known ، Life of Sterling' by Mr. Carlyle, representing the man less in his ecclesiastical than in his general human relations, appeared in 1851; and in the same year 'Twelve Letters by John Sterling' were edited by his relative Mr. Coningham of Brighton.

STERNE, LAURENCE, was the great-grandson of Dr. Richard Sterne, who died archbishop of York in 1683. His father, Roger Sterne, second son of Simon Sterne of Elvington and Halifax, having entered the army, became a lieutenant in Handaside's regiment, and on the 25th of September 1711, o.s., married in Flanders, Agnes, the widow of Captain Herbert, and stepdaughter of a person of the name of Nuttle, whom Sterne himself, in a memoir written for the information of his daughter a short time before his death, describes as "a noted sutler in Flanders in Queen Anne's wars." His mother's own family name he professes to have forgotten. Roger's first child, born at Lisle, in July 1712, was a daughter, Mary, who grew up to be a very beautiful woman, but made an unfortunate marriage, and died early of a broken heart. Laurence was brought into the world on the 24th of November 1713, at Clonmel in Ireland, where his father and mother had arrived with the regiment from Dunkirk only a few days before. "My birthday," says Sterne, "was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke, and sent adrift into the world, with a wife and two children." The lieutenant upon this betook himself with his wife and family to the family seat at Elvington, near York, where his mother, who had inherited the property from her father, Sir Roger Jaques, resided, her husband having died ten years before; here they all sojourned for about ten months, after which, the regiment being reestablished, they set out to join it at Dublin, whence Lieutenant Sterne being within a month ordered to Exeter, his wife and her two infants followed him thither. They remained a twelvemonth in England, and then the lieutenant, with his family increased by another boy, born at Plymouth, was forced once more to turn his face to Ireland. This must have been about the end of the year 1715, if the chronology of the account is to be depended upon. Having got to Dublin, they continued there till the year 1719, which however would be for above three years, instead of only a year and a half, as Sterne seems to state. In that year, he says, "all unhinged again." The regiment was ordered to the Isle of Wight, to embark for Spain on the Vigo expedition. On their journey thither from Bristol the younger boy died, but his place was supplied by a girl (who died how ever in childhood) born in September 1719, in the Isle of Wight, where the lieutenant left his wife and children till the regiment got back to Wicklow, in Ireland, whither he then sent for them. They lived a year in the barracks at Wicklow, where Mrs. Sterne gave birth to another boy; and then they spent six months with a relation of hers, a Mr. Fetherston, parson of a place called Annamoe about seven miles from Wicklow. "It was in this parish," says Sterne, "during our stay, that I had that wonderful escape, in falling through a millrace whilst the mill was going, and being taken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people flocked to see me." The incident, it seems, is still traditionally remembered in the district. After this they were in barracks for another year in Dublin-the year 1721 -in which, Sterne tells us, he learned to write. The regiment was next ordered to Mullingar, where a collateral descendant of Archbishop Sterne found out his relations, or was found out by them, and, taking them all to his 'castle,' entertained them kindly for a year, and then sent them after the regiment to Carrickfergus. On the journey thither, which took six or seven days, and is described as most rueful and tedious, or shortly after, the youngest boy died, and also another infant, a girl, which had been born when they were last in Dublin. In the autumn of this year (1723), or the spring of the next, Laurence, now ten years old, was sent over to England, and put to school, near Halifax, "with an able master," says he, "with whom I stayed some time, till, by God's care of me, my cousin Sterne of Elvington became a father to me, and sent me to the university." It will be perceived from this detail, that, although Sterne was of English descent and parentage, he was not only by accident a native of Ireland, but spent in that country a considerable part of his early boyhood. No doubt some effect was produced upon his opening powers of thought and observation, by his having been allowed to run wild, as it were, in that land of wit and whim from his seventh to his tenth year.

His father next followed his regiment to Londonderry, where, says the autobiographical sketch, "another sister was brought forth, Catherine, still living, but most unhappily estranged from me by my uncle's wickedness and her own folly." From Londonderry the regiment was sent out to defend Gibraltar at the siege (in 1727), where Lieutenant Sterne was run through the body by a brother officer in a duel, and only recovered with much difficulty, and with so shattered a constitution, that when, shortly after, he was sent out to Jamaica, he speedily fell a prey to the country fever, dying at Port Antonio, in March 1731. "My father," says Sterne, "was a little smart manactive to the last degree in all exercises-most patient of fatigue and disappointments, of which it pleased God to give him full measure; he was in his temper somewhat rapid and hasty, but of a kindly, sweet disposition, void of all design, and so innocent in his own intentions, that he suspected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times in a day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose."

Meanwhile Sterne remained with his master at Halifax, to whom, from an anecdote which he relates, his dawning genius seems to have been already clearly discernible, till he was sent by his kinsman to the University of Cambridge, in 1733. He was admitted of Jesus College on the 6th of July in that year; and he took the degree of B.A. in January 1736; and that of M.A. at the commencement in 1740. On leaving the university, in what year has not been stated, he took orders, and his uncle, the Rev. Jaques Sterne, LL.D., a younger brother of his father's, and a well-beneficed clergyman, being a prebendary of Durham and of York, and rector of Rise and of Hornsea cum Ri-ton, procured him the living of Sutton, in Yorkshire. It was in the city of York that he met with the lady whom he married in 1741, after having courted her, as he tells us, for two years. Her name is not known; all that appears is that her Christian name began with L., being probably Lydia, like that of her daughter. She brought him some fortune, but probably of no great amount. Sterne's uncle now procured him a prebend in York cathedral; "but he quarrelled with me afterwards," says Sterne, "because I would not write paragraphs in the newspapers: though he was a party man, I was not, and detested such dirty work, thinking it beneath me: from that period he became my bitterest enemy." Notwithstanding all this virtuous indignation however, Sterne appears to have gone on doing this "dirty work" for his uncle for a very considerable length of time not much less than twenty years. In a letter to a Mrs. F-—, written in November 1759, on the eve of the publication of the first two volumes of his Tristram Shandy,' he says, in reply to an inquiry his correspondent had made as to the reason of his turning author, Why truly, I am tired of employing my brains for other people's advantage. 'Tis a foolish sacrifice I have made for some years to an ungrateful person." It has been asserted that he wrote, or conducted for some time, a periodical electioneering paper published at York in the Whig interest. Soon after his marriage, a friend of his wife's presented him with the living of Stillington, also in Yorkshire; and he tells us he remained near twenty years at Sutton doing duty at both places, which seem to have been within a mile and a half of each other. "I had then," he says, "very good health: books, painting, fiddling, and shooting were my amusements." During all this space, his only publications, or all at least to which he put his name, were two sermons: the first, entitled 'The Case of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath considered,' in 1747; the second, entitled 'The Abuses of Conscience,' in 1750. This latter is the same which he afterwards introduced in the second volume of his 'Tristram Shandy' as a Sermon of Yorick's: in the preface to the first two volumes of his collected sermons, which appeared the following year, he says, "I suppose it is needless to inform the public that the reason of printing these sermons arises altogether from the favourable reception which the sermon given as a sample of them in Tristram Shandy' met with from the world :-that sermon was printed by itself some years ago, but could find neither purchasers nor readers." Both sermons were republished in the collection.

The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy' were originally published at York, towards the end of 1759, and were reprinted at Loudon early in 1760. Although anonymous, the work seems to have been known to be Sterne's from the first; and it raised him at once from obscurity to universal notoriety and high literary fame. This and his subsequent publications-two volumes of Sermons in 1760, vols. 3 and 4 of Tristram Shandy' in 1761, vols. 5 and 6 in 1762, vols. 7 and 8 in 1765, two more vols. of Sermons in 1766, the 9th vol. of Tristram Shandy' in 1767, and the 'Sentimental Journey' in 1768probably also brought him a good deal of money; and his circumstances were further improved by his being presented by Lord Falconbridge, in 1760, with the curacy of Coxwold, also in Yorkshire, which he calls "a sweet retirement, in comparison of Suttou." His celebrity also, it is to be feared, introduced the Yorkshire parson to new habits of life, and to some kinds of dissipation not quite so innocent as "fiddling and shooting." In 1760 he took a house at York for his wife and his only child, a daughter; but his own time he seems from this date to have spent mostly either in London or on the Continent. In 1762, before the conclusion of the peace, he went to France, whither he was soon after followed by his wife and daughter. Leaving them both in that country, he seems to have in the first instance returned to England, whence, in 1764, he proceeded to Italy, with a view to the recovery of his health, now greatly impaired. He returned to England in the earlier part of 1767, aud, having after some time persuaded his wife to come over to him with their daughter, he remained at York till he had written all that we have of his 'Sentimental Journey,' the first part, which he then brought up with him to the metropolis, and published, as has been already stated, in the beginning of the following year. He lived merely to see the work brought out; having died, at his lodgings in Bond-street, on the 18th of March 1768 (not the 13th of September, as is stated on his monument erected some years after in the burying-ground of St. George's, Hanover-square, where he was interred). He had saved nothing, if he did not die in debt; but it is said that, soon after, his wife and daughter being at York during the races, a collection which amounted to a thousand pounds was made for them by some gentlemen there; and they also received a liberal subscription for three more volumes of his Sermons, which were afterwards published. In 1775, after her

mother's death, Sterne's daughter, who calls herself, at the end of the dedication to Garrick, Lydia Sterne de Medalle (having been married to a person of the latter name), published three small volumes of his 'Letters to his Friends,' along with the short autobiographical memoir from which many of the above facts have been taken. Some of the letters in this collection are of a very extraordinary character to have been either published by a daughter, or left for publication, as we are assured they were, by a wife. The same year there appeared, under the title of Letters to Eliza,' ten letters addressed by Sterne, in March and April 1767, to an East Indian lady, who is described by the editor as a "Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of Daniel Draper, Esq., counsellor at Bombay, and at present chief of the factory at Surat." Having come to England for the recovery of her health, she and Sterne became acquainted and were greatly taken with each other. Sterne's letters however do not warrant us in concluding that they were attached by any other feelings than those of a very warm friendship. The lady had been dead some years, as well as Sterne himself, when his letters to her were published; and the latter part of her life, the editor tells us, had been attended with circumstances which were "generally said to have reflected no credit either on her prudence or discretion." But whether there is any real ground for this slander we greatly doubt. Mrs. Draper returned to her husband in India after her correspondence with Sterne, and, then making a second visit to England, died at Bristol, and was interred in the cathedral, where there is a marble monument erected to her memory. With the exception of one or two fragments, the only other remains of Sterne that have been printed consist of a second collection of letters, in one volume, which also appeared in 1775; with the addition of a piece of humorous satire entitled 'The History of a Watchcoat,' which however had been published separately about seven years before.

In 1793 Dr. Ferriar, of Manchester, published an Essay in the third volume of the Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society,' afterwards enlarged and published separately in 1798, and again in 1802, under the title of Illustrations of Sterne,' with the view of showing that many passages in his writings were suggested by or imitated from various old and commonly neglected authors, especially Rabelais and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.' In a literal sense, the charge is sufficiently established; there are some passages in Sterne which may be fairly said to be copied from Burton, Rabelais, and others; and the germs of a good many of his thoughts and expressions may be found in their pages. Of course also the general spirit of his wit and turn of writing must have taken something from the sources with which he is thus proved to have been familiar. But however these detections may affect Sterne's reputation for honesty, the question of the originality of his genius is not touched by them. A writer of original genius, under the pressure of haste or indolence, may, if not a scrupulous man, borrow or steal occasionally, as well as the most common-place writer. Sterne, we know, was the reverse of scrupulous; but he may also have had no very felonious intention in the appropriations that are laid to his charge; it will be admitted that he has for the most part really put a new life into what he has thus resuscitated; and he probably thought that in all such cases he gave more than he took. The nature of his writings, it is to be remembered, precluded him from making any formal acknowledgment of his obligations; he could not finish off a chapter in Tristram Shandy' with a list of references such as might be appended to a chapter of a history or an article in a dictionary. Beyond all controversy, he is, in his conceptions and delineations separately considered, as well as in his general spirit and manner, one of the most original of writers. His humour is quite as much sui generis as that of either Rabelais or Cervantes or Swift. Whatever he may have in common with any or all of these, he has much more in which he differs from them, and that is wholly his own. He is, of all English humourists at least, the airiest and most buoyant. And it is wonderful what a truth and real humanity there is even in his most startling and eccentric creations; how perfectly unity of character and every artistic probability is preserved in each of them; how they all draw our sympathies towards them; how they live like actual existences in our memories and our hearts. It is rather a simple fact than an opinion that the first class of Sterne's dramatis persona, his Uncle Tobys, his Corporal Trims, his Yoricks, rank in that department of our literature next to the Launces and Touchstones, the Malvolios and Justice Shallows, of Shakspere, and far apart from all else of the same kind in the language. In the mere art of writing also, his execution, amid much apparent extravagance, is singularly careful and perfect; it will be found that every touch has been well considered, has its proper purpose and meaning, and performs its part in producing the effect; but the art of arts, the ars celare artem, never was possessed in a higher degree by any writer than by Sterne. His greatest work, out of all comparison, is undoubtedly his Tristram Shandy;' although, among foreigners, the 'Sentimental Journey' seems to stand in the highest estimation. But that will hardly be the judgment of any Englishman, though it may be of some English women.

STERNHOLD, THOMAS, was a native of Hampshire. The date of his birth is not known. He was educated at Oxford. He was groom of the robes to Henry VIII., and retained the same office under Edward VI., in whose reign he died, August 1549. Sternhold's only claim to distinction is that he was the principal

author of the first English metrical version of the Psalms attached to the Book of Common Prayer. He had undertaken to versify the whole of the Psalms, but completed only fifty-one: the rest were translated by John Hopkins and others. Sternhold's version was not published till after his death-All such Psalm of David as Thomas Sternholde did in his Lyfe drawe into English Metre,' 8vo, London, 1549. He was also the author of 'Certain Chapters of the Proverbs of Solomon, drawen into Metre,' 8vo, London, 1549. The complete version of the Paalms by Sternhold and Hopkins was not published till 1562, when it was first annexed to the Book of Common Prayer, with the title of The whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into English Metre, by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins, and others, conferred with the Ebrue, with apt Notes to sing withal.' The printing was in black letter, and the music consisted of the melodies only, without base or other part. Many of the best melodies were adaptations from the German and French.

The Reformation introduced metrical versions of the Psalms. The Earl of Surrey, who was beheaded on the 19th of January 1546-7, translated some of the Psalms and Ecclesiastes into verse, which, together with a few poems, were printed by Dr. Percy, but never published, the whole impression having been consumed in the fire which destroyed the printing-office of Mr. Nichols in 1808. Sir Thomas Wyatt also published Certayne Psalmes, chosen out of the Psalmes of Dauid, commonly called vij. Penytentiall Psalmes, drawn into Englishe Metre; whereunto is added a Prolog of the Aucthore before euery Psalme, very pleasant and profettable to the godly Reader,' 8vo, London, 1549. In the same year was published The Psalter of Dauid, newly translated in Englyshe Metre, in such sort that it may more decently and with more delight of the mynd be reade and songe of al men; whereunto is added a Note of four parts, wyth other thynges,' &c., London, 1549. "Then," as Campbell, in his 'Specimens of English Poetry' (vol. i., Essay on English Poetry'), observes, "then flourished Sternhold and Hopkins, who, with the best intentions and the worst taste, degraded the spirit of Hebrew Psalmody by flat and homely phraseology; and mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime. Such was the love of versifying holy writ at that period, that the Acts of the Apostles were rhymed and set to music by Christopher Tye." Tye's book is entitled The Actes of the Apostles; translated into Englyshe Metre, and dedicated to the Kynge's moste excellent Majestye, by Cristofer Tye, Doctor in Musyke and one of the Gentylinen of his Grace's most honourable Chappell; wyth Notes to eche Chapter, to synge and also to playe upon the Lute, very necessary for studentes after theyr studye to fyle theyr wyttes, and also for all Christians that cannot synge to read the good and godlie storyes of the Liues of Christ hys Apostles,' sm. 8vo, Lond., 1553. See further, Warton's Hist. of English Poetry,' vol. iii., 149-57, &c., ed. 1840.

STESI CHORUS, one of the earliest and most celebrated lyric poets of ancient Greece. The few and fragmentary accounts which we have of him, are not only in direct contradiction to one another, but are manifestly interwoven with various mythical elements. All accounts however agree that he was a native of Himera in Sicily, and son of Euphemus. (Plat., 'Phædr.,' p. 244; Steph. Byz., s. v. Maravpós.) Among the various statements of the date of his birth, the most probable is that it was about B.C. 643. He lived to the age of eightythree, his death having probably taken place in B.C. 560. In his later years therefore he witnessed the tyranny of Phalaris, against whom he is said to have cautioned his fellow-citizens in an apologue called the 'Horse and the Stag.' (Aristot., Rhet.,' ii. 20; Conon, Narrat.,' 42; comp. Horat., 'Epist.,' i. 10, 34, &c.) The population of Himera consisted of Zancleans and Syracusans, but the family of Stesichorus had come to the colony from Metaurus. He is said to have been blind for some time, and, according to the story, this punishment was inflicted on him for having offended by his poems the shade of Helen. His original name was, according to Suidas (s. v. Zrnoíxopos), Tisias, and he assumed the name of Stesichorus as indicating the art to which he mainly devoted his life, that is, the art of training and directing the solemn choruses at the religious festivals. This art appears to have been hereditary in his family, which may be inferred from the fact that, according to some writers, he was descended from Hesiod, and that after his death there occur two Himeræans of the same name, who were likewise distinguished in this art. (Marm. Par., 'Ep.,' 50 and 73.) But Stesichorus Tisias was the most celebrated of the family. It was he who gave to the choral songs the artistic form which was subsequently brought to perfection by Pindar. Before his time a chorus simply consisted of strophes and antistrophes. Stesichorus added the epode, during the recitation of which the choruses stood still. The movements and arrangement of the chorus-dancers were likewise settled by him in a manner which was afterwards observed by other teachers of the chorus and poets, and lastly, he introduced a greater variety of characteristic metres than had been hitherto used in the composition of choruses, and had them accompanied by the cithara. In short, Stesichorus was regarded by the ancients as the creator of the perfect form of this species of poetry, although his choruses were much more simple than those of later times, and bore greater resemblance to epic poetry. The dialect which he used was that of the Epos, interspersed with Dorisms. The subjects of his poetry were all taken from the mythical and heroic ages of Greece, as

Lighthouse Commissioners, he made his first tour of inspection, and afterwards introduced a still greater improvement on the illumination of lighthouses by means of the catoptric principle, and by adopting various means to distinguish one lighthouse from another. In 1807, an Act having been obtained in 1806, he commenced, under Rennie, the construction of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, on a rock in the North Sea, a few miles off Arbroath in Forfarshire, on which the light was exhibited for the first time on Feb. 1, 1811. The rock being extremely small, and almost entirely covered, even at low-water, except in spring-tides, offered great obstacles to the construction, but they were successfully overcome, and an account of the details of the erection and structure, illustrated with plates, was published at Edinburgh in 1824. A controversy has arisen as to the originality of Mr. Stevenson's plans, into which we cannot enter, but it is certain that much of the merit arises from the mechanical means adopted to secure a firm and enduring foundation, and this was undoubtedly dore by Mr. Stevenson. In 1814, on another tour of inspection, Sir Walter Scott was a companion of the engineer and commissioners in the voyage, which afforded many materials for descriptions in Scott's poem of The Lord of the Isles,' and in the novel of The Pirate.' Mr. Stevenson held the situation of engineer till 1842, during which time he erected no fewer than 23 lighthouses. He was also employed in numerous engineering works in various parts of the United Kingdom, but chiefly in Scotland, in connection with the improvement of rivers and harbours, and the erection of piers and bridges, into which latter class of works he introduced some new principles of construction. He likewise surveyed a line of railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which, though not adopted, was admitted to be extremely clever. He was employed to report on other lines of railway, and he suggested the use of malleable iron rails instead of the cast-iron rails and tramplates previously in use. In 1828 he became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and while he lived was looked upon as an authority of great weight on all questions connected with the improvements of ports, harbours, and rivers. He died on July 12, 1850, when the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses passed a resolution acknowledging his great services and merits. He left sons, whom he had brought up to his own profession, who worthily sustain the reputation of their father.

STEVIN, SIMON, a celebrated Flemish mathematician, was born about the middle of the 16th century, at Bruges: it has been ascertained that he went to reside in Holland, where he obtained the title of mathematician to Prince Maurice of Nassau, and that he was made civil engineer to the States, the charge of constructing and repairing the dykes being confided to him. It is to be regretted that no other particulars concerning his life have been preserved. He appears to have died at La Haye in 1620.

He wrote a treatise on arithmetic, which was printed at Antwerp in 1585; and in the same year he published a collection of geometrical problems in five books. He appears to have studied algebra with great attention, and to have made in that branch of science several improvements. The principal of these consist in the employment of fractional indices, as exponents of the roots of quantities (the use of integers as the exponent of powers had previously been introduced by Stifel [STIFEL, MICHAEL]), and in a general but laborious method of approximating in numbers to the root of any equation. He represented the unknown quantity by a small circle; and a number, either integral or fractional, contained within the circle, indicated a power or root of that quantity.

In 1586 Stevin published in quarto, and in the Dutch language, his tract on statics and hydrostatics, in the preface of which he endeavours to prove that the Dutch language is more ancient than any other; and in the same year he published, also in Dutch, his 'New System of Fortification.' In 1589 he brought out a tract entitled 'De Motu Caeli;' and ten years afterwards, in Dutch, a treatise on navigation: the latter was translated into Latin by Grotius, and published at Leyden in 1624.

In 1605 W. Snell translated into Latin, and published in two volumes, folio, the greater part of the works of Stevin, but he did not live to complete the undertaking. In 1634 however Albert Girard published, at Leyden, the whole of the works in French: this edition contains the treatise on arithmetic; the six books of the algebra of Diophantus (the first four books were translated from the Greek by Stevin, and the others by Girard), and an explanation of the tenth book of Euclid; tracts on cosmography, geography, and astronomy, the practice of geometry, statics, optics, castrametation, a new system of fortification, and a method of fortifying places in which manoeuvres of water, by means of sluices, were to contribute to the defence.

The work on statics contains a simplification of the demonstration of Archimedes relating to the fundamental property of the lever. Stevin represented the two weights at the extremities of the lever by parallelopipeds suspended horizontally by strings applied at their middle points: the breadths and depths of these parallelopipeds were equal, but the length of each was double the distance from the fulcrum of the lever to the point from which the other was suspended. When the parallelopipeds were placed end to end, the middle of the whole was vertically under the fulcrum of the lever, and therefore the latter was necessarily in equilibrio, while the weights of the separate parallelopipeds were inversely proportional to the lengths of the arms from whose extremities they were suspended.

In order to exhibit the conditions under which a body is in equilibrio on an inclined plane, Stevin supposes a triangular prism to be placed with one side parallel to the horizon, so that the other sides may form a double inclined plane; and he imagines a string, on which are placed a number of equal weights, at equal distances from one another, to be laid on those sides across the upper edge of the prism: each part of the string of weights extends from the edge to the base of the prism; or the two extremities of the string are at equal distances below that base. He concludes that the string so placed would be at rest on the two planes, because if it were to begin to move (the string of weights being of infinite length) it would move for ever, which he supposed to be absurd, so that the tendency of the weights to descend on one side must exactly counterbalance the like tendency of those on the other side; and evidently the sum of the weights lying on one plane is to the sum of the weights lying on the other, in the same proportion as the lengths of those planes respectively, the lengths being measured in directions perpendicular to the edge of the prism. Hence he infers that the same power is required to support different bodies on single inclined planes of equal heights, when the weights of the bodies are proportional to the lengths of the planes. If one side of the prism is in a vertical position, the tendency to descend is evidently equal to the weight; and hence, on every inclined plane, the sustaining power, in a direction parallel to the plane, is to the weight of a body, as the height of the plane is to its length. From this theory, also, Stevin discovered that an equilibrium between three forces acting at one point in a body, takes place when the forces are parallel and proportional to the three sides of a triangle. His demonstration however extends only to the case in which the directions of two of the forces are at right angles to one another; for he states that when a body is supported on an inclined plane, and retained by a force acting parallel to the plane, it is in the same circumstances as if it were suspended by two strings, one perpendicular and the other parallel to the plane; and he concludes that the ratio of the weight of the body, to a force parallel to the plane, is as the hypotenuse to the base of a right-angled triangle formed by three lines, one in a vertical direction, another perpendicular to the plane, and the base or third side being in a horizontal position.

Stevin is said to have contrived a car which moved by means of sails, on the flats of Holland, with more rapidity than any carriage drawn by horses.

STEWART, MATTHEW, D.D., a mathematician of North Britain, who attained great distinction by his researches in the higher branches of science, and the success with which he cultivated the ancient geometry. He was born at Rothsay, in the Isle of Bute, in 1717; and having received the best education which a grammar school afforded, he prosecuted his studies in philosophy and theology at the University of Glasgow, into which he was admitted in 1734. Dr. Simson, who then occupied the chair of mathematics in that university, is said to have early discerned the predilection of Stewart for mathematical researches; and his lectures appear to have given his pupil that decided preference for the ancient over the modern analysis, which he retained to his death.

On going to reside in Edinburgh, Mr. Stewart attended the lectures of Maclaurin, till, having adopted the church as a profession, he was appointed to the living of Roseneath, in the west of Scotland. In 1747 however, on the death of that mathematician, he was elected to succeed him; and he held the post of mathematical professor in the University till 1772, when his health began to decline. His son, the late Dugald Stewart, from that time began to assist him by occasionally delivering lectures; and three years afterwards the young mathematician and philosopher was appointed joint professor with his father. In 1775 he retired to an estate in Ayrshire, where he spent nearly all the rest of his life in cultivating science as an amusement. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1764; and he died on the 23rd of January, 1785.

The first efforts of Dr. Stewart in science were to extend the subject of what is called the 'locus ad quatuor rectas' to the powers of any number of perpendiculars drawn to an equal number of lines. While engaged in this pursuit, after his removal to Roseneath, he discovered most of those propositions which, in 1746, he published under the title of Geometrical Theorems.' These, which are mostly porisms, are sixty-nine in number, but five only of them are accompanied by demonstrations. Dr. Stewart is said to have suppressed, for the sake of brevity, the proofs of the others; but several of the theorems were afterwards demonstrated by Dr. Small, and Mr. Lowry has given, in Leybourne's Mathematical Repository,' demonstrations of all those which admit of investigation by the processes of the ancient geometry.

In the first volume of the 'Essays of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh,' there is a paper by Stewart containing some propositions founded on a theorem in the fourth book of Pappus; and, in the second volume of the same work, he gave a solution of Kepler's problem,' in accordance with the methods of the ancients. This he accomplished by the application of a property of curves, from which the approximations may be carried to any degree of accuracy in a series of rapidly converging results. In 1761 he published his 'Four Tracts, Physical and Mathematical,' in which there is an attempt to investigate the higher parts of mixed mathematics in a manner con

formable to the spirit of the Greek geometry. The first tract contains the theory of centripetal forces in a series of propositions, which, admitting the quadrature of curves, are rigorous; and in the remainder of the work Dr. Stewart considers the intricate subject of the perturbations. His design was to carry on the approximations for determining the elements of the orbits according to the method in which Newton, Machin, Walmsley, and other eminent mathematicians had begun the investigations; but the work stops far short of the ends now proposed in the researches of physical astronomy.

In the following year he published a series of geometrical propositions, which are investigated analytically, and afterwards demonstrated by synthetical processes: they are entitled, Propositiones More Veterum demonstratæ,' and this designation is said to have been given to them by Dr. Simson. His last work was an 'Essay on the Sun's Distance;' and this problem he endeavoured to treat according to the method of the ancients, but the subject is too intricate to admit of their analysis being applied to it, though the work exhibits all the ingenuity which might be expected from the learned author. Making use of the movement of the moon's apsides as an effect of solar perturbation, he determined the parallax of the sun to be 6.9", and it is now known to be about 8". Being obliged, in order to diminish the complexity of the investigation, to reject quantities which were supposed to have but small influence on the result, considerable errors exist in the steps; and, except that compensations occurred, the parallax might have appeared to be three times as great as it is in reality. The Essay' was much animadverted on by Dawson and Landen during the life of the writer; and since the true parallax of the sun has been ascertained from the transit of Venus, in 1769, it is admitted that no reliance can be placed on the determination of such an element by inductions drawn from the effects of the mutual attractions exercised by the bodies of the solar system. STEWART, DUGALD, the son of Dr. Matthew Stewart, the subject of the preceding article, was born in Edinburgh, on the 22nd of November 1753. He was educated at the high school of Edinburgh, and the progress he made in classical and mathematical attainments was such as to excite the warmest expectations of future success. In the winter of 1772, having that year attended the course of lectures delivered by Dr. Reid at Glasgow, his love for metaphysical speculation was roused, and he wrote and read to a literary association an Essay on Dreaming,' which he afterwards incorporated in his 'Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind' (vol. i. chap. v., § 5). He was then in his nineteenth year. But still more decisive was the fulfilment of his early promise a short time afterwards, when, having completed his Glasgow studies, he assumed the charge of the mathematical classes hitherto taught by his father in the University of Edinburgh, and on coming of age he was appointed joint mathematical professor with his father.

He taught with great success until his five and twentieth year, when an occasion presented itself for his resuming his favourite studies under the most advantageous position. Dr. Ferguson, the then professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh, having been sent as secretary to the commissioners to conclude peace with North America, Dugald Stewart was called upon to fill his place during his absence. He accepted the invitation and during the session 1778-79, besides teaching his own classes of mathematics, and one on astronomy, he lectured on ethics for Dr. Ferguson; thinking over every morning the subject of lecture for the day, and addressing his pupils extempore. His amiable and elegant manner was much relished, and his lectures gave so much satisfaction, that on the retirement of Dr. Ferguson, in 1785, he was appointed his successor. He had previously had the care of a few private pupils of rank whom he received into his family. He was thirty-two years of age when he entered upon his new professorship. His mind had become enlarged and enriched with a discursive, desul. tory, but valuable erudition, his opinions had become fixed, and the habitual grace and mildness of his manner had become still more winning from his increasing confidence and facility of exposition. He became very popular. His lecture-room was crowded, his fame spread over Great Britain before he had published anything, and, as Sir James Mackintosh truly remarks, "without derogation from his writings it may be said that his disciples were among his best works." His first work therefore came heralded by fame, and it scarcely disappointed anticipation. It was the first volume of his 'Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,' which appeared in 1792. The subject was treated with an elegance and eloquence of diction and a richness of illustration which more than compensated the majority of readers for its deficiencies in profundity and logical sequence of ideas; indeed its very faults were helps to its popularity, because it satisfied the current tendency to reaction against the sensualist school, and at the same time made no great demand on the speculative faculty of its reader. The philosophy was that of Reid, but rendered attractive by those arts of composition to which Dugald Stewart paid such fastidious attention; yet of this philosophy, and of Dugald Stewart's works generally, we may say with Professor Cousin, "it was an honourable protestation of common sense against the extravagancies and extreme consequences of sensualism. But it proceeded no further in its path than did Locke in his. The Scotch philosophy limited itself to the re-establishment of some of the forgotten elements of human nature, and some of the fundamental ideas of reason, which it described such

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as they now incontestably appear; but it did not attempt to account for them, nor to ascend to their origin, nor to follow them in their legitimate applications; it had a commencement of psychology, but no regular logic; it had neither a metaphysic, nor a theodicea, nor a cosmology; it had a little of morals and politics, but no system. The merits of the Scotch, as of Locke, are clearness and good sense; their faults are the absence of any speculative ability, the want of comprehensiveness and of rigorous precision." (Cours de Philosophie, Intro. à l'Hist. de Phil., Leçon XII.)

In the following year (1793) Dugald Stewart published his 'Outlines of Moral Philosophy,' a text-book for his pupils: and the 'Life of Adam Smith,' which appeared in the Transactions' of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and which was followed by the 'Life of Dr. Robertson' in 1796, and the Life of Dr. Reid' in 1802. They have been subsequently reprinted. His activity was unceasing; and in 1800 he added a series of 'Lectures on Political Economy' to his heavy professional duties, but they were not continued. On several occasions when his colleagues were ill, he gave temporary lectures for them on natural philosophy, logic, and rhetoric. In the winter of 1808-9, from grief at the loss of his younger son, which brought on a severe indisposition, he was obliged to have a deputy to discharge his duties. In the following session, seeing little prospect of recovering his health, he resigned altogether; and in May 1810, Dr. Thomas Brown, his late assistant, was appointed in his place. Dugald Stewart having now retired from public life, lived constantly at Kinneill House, on the Frith of Forth, about twenty miles west from Edinburgh, where he devoted himself to the prosecution of his favourite studies. The fruits of his retirement were not slow in manifesting themselves: in 1810 appeared his first volume of Philosophical Essays,' in the preface to which he says, "The state of my health having interrupted, for many months past, the continuation of my work on the human mind, I was induced to attempt, in the meantime, the easier task of preparing for the press a volume of Essays." Yet it is in this work, which he considered the "easier task," that he has best proved his claim to the title of a metaphysician, which is noticed both by Sir James Mackintosh and Professor Cousin (Fragmens Philosophiques,' p. 78); indeed his chief work, as he frankly owns, is rather a collection of such theories pointing towards the common end of throwing light on the structure and functions of the mind, than a systematic treatise, such as might be expected from the title of elements. "It is in essays of this kind," says Mackintosh, "that he has most surpassed other cultivators of mental philosophy. His remarks on the effect of casual associations may be quoted as a specimen of the most original and just thoughts conveyed in the best manner." (Dissertation prefixed to Ency. Britan.,' p. 329.) The Philosophical Essays' reached three editions in seven years; the contents of the volume are various and interesting,-on Locke, Berkeley, Influence of Locke on the Philosophy of France; Metaphysical Theories of Hartley, Priestley, and Darwin; on Philological Speculations; on the Beautiful, Sublime, Taste, and Culture of Intellectual Habits. In 1814 the second volume of his 'Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind' appeared; but was not so well received, and never, we believe, reached a second edition. In 1815 appeared his celebrated Preliminary Dissertation to the Supplement of the Encyclopædia Britannica,' entitled 'A General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Science since the Revival of Letters;' a work for which his discursive reading well fitted him. It enjoys considerable popularity, and chiefly owing to these very qualities, for as a philosophical view of the progress of the metaphysical sciences it is almost worthless. He never once rises to any comprehensive principle. There is no unity in that mass of writing, of criticism, and notes. He never attempts to seize the spirit of each age, and to show how it influenced others. All is isolated. Pleasant and clever as the adversaria of some student, but very inefficient if looked on as a treatise or consulted as a history. As a specimen of his carelessness, we may mention the entire omission of Spinoza, a man whose influence on speculative philosophy has been only second to that of his master Des Cartes. His extreme carelessness as to any systematic comprehension of what he was to perform, and his neglect as to arrangement of materials, are, as is remarked by a writer in the Quarterly Review,' shown in the author's advertisement,' wherein we are told that his original design (as is well known to his friends) was to comprise in ten or twelve sheets all the preliminary matter which he was to contribute to the 'Supplement.' It has now extended to six times this length, and we are informed that he has only discussed one of the three divisions under which he had projected to arrange his subject. We cannot but observe that this fact sufficiently justifies all that we had ventured to say on the desultory and unpremeditated manner in which the work must have been prepared. Yet in the face of this, and of the internal evidence of its desultory nature, Sir James Mackintosh declares this discourse to be "the most splendid of Mr. Stewart's works." (Edin. Review,' Sept. 1816, p. 191. See also a second article by the same hand on this Discourse, 'Edin. Review,' October 1821, pp. 220-267.)

Stewart remained silent from this period till 1821, when the second part of his 'Discourse' was published, and attracted as much attention as the former, and more hostility, because it was principally occupied with a weak and cavilling attack on Locke and his school. The following year he suffered from palsy, which interrupted his labours till 1827,

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