OF ACCIDENT IN DIRECTING PURSUITS: RENNIE--LINNAEUS- CARAVAGGIO HARRISON EDWARDS-VILLARS-JOLY-JOURDAIN-BANDI NELLI-BERNARD PALISSY. AMONG self-educated men there are few who claim more of our admiration than the celebrated JAMES FERGUSON. If ever any one was literally his own instructor in the very elements of knowledge, it was he. Acquisitions that have scarcely in any other case, and probably never by one so young, been made without the assistance either of books or a living teacher, were the discoveries of his solitary and almost illiterate boyhood. There are few more interesting narratives in any language than the account which Ferguson himself has given of his early history. He was born in the year 1710, a few miles from the village of Keith, in Banffshire; his parents, as he tells us, being in the humblest condition of life (for his father was merely a day-labourer), but religious and honest. It was his father's practice to teach his children himself to read and write, as they successively reached what he deemed the proper age; but James was too impatient to wait till his regular turn came. While his father was teaching one of his elder brothers, James was secretly occupied in listening to what was going on, and, as soon as he was left alone, used to get hold of the book, and work hard in endeavouring to master the lesson which he had thus heard gone over. Being ashamed, as he says, to let his father know what he was about, he was wont to apply to an old woman who lived in a neighbouring cottage to solve his difficulties. In this way he actually learned to read tolerably well before his father had any suspicion that he knew his letters. His father at last, very much to his surprise, detected him one day reading by himself, and thus found out his secret. When he was about seven or eight years of age, a simple incident occurred which seems to have given his mind its first bias to what became afterwards its favourite kind of pursuit. The roof of the cottage having partly fallen in, his father, in order to raise it again, applied to it a beam, resting on a prop in the manner of a lever, and was thus enabled, with comparative ease, to produce what seemed to his son quite a stupendous effect. The circumstance set our young philosopher thinking; and, after a while, it struck him that his father in using the beam had applied his strength to its extremity, and this he immediately concluded was probably an important circumstance in the matter. He proceeded to verify his notion by experiment; and having made several levers, which he called bars, soon not only found that he was right in his conjecture as to the importance of applying the moving force at the point most distant from the fulcrum, but discovered the rule or law of the machine, namely, that the effect of any force or weight made to bear upon it is always exactly proportioned to the distance of the point on which it rests from the fulcrum. 'I then,' says he, thought that it was a great pity that, by means of this bar, a weight could be raised but a very little On this, I soon imagined that by pulling round a wheel the weight might be raised to any height, by tying a rope to the weight and winding the rope round the axle of the wheel, and that the power gained must be just as great as the wheel was broader than the axle was thick; and found it to be exactly so, by hanging one weight to a rope put round the wheel, and another to the rope that coiled round the axle.' The child had thus, it will be observed, actually discovered two of the most important elementary truths in mechanicsthe lever, and the wheel and axle. He afterwards hit upon others; and all the while he had not only possessed neither book nor teacher to assist him, but was without any other tools than a simple turning lathe of his father's, and a little knife wherewith to fashion his blocks and wheels, and the other contrivances he needed for his experiments. After having made his discoveries, however, he next, he tells us, proceeded to write an account of them; thinking his little work, which contained sketches of the different machines drawn with a pen, to be the first treatise ever composed of the sort. When, some time after, a gentleman showed him the whole in a printed book, although he found that he had been anticipated in his inventions, he was much pleased, as he was well entitled to be, on thus perceiving that his unaided genius had already carried him so far into what was acknowledged to be the region of true philosophy. It is a ludicrous blunder that the French astronomer Lalande makes in speaking of Ferguson, when he designates him as 'Berger au Roi d'Angleterre en Ecosse,' the King of England's Shepherd for Scotland. He had no claim to this pompous title; but it is true that he spent some of his early years as a keeper of sheep, though in the employment, not of the State, but of a small farmer in the neighbourhood of his native place. He was sent to this occupation, he tells us, as being of weak body; and while his flock was feeding around him, | he used to busy himself in making models of mills, spin- | ning-wheels, etc. during the day, and in studying the stars at night, like his predecessors of Chaldea. When a little older he went into the service of another farmer, a respectable man called James Glashan, whose name well deserves to be remembered. After the labours of the day, young Ferguson used to go at night to the fields, with a blanket about him and a lighted candle, and there, laying himself down on his back, pursued for long hours his observations on the heavenly bodies. I used to stretch,' says he, 'a thread with small beads on it, at arm'slength, 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.' 'My master,' he adds, 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 a respect for the memory of that man.' Having been employed by his master to carry a message to Mr. Gilchrist, the minister of Keith, he took with him the drawings he had been making, and showed them to that gentleman. Mr. Gilchrist upon this put a map into his hands, and having supplied him with compasses, ruler, pens, ink, and paper, desired him to take it home with him, and bring back a copy of it. For this pleasant employment,' says he, 'my master gave me more time than I could reasonably expect, and often took the threshing-flail out of my hands, and worked himself, while I sat by him in the barn, busy with my compasses, ruler, and pen.' This is a beautiful, we may well say, and even a touching picture,the good man so generously appreciating the worth of knowledge and genius, that, although the master, he voluntarily exchanges situations with his servant, and insists upon doing the work that must be done himself, in order that the latter told, entirely to himself and to nature; on which account Ferguson designates him 'God Almighty's scholar.' may give his more precious talents to the more appropriate vocation. We know not that there is on record an act of homage to science and learning From this person Ferguson more honourable to the author. received instructions in decimal Having finished his map, fractions and algebra, having Ferguson carried it to Mr. Gil- already made himself master of christ's, and there he met Mr. | vulgar arithmetic by the assistGrant of Achoynamey, who ance of books. Just as he offered to take him into the was about, however, to begin house, and make his butler give geometry, Cantley left his place him lessons. 'I told Squire for another in the establishment Grant,' says he, 'that I should of the Earl of Fife, and his rejoice to be at his house, as pupil thereupon determined to soon as the time was expired return home to his father. for which I was engaged with my present master. He very politely offered to put one in my place, but this I declined.' When the period in question arrived, accordingly, he went to Mr. Grant's, being now in his twentieth year. Here he found both a good friend and a very extraordinary man in Cantley the butler, who had first fixed his attention by a sun-dial which he happened to be engaged in painting on the village schoolhouse, as Ferguson was passing along the road on his second visit to Mr. Gilchrist. Dialing, however, was only one of the many accomplishments of this learned butler, who, Ferguson assures us, was profoundly conversant both with arithmetic and mathematics, played on every known musical instrument except the harp, understood Latin, French, and Greek, and could let blood and prescribe for diseases. These multifarious attainments he owed, we are Cantley, on parting with him, had made him a present of a copy of Gordon's Geographical Grammar. The book contains a description of an artificial globe, which is not, however, illustrated by any figure. Nevertheless, 'from this description,' says Ferguson, '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 was happy to find that by my globe (which was the first I ever saw) I could solve the problems.' For some time after this, he was very unfortunate. Finding that it would not do to remain idle at home, he engaged in the service of a miller in the neighbourhood, who, feeling probably that he could trust to the honesty and capacity of his the hours was the neck of a broken bottle. A short time after this, when he had recovered his health, he gave a still more extraordinary proof of his ingenuity, and the fertility of his resources for mechanical invention, by actually constructing a timepiece, or watch, moved by a spring. But we must allow him to give the history of this matter in his own words:— 'Having then,' he says, 'no idea how any timepiece could go but by weight and 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 servant, soon began to spend all his own time in the alehouse, and to leave poor Ferguson at home, not only with everything to do, but with very frequently nothing to eat. A little oatmeal, mixed with cold water, was often, he tells us, all he was allowed. Yet in this situation he remained a year, and then returned to his father's, very much the weaker for his fasting. His next master was a Dr. Young, who, having induced him to enter his service by a promise to instruct him in medicine, not only broke his engagement as to this point, but used him in other respects so tyrannically, that, although engaged for half a year, he found he could not remain beyond the first quarter, at the expira- | father's house (which was close tion of which, accordingly, he came away without receiving any wages, having wrought the last fortnight,' says he, 'as much as possible with one hand and arm, when I could not lift the other from my side.' This was in consequence of a severe hurt he had received, which the doctor was too busy to look to, and by which he was confined to his bed for two months after his return home. Reduced as he was, however, by exhaustion and actual pain, he could not be idle. In order,' says he, '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 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 gunlock, 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, |