number of persons, enriching many, and diffusing widely through the community a knowledge of public men, and a taste for the fine arts. extraordinary increase of sensibility also was obtained by the use of this material, and thus the applications of photography were multiplied; and it is scarcely too much to assert that the employment of collodion in photography But far more important are the wondrous powers evolved mainly led to that development of the art which has since from the study of heat. The pioneer in this branch taken place. Few, indeed, obtained satisfactory results among us was the Hon. Mr. Cavendish, who was born in with the daguerreotype, or even the albumen process; but 1731, and devoted his life to the pursuits of science. He with the collodion process, any one possessing an ordinary was followed by Dalton, who made several important disshare of manipulative dexterity may obtain at pleasure coveries in chemistry, particularly with reference to the either positive or negative pictures of great beauty. Many gases, and in the doctrine of heat. Mr. Dalton has been improvements have been introduced since the discovery of labouring, says Sir Humphry Davy, for more than a the applicability of collodion, but perhaps the most important has for its object the imparting to dry collodion some degree of that sensitiveness for which moist collodion is so remarkable, and thus making photography more generally useful, by rendering it easier to the traveller, or to the photographer who is obliged to operate at a distance from his studio. From these experiments in light has sprung the art of delineating the human features and all other objects with perfect accuracy, which has added greatly to the happiness of families, and created a great trade in photographic portraits, employing an immense quarter of a century with the most disinterested views. With the greatest modesty and simplicity of character, he has remained in the obscurity of the country, neither asking for approbation nor offering himself as an object of applause. In 1833, at the age of sixty-seven, he received a pension from government, which he enjoyed till 1844, when he died. His discoveries may be said to have terminated at the age of forty, though he laboured for thirty years after. The conceptive faculty seems to have spent itself in his earlier efforts. His discoveries in connection with heat, electricity, and magnetism, and their practical applications, TO 1837.] IMPROVEMENTS IN MECHANICAL ARTS. in connection with which are those of Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Faraday, Major-General Sabine, and Captain Sir J. C. Rosse, are too familiar to our readers to be dwelt upon here, especially as their full development belongs to a subsequent period. We shall now note some points of contact between science and the mechanical arts, in the progress of those discoveries and inventions which have so wonderfully increased the power of man in the present age. One of the most important of these is the power of calculating the strength of materials to which we owe the tubular bridge, and with 367 coal-pits; but after a while he rose to be an engine-man, when his wages became twelve shillings a week, and his ingenuity and attention soon gained him the confidence of his employers. By working extra hours, in repairing the watches and clocks of his neighbours, he managed to give his son Robert the education of which he himself had felt the want; for he derived his knowledge of machinery from observation, and not from books. He turned his attention to the invention of a safety lamp, in which he made considerable progress; but he was outstripped by the superior genius and quickness of Sir H. Davy, who was which the name of Robert Stephenson is so honourably connected. The comparatively great strength of tubes was a fact known from the time of Galileo, but it was reserved for Mr. Stephenson to bring their application to perfection. The bridge that spans the Menai Strait, which he undertook on his own responsibility, unprecedented for its boldness and novelty, was a most signal triumph of genius, and a memorable proof of the power of faith in the principles of science. Like the Herschels, the two Stephensons attained almost equal celebrity. George, the father, was born near Newcastle, in 1780. His parents being very poor, he was obliged at an early age to gain a subsistence by working at occupied on the same subject. Attempts had been made for some time to introduce locomotives generally, but engineers had bewildered themselves in the endeavour to overcome an imaginary difficulty. Without making a trial, they supposed that the adhesion between the wheels and the rails was not sufficient to render propulsion possible, except with the aid of complicated apparatus. Stephenson saw that this supposition had no foundation, and therefore he succeeded where they had failed. Among the many improvements he introduced into the locomotive, increasing the draft, by throwing the waste steam into the chimney, was not the least valuable. He conceived the idea, also, of a velocity on railways much higher than had before been thought of, and he attained it. In a competition, in 1829, an engine made by him gained the prize; and his success was due, in a great degree, to his application of a principle which was not unknown, but had never before been reduced to practice-the increase of evaporating power in the boiler, by conveying the hot air from the furnace to the smoke-box through a number of tubes. He may be said to have been to the locomotive what Watt was to the fixed engine. He died in 1818. Robert Stephenson, his son, was born in 1803. Notwithstanding the poverty of his parents, he was well educated, thanks to his father's exertions, which were well seconded by his own. Having spent some time in the University of Edinburgh, where he gained a prize in mathematics, he was first placed in his father's factory, and then was sent out to South America, to report on the gold and silver mines of Columbia and Venezuela. On his return he devoted himself to the improvement of locomotives, made various important experiments, and greatly assisted his father in his projects. He subsequently constructed numerous railways, many of which included works of great difficulty, and several of them were on the Continent, where his skill was fully appreciated. He gave to iron bridges a span greater than had ever before been attempted; but his fame mainly rests on his invention of the tubular bridge, though, in carrying out this idea, he had the advantage of very able assistance. Besides those at the Menai Straits, he constructed the tubular bridge over the St. Lawrence, at Montreal, where it is nearly two miles wide. He was elected member of Parliament; and he died in 1859, having, it is said, refused a title, which could, indeed, have added nothing to the brilliancy of that name which he and his father had rendered so celebrated. Mr. Brunel, another of the heroes of mechanical science, made a great step in advance by the invention of selfacting machinery to supersede the work of artisans, by which a new epoch was created in art. By means of this machinery, not only is it possible to execute, in a comparatively short time, and with a prodigious economy, such objects as blocks and pulleys-which are required in vast numbers, and should be precisely alike—but the accuracy of the manufacture is thereby increased, and works which transcend the power of unaided muscular labour, such as an iron steam cylinder, eight feet or more in diameter, may be readily executed under the direction of a very ordinary workman by means of steam-power and self-acting machinery. He was aided by the Government in starting a manufactory for the construction of tools, for which he received £53,000. In the course of a year 140,000 blocks, on no less than 200 different patterns, were produced, and the number of workmen was diminished in the proportion of about eleven to one. As a reward, Mr. Brunel received £16,000, being two-thirds of the first year's saving a sufficient proof that he was the bonâ fide inventor of this admirable apparatus. Nearly twenty years elapsed before such a splendid example of ingenious economy and artistic precision was generally imitated; yet before his death Sir Marc Brunel saw the fruit of his ingenuity almost indefinitely multiplied in the workshops of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Newcastle, and no less highly appreciated and extensively employed abroad. "The more we reflect," says Professor Forbes, "on the comparative state of the arts now and a century ago, the more we shall find reason to estimate highly the introduction of correct and scientific ideas of machinery and tools, for constructing other machines and structures. It was, in fact, the necessary complement of the invention of the steam-engine. Watt contrived the mighty heart which was to give a new impulse to social life: Brunel and others of the same stamp added limbs and muscles, whereby its energies were rendered thoroughly practical." Among these may be mentioned the planing machine, the circular saw, and the mortising machine, and, above all, perhaps, the steam-hammer, which form the staple of the magnificent and varied apparatus with which, driven by the gigantic power of steam, our mechanical factories are now so generally provided, and without which the triumphs of art in which our generation glories—our railroads, our locomotives, our crystal palaces, our tunnels, suspension bridges, and our steam navies—would have been impossible achievements. The greatest effort of Brunel was the Thames Tunnel, a structure of perfect firmness and solidity laid on a quicksand, and forced through a quaking mass of mud, which will endure like the cloace of regal Rome, when the palace and the cathedral bave crumbled to dust. He was enabled to accomplish this prodigious work by means of "the shield "-a movable vertical frame of cast iron, provided with thirty-six cells, in each of which a man was placed with a pick to excavate the area, this frame or shield being moved bodily forwards by powerful screws, while the bricklayers brought up the arched masonry behind, which was then beyond the power of injury. The works, however, were several times "drowned" during their progress by the irruptions of the Thames, but every fresh difficulty was met successfully by the heroic engineer. The tunnel was commenced on the 2nd of March, 1825, and finished on the 25th of March, 1843. Brunel survived the completion of this, his greatest work, above six years, dying on the 12th of December, 1849. He was the chief of a class-the mechanical engineers-since extensively multiplied: and he left a son to be the brightest ornament of the same profession, and to add fresh lustre to his name. Of a different kind, but perhaps still more wonderful, are the calculating machines of Mr. Babbage. A few years after leaving college, he originated the plan of a machine for calculating tables, by means of successive orders of differences, and having received for it, in 1822 and the following year, the support of the Astronomical and Royal Societies, and a grant of money from Government, he proceeded to its execution. He also in 1834 contrived a machine called the "analytical engine," extending the plan so as to develop algebraic quantities, and to tabulate the numerical value of complicated functions, when one or more of the variables which they contain are made to alter their values; but the difficulties of carrying out this plan became insurmountable. * For the materials in the foregoing rapid sketch of the progress of science, the writer is chiefly indebted to the dissertation of Professor Ferbes, in the Encyclopædia Britannica." TO 1837.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. The most memorable event connected with the progress of science in the present age, is the establishment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which held its first annual meeting at York, in 1831. It is au institution of the most comprehensive character, including every department of human knowledge of a scientific nature, and which can be advanced by scientific investigation. It contemplates no interference with the ground occupied by other institutions. Its objects are to give a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate science in different parts of the British Empire with one another, and with foreign philosophers-to obtain a more general attention to the objects of science, and a 369 moting its objects where the annual meetings are held. So popular did this institution become with the friends of science throughout the United Kingdom, that at the fourth meeting in Edinburgh, in 1834, 1,298 tickets were issued to members. All the public accommodations which that fine capital possessed were opened to it, and its visit constituted a sort of festal season, as it does wherever it holds its meetings. On that occasion, one of the secretaries, Professor Forbes, delivered an address, in which he gave an account of its objects and its progress up to that time. The Lord Chancellor Brougham was present at the meeting, and in seconding a motion for a vote of thanks to M. Arago and other distinguished foreigners who honoured it with their presence, he said that he looked upon this removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress. The association was composed originally of all persons who attended its first meeting, of the fellows and members of chartered, literary, and philosophical societies publishing transactions in the British Empire, of the office-bearers, members of councils, or Inanaging committees of philosophical institutions, or such of their members as they recommended. Persons not belonging to such institutions are elected by the general committee or council. All members pay an annual subscription of £1 in advance, or a life subscription The association is managed by a general committee, and committees of science for the different sections, aided by local committees, who assist in pro as one of the most important and unquestionable of all the benefits it was calculated to bestow, that it brought together men of science from every quarter of the world. As there is no duty more sacred and imperative on the part of governments than to promote by every means that peace which ought to bind the great family of mankind together in all its departments and institutions, so he held that whatever brings men into contact on such neutral ground as science, tends to facilitate the task of rulers, and makes it easy to keep at peace with neighbouring states. The first eight meetings of the association (1831-38) were held at York, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Dublin, Bristol, Liverpool, and Newcastle. It would not be right to conclude this brief review of There is not very much to be said of the progress of the fine arts during the twenty years that comprised the last two reigns. It was a time of transition; the lights of the past age were gradually setting, and those which were to illumine the reign of Victoria, with a few exceptions, had not risen far above the horizon. We shall best describe the progress made during the period under review by brief notices of the most distinguished artists who have adorned it, and of their principal works. the progress of science without noticing the laudable and £8,000 a year, the greatest part of which would be efforts made during this period to diffuse it among the employed in paying for literary labour and plates, were people, and we cannot do better than avail ourselves of the the duty repealed. The exaction of this duty is among address of Lord Brougham, as President of the National the greatest anomalies of our political administration, Association for the Promotion of Social Science, in 1858:- though it is not the only one; for while endeavouring by "It is quite as great a delusion under which those labour every resource of negotiation and of force, not a little who figure to themselves the promoters of popular litera- costly, to put down the foreign slave-trade, we give it ture as indifferent to the encouragement of more severe direct encouragement by opening our markets to slavestudies and the cultivation of profounder science. We of grown sugar, and thus also lowering the price of our own the Useful Knowledge Society can well recollect that free-grown produce. So while we profess to promote exactly the same prejudice prevailed-or if it did not, was education, and, indeed, the improvement of people in sought to be raised-against the preparation of scientific every way, and expend large sums yearly to further this works in a cheap form, and designed to give information of great work, we raise, on the other hand, a powerful obthe most solid and even profound description. Some of struction to all our operations by laying a tax upon the very persons who were remunerated, and amply remu- knowledge in each one of its various departments." nerated, for their writings, derided what they called sixpenny science, because a treatise once a fortnight for several years was published at that price. But by whom composed? By such mathematicians as Professor De Morgan; such natural philosophers as Sir D. Brewster, a discoverer as well as a teacher; and such botanists as Professor Lindley. It was plain enough that some of those who thus complained of the treatises as not profound could not have read one line of them, from their own profound ignorance of the subject. Contemporary with the Penny Magazine was the Penny Cyclopædia, of which it is enough to say that so accomplished a scholar as Professor Long being the conductor, no less a mathematician than the Astronomer-Royal has published in a separate form his valuable contributions to the work-papers, too, composed in so plain and popular a manner as to bring the most sublime truths of the Newtonian philosophy within the comprehension of readers very moderately acquainted with the mathematics. At the bottom of the clamour against the Useful Knowledge Society's proceedings, possibly not unconnected with the present attacks upon popular literature, was the notion that the gains of authors are lessened, the wages of literary labour reduced-an error not less glaring than that of the common workman who should object to the capital by which his labour is employed and paid being invested at low profits and quick returns. In truth, the fund out of which literary labour is paid has been very greatly increased by the cheap publications. Independently of the Cyclopædia, the society did not expend less than £100,000 in this way, the whole arising from the profits of its cheap works, which, by their charter of incorporation, they were bound thus to ex-ledge, cried up everything foreign, and looked with conpend. When Admiral Beaufort (late hydrographer of the Admiralty) was consulted on the price of its maps, one shilling being proposed, he refused to unertake the superintendence of that department if the price were fixed higher than sixpence, because he saw that this must secure circulation and profit. But the duty on paper is a heavy burden, and goes almost altogether in diminution of the fund destined for authors and artists. It amounted to above £7,000 yearly on the Penny Magazine, when it was threepence a pound. Had it not been reduced to three-halfpence, the Cyclopædia must have been given up; and even since the reduction, one of the greatest publishers pays Government between £7,000 When the Prince Regent ascended the throne, the fine arts were still in a languishing condition, and dilet tanteism characterised the patrons of painters. The court and the nobles, and men of princely fortunes, showered wealth upon their favourites, so that many of our painters and sculptors amassed considerable wealth. The great patrons had, at enormous cost, gathered together collections, which included pictures not to be found elsewhere out of national or royal galleries. The cognoscenti had obtained a standing as genuine critics, and had acquired great skill in discerning the productions of the old masters, from the habit of attending sales, and making selections; selfinterest and vanity tending to render their judgments quick and keen in these matters. The consequence was that these connoisseurs could lay claim to a degree of critical acumen which we now expect only from a superior artist, whose business it is to understand everything about such matters. Of course, there was much of the empirical spirit about many, who prided themselves on their attainments in this department. Young men who rode posthaste through the Continent, and took a hurried glance at the national galleries, assumed airs of transcendent know tempt upon the productions of native artists. But artists began to travel too, and study abroad, and were rewarded by having their ateliers crowded with sitters. The fruit of travel soon told upon the rising generation of artists, and revived a spirit which led, in 1823, to the formation of the National Gallery, to which we have already referred as one of the few claims of George IV. to the gratitude of his country. The Elgin marbles, too, which had become national property in 1816, had given a stimulus to art, and extended the taste for its cultivation. They were chiefly derived from the Parthenon, a temple of Minerva, on the Acropolis at Athens, of which they formed part of the frieze and pediment, built by Phidias, about 500 years B.C. |