Simpson. He died in 1776, having for many years enjoyed a distinguished reputation both at home and abroad; for several of his works had been translated into foreign languages, and were admired throughout Europe for the simplicity and ingenuity of their elucidations. Of his Dialogues on Astronomy, Madame de Genlis says, "This book is written with so much clearness, that a child of ten years old may understand it perfectly from one end to the other."

The faculties of distinct apprehension and luminous exposition belonged, indeed, to Ferguson in a pre-eminent degree. He doubtless owed his superiority here in a great measure to the peculiar manner in which he had been obliged to acquire his knowledge. Nothing that he had learned had been set him as a task. He had applied himself to whatever subject of study engaged his attention, simply from the desire and with the view of understanding it. All that he knew, therefore, he knew thoroughly, and not by rote merely, as many things are learned by those who have no higher object than to master the task of the day. On the other hand, as has often happened in the case of self-educated men, the want of a regular director of his studies had left him ignorant of many departments of knowledge in which, had he been introduced to them, he was probably admirably adapted to distinguish himself, and from which he might have drawn, at all events, the most valuable assistance in the prosecution of his favourite investigations. Thus, familiar as he was with the phenomena of astronomy and the practical parts of mechanics, and admirable as was his ingenuity in mechanical invention, he knew nothing, or next to nothing, either of abstract mathematics or of the higher parts of algebra. He remained, in this way, to the end of his life, rather a clever empiric, to use the term in its original

and more honourable signification, as meaning a practical and experimenting philosopher, than a man of science. This was more peculiarly the sort of peril to which self-educated men were exposed in Ferguson's day, when books of any kind were comparatively scarce, and good elementary works scarcely existed on any subject. Much has since been done, and is now doing, to supply that great desideratum; and even already, in many departments, the man who can merely read is provided with the means of instructing himself both at little expense, and with a facility and completeness such as a century, or even half a century ago, were altogether out of the question. Not a little, however, still remains to be accomplished before the good work can be considered as finished; nor, indeed, is it the nature of it ever to be finished, seeing that, even if we should have perfectly arranged and systematized all our present knowledge, time must be constantly adding to our possessions here, and opening new worlds for philosophy to explore and conquer.

It was, as has been stated, the accident of the roof of his father's cottage coming down, while he was a child, that first turned Ferguson's attention to mechanical contrivance. Such are the chances which often develope genius, and probably even give it in part its direction and peculiar character. The late eminent engineer, JOHN RENNIE, used to trace his first notions, in regard to the powers of machinery, to his having been obliged, when a boy, in consequence of the breaking down of a bridge, to go one winter every morning to school by a circuitous road, which carried him past a place where a thrashing machine was generally at work. Perhaps, had it not been for this casualty, he might have adopted another profession than the one in which he so much distinguished himself. It was the appearance of

LINNEUS. HARRISON. CARAVAGGIO, ETC. 211

the celebrated comet of 1744 which first attracted the imagination of LALANDE, then a boy of twelve years of age, to astronomy. The great LINNEUS was probably made a botanist, by the circumstance of his father having a few rather uncommon plants in his garden. HARRISON is said to have been originally inspired with the idea of devoting himself to the constructing of marine time-pieces, by his residence in view of the sea. It was a voyage in the Mediterranean which first gave to VERNET his enthusiasm for marine painting. Other great painters have probably been indebted to still slighter circumstances for their first introduction to the art. CLAUDE LORRAINE derived his taste for design from frequenting the workshop of his brother, who was a wood engraver. The elder CARAVAGGIO, Polidoro Caldara, was born of poor parents, at the town in the north of Italy from which he takes his common designation; and having, when a young man, wandered as far as Rome in search of work, was at last engaged to carry mortar for the fresco painters, who were then employed in decorating the Vatican, which humble occupation giving him the opportunity of observing the operations of these artists, first inspired him with the ambition of becoming himself a painter. The commencement of the history of MICHAEL ANGELO CARAVAGGIO is not very different. He, as his name denotes, was a native of the same place as Polidoro, though he flourished more than half a century later, and he is recorded to have had his love of the art first awakened by being, when a boy, employed by his father, who was a mason, to mix plaster for some frescopainters at Milan. Another Italian painter, CAVEDONE, Owed his introduction to his profession to the accident of having been received, after he had been turned out of doors by his father, into the service of

a gentleman who happened to possess a good collection of pictures, which he began by copying in ink with a pen. JAMES TASSIE, the celebrated modeller and maker of paste gems, commenced life as a stonemason in Glasgow, and was first prompted to aspire to something beyond this humble occupation by having gone by chance on a holyday to see the paintings in the academy for instruction in the fine arts, established in that city by Messrs. Robert and Andrew Foulis, the printers. Having obtained admission to the academy as a pupil, he wrought at his original trade to maintain himself, until he had acquired a knowledge of drawing. Tassie became eventually the most distinguished artist in his line in Europe; and carried, indeed, the art itself, which he practised, to a degree of perfection that before hist time had not been approached. A descriptive catalogue of his pastes, which, at the time of his death, in 1799, amounted to twenty thousand, has been published in two quarto volumes, and among them are enumerated imitations, or rather fac-similes, of all the more celebrated gems, ancient and modern, known to be in existence.

The youthful CHATTERTON's taste for the study of, English antiquities is said to have been first excited by the accidental circumstance of a quantity of ancient parchment manuscripts having fallen into his hands, which had been taken by his father, who kept a school, from an old chest in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol, to make covers for the writingbooks used by his scholars. If he had never seen these parchments, how different might have been the history of that gifted but ill-fated boy! GEORGE EDWARDS, the naturalist, and author of the splendid book entitled the History of Birds,' was in the first instance apprenticed to a London merchant; but the accident of a bed-room being assigned to him