did. One evening, when he was so occupied, I was playing the piano, when

suddenly I fainted; he was very much startled, as neither I nor any of our family had ever done such a thing. When I recovered, I said it was the smell of garlic that had made me ill. The truth was, the mineral contained arsenic, and I was poisoned for the time by the fumes.

At this time we formed an acquaintance with Dr. Wollaston, which soon became a lasting friendship. He was gentlemanly, a cheerful companion, and a philosopher; he was also of agreeable appearance, having a remarkably fine, intellectual head. He was essentially a chemist, and discovered palladium; but there were few branches of science with which he was not more or less acquainted. He made experiments to discover imponderable matter; I believe, with regard to the ethereal medium. Mr. Brand, of the Royal Institution, enraged him by sending so strong a current of electricity through a machine he had made to prove electro-magnetic rotation, as to destroy it. His characteristic was extreme accuracy, which particularly fitted him for giving that precision to the science of crystallography which it had not hitherto attained. By the invention of the goniometer which bears his name, he was enabled to measure the angle formed by the faces of a crystal by means of the reflected images of bright objects seen in them. We bought a goniometer, and Dr. Wollaston, who often dined with us, taught Somerville and me how to use it, by measuring the angles of many of our crystals during the evening. I learnt a great deal on a variety of subjects besides crystallography from Dr. Wollaston, who, at his death, left me a collection of models of the forms of all the natural crystals then known.

Though still occasionally occupied with the mineral productions of the earth, I became far more interested in the formation of the earth itself. Geologists had excited public attention, and had shocked the clergy and the more scrupulous of the laity by proving beyond a doubt that the formation of the globe extended through enormous periods of time. The contest was even more keen then than it is at the present time about the various races of prehistoric men. It lasted very long, too; for after I had published my work on Physical Geography, I was preached against by name in York Cathedral. Our friend, Dr. Buckland, committed himself by taking the clerical view in his "Bridgewater Treatise;" but facts are such stubborn things that he was obliged to join the geologists at last. He and Mrs. Buckland invited Somerville and me to spend a week with them in Christchurch College, Oxford. Mr. and Mrs. Murchison were their guests at the same time. Mr. Murchison (now Sir Roderick) was then rising rapidly to the pre-eminence he now holds as a geologist. We spent every day in seeing some of the numerous objects of interest in that celebrated university, venerable for its antiquity, historical records, and noble architecture.

Somerville and I used frequently to spend the evening with Captain and Mrs. Kater. Dr. Wollaston, Dr. Young, and others were generally of the party; sometimes we had music, for Captain and Mrs. Kater sang very prettily. All kinds of scientific subjects were discussed, experiments tried and astronomical observations made in a little garden in front of the house. One evening we had been trying the power of a telescope in separating double stars till about two in the morning; on our way home we saw a light in Dr. Young's window, and when Somerville rang the bell, down came the doctor himself in his dressing-gown, and said, "Come in; I have something curious to show you." Astronomical signs are frequently found on ancient Egyptian monuments, and were supposed to have been employed by the priests to record dates. Now Dr. Young had received a papyrus from Egypt, sent to him by Mr. Salt, who had found it in a mummy-case; and that very evening he had proved it to be a horoscope of the age of the Ptolemies, and had determined the date from the configuration of the heavens at the time of its construction. Dr. Young had already made himself famous by the interpretation of hieroglyphic characters on a stone which had been brought to the British Museum from Rosetta in Egypt. On that stone there is an inscription in Hieroglyphics, the sacred symbolic language of the early Egyptians; another in the Enchorial or spoken language of that most ancient people, and a mutilated inscription in Greek. By the aid of some fragments of papyri Dr. Young discovered that the Enchorial language is alphabetical, and that nine of its letters correspond with ours; moreover, he discovered such a relation between the Enchorial and the hieroglyphic inscription that he interpreted the latter and published his discoveries in the years 1815 and 1816.

M. Champollion, who had been on the same pursuit, examined the fine collection of papyri in the museum at Turin, and afterwards went to Egypt to pursue his studies on hieroglyphics, to our knowledge of which he contributed greatly. It is to be regretted that one who had brought that branch of science to such perfection should have been so ungenerous as to ignore the assistance he had received from the researches of Dr. Young. When the Royal Institution was first established, Dr. Young lectured on natural philosophy. He proved the undulatory theory of light by direct experiment, but as it depended upon the hypothesis of an ethereal medium, it was not received in England, the more so as it was contrary to Newton's theory. The French _savants_ afterwards did Young ample justice. The existence of the ethereal medium is now all but proved, since part of the corona surrounding the moon during a total solar eclipse is polarized--a phenomenon depending on matter. Young's Lectures, which had been published, were a mine of riches to me. He was of a Quaker family; but although he left the Society of Friends at an early age, he retained their formal precision of manner to the last. He was of a kindly disposition, and his wife and her sisters, with whom I was intimate, were much attached to him. Dr. Young was an elegant and critical scholar at a very early age; he was an astronomer, a mathematician, and there were few branches of science in which he was not versed. When young, his Quaker habits did not prevent him from taking lessons in music and dancing. I have heard him accompany his sister-in-law with the flute, while she played the piano. When not more than sixteen years of age he was so remarkable for steadiness and acquirements that he was engaged more as a companion than tutor to young Hudson Gurney, who was nearly of his own age. One spring morning Young came to breakfast in a bright green coat, and said in explanation of his somewhat eccentric costume for one who had been a Quaker, that it was suitable to the season. One day, on returning from their ride Gurney, leaped his horse over the stable-yard gate. Young, trying to do the same, was thrown; he got up, mounted, and made a second attempt with no better success; the third time he kept his seat, then quietly dismounting, he said, "What one man can do, another may."

* * * * *

One bright morning Dr. Wollaston came to pay us a visit in Hanover Square, saying, "I have discovered seven dark lines crossing the solar spectrum, which I wish to show you;" then, closing the window-shutters so as to leave only a narrow line of light, he put a small glass prism into my hand, telling me how to hold it. I saw them distinctly. I was among the first, if not the very first, to whom he showed these lines, which were the origin of the most wonderful series of cosmical discoveries, and have proved that many of the substances of our globe are also constituents of the sun, the stars, and even of the nebulae. Dr. Wollaston gave me the little prism, which is doubly valuable, being of glass manufactured at Munich by Fraunhofer, whose table of dark lines has now become the standard of comparison in that marvellous science, the work of many illustrious men, brought to perfection by Bunsen and Kirchhoff.

* * * * *

Sir William Herschel had discovered that what appeared to be single stars were frequently two stars in such close approximation that it required a very high telescopic power to see them separately, and that in many of these one star was revolving in an orbit round the other. Sir James South established an observatory at Campden Hill, near Kensington, where he and Sir John Herschel united in observing the double stars and binary systems with the view of affording further data for improving our knowledge of their movements. In each two observations are requisite, namely, the distance between the two stars, and the angle of position, that is, the angle which the meridian, or a parallel to the equator makes with the lines joining the two stars. These observations were made by adjusting a micrometer to a very powerful telescope, and were data sufficient for the determination of the orbit of the revolving star, should it be a binary system. I have given an account of this in the "Connexion of the Physical Sciences," so I shall only mention here that in one or two of the binary systems the revolving star has been seen to make more than one revolution, and that the periodical times and the elliptical elements of a great many other orbits have been calculated, though they are more than 200,000 times farther from the sun than we are.

After Sir John Herschel was married, we paid him a visit at Slough; fortunately, the sky was clear, and Sir John had the kindness to show me many nebulae and clusters of stars which I had never seen to such advantage as in his 20 ft. telescope. I shall never forget the glorious appearance of Jupiter as he entered the field of that instrument.

For years the British nation was kept in a state of excitement by the Arctic voyages of our undaunted seamen in quest of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The idea was not new, for a direct way to our Eastern possessions had been long desired. On this occasion the impulse was given by William Scoresby, captain of a whaler, who had sailed on the east coast of Greenland as high as the 80th parallel of latitude, and for two successive seasons had found that the sea between Greenland and Spitzbergen was free of ice for 18,000 square miles--a circumstance which had not occurred before in the memory of man. Scoresby was of rare genius, well versed in science, and of strict probity. When he published this discovery, the Admiralty, in the year 1818, sent off two expeditions, one under the command of Captains Franklin and Buchan to the east of Greenland, and another under Captains Ross and Parry to Baffin's Bay. Such was the beginning of a series of noble adventures, now the province of history.

I had an early passion for everything relating to the sea, and when my father was at home I never tired asking him questions about his voyages and the dangers to which he had been exposed. Now, when I knew something of nautical science, I entered with enthusiasm into the spirit of these Arctic voyages; nor was my husband less interested. We read Scoresby's whaling voyages with great delight, and we made the acquaintance of all the officers who had been on these northern expeditions.

Sir Edward Parry, who had brought us minerals and seeds of plants from Melville Island, invited us to see the ships prepared for his third voyage, and three years' residence in the Arctic seas. It is impossible to describe how perfectly everything was arranged: experience had taught them what was necessary for such an expedition. On this occasion I put in practice my lessons in cookery by making a large quantity of orange marmalade for the voyage. When, after three years, the ships returned, we were informed that the name of Somerville had been given to an island so far to the north that it was all but perpetually covered with ice and snow. Notwithstanding the sameness which naturally prevails in the narratives of these voyages, they are invested with a romantic interest by the daring bravery displayed, and by the appalling difficulties overcome. The noble endeavour of Lady Franklin to save her gallant husband, and the solitary voyage of Sir Leopold McClintock in a small yacht in search of his lost friend, form the touching and sad termination to a very glorious period of maritime adventure. More than fifty years after these events I renewed my acquaintance with Lady Franklin. She and her niece came to see me at Spezia on their way to Dalmatia. She had circumnavigated the globe with her husband when he was governor in Australia. After his loss she and her niece had gone round the world a second time, and she assured me that although they went to Japan and China (less known at that time than they are now), they never experienced any difficulty. Seeing ladies travelling alone, people were always willing to help them. The French sent a Polar expedition under Captain Gaimard in the years 1838 and 1839; and the United States of North America took an active part in Arctic exploration. Whether Dr. Kane's discovery of an open polar ocean will ever be verified is problematical; at all events, the deplorable fate of Sir John Franklin has put a stop to the chance of it for the present; yet it is a great geographical question which we should all like to see decided.

Captain Sabine, of the Artillery (now General Sir Edward Sabine, President of the Royal Society), was appointed to accompany the first expedition under Captains Ross and Parry on account of his high scientific acquirements. The observations made during the series of Arctic voyages on the magnetism of the earth, combined with an enormous mass of observations made by numerous observers in all parts of the globe by sea and by land, have enabled Sir Edward Sabine, after a labour of nearly fifty years, to complete his marvellous system of terrestrial magnetism in both hemispheres. During that long period a friendship has lasted between Sir Edward and me. He has uniformly sent me copies of all his works; to them I chiefly owe what I know on the subject, and quite recently I have received his latest and most important publication. Sir Edward married a lady of talent and scientific acquirements. She translated "Cosmos" from the German, and assisted and calculated for her husband in his laborious work.

I do not remember the exact period, but I think it was subsequent to the Arctic voyages, that the theory was discovered of those tropical hurricanes which cause such devastation by sea and land. Observations are now made on barometric pressure, and warnings are sent to our principal seaports by telegraph, as well as along both sides of the Channel; but notwithstanding numerous disastrous shipwrecks occur every winter on our dangerous coasts. They were far more numerous in my younger days. Life-boats were not then invented; now they are stationed on almost every coast of Great Britain, and on many continental shores. The readiness with which they are manned, and the formidable dangers encountered to save life, show the gallant, noble character of the sailor.