firmed by an observation of Mr. Thomas Hearne, who says, 'that Sir Isaac was a man of no very promising aspect. He was a short well-set man. He was full of

thought, and spoke very little in company, so that his conversation was not agreeable. When he rode in his coach one arm would be out of his coach on one side, and the other on the other.' Sir Isaac never wore spectacles, and never lost more than one tooth to the day of his death.'

The social character of Sir Isaac Newton was such as might have been expected from his intellectual attainments. He was modest, candid, and affable, and without any of the eccentricities of genius, suiting himself to every company, and speaking of himself and others in such a manner that he was never

even suspected of vanity. But this,' says Dr. Pemberton, I immediately discovered in him, which at once both surprised and charmed me. Neither his extreme great age, nor his universal reputation, had rendered him stiff in opinion, or in any degree elated. Of this I had occasion to have almost daily experience. The remarks I continually sent him by letters on the Principia were received with the utmost goodness. These were so far from being anyways displeasing to him, that on the contrary they occasioned him to speak many kind things of me to my friends, and to honour me with a public testimony of his good opinion.'"-Vol. II., pp. 413-414, 406-407.

Of his intellect Sir David thus speaks:

"The peculiar character of his genius, and the method which he pursued in his inquiries, can be gathered only from the study of his works, and from the history of his individual labours. Were we to judge of the qualities of his mind from the early age at which he made his principal discoveries, and from the rapidity of their succession, we should be led to ascribe to him that quickness of penetration, and that exuberance of invention, which is more characteristic of poetical than of philosophical genius. But we must recollect that Newton was placed in the most favourable circumstances for the development of his powers. The flower of his youth, and the vigour of his manhood, were entirely devoted to science. No injudicious guardian controlled his ruling passion, and no ungenial studies or professional toils interrupted the continuity of his pursuits. His discoveries were therefore the fruit of persevering and unbroken study; and he himself declared, that whatever service he had done to the public was not owing to any extraordinary

sagacity, but solely to industry and patient thought.

"Initiated early into the abstractions of geometry, he was deeply imbued with her cautious spirit. And if his acquisitions were not made with the rapidity of intuition, they were at least firmly secured; and the grasp which he took of his subject was proportional to the mental labour which it had exhausted. Overlooking what was trivial, and separating what was extraneous, he bore down with instinctive sagacity on the prominences of his subject, and having thus grappled with its difficulties, he never failed to entrench himself in its strongholds.

"To the highest powers of invention Newton added, what so seldom accompanies them, the talent of simplifying and communicating his profoundest speculations. In the economy of her distributions, nature is seldom thus lavish of her intellectual gifts. The inspired genius which creates is rarely conferred along with the matured judgment which combines, and yet without the exertion of both, the fabric of human wisdom could never have been reared."-Vol. ii., pp. 399, 400.

We have not endeavoured to give anything like a complete abstract of Sir David Brewster's book. We would rather lead the reader to refer to it himself for his own perusal. It is full of interesting and valuable matter, since not only does it contain the best account hitherto given of the life of Sir Isaac Newton, but each of the great subjects in which he made discoveries is popularly explained, and its history brought down almost to the present day.

Were we disposed to be critical, we might take exception to occasional faults of style, especially to certain ambitious passages, in which, though the matter is good, there is a certain effort and straining after effect too plainly visible. There are also some needless repetitions of the same matter introduced at one time in its proper chronological order, and at another because of its connexion with other parts of the same subject. Repetitions, however, are better than omissions, and in the life of such a man as Newton we care little for minor faults in the manner of relation, so that we have all the ascertainable facts completely stated, and their nature and connexion adequately pointed out.

MR. REEVE, the learned reviser of a new and recently published edition of Bulstrode Whitelocke's "Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653-54," remarks upon the close amity between Sweden and this country, of which that mission formed the basis, that "though the power of Britain has increased in that interval, and the power of Sweden has declined, many of the same considerations and inducements exist in equal or in greater force, at this moment, to lead the statesmen of England to give their best support to the Crown of Sweden, and to desire that Sweden should regain that ascendancy in the Baltic which she so gloriously acquired and exercised in the seventeenth century." The soundness of this opinion will, we believe, be generally admitted; and we do not doubt that a glimpse of Cromwell's first exploit, in the character of a high contracting party, will be, just now, especially interesting to our readers, as recalling to their recollection the position and policy of Sweden, such as they were two hundred years since, and such as it is not impossible they may again be before the present troubles of Europe shall be composed. There are, indeed, few epochs in history to which Englishmen - whatever may be their private sentiments with respect to the divine right of governing, or of overturning governments-commonly look back with so much of pride and pleasure as those first years of the latter half of the seventeenth century, when, to use the eloquent words of Mr. Macaulay, "after half a century, during which England had been scarcely of more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, at or.ce she became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West India Islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the reformed churches scattered over Roman Ca

tholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps, professed a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppression by the mere terror of that great name. The Pope himself was forced to preach humanity and moderation to Popish princes. For a voice which seldom threatened in vain had declared, that unless favour were shown to the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle of St. Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake and that of his family, so much reason to desire, as a general religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain of the Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him." Deeply impressed with these convictions, as Cromwell certainly was, it was natural that he should turn with friendly intent to that nation whose illustrious king had, twenty years earlier, laid down his commision as champion of the Protestant faith, and his life, upon the bloody field of Lützen. The regular course of his personal ambition must seem to have led him to claim successorship to Gustavus Adolphus; and in no way could be, at that period, have advanced his claim more effectually than by cultivating a close alliance with Sweden, which that great soldier had raised into the position of a bulwark of Protestant Europe. In this policy, Cromwell was encouraged by the general feeling of the English nation, and by a romantic admiration for his own character, very freely expressed by Queen Christina. "The business (he said, in one of his conversations respecting the embassy) is of exceeding great importance to the Commonwealth, as any can be; that it is: and there is no prince or state in Christendom with whom there is any probability for us to have a friendship, but only the Queen of Sweden. She hath sent several times to us, but we have returned no embassy to her, only a letter by a young gentleman. She expects an ambassador from us; and if we should not send a man of emi

nency to her, she would think herself slighted by us and she is a lady of great honour, and stands much upon ceremonies." At that time, it is to be remembered, Christina was in the full enjoyment of the power and prestige bequeathed to her by her renowned father, whose territorial conquests from Russia, Poland, and Denmark, were recorded in her style and titles of Queen of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals; Great Prince of Finland, Duke of Esthonia, Carelia, Bremen, Veherden, Stettin, Pomerland, Cassubia and Vandalia, Prince of Rugia, and Lady of Ingria and of Wismar. A glance at the map will show what has become of all these fair principalities and lordships; but they were then held with no feeble hand by that able and brave, though eccentric and unsteady, princess, and guarded by the wisdom of one of the truest and sagest servants monarch ever trusted in-the illustrious Chancellor Axel Oxenstiern. An alliance, offensive and defensive, with Sweden was then, truly, a worthy object of English diplomacy. Cromwell thought so; and he selected for his representative a man peculiarly fitted for the office, who fortunately recorded the minutest details of his own opinions and acts, and of those of others, so far as he could ascertain them, in the course of his mission. Upon the product of this labour, in the "Journal of the Swedish Embassy," we shall draw freely, and yet leave untouched a mine of curious and, to the political student, highly useful information.

Bulstrode Whitelocke, one of Cromwell's Commissioners of the Great Seal and his Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Sweden, may probably be set down as a member of the class known in those days as "waiters upon Providence." Bred a lawyer,

he had served as a soldier and in

several civil employments, carrying with him throughout many of the habits and feelings engendered by those various pursuits, curiously tempered by their contrasts, and by the circumstances of his birth and education as a gentleman, and his strong and manifestly sincere religious views. "He never led, but followed (says Lord Clarendon) and was rather carried away by the torrent than swam with the stream;" and his third wife draws his character with a still more graphic pen, when she tells him in a dialogue

recorded by himself, that "though serviceable in some things, he was yet not thorough-paced." He had a profound faith in the British constitution; although, when occasion required subtlety in reconciling the letter to the spirit, his conscience was "lawyer-like, and of the common fashion." He was brave and punctilious; but yet a thorough old soldier, when his business was to procure intelligence or supplies. And finally, he was a man of honour and good breeding, ready to maintain. with his sword the precedence of the Commonwealth of England at a court ceremony, and proud of being taken out by Queen Christina to dance the brawls, in that he thus satisfied her majesty that he was a gentleman, and bred a gentleman, and that the Hollanders were lying fellows to report that there were none but mechanics of the Parliament party. Still, he stoutly resisted all temptations to desecrate the Lord's Day with worldly business, or the ball of pleasure, and testified against "that wicked custom of cup-health pledging" so no. bly, as to set the soul of one Jonathan Pickes, a savory member of a congregation in London, "and many more, a-praising God on his behalf." It was, no doubt, the possession of these various and somewhat opposite qualities and virtues that recommended Whitelocke to Cromwell as his representative in this "very honourable business;" and Oliver was manifestly sincere when he urged him to undertake it "as the fittest man in the nation for this service. We know your abilities (continued the General), having long conversed with you; we know you have languages, and have travelled, and understand the interest of Christendom; and I have known you in the army to endure hardships, and to be healthful and strong, and of mettle, discretion, and parts most fit for this employment. You are so indeed; really no man is so fit for it as you are. We know you to be a gentleman of a good family, related to persons of honour; and your present office of Commissioner of the Seal will make you more acceptable to her. I do earnestly desire you to undertake it, wherein you will do an act of great merit, and advantage to the Commonwealth, as great as any member of it can perform; and which will be as well accepted by them." The service was one beset with dangers. The only two persons who had been charged with high diplomatic

missions from the Commonwealth had been murdered-Dr. Dorislaus at the Hague, by a party of the king's friends, in 1649; and Roger Ascham at Madrid, in the succeeding year. It was also supposed by Whitelocke's wife, and some of his friends, that the proposed embassy was designed as an honourable banishment: "he [the General] means no good to you, but would be rid of you," was the argument of Mrs. Whitelocke, who, with abundance of tears, implored him to think of the irreparable loss his death would be to her, and their "twelve children, and a thirteenth coming-most of them unable to help themselves." On his own part, Whitelocke was not free from a feeling that it was unsafe to commit himself to the existing regime in so open and decided a manner as the undertaking of an embassy. His habitual caution "objected that the authority under whose commission he was to act in this great business, was not justifiable by the law of God, or of this nation, and he the more liable to punishment if a change should come." This case of conscience was, however, settled as before the nation, by the subtlety of his legal friends, who proved the existence and authority of a government de facto, and as before God, by the text, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.' "As to matter of prudence, he was said to be so far engaged already with the Parlia ment party, that he could not go back; that if any change should be made with force, it would be safer to be from among them than in the midst of them; if it were made upon terms, he, though absent, should be comprised in them. The argument was summed up in a discourse with William Cooke, an ancient, sober, discreet, and faithful servant to Whitelocke and his father, above fifty years, which is so characteristic of the times, and so illustrative of the state of affairs, that we must direct our readers' attention towards it by a short extract:—

"COOKE-If you be sent over sea, I pray God bless you, and send you well home again.

"WHITELOCKE-There will be some danger of coming well home again.

"Co. Why, sir, many honest gentlemen before now have been sent over seas, and yet have returned well home again; and so I hope will you.

"WH. But this is a journey of more danger than ordinary.

"Co.-Sir, you have been in great danger ere now, and God has kept you; and so, I hope, He will still.

"WH.-I perceive you are not so much against my going as others are.

"Co.-I see no cause to be much against it, that's the truth on't; because I hope it may be for the good of you and yours, which I wish with all my heart, and ever did. "WH. - But do you not think it would be more for our good for me to stay at home?

"Co. That you know best; but this I think, that if by going abroad you may gain a good advantage to your state, and by staying at home you will only spend of it, then it will be more for your good to go abroad than to stay at home. But these things are above me.

"WH.-You speak reason, William.

"Co.-I cannot tell that; for I have heard that our great man, I mean my lord general, would have you to go; and if it be so, and yet you will stay at home, I doubt there may be as much danger for you to stay as to go.

"WH. It is true, the General would have me go; but I am not bound to obey him in all things.

"Co. I am deceived if he will not be obeyed in what he hath a mind to.

"WH. I am not under his command; what can he do to me?

"Co.-What can he do? What can he not do? Do not we all see he does what he list? We poor countrymen are forced to obey him to our cost; and if he have a mind to punish us or you, it's an old proverb, that it is an easy thing to find a staff to beat a dog; and I would not have you to anger him, lest you bring danger and trouble too upon you and your family and state; that's the truth on't.

"WH.-I fully agree with you in this."

And so Whitelocke determined, as it was manifest from the first serious moving of the matter that he would, to undertake a "very honourable business," wherein he might be instru mental to promote the Protestant interest, and to do service to good people both at home and abroad. Whether or not he should be able to accomplish that design was fully discussed upon the Lord's Day, September 11, 1653, the discussion being deemed a fitting sabbatical work. It was objected :

"That the people of these parts, whither he was to go, differ wholly from our persuasion in matters of religion; and though

they are Protestants after the doctrine of Luther, yet they are not so easily to be reconciled to those of other tenets, nor to be brought to join with them; and they have a sharp averseness to the opinions of Calvin, and look upon us as most favouring them, and more than those of their great author, Luther.

"On the other part it was said, that though the Swedish and German professors are generally Lutherans, yet they are Protestants, and agree with us in fundamentals, and against the Roman Church.

"That the Queen of Sweden, but chiefly her father, and many of his great men yet living, have testified much affection to the Protestant cause, and are forward to promote it; that such a person as Whitelocke, being with them upon the place, and discoursing with them about these matters, wherein he is able to give them so much satisfaction, and such as they have not had an opportunity so fully to receive before; and the example of Whitelocke and his company, to work upon them to a greater liking of our ways and profession, accompanied with such practice, would gain a better acceptation with them than any they have formerly given to those from whom at present they do differ; and will much persuade towards a firm amity and union with this Commonwealth.

"That there is no other nation in Christendom from whom the Swedes can rationally expect such a friendship and union, but only England, especially in matters of religion, and for strength against the Popish party, who love not them nor us.

"The Protestant princes of Germany are not at this day so considerable, nor so free of differences and jealousies among themselves and against the Crown of Sweden, nor so secure of nearer enemies, as to be much assistance to the Swedes, who will hardly be reconciled and united to the Danes, to join with them against the Papists. The French Protestants are overpowered at home, the Switzers are too far off, the Netherlanders too much in league with the Danes, and in love with trade; so that the English only are the people with whom the Swedes may hope for a fair amity and unity for the Protestant interest against the common enemy thereof, the Popish party."

In this brief sketch of European politics, two centuries old, it needs but to change a few names to bring before the mind a lively presentment of the form and feature of the present time. The despotic party of that day was called Popish it is now called Russian. Security against oppression was then associated in men's minds with an ecclesiastical, as it is now with a civil constitution; and, as is well worthy of remark, the religious patriot

was as zealous to thrust his freedom down all other men's throats, at point of pike, as the revolutionary propagandist of our own time is to reduce the world under the heavy yoke of his churchless, and kingless, and lawless liberty. Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men roused the fears of the German princes then, as Socialists and Red Republicans rouse them now, while the sharp averseness existing in the seventeenth century between the Calvinist and Lutheran professors, notwithstanding their agreement in fundamentals, and against the Roman Church, is represented in the nineteenth by the repulsion that keeps asunder democrats and constitutionalists, and dividing the camp of freedom, exposes it an easy prey to the common enemy. Although the Swede and the Dane must clearly see the doom that impends over both, they will hardly be reconciled and united to join against the Russians. The Prussian and Austrian people are overpowered by their kings and armies at home, the Switzers are still too far off, the Netherlanders still too much in league with the Czar, and in love with trade; so that in truth it behoves the Swedes at this very day to desire a firm amity and union with England for the independence of Europe against the common enemy thereof the Russian party unless they be content to submit passively to an erasure of the glorious name of Sweden from the list of nations.

No sooner had Whitelocke signified to Cromwell his assent to the proposal made to him, than the matter was brought before the Parliament in a report from the council, which was agreed to nemine contradicente, but not without some little grumbling on the part of" one of the members, who had an opinion of himself to be more godly than others, and who did object that they knew not whether Whitelocke were a godly man or not; as though he might be otherwise qualified, yet, if he were not a godly man, it was not fit to send him ambassador." The next object of care was to prepare for the embassy, which was done (despite of some higgling by the council) in such a manner as plainly to show the importance attached by Cromwell to the impression as to the grandeur and power of England, and as to the aristocratic character of its rulers, to produce which upon the mind of Europe