These books have lately been issued in a new and expanded form, and with titles more consistent with the train of thought which pervades them. These are-The History of Scientific Ideas,' 'Novum Organum Renovatum,' 'The Philosophy of Discovery.' In these works there is one expressed thought, which should take deep root and grow into a sublime tree; but it is unfortunately checked in its development by the luxuriant growth of less ennobling plants. Another one of England's greatest philosophers says, "Science has scattered her material benefits so lavishly wherever she has been in presence, that no small number of her followers, and all the multitude, have left off gazing on the resplendency of her countenance in their eager scramble for her gifts." Dr. Whewell is not of the multitude. "I have not, therefore, aimed," he writes, "at imitating Bacon in those parts of his work in which he contemplates the increase of man's dominion over Nature as the main object of natural philosophy; being fully persuaded that, if Bacon himself had unfolded before him the great theories which have been established since his time, he would have acquiesced in their contemplation, and would readily have proclaimed the real reason for aiming at the knowledge of such truths to be that they are true."

'Indications of the Creator' was an answer given by Dr. Whewell to the humiliating philosophy of the 'Vestiges of Creation.' In the Indications' there are beautiful outbursts of a true religious feeling, interwoven with the thoughts of a philosopher who is making his incursions into the realms of unexplored truth, to gather the evidences which are required to destroy the specious and, as he conceives, dangerous arguments of his opponent. The same spirit which has guided Dr. Whewell in the various philosophical labours to which we have referred, and that unchained, and too often irrepressible fancy, which is ever and anon flashing forth its meteoric beams, reached a culminating point in 'The Plurality of Worlds.' This work has always been considered as being from the pen of the Master of Trinity, and the authorship has never been denied. There are internal evidences which appear to us to fix it unmistakably upon him. At the same time we are not disposed to consider the argument of the plurality of worlds as the creed of its author. A giant plays with an idle thought as the ambidextrous conjuror deals with his gilded ball, and he bewilders those who can see only circles of light in its rapid passage

from hand to hand. Upon a premiss of the most unsubstantial character genius has playfully built a superstructure which looks like the temple of the living truth. To use Dr. Whewell's own metaphor, slightly modified, the author of 'The Plurality of Worlds' has spun from a store within itself that thread on which the pearls -produced by wounding the oyster-are strung.

In 1859 Dr. Whewell published The Platonic Dialogues for English Readers.' In this work the matter and the manner of the dialogues is given with all fidelity, but numerous prolix and obscure passages are abridged, and this process peculiarly fits the book for those for whom it was intended. Dr. Whewell assures us that this work had been the loved labour of many years.

We have named already a sufficiently varied series of works as the offspring of one human brain. To these we have yet to add 'Architectural Notes on the Churches of Germany,' and a translation of Auerbach's Professor's Wife.' Dr. Whewell was also the editor of Butler's Sermons, and of Newton's Principia.' At the recent visitation to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, we were pleased to meet with this philosopher, who, although in his sixty-ninth year, was as vigorous as ever in mind and body. Two remarkable men stood conversing together in the courtyard of the Observatory-Herschel and Whewell-both philosophers of the highest class, and both of them adding to their various and brilliant accomplishments, poetic talent of so high an order, that if they had not become the priests of the muse of science, they would have become the votaries of her more enthusiastic sister. These philosophers, with but two years of difference in their ages, can look back upon the labours of their well-spent lives with serene pleasure. They have won their admission, by different, but by equally acceptable labours to the Eleusinian mysteries, to behold visions of the creation of the universe, and to see the workings of that Divine agency which controls the whole. While looking on those master minds we felt one regret. If, instead of diffusing their giant powers of intellect over the wide fields of science, they had brought their strength to bear on one division of them, how vast would have been the gain to human knowledge!

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RICHARD OWEN, M.D., V.P.R.S., D.C.L., F.L.S., ETC.,

SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NATURAL HISTORY DEPARTMENT,
BRITISH MUSEUM.

RICHARD OWEN, the youngest son of Richard Owen, Esq., of Fulmer Place, Bucks., was born at Lancaster, July 20th, 1804. He received his classical and mathematical education at the Grammar School of Lancaster, under the Rev. Jos. Rowley, M.A., and the Rev. John Beethom, M.A., and his scientific education at the University of Edinburgh and the Medical School of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London.

He matriculated at Edinburgh in 1824, and, besides the professorial courses in the university (the third Monro, on anatomy and physiology; Jameson, on natural history; Hope, on chemistry; Alison, on the institutes of medicine, etc.), he attended the lectures on anatomy by Dr. Barclay, and the summer course on comparative anatomy given by the same learned professor at his private school. Here also Mr. Owen heard the first course of lectures delivered by Dr. Robert Knox, who became the successor to Dr. Barclay.

During his studentship at Edinburgh Mr. Owen assisted in founding the "Hunterian Society " for communications and discussions on medical and physiological subjects by students of the university, the professors granting the use of a room for that purpose. Of this Society, which we believe still flourishes, Owen was elected president in 1825. He appears to have gone up for his examination at the Royal College of Surgeons in London soon after his arrival in the metropolis; the date of his membership of the College in the official list being 1826, that of his fellowship, 1843. Mr. Owen commenced private practice as a surgeon in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1827, and communicated cases to the Medical Society