self by his literary attainments, and by an unusual combination of talents and modesty. He shrunk, however, from all public exercise of his powers, and after a short intercourse with the busy world, flew with all the ardour of youthful enthusiasm to the retirement in which a handsome patrimony enabled him to live. Our meeting was mutually joyful, though at first I fancied I perceived about him a little uneasiness and constraint of manner. We spent a delightful evening in the recapitulation of our boyish exploits, and in the communication of particulars in which we felt a common interest. "The world," says Dr. Johnson, (and we experienced the full force of the remark,)" has few greater pleasures than that which two friends enjoy in tracing back, at some distant time, those transactions and events through which they have passed together." I was struck with the eloquence of my friend's conversation, the happiness of his language, and the comprehensiveness of his views, and there seemed such an air of comfort in his house, so many happy features in his circumstances, and so great an improvement in the powers of his mind, that I could not help congratulating him on the realization of those golden visions which I knew had hung over his youthful fancy. His reply, accompanied by a shake of the head, was full and ingenuous. In giving the substance of it to the reader, it would be vain to attempt to convey that glow of eloquence by which every thought was illuminated. "I cannot boast," said he, "of any immunity from the common lot of mankind; and what pictures of happiness did the fancy ever form that found their counterpart in subsequent events? Those visions of my youth rendered me exquisitely happy while they lasted that they are fled, your present visit will soon inform you. You will be a witness to my usual occupations, and they, together with the tone of thinking in which I indulge, will enable you to estimate the happiness of my condition. Do not, however, conceive that I am either unhappy or ungrateful, but I cannot conceal from myself that I have been mistaken in my views of life. Man is born for exertion: the full exercise of his faculties is his highest enjoyment, and the only way of escaping that depth of melancholy which but too frequently settles upon silence and solitude. "The tranquil state of him who has no joys to elevate, no sorrows to depress, no business to engage him, almost invariably lapses into gloom. As the present affords no object to excite his feelings, he is occupied in tracing the past with regret, or looking to the future with heartless anticipation. His attention is too much concentrated on himself. He marks the progression of his own existence as a man in his solitary room listens to the beating of a clock, when every stroke reaches his heart and fills him with indescribable pensiveness. The absence of occupation operates on his spirits like a dead calm on nature. The repose, or rather stagnation of his life, like the tranquillity of a lake in which every object is reflected in clear colours, presents to him too distinctly the circunstances of his situation and the course of his feelings. He marks what in the agitation of employment, escapes the notice of others; like one who, in the silence of the evening when the wind has subsided and the air is still, hears every sound and motion around him—the purling stream, the hum of the distan town, the voice of the watch-dog, and even his own footsteps which fall on his ear with monotonous regularity. "Life will not bear such close and continual inspection, and he soon be comes abstracted and gioomy. He wants something to call off his mind from itself, and fix it on other objects. The man who is engrossed by active pursuits, feels sprightly and alert. A regular recurrence of employment diverts him from a morbid attention to his own thoughts and feelings. As the breeze undulates the surface of the water and throws the images reflected on its bosom into a lively fluctuation and indistinctness, so the occupation of his faculties communicates a brisk impulse to his spirits, and presents the past, the present, and the future under the same exhilirating aspect. "My fondness for study, indeed, has partially the effect of withdrawing me from myself, and contributes much to make life pass away pleasantly; yet even study becomes wearisome when there is no ulterior object. "I have nothing to gain by reading but the pleasure afforded by the ideas as they pass through my mind. When I meet with any masterly production, with original views and profound thinking, I experience that fervor of soul, that expansion of intellect, which is perhaps the finest pleasure of existence; but how few are such moments compared with those in which I am listlessly borne along by trite arguments, feeble narrarive, or dull declamation! As I have nothing to interest me in a subject beyond what the subject itself furnishes, I have no motives to overcome any difficulty in my way, and hence my reading is desultory and without any satisfactory result; the course may be pleasant, while the termination is too often langour and vacuity. There are moments, too, when reading ceases to interest, when every amusement is tasteless, and the heart aches with a void which there is nothing to fill; when existence appears a sunless waste, a cold, bleak, cheerless prospect: "There is a mood of mind we all have known, On drowsy eve, or dark and lowring day, Nor dare we of our listless load complain, For who for sympathy may seek that cannot tell of pain?" "To moments like these of more than ordinary depression, the retired man is peculiarly subject: no wonder that to escape them men plunge into the tumult of war or the anxieties of business; that they seize on something to occupy their faculties and rouse their passions. "But there is another deficiency in my condition, a want of the sympathy of my fellow-men, of which, however some may attempt to despise it, all virtually acknowledge the importance. My taste and feelings and those of the human beings around me were originally, in some measure at least, coincident, but from our different modes of life they have insensibly di verged, and are now widely asunder. I am an isolated being, connected with no one by common pursuits. I see men around me occupied by their several professions, and pleased by the participation of others in their anxiety and success: as for myself, when I mix in society, I hear circumstances detailed which cannot interest me, feelings expressed with which I am unable to sympathise, and maxims assumed to which I can. not assent; and I am condemned to lock up in silence my own hopes, pleasures, and opinions, because few could enter into them, and none understand them, without a longer course of explanation than it would be agreeable to give, or any one would be willing to follow. I have some friends, it is true, who are acquainted with my peculiarities, and whose society I can enjoy, but they are men who have their several vocations, and are not always at liberty to entertain an idler like myself. If I call upon them, I find them occupied, perhaps, with matters uninteresting to me, and though out of friendship they may enter into conversation, their minds are evidently kept by force from the business which I have inter rupted, and are ready to rebound the moment I am gone. I go—to all the weariness and vacancy of idleness, while they spring back with alacrity to their accustomed duties. Happy people! who are forced to daily exertion by the gentle violence of a profession. Such are my views, and you will now, my friend, be enabled to judge of the enviableness of my condition." For these observations of my friend there is doubtless considerable foundation, although, perhaps, he has fallen into the common error of contrasting the bright side of his neighbour's situation with the dark aspect of his own. He may have erred, too, in imputing that to his mode of life which arises in a great measure from his own peculiar temperament, and not a few of the evils of which he complains, might surely have been obviated by selecting from the boundless fields of science, some object for regular, steady, and determined pursuit. After all these deductions, however, there is an important residuum of truth. Man is born with faculties fitted for action as well as speculation, and although the progress of society may possibly be promoted by the exclusive attachment of some of its members to each of these modes of occupation, it can scarcely be questioned that the happiness of the individual, not less than the perfection of the human character, is best consulted by a judicious intermixture of both. A man whose life is filled up by incessant activity, often forgets the end of his pursuits in the means, and loses some of the sweetest enjoyments of his species; and he who buries himself altogether in the reveries of speculation equally errs by a partial use of his powers, unfitting himself for those occasional active duties without which it is impossible to pass through the world, and not seldom falling into habits of gloomy abstraction, which can be corrected only by a more frequent participation in the ordinary bu siness of mankind. Sheffield, March 14, 1818. U. Biography, Anecdotes, &c. MEMOIR OF MR. ABRAHAM SHARP. AS the empire of science is extended, many instances occur of individuals, by some favourable circumstance, emerging from that obscurity in which they were apparently destined to pass their days. In most of these we may see a complete refutation of the opinion of some modern authors, that the only difference between one human being and another, is produced entirely by education. The notion of a person being equally capacitated to excel in one pursuit as in another, is also invalidated by an appeal to the early changes which take place in the minds of the distinguished sons of genius. That a person should concentrate all the energies of his mind to pursue objects which, instead of being professionally useful, will be causes of perpetual diappointment and distress, is more than can be accounted for upon the principle of mental equality, or of an equal capacity to shine in any department of science. It is true that a favourable circumstance may introduce a man of talent to the notice of the public, yet no one will argue that this favourable circumstance gives him either his talents or a disposition to use them in any particular manner. The cause must be acknowledged to lie deeper, even in the constitution of his intellectual powers. His mind must be peculiarly fitted in its formation for obtaining a conquest over every difficulty. Such a mind begins to expand the moment that a suitable subject presents itself. The man makes it his business and his recreation, the pursuit of his morning, and the pleasure of his evenings; it employs the vigour, of his youth, and supports his declining faculties in the close of life. The truth of the above remarks may be found in every walk of life; but we shall at present only refer to the subject of the following memoir :— ABRAHAM SHARP was born in the year 1651, at Little-Horton, near Bradford, in the West-Riding of the county of York, where his ancestors had resided for several generations. He was first sent to school in his native village, and afterwards in Bradford, where he distinguished himself as a calculator, and gave some promising specimens of future excellence in the accuracy and beauty of his penmanship. When about sixteen he was apprenticed to a merchant in Manchester, but did not remain there long. His attachment to the mathematics led him to desire a release from the dull routine of the counting-house, and his master was, perhaps, equally dissatisfied; hence they mutually and gladly agreed to a separation. To this, Mr. Sharp's father was very averse, as it entirely cut off his hopes of his son's future welfare; but remonstrances were in vain, and he left his situation. On this event, he opened a day-school, in Liverpool, to teach writing and accounts. This employment, one would think, was as little suited to his disposition as that which he had just left; but he had a reason for this step, and a reason too, which every man who has felt its force, will acknowledge to be of the most cogent nature-necessity. This, if we may so speak, is the syllogism of nature, and as much superior to those which are manufactured of mood and figure, as feeling is above speculation, and common sense above sophistry.* Mr. Sharp continued his school for several months with increasing prospects of success, till he heard that Mr. Flamsteed, the astronomer, resided at Liverpool, and lodged in the house of a merchant. He then immediately engaged as book-keeper to the merchant, that he might enjoy the pleasure of the astronomer's company and conversation. Here these congenial spirits mingled the vivid beams of genius, which shone brighter in union than they could have done separately. Their respective talents cast a mutual lustre upon each other, and friendship harmonized them into one. Mr. Flamsteed used his influence in procuring a situation for his friend in Chatham Dockyard, which, whilst its profits were more adequate to his wants, gave him more leisure to pursue his favourite studies. When about his 25th year, Mr. Flamsteed took him to assist in fitting up the Royal Observatory, at Greenwich, which had been recently built. At this time he constructed his mural arc of 791⁄2 inches radius, which, with some other of his performances, shall be described in the language of that very able engineer, Mr. Smeaton. "In the year 1689, Mr. Flamsteed completed his mural arc at Greenwich; and in the Prolegomena to his Historia Cœlestis, he makes an ample aeknowledgment of the particular assistance, care, and industry of Mr. Abraham Sharp, whom, in the month of August, 1688, he brought into the Observatory, as his amanuensis, and being, as Mr. Flamsteed tells us, not only a very skilful mathematician, but very expert in mechanical operations, he was principally employed in the construction of this mural are; which in the compass of 14 months, he finished, so greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. Flamsteed, that he speaks of him in the highest terms of praise. "This celebrated instrument, of which he also gives the figure at the end of the Prolegomena, was of the radius 791⁄2 inches, and in like manner as -the sextant, it was furnished both with screw and diagonal divisions, all performed by the accurate hand of Mr. Sharp. Yet whoever compares the different parts of the table for conversion of the revolutions and parts of the screw belonging to the mural arc into degrees, minutes, and seconds, with each other, at the same distance from the zenith on different sides, and with their halves, quarters, &c. will find as notable a disagreement of the * The father of Mr. Ramsden, the celebrated mathematical instrument-maker, was a nephew of Mr. Sharp, and says, that some time in his younger days his grand-uncle, Abraham, our author, was an exciseman, which he quitted on coming to a patrimonial estate of about £200 a year. If so, it must have been previous to his going to Liverpool, which is not altogether improbable, as the officers of the excise were, at that time, upon a different footing to what they are at present, with respect to age, &c. |