I had been for some time contemplating the possibility of retiring altogether from business. I had got enough of the world's goods, and was willing to make way for younger men. But I found it difficult to break loose from old associations. Like the retired tallow-chandler, I might wish to go back “on melting days.” I had some correspondence with my old friend David Roberts, Royal Academician, on the subject. He wrote to me on the 2d June 1853, and said:—

“I rejoice to learn, from the healthy tone that breathes throughout your epistle, that you are as happy as every one who knows you wishes you to be, and as prosperous as you deserve. Knowing, also, as I do, your feeling for art and all that tends to raise and dignify man, I most sincerely congratulate you on the prospect of your being able to retire, in the full vigour of manhood, to follow out that sublime pursuit, in comparison with which the painter's art is but a faint glimmering. ‘The Landscape of other worlds’ you alone have sketched for us, and enlightened us on that with which the ancient world but gazed upon and worshipped in the symbol of Astarte, Isis, and Diana. We are matter-of-fact now, and have outlived childhood. What say you of a photograph of those wonderful drawings? It may come to that.”

Our history begins long before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of ancestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially in the more civilised races. At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves. It may be a generous enthusiasm, or, as some might say, a harmless vanity, to take pride in the honour of their name. The gifts of nature, however, are more valuable than those of fortune; and no line of ancestry, however honourable, can absolve us from the duty of diligent application and perseverance, or from the practice of the virtues of self-control and self-help.

Sir Bernard Burke, in his Peerage and Baronetage, gives a faithful account of the ancestors from whom I am lineally descended. “The family of Naesmyth,” he says, “is one of remote antiquity in Tweeddale, and has possessed lands there since the 13th century.” They fought in the wars of Bruce and Baliol, which ended in the independence of Scotland.

The following is the family legend of the origin of the name of Naesmyth:—

Before I went to school it was my good fortune to be placed under the special care of my eldest sister, Jane. She was twenty years older than myself, and had acquired much practical experience in the management of the younger members of the family. I could not have had a more careful teacher. She initiated me into the depths of A B C, and by learning me to read she gave me the key to the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers who have ever lived.

But all this was accomplished at first in a humdrum and tentative way. About seventy years ago children's books were very uninteresting. In the little stories manufactured for children, the good boy ended in a coach-and-four, and the bad boy in a ride to Tyburn. The good boys must have been a set of little snobs and prigs, and I could scarcely imagine that they could ever have lived as they were represented in these goody books. If so, they must have been the most tiresome and uninteresting vermin that can possibly be imagined.

After my sister had done what she could for me, I was sent to school to learn English. I was placed under the tuition of a leading teacher called Knight, whose schoolroom was in the upper storey of a house in George Street.

The rapid extension of railways and steam navigation, both at home and abroad, occasioned a largely increased demand for machinery of all kinds. Our order-book was always full; and every mechanical workshop felt the impulse of expanding trade. There was an increased demand for skilled mechanical labour—a demand that was far in excess of the supply. Employers began to outbid each other, and wages rapidly rose. At the same time the disposition to steady exertion on the part of the workmen began to decline.

This state of affairs had its usual effect. It increased the demand for self-acting tools, by which the employers might increase the productiveness of their factories without having resort to the costly and untrustworthy method of meeting the demand by increasing the number of their workmen. Machine tools were found to be of much greater advantage. They displaced hand-dexterity, and muscular force. They were unfailing in their action. They could not possibly go wrong in planing and turning, because they were regulated by perfect modelling and arrangements of parts. They were always ready for work, and never required a Saint Monday.

As the Bridgewater Foundry had been so fortunate as to earn for itself a considerable reputation for mechanical contrivances, the workshops were always busy.

When James Watt retired from business towards the close of his useful and admirable life, he spoke to his friends of occupying himself with “ingenious trifles,” and of turning “some of his idle thoughts” upon the invention of an arithmetical machine and a machine for copying sculpture. These and other useful works occupied his attention for many years.

It was the same with myself. I had good health (which Watt had not) and abundant energy. When I retired from business I was only forty-eight years old, which may be considered the prime of life. But I had plenty of hobbies, perhaps the chief of which was Astronomy. No sooner had I settled at Hammerfield than I had my telescopes brought out and mounted. The fine clear skies with which we were favoured, furnished me with abundant opportunities for the use of my instruments. I began again my investigations on the Sun and the Moon, and made some original discoveries, of which more anon.

Early in the year 1858 I received a pressing invitation from the Council of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society to give a lecture before their members on the Structure of the Lunar Surface. As the subject was a favourite one with me, and as I had continued my investigations and increased my store of drawings since I had last appeared before an Edinburgh audience, I cheerfully complied with their request.

Although Alexander Nasmyth had to a considerable extent lost his aristocratic connection as a portrait painter, yet many kind and generous friends gathered around him. During his sojourn in Italy, in 1783, he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, Haddingtonshire. The acquaintance afterwards ripened into a deeply-rooted friendship.

During the winter season Sir James resided with his family in his town house in George Street. He was passionately attached to the pursuit of art and science. He practised the art of painting in my father's room, and was greatly helped by him in the requisite manipulative skill. Sir James was at that time engaged in writing his wellknown essay “On the Origin of Gothic Architecture,” and in this my father was of important help to him. He executed the greater number of the illustrations to this beautiful work. The book when published had a considerable influence in restoring the taste of architects to a style which they had heretofore either neglected or degraded.

Besides his enthusiasm in art and architecture, Sir James devoted a great deal of time to the study of geology. The science was then in its infancy. Being an acute observer, Hall's attention was first attracted to the subject by the singular geological features of the sea-coast near his mansion at Dunglass.

I was born on the morning of the 19th of August 1808, at my father's house, No. 47 York Place, Edinburgh. I was named James Hall after my father's dear friend, Sir James Hall of Dunglass. My mother afterwards told me that I must have been “a very noticin' bairn,” as she observed me, when I was only a few days old, following with my little eyes any one who happened to be in the room, as if I had been thinking to my little self, “Who are you?”

After a suitable time I was put under the care of a nursemaid. I remember her well—Mary Peterkin—a truly Scandinavian name. She came from Haddingtonshire, where most of the people are of Scandinavian origin. Her hair was of a bright yellow tint. She was a cheerful young woman, and sang to me like a nightingale. She could not only sing old Scotch songs, but had a wonderful memory for fairy tales. When under the influence of a merry laugh, you could scarcely see her eyes; their twinkle was hidden by her eyelids and lashes. She was a willing worker, and was always ready to lend a helping hand at everything about the house. She took great pride in me, calling me her “laddie.”

When I was toddling about the house, another sister was born, the last of the family.

My father, Alexander Nasmyth, was the second son of Michael Nasmyth. He was born in his father's house in the Grassmarket on the 9th of September 1758. The Grassmarket was then a lively place. On certain days of the week it was busy with sheep and cattle fairs. It was the centre of Edinburgh traffic. Most of the inns were situated there, or in the street leading up to the Greyfriars' Church gate.

The view from my grandfather's house was very grand. Standing up, right opposite, was the steep Castle rock, with its crown buildings and circular battery towering high overhead. They seemed almost to hang over the verge of the rock. The houses on the opposite side of the Grassmarket were crowded under the esplanade of the Castle Hill.

There was an inn opposite the house where my father was born, from which the first coach started from Edinburgh to Newcastle. The public notice stated that “The Coach would set out from the Grass Market ilka Tuesday at Twa o'clock in the day, God wullin’, but whether or no on Wednesday.” The “whether or no” was meant, I presume, as a precaution to passengers, in case all the places on the coach might not be taken on Wednesday.

The Grassmarket was also the place for public executions. The gibbet stone was at the east end of the Market.

To Sir John Herschel.

91 Adelaide Road, March 25, 1867.

1867

My dear Sir John,—‘How do you bear this trying weather?’ asked a friend during the late froid d'enfer, as a Frenchman might say. ‘Trying weather!’ said I; ‘convicting weather! sentencing weather! penal servitude weather!’

The question between me and the College is simple. I entered that College on what all the world knows was its loudly vaunted principle, that the creed of neither teacher nor student was to be an element of his competence to teach or to learn. After forty years of existence the College, for worldly reasons, has decided that a teacher must not be too well known to be heterodox: he must not be conspicuous as a Unitarian. Breach of faith, surrender of principle, and D. I. O.

But this is not all. Between ourselves, the candidate who has been refused the chair of Mental Philosophy because he is so very wicked a Christian in religion, is also excluded because he is too much of a theist in philosophy. He cannot help founding his psychology on a moral Governor of the universe.

Now, I would not have objected to leaving the existence of God and His action on the minds of men an open question for the best qualified candidate to treat in his own way; but the interference of the College as a college, and a settlement of that question officially, is a step in which it concerns me, with my way of thinking, to take a part.

1806

Augustus De Morgan was born in the year 1806 at Madura, in the Madras Presidency. His father Lieutenant-Colonel De Morgan had held appointments, some of them staff situations, at several stations in India; and at the time of his fifth child's birth had chosen Madura in preference to Vellore on account of its comparative quietness. This choice was fortunate, for the battalion of Colonel De Morgan's regiment commanded by Colonel Fanshawe was at Vellore during the time of the mutiny of the native troops; and thus escaped the terrible outbreak in which several English officers lost their lives, and Colonel Fanshawe was murdered. Even at the quieter stations there was cause for alarm from the general disaffection of the native troops, and my husband's mother told how she, being then near her confinement, saw Colonel De Morgan, when the sentries were changed, creep out of bed to listen to the Sepoys, that he might learn if any plot were in agitation, about which information might be given with the password.

Voyage to England

When Augustus was seven months old his father and mother came to England with three children, two daughters and the infant. They sailed in the Duchess of Gordon, one of a convoy of nearly forty ships. The Commodore, Captain (afterwards Admiral) Sir John Beaufort, was on friendly terms with my husband in after life.

1827. William Frend.

It was at this time that he became acquainted with my father, William Frend. They first met at the office of the Nautical Almanac, of which their common friend, Lieutenant Stratford, R.N., had been recently appointed Comptroller. Mr. Frend and Mr. Stratford were both members of the old Mathematical, and subsequently of the Astronomical Society. Though my father was, even at that time, far behind Mr. De Morgan as a mathematician, the two had a good deal of mathematics in common. My father had been second wrangler in a year in which the two highest were close together, and was, as his son-in-law afterwards described him, an exceedingly clear thinker and writer. It is possible, as Mr. De Morgan said, that this mental clearness and directness may have caused his mathematical heresy, the rejection of the use of negative quantities in algebraical operations; and it is probable that he thus deprived himself of an instrument of work, the use of which might have led him to greater eminence in the higher branches. This same heresy gave occasion to many amusing arguments and discussions. But between these two sympathy in matters of morals and principle formed a stronger bond than similarity of pursuit. My father had sacrificed good prospects as a clergyman to his conscientious scruples about the doctrines of the Established Church, as expressed in the Creeds and Articles, and had been through life an earnest advocate of religious liberty.

To Sir J. Herschel.

5 Upper Gower Street, Oct. 16, 1832.

1832

My dear Sir John,—I have just duly received your Catalogue, which must in course of things be the first paper ordered for press, after those already so disposed of. I shall be very much obliged to you for all you have offered on the Catalogue, the Comet, and the Herscheliana. The crumbs which fall from a rich man's table are good—astronomically, whatever they may be gastronomically.

Have you got, or do you know anything of, Bouillaud's or Bullialdi's Astronomia Philolaica? There is a copy in the British Museum which wants the Prolegomena, which is the very part I want. The matter has reference to Vieta's Harmonicon Celeste, which has been supposed to be lost, and which I have a faint hope might be recovered. Bouillaud is reported to say that somebody stole it from Mersenne, and certainly Vossius quotes words to that effect from the Prolegomena. But my good friend M. Hachette assures me that this is a mistake, and that Bouillaud, in his unpublished MS. at Paris, says that he himself lent Vieta's MSS. to Leopold, Duke of Tuscany. If this be true, some library at Florence may yet contain it. I am the more inclined to hope this, as Schootten, in the Preface to Vieta, gives as his reason for omitting the Harmonicon Celeste, not that no copy was to be had, but that the only one he could get appeared imperfect.

To Rev. Dr. Whewell.

Camden Street, Oct. 21, 1846.

1846

My dear Sir,—First, I am very much obliged by your kind invitation, but my lectures are imperative, and I cannot leave town in November.

Next, as to Athenœum police report, you have made worse guesses, unless indeed you never were mistaken in your life.

Now as to the papers. The only wish I have for them to appear in one is that I may get my copies all at one time, and get them disposed of with one trouble. Whether, this condition being fulfilled, they are printed in the form of two papers or one does not matter, and I agree with you that they are distinct enough to be two, and might better be so.

I am going to publish a work on Logic, which, as I told you, will appear soon after the paper. This is sufficient reason for not developing in the paper. Indeed, the Society must know that fact, and take it into consideration in deciding on the printing. There is of course an advantage in new things going first through the usual channels in which scientific matters are propagated, and so I should like the Transactions to have them. But, tota re perspecta, the Society may think otherwise, particularly if there is heavy matter, typographically speaking, on hand already.

To his Mother.

1836

My dear Mother,—I have read your letter carefully; and the papers, and as much of the book as was necessary to show that it contained no argument, and was in fact addressed to those who already believe all it contains. If I can make you see clearly that our modes of arriving at what we believe to be true are so totally different that an attempt to discuss the subject together would be an impossibility, it is all I expect. If your knowledge of the New Testament had been of your own getting, unwarped by the devices of a Church of which it has always been the avowed doctrine to use every means which the age will allow to force men to agree to its own interpretations, I could go much farther, and could show you that taking every book of the New Testament to be an authority to that extent only in which it was recognised as an authority in the first three centuries, and taking the words in their most probable meaning, there is no ground of fear for any honest man who uses the best means in his power to come at truth.

1866

I come now to the last important event of my husband's life—the cessation of his connection with University College. In recording this I wish to dwell as little as possible on the fact, undoubted by all who were near him at the time, that his last illness resulted from mental trouble consequent upon it, in at least as great a degree as from the losses which befell us later. But however painful it is to write it, and however painful it may be to read for the survivors among those who were indirectly responsible for it, I have no choice but to state what was the belief of all who had the means of forming a true judgment.

He had joined University College in his early youth, in opposition to the advice of some of his nearest friends, who believed that his interests would not thereby be promoted, and to the satisfaction only of those in whose minds the upholding of a high principle was a more weighty consideration than worldly success or affluence. He was fully aware how much less lucrative a Professorship in a new institution was likely to be than many appointments which he might have obtained elsewhere. The associations, too, inseparable from a perfectly new institution were less congenial than those in which he would have found himself at either of the two Universities, where he would have worked under and with men whose habits of thought (in some ways) would have been more in harmony with his own.