on the floor. I carried the machine and delineation to the late Martin Felkes, Esq., president of the Royal Society, on a Thursday afternoon. He expressed great satisfaction at seeing it, as it was a new discovery; and took me that evening with him to the Royal Society, where I showed the delineation, and the method of doing it.

‘In the year 1747, I published a dissertation on the phenomena of the harvest moon, with a description of a new orrery, in which there are only four wheels. But having never had grammatical education, nor time to study the rules of just composition, I acknowledge that I was afraid to put it to press; and for the same cause, I ought to have the same fears still. But having the pleasure to find that this my first work was not ill received, I was emboldened to go on in publishing my ‘Astronomy,’ ‘Mechanical Lectures,’ ‘Tables and Tracts relative to several Arts and Sciences,’ a small treatise on ‘Electricity,’ and ‘Select Mechanical Exercises.’

‘In the year 1748, I ventured to read lectures on the eclipse of the sun that fell on the 14th of July in that year. Afterwards I began to read astronomical lectures on an orrery which I made, and of which the figures of all the wheelwork are contained in the 6th and 7th plates of ‘Mechanical Exercises.’ I next began to make an apparatus for lectures on mechanics, and gradually increased the apparatus for other parts of experimental philosophy, buying from others what I could not make for myself. I then entirely left off drawing pictures, and employed myself in the much pleasanter business of reading lectures on mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneumatics, electricity, and astronomy; in all which my encouragement has been greater than I could have expected.’

To this narrative we shall add the few particulars which are necessary to complete the view of Ferguson’s life and character. It was through the zeal of George III in behalf of science, that Ferguson was honored with the royal bounty of £50 a-year. His majesty had attended some of the lectures of the ingenious astronomer, and often, after his accession, sent for him to converse upon scientific topics. He had the extraordinary honor of being elected a member of the Royal Society, without paying either the initiatory or the annual fees, which were dispensed with in his case, from a supposition of his being too poor to pay them without inconvenience. To the astonishment of all who knew him, it was discovered, after his death, that he was possessed of considerable wealth—​about £6000. ‘Ferguson,’ says Charles Hutton in his Mathematical Dictionary, ‘must be allowed to have been a very uncommon genius, especially in mechanical contrivances and inventions, for he constructed many machines himself in a very neat manner. He had also a good taste in astronomy, as well as in natural and experimental philosophy, and was possessed of a happy manner of explaining himself in a clear, easy, and familiar way.

His general mathematical knowledge, however, was little or nothing. Of algebra he understood little more than the notation; and he has often told me that he could never demonstrate one proposition in Euclid’s Elements; his constant method being to satisfy himself as to the truth of any problem with a measurement by scale and compasses.’ He was a man of very clear judgment in everything that he professed, and of unwearied application to study: benevolent, meek, and innocent in his manners as a child: humble, courteous, and communicative: instead of pedantry, philosophy seemed to produce in him only diffidence and urbanity. After a long and useful life, worn out with study, age, and infirmities, he died November 16, 1776.

SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL.

The science of astronomy, which, from the time of Copernicus, had been gradually improving, through the laborious exertions of Tycho Brahè, Galileo, Kepler, Hüygens, Newton, Halley, Delisle, Lalande, and other eminent observers of the starry firmament, was considerably advanced by the discoveries of Herschel, whose biography now comes under our notice.

William Herschel was born at Hanover on the 15th of November 1738. He was the second of four sons, all of whom were brought up to their father’s profession, which was that of a musician. Having at an early age shown a peculiar taste for intellectual pursuits, his father provided him with a tutor, who instructed him in the rudiments of logic, ethics, and metaphysics, in which abstract studies he made considerable progress. Owing, however, to the circumscribed means of his parents, and certain untoward circumstances, these intellectual pursuits were soon interrupted, and at the age of fourteen he was placed in the band of the Hanoverian regiment of guards, a detachment of which he accompanied to England about the year 1757 or 1759. His father came with him to England, but after the lapse of a few months, he returned home, leaving his son, in conformity with his own wish, to try his fortune in Great Britain—​the adopted home of many an ingenious foreigner. How or when he left the regimental band in which he had been engaged, we are not informed. After struggling with innumerable difficulties, and no doubt embarrassed by his comparative ignorance of the English tongue, he had the good fortune to attract the notice of the Earl of Darlington, who engaged him to superintend and instruct a military hand at the time forming for the Durham militia. After fulfilling this engagement, he passed several years in Yorkshire, in the capacity of teacher of music. He gave lessons to pupils in the principal towns, and officiated as leader in oratorios or concerts of sacred music—​a kind of employment in which the Germans are eminently skilled, from their love of musical performances. Herschel, however, while thus engaged in earning an honorable livelihood, did not allow his professional pursuits to engross all his thoughts. He sedulously devoted his leisure hours in improving his knowledge of the English and Italian languages, and in instructing himself in Latin, as well as a little Greek. At this period he probably looked to these attainments principally with a view to the advantage he might derive from them in the prosecution of his professional studies; and it was no doubt with this view also that he afterwards applied himself to the perusal of Dr. Robert Smith’s ‘Treatise on Harmonics’—​one of the most profound works on the science of music which then existed in the English language. But the acquaintance he formed with this work was destined ere long to change altogether the character of his pursuits. He soon found that it was necessary to make himself a mathematician before he could make much progress in following Dr. Smith’s demonstrations. He now, therefore, turned with his characteristic alacrity and resolution to the new study to which his attention was thus directed; and it was not long before he became so attached to it, that almost all the other pursuits of his leisure hours were laid aside for its sake.

Through the interest and good offices of a Mr. Bates, to whom the merits of Herschel had become known, he was, about the close of 1765, appointed to the situation of church-organist at Halifax. Next year, having gone with his elder brother to fulfill a short engagement at Bath, he gave so much satisfaction by his performances, that he was appointed organist in the Octagon chapel of that city, upon which he went to reside there. The place which he now held was one of some value; and from the opportunities which he enjoyed, besides, of adding to its emoluments by engagements at the rooms, the theatre, and private concerts, as well as by taking pupils, he had the certain prospect of deriving a good income from his profession, if he had made that his only or his chief object. This accession of employment did not by any means abate his propensity to study for mental improvement. Frequently, after the fatigue of twelve or fourteen hours occupied in musical performances, he sought relaxation, as he considered it, in extending his knowledge of the pure and mixed mathematics. In this manner he obtained a competent knowledge of geometry, and found himself in a condition to proceed to the study of the different branches of physical science which depend upon the mathematics. Among the first of these latter that attracted his attention, were the kindred departments of astronomy and optics. Some discoveries about this time made in astronomy awakened his curiosity, and to this science he now directed his investigations at his intervals of leisure. Being anxious to observe some of those wonders in the planetary system of which he had read, he borrowed from a neighbor a two-feet Gregorian telescope, which delighted him so much, that he forthwith commissioned one of larger dimensions from London. The price of such an instrument, he was vexed to find, exceeded both his calculations and his means; but though chagrined, he was not discouraged; he immediately resolved to attempt with his own hand the construction of a telescope equally powerful with that which he was unable to purchase; and in this, after repeated disappointments, which served only to stimulate his exertions, he finally succeeded.

Herschel was now on the path in which his genius was calculated to shine. In the year 1774, he had the inexpressible pleasure of beholding the planet Saturn through a five-feet Newtonian reflector, made by his own hands. This was the beginning of a long and brilliant course of triumphs in the same walk of art, and also in that of astronomical discovery. Herschel now became so much more ardently attached to his philosophical pursuits, that, regardless of the sacrifices of emolument he was making, he began gradually to limit his professional engagements and the number of his pupils. Meanwhile, he continued to employ his leisure in the fabrication of still more powerful instruments than the one he first constructed; and in no long time he produced telescopes of from seven to twenty feet focal distance. In fashioning the mirrors for these instruments, his perseverance was indefatigable. For his seven-feet reflector, it is asserted that he actually finished and made trial of no fewer than two hundred mirrors before he found one that satisfied him. When he sat down to prepare a mirror, his practice was to work at it for twelve or fourteen hours, without quitting his occupation for a moment. He would not even take his hand from what he was about, to help himself to food; and the little that he ate on such occasions was put into his mouth by his sister. He gave the mirror its proper shape more by a natural tact than by rule; and when his hand was once in, as the phrase is, he was afraid that the perfection of the finish might be impaired by the least intermission of his labors.

It was on the 13th of March, 1781, that Herschel made the discovery to which he owes, perhaps, most of his popular reputation. He had been engaged for nearly a year and a-half in making a regular survey of the heavens, when, on the evening of the day that has been mentioned, having turned his telescope—​an excellent seven-feet reflector, of his own constructing—​to a particular part of the sky, he observed among the other stars, one which seemed to shine with a more steady radiance than those around it; and, on account of that, and some other peculiarities in its appearance, which excited his suspicion, he determined to observe it more narrowly. On reverting to it after some hours, he was a good deal surprised to find that it had perceptibly changed its place—​a fact, which, the next day, became still more indisputable. At first he was somewhat in doubt whether or not it was the same star, which he had seen on these different occasions; but after continuing these observations for a few days longer, all uncertainty upon that head vanished. He now communicated what he had observed to the royal astronomer, Dr. Maskelyne, who concluded that the luminary could be nothing else than a new comet. Continued observation of it, however, for a few months, dissipated this error; and it became evident that it was, in reality, a hitherto undiscovered planet.

This new world, so unexpectedly found to form a part of the system to which our own belongs, received from Herschel the name of Georgium Sidus, or Georgian Star, in honor of the king of England; but by continental astronomers, it has been more generally called either Herschel, after its discoverer, or Uranus. He afterwards discovered, successively, no fewer than six satellites or moons, belonging to his new planet.

The anouncement of the discovery of the Georgium Sidus, at once made Herschel’s name universally known. In the course of a few months the king bestowed upon him a pension of £300 a-year, to enable him entirely to relinquish his engagements at Bath; and upon this, he came to reside at Slough, near Windsor. He now devoted himself entirely to science, and the constructing of telescopes, and observations of the heavens, continued to form the occupations of the remainder of his life.

Astronomy is indebted to him for many more most interesting discoveries besides the celebrated one of which we have just given an account, as well as for a variety of speculations of the most ingenious, original, and profound character. But of these we cannot here attempt any detail.

He also introduced some important improvements into the construction of the reflecting telescope, besides continuing to fabricate that instrument of dimensions greatly exceeding any that he had formerly attempted, with powers surpassing, in nearly a corresponding degree, what had ever been before obtained. The largest telescope which he had ever made was his famous one of forty feet long, which he erected at Slough, for the king.

It was begun about the end of the year 1785, and on the 28th of August 1789 the enormous tube was poised on the complicated but ingeniously-contrived mechanism by which its movements were to be regulated, and ready for use. On the same day a new satellite of Saturn was detected by it, being the sixth that had been observed attendant on that planet. A seventh was afterward discovered, by means of the same instrument. This telescope has since been taken down, and replaced by another of only half the length, constructed by the distinguished son of the subject of our present sketch.

So extraordinary was the ardor of this great astronomer in the study of his favorite science, that for many years, it has been asserted, he never was in bed at any hour during which the stars were visible, and he made almost all his observations, whatever the season of the year, not under cover, but in his garden, in the open air—​and generally without an attendant. By these investigations Herschel became acquainted with the character of the more distant stars, upon which he wrote a variety of papers. In 1802, he presented to the Royal Society a catalogue of five thousand new nebulæ, nebulous stars, planetary nebulæ, and clusters of stars; thus opening up a boundless field of research, and making the world aware of the sublime truth of there being an infinitude of heavenly bodies far beyond the reach of ordinary vision, and performing in their appointed places the offices of suns to unseen systems of planets.

These discoveries established Herschel’s claims to rank amongst the most eminent astronomers of the age, and amply merited the distinctions conferred upon him by learned bodies and the reigning prince. In 1816, George IV, then prince regent, invested him with the Hanoverian and Guelphic order of knighthood. He was now, from being originally a poor lad in a regimental band, rewarded for his long course of honorable exertion in the cause of science. Herschel (now Sir William) did not relinquish his astronomical observations until within a few years of his death, which took place on the 23d of August, 1822, when he had attained the age of eighty-three. He died full of years and honors, bequeathing a large fortune, and leaving a family which has inherited his genius.

SIMON BOLIVAR.

The Spanish colonies of South America remained for three centuries in quiet submission to the mother country, if we except the desperate attempt of the Peruvian Indians, under Tupac Amaru, to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. Never were despotism, avarice and slavish obsequiousness to power, more thoroughly displayed than in Spanish America, under the government of the viceroys and captains-general, who, with all the principal officers of the viceroyal court, were sent to America from Madrid, and who, without being under any efficient responsibility, administered their authority with every species of tyranny and venality. Justice was bought and sold, and the most important legal decisions were made in favor of the highest bidder. The mercantile policy of the parent country was equally despotic and rapacious. The establishment of manufactures was not permitted, while cargoes of Spanish commodities, the refuse of the shops, were forced, in barter for silver and gold, upon a half-civilized people, who neither wanted nor could possibly use them. Foreign commerce was interdicted on pain of death; all social improvement was suppressed; and to prevent the inhabitants from knowing the extent of their degradation, all intercourse whatever was strictly forbidden with any country or people, besides Spain and Spaniards, and allowed even with them under many restrictions. Superstition and ignorance were upheld as the surest support of the colonial system; so that, previous to 1810, the whole continent, from Lima to Monte Video, contained but one wretched printing-press, and that in the hands of the monks, who consigned to the dungeons of the Inquisition every man who possessed a prohibited book.

The example of the revolt of the British North American colonies had a slow effect in propagating revolutionary ideas in the south; and the usurpation of the crown of Spain by Napoleon precipitated those movements which resulted, after a bloody struggle, in wresting from the dominion of Spain the whole of her continental possessions in America. In this momentous contest, Simon Bolivar bore the most conspicuous part, and his life comprises the substance of the history of the country in which his military exploits were performed during its most eventful period.

This celebrated man was born in the city of Caraccas, in July, 1783. He belonged to a family of distinction, and was one of the few natives of the Spanish colonies who were permitted to visit Europe. After finishing his studies at Madrid, he went to France, and during his stay at Paris rendered himself an acceptable guest in its social circles, by the amenity of his manners, and his other personal recommendations. In the midst, however, of all the seductions of that gay capital, his sanguine temper and ardent imagination anticipated the task which the future fortunes of his country might impose upon him, and even in his twenty-third year he is said to have contemplated the establishment of her independence. While at Paris his favorite occupation was the study of those branches of science which contribute to the formation of the character of a warrior and statesman. Humboldt and Bonpland were his intimate friends, and accompanied him in his excursions in France; nor did he think his travels finished till he had visited England, Italy, and a part of Germany. On his return to Madrid, he was married, and shortly afterwards returned to America, where he arrived in 1810, at the very moment when his countrymen were about to unfurl the standard of independence. On his passage homeward, he visited the United States, where he gathered some political knowledge which subsequent events rendered highly useful to him.

The revolution began in Venezuela on Good Friday, April 19, 1810, when, by a popular movement, the captain-general of Caraccas was arrested and deposed, and a congress convened to organize a new government. The talents and acquirements of Bolivar pointed him out as the best qualified person to be placed at the helm; but he disapproved of the system adopted by the congress, and refused a diplomatic mission to England. He even declined any connection with the government, though he continued a staunch friend to the cause of independence. But at length he consented to proceed to England, where he solicited the British cabinet in vain to espouse the cause of the revolution. Finding them resolved to maintain a strict neutrality, he returned to Caraccas after a short stay. In the mean time, the declaration of independence was boldly maintained by military force. Miranda was appointed commander-in-chief. Bolivar took the post of colonel in the army, and governor of Puerto Cabello, the strongest place in Venezuela.

Success attended the arms of the patriots till 1812, when a remarkable event caused them the most serious reverses. In March of that year a violent earthquake devastated the whole province, and among other places totally destroyed the city of Caraccas, with all its magazines and munitions of war. This dreadful calamity, in which twenty thousand persons perished, happened, by a most remarkable coincidence, on the anniversary of the very day in which the revolution had broken out, two years before. The priesthood, who, as a body, were devoted to the royal interest, eagerly seized upon this circumstance. In their hands, the earthquake became the token of the Divine wrath against the revolutionary party. The superstitious multitude were easily deluded and terrified with such representations and denunciations. Priests, monks, and friars, were stationed in the streets, vociferating in the midst of credulous throngs of people trembling with fear, while the royalist commanders improved the occasion by overrunning one district after another. Bolivar was compelled to evacuate Puerto Cabello. Miranda’s conduct having become suspicious, he was arrested by the patriot leaders and delivered up to the Spanish commander, who sent him to Spain, where he died in a dungeon. Bolivar is supposed to have had a share in this transaction, in consequence of which he has been severely censured. There were some circumstances, however, which appeared to justify a suspicion that Miranda was engaged in a hostile plot with the British cabinet.

Bolivar was now entrusted with the command of an army of six thousand men, which he led across the mountains to the further extremity of New Granada. In the hostilities of this period, deeds of the most revolting ferocity were perpetrated by the royalist troops, and the whole country was reduced to a frightful state of misery. On the most trivial pretexts, old men, women and children, were arrested and massacred as rebels. Friars and military butchers reigned triumphant. One of the Spanish officers, named Suasola, cut off the ears of a great number of patriots, and had them stuck in the caps of his soldiers for cockades. Bolivar, who had hitherto conducted the war with great forbearance, was inflamed with indignation at these cruelties; he swore to avenge his countrymen, and declared that every royalist who fell into his hands should be consigned to the vengeance of his soldiery. But this spirit of inexorable justice and retaliation ill accorded with Bolivar’s character, and it was exercised only on one occasion, when eight hundred Spaniards were shot. Afterwards it was formally announced by Bolivar, that ‘no Spaniard shall be put to death except in battle. The war of death shall cease.’

The royalists, who, by the practice of the most bloody and ferocious atrocities, had gained possession of nearly the whole country, now began to give way before the arms of Bolivar. Passing from one victory to another, he drove the enemy from every post, and on the 4th of August, 1814, made his triumphant entry into the renovated city of Caraccas. The enthusiasm and joy of the people exceeded all bounds, and this was certainly the most brilliant day in his whole career. Greeted by the acclamations of thousands of the inhabitants, artillery, bells and music, the Liberator was drawn into the city in a triumphal car by twelve beautiful young ladies, of the first families of the capital, dressed in white, and adorned with the patriot colors, while others crowned him with laurel, and strewed his way with flowers. All the prisons were thrown open, and hundreds who had been suffering for political opinions came forth, pale and emaciated, to thank him for their liberation. The royalists throughout the province capitulated, and the triumph of the patriots was complete.

Bolivar was now constituted dictator, and entrusted with unlimited power. This measure was prompted by the sentiments of enthusiasm and gratitude during the first moments of exultation in the people; but, as is the case in all infant republics, they soon began to give manifestations of a jealousy for that liberty which had cost them such sacrifices. The power of the dictator, who delegated his authority to his inferior officers, by whom it was frequently abused, redoubled their apprehensions. Suspicions arose, that the primary object of Bolivar was his own aggrandisement. In consequence of this, on the 2d of January 1814, he made a formal tender of his resignation. This lulled the suspicions of the people, and the royalists having begun to rally and arm their negro slaves, he was solicited to retain the dictatorship. The war was now renewed, and many battles were fought. On the 14th of June, 1814, Bolivar was defeated at La Puerta, with the loss of fifteen hundred men; and again, on the 17th of August, near his own estate of San Mateo, where the negro leader Boves, with a squadron of cavalry named the ‘infernal division,’ with black crape on their lances, rushing with hideous shouts from an ambush, scattered his remaining forces, and would have made him a prisoner but for the fleetness of his horse. His cousin, Ribas, was taken and shot, and his head set upon the wall of Caraccas. Bolivar’s beautiful family mansion was burned to the ground, and he was compelled, in September, to leave the royalists again in complete possession of all Venezuela, while thousands of the patriot army deserted to their ranks.

In spite of these reverses, we find him, in December of the same year, at the head of two thousand men, marching upon the city of Bogota, which he stormed and captured. But other circumstances having caused him to despair of any permanent success against the Spaniards at that time, he left the country in May 1815, and retired to Jamaica. The war in Europe being brought to a close, the Spanish government were enabled to send an army of twelve thousand men, under General Morillo, to Venezuela and New Granada. This commander overran both provinces, and executed two thousand of the inhabitants. While Bolivar resided at Kingston, in Jamaica, he employed himself in writing a defense of his conduct in the civil war of New Granada, and issued several spirited exhortations to the patriots, for which his assassination was attempted by the royalist party. A Spaniard, stimulated by a bribe of fifty thousand dollars and a promise of perfect absolution by the church, ventured upon this undertaking. He obtained admission into Bolivar’s apartment, and stabbed to the heart his secretary, who, by chance, was lying in the general’s hammock.

From Jamaica, Bolivar proceeded to Hayti, where he raised a force of blacks and patriot emigrants, with which he landed in Cumana, in July, 1816. But, at Ocumare, he was surrounded by the royalists, defeated with great slaughter, and again expelled from the country. A few months afterwards, he landed once more upon the continent, and, after a battle of three days, completely routed the army of Morillo. This success reinstated him in the office of captain-general, and supreme head, and he followed up this advantage by other victories over the royalists. On the 15th of February, 1819, the congress of the Venezuelan republic was installed at Angostura, when Bolivar submitted the plan of a republican constitution, and formally laid down his authority. A strong representation of the exigencies of the times was again pressed upon him and became his inducement to resume it. In the following summer he undertook an expedition across the Cordilleras. Fatigue and privations of every kind were endured with exemplary fortitude in the advance of the army through this wild, precipitous and barren region, where they lost their artillery and most of their equipments. On the heights of Tunja, they found a Spanish army of three thousand five hundred men, whom they instantly attacked and defeated. This, and a subsequent victory at Boyaca, compelled the Spanish commander-in-chief, Barreyro, to surrender the remnant of his army. Samano, the Spanish viceroy, fled from Bogota, leaving in the treasury a million of dollars behind him; and the deliverance of New Granada was complete.

The immediate consequence of this success was the union of the two provinces of Venezuela and New Granada, under the title of the Republic of Columbia, and Bolivar was appointed president, in 1819. It would much exceed our limits to relate all the military events which followed till the final expulsion of the Spanish armies from the country. Peru had now revolted, and solicited the aid of the Columbians. Bolivar marched an army into that country in 1822, drove the royalists from Lima, and was appointed dictator by the Peruvian congress. On the 6th of August, 1824, he gained the important victory of Junin, and the Peruvian congress shortly after tendered him a present of a million of dollars, which he refused. The royalists being again defeated at Ayacucho, by General Sucre, on the 9th of December, 1824, the war of Spanish American independence was finally closed, after one hundred thousand lives had been sacrificed. Bolivar resigned the dictatorship of Peru in the following February, and in his tour through the country, witnessed one uninterrupted scene of triumph and extravagant exultation,—​of dinners, balls, bull-fights, illuminations, triumphal arches and processions. A sumptuous banquet was given on the summit of the famous mountain of Potosi, and the Liberator, in the enthusiasm excited by the excessive adulation which he received, exclaimed on that occasion, ‘The value of all the riches that are buried in the Andes beneath my feet is nothing compared to the glory of having borne the standard of independence from the sultry banks of the Oronoco, to fix it on the frozen peak of this mountain, whose wealth has excited the envy and astonishment of the world.’

A new republic, formed out of the conquered provinces, was now constituted, and named, from the Liberator, Bolivia. From this republic he received a gift of a million of dollars, on condition that the money should be appropriated to the liberation of negro slaves in that territory. At the request of the congress, he framed a scheme of government, known as the ‘Bolivian code.’ This was adopted both in Bolivia and by the congress of Lima, where Bolivar was made president. On the 22d of June, 1826, a scheme projected by him for a grand congress of the Spanish American republics, was carried into effect, and this meeting, consisting of deputies from Columbia, Mexico, Guatimala, Peru and Bolivia, was convened at Panama. The main object of this congress was to establish an annual convention of state representatives, to discuss diplomatic affairs, decide international disputes, promote liberal principles, and insure a union of strength in repelling any foreign attack. This was a noble idea, but too vast an undertaking for the means of performance which actually existed within the control of the Liberator, and it led to no great practical results.

On the return of Bolivar to Columbia, he found two thirds of the republic in a state of insurrection. Great dissatisfaction existed in Venezuela with the central government, and the inhabitants, headed by Paez, a mulatto general, rose and declared themselves in favor of a federal system. Bolivar, having reached Bogota, the capital, assumed extraordinary powers, being authorized to take that step by the constitution, in its provisions for cases of rebellion. He then proceeded to Venezuela; but, instead of punishing the insurgents, he announced a general amnesty, and confirmed Paez in the general command which he had assumed. This led to strong suspicions that the insurrection had been instigated by Bolivar, in order to afford a pretext for assuming the dictatorship, and that he and Paez had acted with a collusive understanding. The truth, on this subject, has never yet been clearly revealed. The presence of Bolivar quieted the commotion, as, in spite of the suspicions which rested upon him, his popularity was still very great. He addressed a letter to the senate of Columbia, disclaiming all ambitious designs, and offering his resignation. This proposal caused violent debates in the congress, and many members voted to accept it; but a majority were in favor of continuing him in office.

At a congress held at Ocana, in March, 1828, Bolivar assumed more of an anti-republican tone, and recommended strengthening the executive power. Many of his adherents, in which the soldiery were included, seconded his views, and declared that the people were not prepared to appreciate the excellence of institutions purely republican; a fact of which there can be little doubt. They carried this doctrine, however, to an unwarrantable extreme, by insisting that the president should be intrusted with absolute discretionary power. This proposition was indignantly rejected by a majority of the congress, and the partisans of Bolivar vacated their seats; in consequence of which, that body was left without a quorum, and dissolved. The city of Bogota then took the matter into its own hands, and conferred upon Bolivar the title of Supreme Chief of Columbia, with absolute power to regulate all the affairs of government. His immediate concurrence in this illegal and revolutionary measure has been deemed a sufficient proof that it was brought about by his instigation. On the 20th of June, 1829, he entered that city in magnificent state, and assumed his authority. These proceedings could not but lead to violent measures. An attempt was soon made to assassinate the dictator. Several persons broke into his chamber at midnight, and shot two officers of the staff, who were with him; Bolivar himself only escaped by leaping out of the window and lying concealed under a bridge. Santander, the vice-president, and several officers of the army, were tried and convicted of being implicated in this conspiracy. The former was sentenced to death, but Bolivar was satisfied with banishing him from Columbia.

The whole country became rent with factions, commotions and rebellion. The popularity of the Liberator was gone, and his authority was disclaimed in almost every quarter. The events which ensued do not require to be specified here, as they are nothing more than a repetition of what had been acted over many times before. At length, Bolivar, finding his influence at an end, and his health and spirits broken, determined to withdraw from public life, take leave of the country, and retire to Europe. At a general convention at Bogota, in January, 1830, he resigned his authority for the last time, and rejected many entreaties to resume it. He withdrew to the neighborhood of Carthagena, where he spent nearly two years in retirement, when, finding his end approaching, he issued his farewell address to the people of Columbia, in the following words:—

‘Columbians,—​I have unceasingly and disinterestedly exerted my energies for your welfare. I have abandoned my fortune and my personal tranquillity in your cause. I am the victim of my persecutors, who have now conducted me to my grave: but I pardon them. Columbians, I leave you. My last prayers are offered up for the tranquillity of my country; and if my death will contribute to this desirable end, by extinguishing your factions, I shall descend with feelings of contentment into the tomb that is soon to receive me.’ A week afterwards, he breathed his last, at San Pedro, near Carthagena, on the 17th of December, 1831, at the age of forty-eight.

His death appears to have afflicted his countrymen with the deepest sorrow and remorse. In an instant they forgot the jealousies and suspicions which had filled their breasts, with regard to their great chief, and, by a sudden revulsion of feeling, they indulged in the most bitter self-reproach at the reflection, that the man who had devoted his fortune and his life to the liberation and welfare of his country, had sunk under their ungenerous reproaches, and died of a broken heart, the victim of national ingratitude. Almost every town in Columbia paid honors to his memory by orations, funeral processions, and other demonstrations of grief and respect.

The fortunes of this eminent man were most singular. During one period his was regarded as one of the greatest characters of modern times. At the present moment he is almost forgotten; and another generation may witness the revival of his fame. In the early part of his career he was believed to be a disinterested patriot; at the close he had totally lost the confidence of his countrymen, and he died tainted with the suspicion of intriguing with the French government to subjugate the country by European arms and establish a monarchy. There are some acts of his life which have an equivocal character; but, judging of his whole conduct from such evidence as is within our reach, we are compelled to pronounce his acquittal of the charge of entertaining designs hostile to the liberties of his country. Bolivar is not to be judged by the standard which we apply to the character and merits of Washington. The cool-tempered, orderly, intelligent, and well educated North Americans, who achieved their independence with a moderation, sobriety and self-restraint, which drew forth the applause and admiration of the world, were a very different race from the heterogeneous population of Columbia, ignorant, insubordinate, superstitious, fanatical, ferocious, little advanced in civilization, and subject to all the sudden impulses of a rash and fiery southern temper. It was impossible to govern such men, amid the turbulence of jealous factions, by the weak instrument of a written constitution.

The proofs of Bolivar’s disinterestedness are very strong. He sacrificed a large fortune in the cause of his country; and had many opportunities of acquiring enormous wealth, all of which he neglected. As a military commander, he is entitled to high praise. Though often defeated, his perseverance and fortitude, in rising superior to every obstacle, are everywhere conspicuous. The difficulties of marshalling, disciplining, and leading an army to battle during the revolution of Columbia, are hardly to be conceived. Bolivar’s troops often consisted chiefly of desperate adventurers, eager only for pay and plunder; ragged Creoles, Indians, naked negroes, and cavalry of half-savage Llaneros mounted on wild horses. Whole regiments often deserted from one side to the other, and back again, according to the chance of success.

The fatigues, cares and anxieties to which he was constantly exposed during a most eventful career of nearly twenty years, were strongly marked in his countenance, and at forty-five he had the appearance of a man of sixty. He was capable of enduring the most severe labor; was a remarkably bold horseman, and was fond of dancing in his spurs. He was abstemious in personal matters, but hospitable and highly munificent in giving entertainments. His manners were easy and dignified, and he was gifted with an extraordinary faculty of prompt repartee in conversation. In one instance, he was known to give seventeen unpremeditated answers in succession, each of which, if prepared by deliberate study, would have been admired for its happy adaptation to the subject and the occasion. In proposing a toast, in returning thanks, or in speaking impromptu on any casual subject, he never was surpassed.

FRANCIA, THE DICTATOR.

This singular individual, named José Gaspar Rodriguez Francia, was born near Assumpcion, in Paraguay, in the year 1757. His father was either a Frenchman or a Portuguese, and his mother a Paraguay Creole.

He was one of several children. At the university of Cordova, in Tucuman, he received such an education as a classical seminary in the interior of South America could furnish. Being a person of a shrewd, saturnine disposition, and retired, studious habits, he contrived, by close application, to acquire a degree of knowledge seldom placed within the reach of a student whose pursuits were watched by the jealous ecclesiastics of that region. In addition to the branches of education common in the university, he contrived to acquire some knowledge of algebra, geometry and Greek. Having prosecuted his studies through the ordinary term, he returned to Paraguay, and entered into practice as a lawyer. His professional reputation, in that country where justice was regularly bought and sold, was not only unsullied by venality, but conspicuous for rectitude. The following anecdote of his uprightness has been related by a writer no way disposed to be unduly partial to the subject of it.

Francia had an acquaintance in Assumpcion, of the name of Domingo Rodriguez. This man had cast a longing eye upon a certain Naboth’s vineyard; and this Naboth, named Estanislao Machain, was Francia’s open enemy. Rodriguez, never doubting that the young advocate, like other lawyers, would undertake an unrighteous cause for a suitable reward, went to him, offered a liberal retaining fee, and directed him to institute a suit in law, for the recovery of the estate in question. Francia saw at once that the pretensions were founded in injustice and fraud; and he not only refused to act as his counsel, but plainly told Rodriguez, that, much as he disliked his antagonist, Machain, yet if he persisted in his iniquitous suit, he would himself undertake the cause of the injured party. Covetousness, however, is not so easily driven from its purpose. Rodriguez persisted, and, as he was a man of great fortune, the suit appeared to be going against Machain and his estate. At this critical stage of the affair, the slave who attended the door of the luckless Machain, was astonished, one evening, to see Francia present himself before it, wrapped up in his cloak. Knowing that the doctor and his master, like Montague and Capulet, were ‘smoke in each other’s eyes,’ he refused him admittance, and ran to inform his master, of this strange and unexpected visit. Machain, no less struck by the circumstance than his slave, for some time hesitated, but at length determined to admit his old enemy. In walked the silent visitor to Machain’s chamber, and spread the papers connected with the law-case upon the table.

‘Machain,’ said Francia, ‘you know I am your enemy. But I know that my friend Rodriguez meditates, and will certainly, unless I interfere, carry on against you an act of gross and lawless aggression. I have come to offer my service in your defense.’ The astonished man could scarcely credit his senses; but he poured forth his expressions of gratitude in terms of thankful acquiescence.

Pleas, it would appear, are made in that country by writing. The first paper sent into court confounded the adverse counsel, and staggered the judge, who was in their interest. ‘My friend,’ said that functionary to the leading advocate for the plaintiff, ‘I cannot proceed in this matter, unless you bribe Dr. Francia to be silent.’ ‘I will try,’ was the answer; and the advocate went to him with a hundred doubloons. He offered them as a bribe to Francia, to let the matter slip; and more surely to gain his consent, he advised him that this was done at the suggestion of the judge himself.

‘Leave my house, with your vile proposals and contemptible gold!’ was the indignant answer; amd the menial tool of the unjust judge waited for no further dismissal. Francia, putting on his capote, hurried at once to the residence of that magistrate. ‘Sir,’ said he, after mentioning the attempt to bribe him, ‘you are a disgrace to law, and a blot upon justice. You are, moreover, completely in my power; and unless tomorrow you pronounce a decision in favor of my client, I will make your seat upon the bench too hot for you; and the insignia of your judicial office shall become the emblems of your shame.’ The morrow did not fail to bring a decision in favor of Francia’s client. The Judge lost his character, and the young doctor’s fame resounded far and wide.

His uncommon reputation for integrity, a more than common acuteness and learning in his profession, profound knowledge of the foibles and peculiarities of his countrymen, together with his fame for a mysterious familiarity with the occult sciences, soon caused Dr. Francia to be regarded as a most remarkable personage. In the deplorable state of ignorance then existing in South America, it was a wonderful faculty that enabled a man to multiply and substract the letters of the alphabet; to read a language written in strange characters; to measure an angle, and ascertain the height of a mountain with a theodolite. Francia, celebrated for universal knowledge, stood upon high vantage-ground, and in a great public exigence could not fail to be looked upon as one of the individuals destined to take the lead in public affairs.

When the province of La Plata revolted from Spain, the people of Paraguay refused to acknowledge the authority of the former government; in consequence of which an army was sent from Buenos Ayres, in 1810, under Gen. Belgrano, to reduce Paraguay. He was defeated and driven back. The next year a revolutionary government was established, and Francia, who had previously been in public office as a member of the municipal council and mayor of the capital, Assumpcion, was appointed secretary of the congress. Everything was in confusion; the army, as is usual on such occasions, seemed inclined to take the lead, and for some time, faction and terror alone prevailed; but Francia, at this critical moment, obtained an ascendancy which he never afterwards lost. His superior talents, address and information were continually in requisition and made him indispensable on all occasions. Nothing of any importance could be transacted without him. The members of the congress were entirely inexperienced in political matters, and grossly illiterate. Such a body attempted to found a republic, and we are told that their constitution was compiled from passages in Rollin’s Ancient History!

The business proceeded with small success under such auspices. Intrigues, cabals and factions disgusted Francia to such a degree that he resigned his office, and retired to his country seat. The reader may wish for a picture of so remarkable a man as this Dionysius, of the western world, and we will copy the following description of him at the period of his retirement. It is drawn by an English merchant, who resided in Paraguay at that time:

‘On one of those lovely evenings in Paraguay, after the south-west wind had both cleared and cooled the air, I was drawn, in my pursuit of game, into a peaceful valley, remarkable for its combination of all the striking features of the scenery of the country. Suddenly I came upon a neat and unpretending cottage. Up rose a partridge; I fired, and the bird came to the ground. A voice from behind called out, ‘Buen tiro.’—​‘a good shot.’ I turned round, and beheld a gentleman of about fifty years of age, dressed in a suit of black, with a large scarlet capote, or cloak, thrown over his shoulders. He had a mate-cup in one hand, a cigar in the other; and a little urchin of a negro, with his arms crossed, was in attendance by the gentleman’s side. The stranger’s countenance was dark, and his black eyes were very penetrating; while his jet hair, combed back from a bold forehead, and hanging in natural ringlets over his shoulders, gave him a dignified and striking air. He wore on his shoes large golden buckles, and at the knees of his breeches the same.

‘In exercise of the primitive and simple hospitality common in the country, I was invited to sit down under the corridor, and to take a cigar and mate, or cup of Paraguay tea. A celestial globe, a large telescope, and a theodolite, were under the little portico; and I immediately inferred that the personage before me was no other than Doctor Francia. He introduced me to his library, in a confined room, with a very small window, and that so shaded by the roof of the corridor, as to admit the least portion of light necessary for study. The library was arranged on three rows of shelves, extending across the room, and might have consisted of three hundred volumes. There were many ponderous books on law; a few on the inductive sciences; some in French, and some in Latin, upon subjects of general literature, with Euclid’s Elements, and some schoolboy treatises on algebra. On a large table were several heaps of law papers and processes. Several folios, bound in vellum, were outspread upon it. A lighted candle, though placed there solely to light cigars, lent its feeble aid to illumine the room; while a mate-cup and inkstand, both of silver, stood on another part of the table. There was neither carpet nor mat on the brick floor; and the chairs were of such ancient fashion, size, and weight, that it required a considerable effort to move them from one spot to another.’

Francia’s withdrawal left the government without an efficient adviser. Embarrassments multiplied, and a second congress was convened; ‘such a congress,’ we are told, ‘as never met before in the world; a congress which knew not its right hand from its left; which drank infinite rum in the taverns, and had one wish,—​that of getting on horseback home to its field-husbandry and partridge-shooting!’ Such men, and we need not wonder, could not govern Paraguay. Francia was called from his retirement, and a new constitution was formed, with two chief magistrates, called consuls. Francia and a colleague were appointed to these offices for one year; each in supreme command for four months at a time; but as the former took the precedence, he had two thirds of the year for his own term of authority. Two carved chairs were prepared for the use of the consuls, one inscribed with the name of Cæsar, and the other with that of Pompey. It is needless to say which of the consuls took possession of the former. By consummate address and management, and by the influence which he had obtained over the troops, Francia got rid of his colleague at the close of the year, in 1814, and was proclaimed dictator for three years. At the end of that time, he found no difficulty in assuming the dictatorship for life. From the moment that he felt his footing firm, and his authority quietly submitted to, his whole character seemed to undergo a remarkable change. Without faltering or hesitation, without a pause of human weakness, he proceeded to frame the boldest and most extraordinary system of despotism that was ever the work of a single individual. He assumed the whole power, legislative and executive; the people had but one privilege and one duty,—​that of obedience. All was done rapidly, boldly, unreservedly, and powerfully; he well knew the character of the people at whose head he had placed himself, and who, strange to say, once thought themselves possessed of energy and virtue enough for a republic.

The army, of course, was his chief instrument of power. It consisted of five thousand regular troops, and twenty thousand militia. He took care to secure their most devoted attachment, and it does not appear that during his whole career of despotism the smallest symptom of disaffection was ever manifested in their ranks. Francia, at the time of his accession to the supreme authority, was past the age when any dormant vice, save that of avarice, is likely to spring up in the character. He was not dazzled with the pomp and circumstance of exalted rank, nor even by that nobler weakness, the desire of fame; for he took no pains to make an ostentatious display of his power, or spread his reputation among foreign nations, or hand his name down to posterity. On the contrary, he carefully shrouded himself, and, as far as possible, his dominions, in haughty seclusion. His ruling, or rather his absorbing passion, was a love of power, and of power for itself alone. It was with him a pure, abstracted principle, free from desire of the splendor which usually surrounds it, of the wealth which usually supports it, and of the fame which usually succeeds it.

The most remarkable feature in his administration was the perfect isolation in which he placed the country. Intercourse with foreign nations was absolutely interdicted. Commerce was at an end. The ships lay high and dry, their pitchless seams yawning, on the banks of the rivers, and no man could trade but by the Dictator’s license. No man could leave Paraguay on any pretext whatever, and it became as hermetically sealed against the escape of its inhabitants as the ‘Happy Valley’ of Abyssinia. In this restrictive policy he was assisted by the peculiar geographical features of the country. Paraguay, in the midst of an immense and thinly-peopled continent, stood alone and impenetrable; its large rivers, wide forests and morasses, render traveling difficult and hazardous. Any one attempting to cross the frontiers must encounter the danger of losing himself in the wilderness, of being destroyed by those immense and terrible conflagrations to which the thick woods are subject, of excessive fatigue and exposure, of starvation, and attacks from venomous reptiles, wild beasts and savages. The only possibility of escape is during the time that the river Paraguay overflows the surrounding plains; it is then barely practicable. A Frenchman, with five negroes, made the attempt in 1823. One of them died of fatigue, another by the bite of a snake. At one time they were surrounded by the burning woods; and at another were involved in an immense glade in the midst of a forest, where they wandered about for fifteen days in search of an outlet, and were finally obliged to return by the opening through which they escaped. Being at last so reduced by fatigue and famine that they were unable to resist a single man, they were recaptured by a sergeant of militia.

But Francia’s tyranny was not without signal benefits to the country. The land had peace, while all the rest of Spanish America was plunged into frightful anarchy, raging and ravening like a huge dog-kennel gone mad. Paraguay was domineered over by a tyrant, but Peru and Mexico, Chili and Guatimala, suffered the oppression of forty tyrants. Francia’s soldiers were kept well drilled and in strict subordination, always ready to march where the wild Indians or other enemies made their appearance. Guard-houses were established at short distances along the rivers, and around the dangerous frontiers; and wherever an Indian cavalry horde showed itself, an alarm-cannon announced the danger; the military hastened to the spot, and the savage marauders vanished into the heart of the deserts. A great improvement, too, was visible in other quarters. The finances were accurately and frugally administered. There were no sinecures in the government; every official person was compelled to do his work. Strict justice between man and man was enforced in the courts of law. The affair of Naboth’s vineyard could not have occurred under the Dictator’s rule. He himself would accept no gift, not even the smallest trifle. He introduced schools of various sorts, promoted education by all the means in his power, and repressed superstition as far as it could be done among such a people. He promoted agriculture in a singular manner, not merely making two blades of grass grow where one grew before, but two crops of corn in a season. In the year 1820, a cloud of locusts devastated the whole country, and the prospect of universal famine threatened the land. The summer was at an end, and there was no foreign commerce by which supplies might be obtained from abroad. Francia hit upon an expedient, such as had never entered into the contemplation of any man in Paraguay before. He issued a peremptory command, ordering, under a severe penalty, that the farmers throughout the country should sow their lands anew. The result was, that a second crop was produced, and the people amazed with the important discovery that two harvests were, every year, possible in Paraguay. Agriculture made immense progress; the cultivation of many articles, before unknown in the country, was now successfully introduced, and, among others, rice and cotton. Manufactures kept pace with agriculture, and the clothing of the people, which had previously, for the most part, been imported ready made, at a great expense, was now entirely produced at home.

The city of Assumpcion was an assemblage of narrow, crooked, irregular streets, interspersed with trees, gardens, and clumps of tropical vegetation. It had no pavements, and, standing on a slope of ground, the sandy thoroughfare was torn by the rain into gullies, impassable, except by taking long leaps. Numerous springs issued from the soil in every part of the city, and formed streams, or stagnated into pools, where every species of filth became deposited. Francia determined on having it remodeled, paved, and straightened. The inhabitants were ordered to pull down their houses, and build them anew. The cost to private purses was great, and caused infinite grumbling; but Assumpcion is now an improved, paved city, and possesses convenient thoroughfares.

The stern temper and arbitrary political system of Francia led him to acts which could not fail of being denounced as the wanton excesses of a sanguinary disposition. He put to death upwards of forty persons, as we are assured by a traveler, who utters the bitterest denunciations against him. He had frightful prisons, and banished disorderly persons to a desolate spot in the wilderness. How far his executions were wanton and unjustifiable, we have not sufficient means of judging. In the early part of his career, a plot was formed for the purpose of taking his life; it was discovered, and executions followed; after which we hear nothing more of these sanguinary deeds. His enemy, the bandit chieftain Artigas, had done a great deal of injury to Paraguay, and had incensed him further by fomenting revolts among his Indians. Yet, when one of this chieftain’s lieutenants rebelled against him, and forced him to retreat with the wreck of his army, Artigas threw himself on the mercy of the Dictator, and was treated with clemency. He suffered him to reside in Paraguay, assigned him a house and lands, with a pension, and ordered the governor of the district to furnish him besides with whatever accomodations he desired, and to treat him with respect.

The Dictator’s treatment of foreigners who found their way into his dominions, was most rigorous and unjust, and has contributed more than any other cause to blacken his character among strangers. Paraguay was a sort of mouse-trap, easy enough to get into, but very difficult to get out of. M. Bonpland, the fellow-traveler of Humboldt, and two Swiss naturalists, wandering into Francia’s domains, were detained there many years. Sometimes, by special permission, an individual was allowed to leave the country, but these instances were rare. The foreigners detained were informed that they might pursue what avocations they pleased, provided they did not interfere with the government.

The father of Francia was a man of very eccentric habits; his brothers and one of his sisters were lunatics, and the Dictator himself was subject to fits of hypochondria, which seem occasionally to have affected his intellect. When under such influences, he would shut himself up for several days. On one of these occasions, being offended at the idle crowds gazing about the government-house, he gave the following order to a sentinel:—​‘If any person presumes to stop and stare at my house, fire at him; if you miss him, this is for a second shot, (handing him another musket loaded with ball;) if you miss again, I shall take care not to miss you!’ This order being quickly made known throughout the city, the inhabitants carefully avoided passing near the house, or, if their business led them that way, they hurried on with their eyes fixed on the ground. After some weeks, an Indian, who knew nothing of the Spanish language, stopped to gaze at the house, and was ordered to move on, but continued to loiter. The sentinel fired, and missed him. Francia, hearing the report, was alarmed, and summoned the sentinel. ‘What news, friend?’ On being told the cause, he declared that he did not recollect having given such an order, and immediately revoked it.

The domestic establishment of the Dictator of Paraguay consisted of four slaves, three of them mulattoes, and the fourth a negro, whom he treated with great mildness. He led a very regular life, and commonly rose with the sun. As soon as he was dressed, the negro brought him a chafing-dish, a kettle, and a pitcher of water. The Dictator made his own tea; and after drinking it, he took a walk under the colonnade fronting upon the court, smoking a cigar, which he always took care previously to unroll, in order to ascertain that it contained no poison; although his cigars were always made by his sister. At six o’clock came the barber, an unwashed and ragged mulatto, given to drink, but the Dictator’s only confidential menial. If his excellency happened to be in good humor, he chatted over the soap-dish, and the shaver was often intrusted with important commissions in preparing the public for the Dictator’s projects; so that he might be said to be the official gazette of Paraguay. He then stepped out, in his dressing-gown of printed calico, to the outer colonnade, an open space which ranged all around the building; here he walked about, receiving at the same time such persons as he admitted to an audience. About seven, he withdrew to his room, where he remained till nine. The officers then came to make their reports, and received orders. At eleven, his chief secretary brought the papers which required inspection by him, and wrote from his dictation till noon. He then sat down to a table, and ate a frugal dinner. After this, he took a siesta, drank a cup of mate, and smoked a cigar. Till four or five in the afternoon, he again attended to business; the escort then arrived to attend him, and he rode out to inspect the public works. While on this duty, he was armed with a sabre and a pair of double-barreled pocket-pistols. He returned home about nightfall, and sat down to study till nine, when he took his supper, consisting of a roast pigeon and a glass of wine. In fine weather, he took an evening walk in the outer colonnade. At ten, he gave the watchword, and, returning into the house, he fastened all the doors with his own hands.

Though possessing unlimited sway over the finances of the state, he made no attempt to enrich himself, and his small salary was always in arrears to him. His two nephews, who were officers in the army, were dismissed, lest they should presume upon their relationship. He banished his sister from his house, because she had employed a grenadier, one of the soldiers of the state, on some errand of her own. He was a devoted admirer of Napoleon, whose downfall he always deplored. The Swiss traveler, Rengger, who, after a long detention, was permitted to depart, left behind him a print of the French emperor. Francia sent an express after him, inquiring the price of it. Rengger sent him for answer, that the print was at his excellency’s service,—​he did not sell such trifles. The Dictator immediately despatched the print after him;—​he would receive no gifts. There seems to have originally existed in him somewhat of the simple and severe virtue, which is more characteristic of a stern republican than of a sanguinary tyrant. He has left one witticism upon record, which we will subjoin, as it is much in character. Rengger, who was a surgeon, was about to dissect a body. ‘Doctor,’ said the Dictator, ‘examine the neck, and see whether the Paraguayans have not an extra bone there, which hinders them from holding up their heads, and speaking out.’

In the accounts which were written of this extraordinary man during his lifetime, he has been represented as an arbitrary and cruel oppressor, universally detested, and whose death, inasmuch as he had made no provision for the continuance of the government, would plunge the state into anarchy and ruin. Both these representations have been completely falsified by the event. Francia died peaceably, on the twentieth day of September, 1840, aged eighty-three; the people crowding round his house with much emotion, and even, as we are assured, with tears of anxiety and sympathy. The funeral discourse pronounced on the occasion surprised the world; it was filled with praises of the deceased Dictator, whom it represented as the real father of his country.

Enough is known of Dr. Francia to assure us that he was a most remarkable individual; but it would be both difficult and unsafe to draw his character with confidence and minuteness, from the meagre and questionable materials which we possess respecting him. That he was a man of iron integrity in a country where corruption and venality were almost matters of course with public men; that he spent thirty years of his life in toilsome devotion to his country; that he was above the vulgar love of money, and disdained to take advantage of his unlimited power for enriching himself,—​are all incontrovertible facts; that his government was also, on the whole, advantageous to his country, is not to be denied. But what were the motives which guided his conduct? Was it patriotism, or a simple love of power? Why adopt so strange a system of policy—​that of interdicting all intercourse with other nations? Was it from a conviction that this was best adapted to the condition of the people, or that it was indispensable to the preservation of his despotic sway? Why enshroud himself in such mysterious isolation, holding as little commerce of affection and sympathy with his fellow-men us of trade with foreign nations? These are questions which we cannot easily answer. If we may rely upon the scattered glimpses of his career that have been presented to us, we should venture to decide that the main elements of his character consisted of stern integrity and devoted patriotism; blended, however, with natural sternness of temper, a love of power, and a conviction that a despotic government was best suited to the condition of the people. His singular habits were, probably, the result of native eccentricity; his exclusive policy was doubtless adopted with the double motive of perpetuating his authority, and insuring tranquillity to the country. Of the vigor of his mind and energy of his character, there can be no doubt. That he should have created and sustained, for thirty years, the sternest despotism that the world ever witnessed, in the heart of a continent where everything besides was tending to the dissolution of tyrannical power and the establishment of popular institutions, is a phenomenon that may well excite the curiosity and astonishment of the world. We may, indeed, suppose that his government was modeled after that of the Jesuits, the effects of which were still visible in his time; but that he should have been able to assume to himself, and exercise for so long a period, the unlimited power wielded by these sagacious priests, must still excite our surprise.

ALEXANDER WILSON.

This extraordinary man, who, from being originally an operative weaver, became by his own unaided exertions one of the most celebrated ornithologists of his day, was born in Paisley on the 6th of July 1766. His father was a distiller, poor in fortune, though said to have been endowed with an active and sagacious mind. He was so unfortunate as to lose his mother at the early age of ten, and was left without the tender and judicious care which a mother alone can give. On attaining his thirteenth year, he was bound apprentice for three years to his brother-in-law, to learn the business of a weaver, and on the expiry of this term, continued to work as a journeyman for four years more.

The employment of a weaver was by no means congenial to the disposition and propensities of the future ornithologist; but as his father, though a highly respectable man in character, was in very indifferent circumstances, young Wilson had no choice left, but was compelled to adopt that which was readiest and most easily attained. It is much to his credit, however, that though he must have felt—​indeed it is certain that he did feel, and that at a very early age—​that he was fitted for higher things, he yet diligently labored at the humble but honorable calling to which destiny had appointed him, and never allowed such feelings to interrupt his industry. At this period of his life he indulged in a predilection for poetical composition, and wrote several pieces which appeared in the ‘Glasgow Advertiser;’ but in these juvenile attempts he was not very successful, nor was he ever, at any after period, fortunate in this department of literature, though his poetical productions are certainly not without very considerable merit.

Having continued at the loom, as already said, for four years as a journeyman weaver, at the end of this period he abandoned the business, to accompany his brother-in-law, who had commenced traveling merchant or pedlar, in a tour through the eastern districts of Scotland—​an employment which, though it could scarcely claim any sort of precedence in point of rank over that which he had left, he yet gladly embraced, as it at once released him from the confinement and dull monotony of his former occupation, and permitted him to indulge in one of his strongest propensities, which was to ramble over hill and dale, and to enjoy unfettered and unrestrained, the beauties of his native land. With such a disposition, it is not to be wondered at that, as a pedlar, he made much greater progress in the study of nature, and perhaps of man, and in the extending of his ideas, than in the improvement of his fortunes. The acquisition of money was no object with him, and of course, as it was not sought, it was not found.

At this time Burns was in the zenith of his fame, and Wilson, tempted by his success, resolved to publish his poems—​the accumulated pieces of preceding years—​and in 1789, contracted with a printer in Paisley for this purpose, but was obliged to abandon the idea for the time, for want of means to carry it into effect. He, however, published them some time afterwards, with the title of ‘Poems, Humorous, Satirical, and Serious,’ at his own risk, after having in vain endeavored to procure subscribers, and carried them about with him in his hawking expeditions, but met with little or no success in the sale of them. Finding that he could make nothing of either poetry or traffic, he returned once more to his loom, at which he was again quietly seated, when he learned that a debating society in Edinburg had proposed for discussion the question, whether Ferguson or Allan Ramsay had done most honor to Scottish poetry. Seized with an ambition to distinguish himself on this occasion, he borrowed from a friend the poems of Ferguson, which he had never read before, and in a few days produced a poem, which he entitled the ‘Laurel Disputed,’ and in which he awarded the palm to Ferguson. With this poem in his pocket, he proceeded to Edinburg, and recited it before the audience assembled to hear the discussion. Before he left Edinburg, he also recited in public two other poems, and acquired by all a considerable degree of respect and favor. He likewise contributed occasionally, about this time (1791), to a periodical work called ‘The Bee.’ But though Wilson’s poetical efforts procured him some reputation, they did nothing for him in the way of advancing his worldly interests. The volume of poems which he published in 1789, at which period he was only twenty-two years of age, went through two small editions in octavo, but without yielding the author any pecuniary advantage. His literary reputation was, nevertheless, considerably increased by the publication of his ‘Watty and Meg,’ a poem in the Scottish dialect, and of such decided merit, that it was universally ascribed to Burns on its first appearance, which was in 1791. It is a droll and satirical description of a drunken husband and scolding wife, and shows that the author possessed a fund of broad humor.