Correspondence. Manchester, April 3rd, 1850. DEAR SIR,-I have been given to understand by a member of our society, that you are already aware of the existence of a Progress Union at Manchester. It seeks, however, something rather different from that recommended in your address on the formation of such Unions, although that address was perhaps the principal agent in our formation. It is intended more especially to carry out a suggestion contained in your fourth letter " to the Young Men of the Working Classes "-for the training of advocates of political and social movements, by various educational means. Among these means are an Essay and Discussion Class, for private, and lectures for public practice. The Debating Class has been in active operation during the last three months, (the term of our existence,) and having ascertained somewhat of the capabilities of our members, we are about to venture on public propagandism by means of Lectures. I have been directed, as Secretary to the Union, to request your aid in extending a knowledge of the existence of such an Union, by means of your weekly Journal, and hope from time to time to inform you of our progress. I am, dear Sir, Yours very truly, MR. THOMAS COOPER. J. H. NODALL. [I was not aware that a Progress Union had been formed, but only that it was intended to form one, in Manchester. Will the writer of the foregoing letter send me his address more plainly written-that I may reply to him on one matter which I have omitted from his letter? I may add, that I was not aware till last week, that a Progress Union had been formed in Leicester.-T. C.] London, April 1, 1850. SIR,-On Thursday, 28th March, I was passing the shop of Messrs Rivington, in Waterloo Place, when a Bishop, said to be Dr. Wilberforce, of Oxford, came out and mounted a horse, which was held for him by a groom seated on another beautiful animal. A young man on the pavement, with the aspect of a Puritan,-his hair flowing down his back and on his shoulders, addressing the right reverend Father in God, said," Bishop,-go read your Bible, and you will find that Jesus Christ did not ride on fine horses, nor had he a flunkey like that to attend upon him." I leave you to imagine the expression of the Bishop's countenance. Your constant reader who studies the signs of the MR. THOMAS COOPER. TIMES. [Are not a few more such plain-speaking Puritans' as the young man here described— wanted in England ?—T. C.] To Correspondents. ***Correspondents will please address "Thomas Cooper, 5, Park Row, Knightsbridge, London. J. V. Middleton.-He will find on reflcetion, that Leslie's rules for proving Miracles fail when applied to the narratives in the Four Gospels. M. JOLIFFE.-There is merit in his verse, but he needs a study of the best models: that alone can benefit him. ENQUIRER.'; T. C.; TYRO'.-A more complete answer than I can give in these notes will be found in my Eight Letters to the Young Men of the Working Classes.' R. S.-Information on the subject he mentions will be given in some future numbers. 'REFORMATION.'-His proposal is most respectfully declined, for want of room, and the necessity of devoting space to more serious subjects. "Rienzi SUNDAY, April 14, at 7, Hall of Science, (near Finsbury Square), City Road. MONDAY, April 15, at 8, Temperance Hall, Broadway, Westminster. "Protectorate and Character of Cromwell"-Thomas Cooper. At half-past 8, Finsbury Mechanics' Institute, Bell Yard, City Road. "Conservatism of Social Life"-B. B. Wale. At quarter-past 8, Literary Institution, Carlisle Street, Edgeware Road. raldry, Crusaders, and Tournaments"-W. Partridge, "He THINKINGS, FROM JOHN LOCKE. LABOUR. It is labour which puts the greatest value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing; it is to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful products: for all that the straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat, is more worth than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effect of labour; for it is not barely the ploughman's pains, the reaper's and thrasher's toil, and the baker's labour, is to be counted into the bread we eat; the labour of those who broke the oxen, who digged and wrought the iron and stones, who felled and framed the timber employed about the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are a vast number, requisite to this corn, from its being seed to be sown to its being made bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and received as an effect of that: nature and the earth furnished only the almost worthless materials, as in themselves. It would be a strange catalogue of things, that industry provided and made use of, about every loaf of bread, before it came to our use, if we could trace them; iron, wood, leather, bark, timber, stones, bricks, coals, lime, cloth, dying drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials made use of in the ship, that brought any of the commodities made use of by any of the workmen to any part of the work; all which it would be almost impossible, at least too long, to reckon up. TRUTH.-Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge, and the business of the understanding; whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent, or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, or something worse. SLAVERY.-Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it. And truly I should have taken Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, as any other treatise which would persuade all men that they are slaves and ought to be so, for such another exercise of wit as was his who wrote the encomium of Nero, rather than for a serious discourse, had not the gravity of the title and epistle, the frontispiece, and the applause that followed it, required me to believe that the author and publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation, and read it through with all the attention, due to a treatise that made such a noise at its coming abroad; and cannot but confess myself much surprised, that in a book which was to provide chains for all mankind, I should find nothing but a rope of sand; useful to such, perhaps, whose skill and business it is to raise a dust, and would blind the people the better to mislead them; but, in truth, not of any force to draw those into bondage who have their eyes open, and so much sense as to consider that chains are but an ill-wearing, how much care soever hath been taken to file and polish them. FOLLY AND MADNESS.-Folly consists in the drawing of false conclusions from just principles, by which it is distinguished from madness, which draws just conclusions from false principles. ON EDUCATION.-I think we may assert that in a hundred men, there are more than ninety who are what they are, good or bad, useful or pernicious to society, from the instruction they have received. It is on education that depends the great difference observable among them. The least and most imperceptible impressions received in our infancy, have consequences very important,and of a long duration. It is with these first impressions, as with a river, whose waters we can easily turn, by different canals, in quite opposite courses, so that from the insensible direction the steam receives at its source, it takes different directions and at last arrives at places far distant from each other; and with the same facility we may, I think, turn the minds of children to what direction we please. UNEXAMINED OPINIONS.-Our first and great duty is, to bring to our studies, and to our inquiries after knowledge, a mind covetous of truth; that seeks after nothing else, and after that impartially, and embraces it, how poor, how contemptible, how unfashionable soever it may seem. This is that which all studious men profess to do, and yet it is that where I think very many miscarry. HELEN. A ROMANCE IN FOUR VERSES. "Yet was she certes but a country lasse; Yet she all other country lasses far did passe." IT is a lowly cottage of a quaint and antique mien, Spenser With gable end, and straw-thatched roof, hid o'er with mosses green; The summer breeze is sporting with the ringlets of her hair: Her eyes are blue and sparkling, and her cheeks are slightly brown, The lane is cool and shaded, overhead the branches meet; A blush is on her tear-dewed cheeks, her eyes are turned away, It is an ancient village church, the ivy thickly crawls It is a noble mansion where re-echo joyous sounds, For thro' the high and stately pile festivity abounds; From every window splendour gleams, the trees with lamps are hung; The lordly and the lowly, are in happy concord seen, Now laughing at some rustic joke, now dancing on the green; JOHN ALFRED ANGFORD. Stokesley. THE PRIMROSE. Sweet, modest flower, so gentle in its mien, GEORGE TWeddell. THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON. AN ORATION, DELIVERED AT THE CITY OF LONDON MECHANICS' INSTITUTE, GOULD SQUARE; AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS IN THE METROPOLIS. BY THOMAS COOPER. (Continued from last number.) THE child was so small, at his birth, that the nurse used to declare he could have been put into a quart pot. She may, like other nurses, have used hyperbole in speaking of her nursling-for, undoubtedly, she would be proud of him; but it is certain that he was exceedingly fragile, when a child, and that he was reared with difficulty. The little estate left by his father was not of more value than fifty pounds a year; his mother had elder children; she married a poor clergyman two years after Newton's birth; and it was only by energetic attention to her farm that she could render it sufficiently profitable to support her family. Yet little Isaac was sent to the best school in the neighbourhood-the grammar school at Grantham, and was a scholar there, for several years. It is related of him that he was but a dull boy in his class, till he was beaten-physically I mean-by an elder boy; when he first, notwithstanding his slenderness, gave his tyrant a thrashing, and then made good his resolution to pass by him, to the head of the class. This was an instance of the latent ardour which often is called up in the gentlest natures by oppression. He was all good nature and amiability among his companions, and especially loved to please girls, by making them playthings of wood. He had chisels, hammers, and mechanical tools, in abundance; and, doubtless, many of you are acquainted with that singular history of his early boyhood-his construction of the water-clock and the sun-dial; (the latter was placed on the school-roof; but it was gone when I asked after it, many years ago, on visiting the spot -nor could any lout of a lad in the play-ground show me where Isaac had cut his name in the school! They stared at me as if they had never heard of the name!)—of the miniature mill which he made closely upon the model of a mill that was being erected near the town ;-and of the mouse he put into it, to turn it, and joked about his 'miller';—and, above all, how he introduced paper-kites into Grantham, and tied a lanthorn to the tail of one which was flown at night-alarming all the country gossips with the vision of a portentous star-for his boyhood was the season of the Civil Wars, and such a sight, at that period, could not fail to consternate the beholders, nor to make them angry even when the hoax was discovered. These are all trifles to dwell upon. But who would pass them over? They were the evidences of a grand constructive genius which was, one day, to develope the construction of the Universe. Yet, it was not the way in which some would expect such a genius to give signs of its indwelling in that boy; nor did any human being around him, for some years, seem to apprehend what was growing up within him. His mother, at length, took him from school to assist in the business of the farm; but, good lack! he was utterly unfitted for such business. He would be cutting mill-wheels by the brook-side, when he should have been minding the sheep; he would be absorbed in the library of Mr. Clarke the apothecary, on Grantham market-days, or otherwise be esconced under a hedge with a mathematical book,-while the man-servant who was sent with him, was left to manage the market sales and purchases, for his mother's family. Deliverance comes at last. His maternal uncle, an Ayscough, and a kindly clergyman, arrives at the little farm, and learning that he is at the market, goes after him to Grantham. But Isaac cannot be found, for some time; and when he is discovered, it is in a hayloft, and he is absorbed in the study of Euclid. The good uncle discerns the soul there is within him; persuades his mother to struggle with difficulty, and send him again to school, that he may be prepared for the University; promises all the aid in his power; and finally sees him entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his eighteenth year, and in 1660, the year of the Restoration' of Chas. 2. The zeal for mathematical studies was great throughout Europe at this period. The celebrated Dr. Isaac Barrow-a divine who never preached without knocking all the dust out of his text,' according to the homely phrase of those times-was also professor of mathematics at Cambridge; and Newton had, in him, the best teacher that, perhaps, all England could have afforded,—and what was better still, an intellect of that truly noble cast which could admire, instead of becoming jealous of the pupil when he outsped the teacher. The works of the great Descartes, Kepler's Treatise on Optics, and the Arithmetica Infinitorum,' of Wallis, a profound English mathematician,-were among the chief studies of young Newton, during his first attendance at the University. His study of Descartes led him to devote his powers especially to algebra, or analytical mathematics; and he soon discovered the formula usually termed, by algebraists, The Binomial Theorem of Newton.' Those among you who are acquainted with the mathematics do not need to have that discovery described. To others, I can only say that the formula unfolds a method for the developement of functions into an infinite series: an explanation which will be no clearer than talking Greek to some people-and yet I knew not how to describe it more intelligibly to those who know nothing of algebra. The thing to be recommended, especially to you young men, is that you begin to get some knowledge of algebra, for yourselves, and then you will know all about it. Suffice it, however, to say, that the 'Binomial Theorem' is now one of the formulas of algebra most commonly used; and that there is scarcely any analytical research in which it is not of use. A far greater discovery followed: this was the 'Integral Calculus,' or what is sometimes called the Science, or Doctrine, of Fluxions'-the very highest discovery ever made by any mathematician, and still more impossible to define popularly. This new and grander discovery, Newton soon perceived, would enable him to make others in determining the laws of natural phenomena. That is,―shall I say?—it was the key by which the laws of the solar and planetary world could be deciphered: the rule and instrument by which their motions could be accurately calculated: Arithmetic,' or the ordinary science of numbers, being too loose and clumsy an instrument to apply to the solution of astral questions, which involve numbers and relations so unusual. With this conviction of the value of this great discovery for the future, Newton did not make it known. He declined the reputation that might have been gained by publishing it-fixing his determination on greater discoveries. All this had occurred before he quitted the University in 1665, on account of the Plague. We have been looking, therefore, at the mental strides of a giant made by a mere stripling up to three and twenty years of age! What a lesson of early resolution, of energy, and industry!-and let it not be forgotten, of humility and modesty, for pride would have rushed to tell the world what it had done: to sacrifice the world's applause -who does not know how difficult that is for us, when we are young? We must hasten on with our hasty biographical sketch. During his short retirement into the country, his mind is profoundly intent on these great future discoveries; and now it is that the event occurs which has received such various comment: his first thought of the universal applica |