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For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

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His courtship to the dark-browed night; And we had such sweet secrets to tell to While images of molten seas,

Of snowy slope and crimson height, Of valleys dim and gulfs profound Aloft a dazzling pageant wound.

Where shadow fell in glade and dell
Uncovered shoulders nestled deep,
And here and there the braided hair
Of rosy goddesses asleep;
For in a moment clouds may be
Dead, and instinct with deity.
Saturday Review.

JOHN DAVIDSON.

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each other

That it might have been sunset or moonrise or dawn,

Till we chanced to look up and encountered her mother,

Come softly upon us across the soft lawn Come softly upon us, unruffled and stately, With a questioning glance at her daughter and me,

Which changed to a smile as I handed sedately

Her afternoon tea.

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From The London Quarterly Review.

SIR WILLIAM PETTY.1

with much judgment.
The result is a
volume with which all students of the
period must of necessity make them-
selves familiar.

LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE has produced one of the most valuable biographies of the season. It will William Petty was born at Rumsey, scarcely be popular, but it is singularly in Hampshire, on May 26, 1623. His instructive. It recalls attention to a father was a clothier, and, as Aubrey scientific man who took a chief part in notes, "did dye his own cloths." The founding the Royal Society, and whose chief amusement of Petty's boyhood brain teemed with projects for the im- was to watch the skilled workmen of provement of shipping, of trade, and of the little town-smiths, watchmakers, education. It allows us to step behind carpenters and joiners-busy at their the scenes in the later days of the Com- trades. At twelve years old, Aubrey monwealth, and throws a flood of light says, with some pardonable exaggeraon those difficult problems in Ireland tion, he could have worked at any of which taxed the resources and the pa- these trades. The boy had a vein of tience of the government so sorely in satirical humor and a power in caricathe latter half of the seventeenth cen- ture drawing which made the townsfolk tury. Sir William Petty was one of take special note of the precocious little the pioneers of modern science and fellow. Petty describes himself as "a of political economy; he accomplished perfect cheiromantes." His Hampone of the greatest feats ever attempted shire school gave him a grounding in by a surveyor, and proved himself in Greek and Latin, which proved of many trials a man of rare courage and much service in later days. When he steadfast purpose. He was the maker was fifteen, Petty made some unsucof his own fortune, and from the time cessful attempts to exchange home and when as a cabin-boy he astonished the employment with a lad from the Chanpeople of Caen by talking in Latin nel Islands. He afterwards bound down to the last day of his life he himself apprentice to the master of a proved himself worthy of respect and vessel in which he sailed for France. admiration, bent, as Jean Paul Richter Aubrey says, "he knew not that he would have said, on making the best of was purblind [short-sighted] till his the stuff, on using every faculty and master bade him climb up the rope opportunity to the highest advantage. ladder; and give notice when he espied a steeple, somewhere upon the coast, which was a landmark for the avoiding

The biography is founded on the Bowood manuscripts, including Petty's own papers, which afterwards came into the hands of his grandson, the Earl of Shelbourne, and Sir William's letters to his friend, Sir Robert Southwell, which appear to have been added to the collection at Bowood by the third Marquis of Lansdowne. Scattered manuscripts in the Sloane and Egerton collections at the British Museum and in the Rawlinson collection at the Bodleian have also been used

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of a shelf. At last the master saw it

from the deck; and they fathomed, and found they were but in foot water; whereupon as I remember his master drubbed him with a cord." The sailors, who were jealous because he knew so much more about the art of navigation than themselves, ill-treated him and finally abandoned him with a broken leg at a little French inn near Caen. He was able to tell his story in Latin, and all Caen began to talk about "Le petit Matelot Anglois qui parle Latin et Grec." As soon as he could move, an officer sent for him in order that he might learn something about he got employment as a teacher of the tactics of the English navy. Then English, and saved enough to buy a

1

suit of clean linen. Whilst bathing in | shreds of letters and parchment, wherewith the river he met the students of the to size paper. By all which I gott my exJesuit College. The fathers offered to penses, followed by Colledge, proceeded in take him as a pupil and promised to Mathematics, and cleerd four pounds. limit their proselytizing zeal to prayers for his conversion. Thus the boy went on availing himself of every opportunity of gathering knowledge. Long afterwards, in July, 1686, he describes the painful process by which he built up his fortunes :

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Deare Cozen, -The next part of my answer to yours of the 10th inst. is (1) How I got the shilling I mentioned to have had at Xmas, 1636; which was by 6d. I got of a country Squire by showing him a pretty trick on the cards, which begot the other 6d. fairly won at cards. (2) How this shilling came to bee 4s. 6d. When I went to sea was 6d. given (or rather paid) mee by Mother Dowling, who having been a sinner in her youth, was much relieved by my reading to her in the "Crums of Comfort," Mr. Andrews' "Silver Watchbell," and "Ye Plain Mans Pathway to Heaven." The next 6d. I got for an old Horace given (why do I say given) or delivered mee by Len. Green, for often construing to him in Ovid's Metamorphoses till my throat was soare, though to so little purpose that hee, coming to say his lesson began Protinus (signifying soon after") King Protinus, etc. My next booty was 18d., given me by my God-father for making 20 verses to congratulate his having been made a Doctor in Divinity by some good luck. The other shilling was impressed by my Aunt, whom I repaid by a bracelet bought in France for 4d., but judged to be worth 16d.

66

We are reminded by this quaint picture of the father of the Wesleys who set out for Exeter College, Oxford, with £2 5s. in his pocket, received only a

crown from his friends while in resi

dence, yet showed such diligence in writing and teaching that he took his degree and left the university with £10 of his own.

After leaving the Jesuit College, Petty returned to England and entered the Royal Navy. By the time he was twenty he had saved about £60 and had earned a reputation as one of the best mathematicians of his age. When the Civil War broke out he retired to the Continent. He frequented the schools of Utrecht, Leyden, and Amsterdam. Then he went to study at the School of Anatomy in Paris. In the French capital he had the good fortune to form a close friendship with Hobbes. The philosopher at once recognized his ability and admitted him to familiar intercourse. Petty, with his skill as a draughtsman, was able to render considerable service to Hobbes in the study of optics on which he was then engaged. Through Hobbes he gained an entry into the coterie of English refugees who met at the house of Father Marsia Merser, the mathematician, to discuss scientific and literary questions. The Marquis of Newcastle and Sir Charles Cavendish were memsold at home to the young fellowes, whom bers of that circle. All the great ideas "The I understood to have sweethearts, for treble of the age were debated there. what they cost. I also brought home two atmosphere of the time throbbed with hair hatts (which within these 11 years scientific discovery, and the mental might have been seen) by which I gayned horizon of man seemed daily to grow little lesse. . . . I must not omit that "La wider." Petty's brain seems to have Grande Jane," ye farrier's wife, had an escu for setting my broken leg; the Potticary 10 sols, and 8 sols, a payer of crutches, of which I was afterwards cheated. Upon the remainder (my ring trade being understood and lost) I set up with the remainder

This

4s. 6d. was layd out in France upon pitteful brass things with cool'd glass in them,

instead of diamonds and rubies. These I

of two cakes of bees-wax sent me in relief of my calamity, upon the trade of playing cards, white starch, and hayre hatts, which I exchanged for tobacco pipes and the

caught fire by contact with these learned men. As yet, however, his purse was thin. He had many a struggle for bread. On one occasion, Aubrey says that he lived for a week on "threepennyworth of walnuts." Yet such was his economy and resource that in 1646, when he returned to England, he had increased his little store

to £70, and had paid for the education | There was also to be a model hospital of one of his brothers. for the benefit both of doctor and

agate their religion." Samuel Hartlib, to whom the pamphlet was dedicated, sent a copy to Robert Boyle. He describes Petty as "a perfect Frenchman and a good linguist in other vulgar tongues, besides Latin and Greek; a most rare and exact anatomist, and excelling in all mathematical and mechanical learning; of a sweet natural disposition and moral comportment. As for solid judgment and industry,

praise for a young fellow of twentyfour to gain from the man at whose suggestion John Milton had written his "Tractate on Education."

A letter to his cousin, written in 1649, gives us a glimpse of Petty's

For a short time he carried on his patient. In closing his pamphlet, father's business. In 1647 he obtained Petty expressed his regret that no a patent for a kind of manifold letter-" Society of Men existed as careful to writer, "easily made and very durable, advance arts as the Jesuits are to propwhereby any man, even at the first handling, may write two resembling copies of the same thing at once, as serviceably and as fast as by the ordinary way." He announced this invention in a remarkable pamphlet on education. Petty suggested the formation of literary workhouses in which children might be taught, not only to read and write, but might also learn some trade. All children of seven were to be eligible, however poor their altogether masculine." This was high parents might be. He showed himself a wise reformer when he urged that "the business of education be not, as now, committed to the worst and unworthiest of men, but that it be seriously studied and practised by the best and ablest persons." He also sug-plans of life. "I intend," he says, gested that reading and writing might "God willing, as soone as possibly I be deferred a while. He thought that can, to take the degree of Dr. of Phychildren should first be "taught to sicke, which being done, it will bee a observe and remember all sensible ob- great discredit for mee, and, consejects and actions, whether they be quently, a great hindrance to mee, to natural or artificial, which the edu- goe and buy small matters, and to doe cators must on all occasions expound other triviall businesses, which I have unto them. . . as it would be more many times to doe, and being not able profitable to boys to spend ten or to keepe a servant, and withall not twelve years in the study of things having one-fifth part of employment than in a rabble of words. . . . There enough for a servant, and lastly, much would not then be so many unworthy of that little business I have being such fustian preachers in divinity; in the as I would not acquaint every one law so many pettyfoggers; in physics with." He urged his cousin to come so many quacksalvers; and in country up to London, promising to give him schools SO many grammaticasters." any clothes he could spare, to hire him The pamphlet proves that its writer a convenient place for a tape loom, to had also gained some inkling as to the lend him £40 to purchase a loom and value of technical training. He pro- the necessary material. John Petty posed the establishment of a College of would have to "make a sceleton" for Tradesmen in which one at least of his cousin and work on some experievery trade," the prime most ingenious ments relating to his inventions, for workman," might be elected a fellow which he would receive twelvepence and allowed a handsome dwelling rent per day. In addition to this he was to free. He thought that all trades would come to Petty's lodgings at some conthen make rapid strides to perfection; venient time and execute various small inventions would become more fre- commissions for him. quent, and there would be the best opportunity for writing a history of trades in perfection and exactness.

Before the year was out, Petty removed to Oxford. The following March he became doctor in physic, and

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