ics" and "Principia."

Newton has been the great glory of the Royal Society; and the Royal
Society is justly proud of its most illustrious ornament. He joined it
in January, 1674, when he was excused the ordinary payment of a shilling
a week, "on account of his low circumstances as he represented." In 1703
he was elected to the presidential chair, which he continued to occupy
until his death, in 1727. Characteristic mementoes of him are preserved
among the Royal Society's treasures. There is a solar dial made by the
boy Isaac, when, instead of studying his grammar and learning Virgil and
Horace, he was busy making windmills and water-clocks. We fancy we see
him going along the road to Grantham on a market day with the old
servant whom his mother sent to take care of him, and then stopping by
the wayside to watch the motions of a water-wheel, reflecting upon the
mechanical principles involved in the simplest contrivances. It is
pleasant, with our knowledge of what he afterward became, to sit down on
the green bank by the river side, and to speculate upon the ignorance of
the old servant who accompanied him, and of the farmers they saluted by
the way, as to the illustrious destiny which awaited the widow's son who
lived in the manor house of Woolsthorpe. The reflecting telescope,
preserved along with the dial, was made by Newton in his thirtieth year,
and reminds us of the deep mathematical studies he was then pursuing at
Cambridge. The autograph MS. of the "Principia," also in the possession
of the Royal Society, gives increased vividness to the picture of this
extraordinary person in his study, solving mysterious problems, and
suggesting others still more mysterious; and then the lock of silvery
hair adds the last touch to fancy's picture--like a stroke of the pencil
which, when a portrait is nearly complete, gives life and expression to
the whole.

Newton was portly but not tall, his silvery locks were abundant without
any baldness, and his eyes were sparkling and piercing, though perhaps
they failed to indicate the profound genius which through them looked
into the secrets of the universe. Wonderful humility blended with his
intellectual greatness. To other men he seemed a spirit of higher rank,
having almost superhuman faculties of mental vision, wont to soar into
regions which the vulture's eye hath never seen; to himself he was but a
boy playing with the shells on the seashore, while the ocean lay
undiscovered bef