MacTutor
William Spottiswoode
Times obituary
The death of the President of the Royal Society—a body which may be regarded as the official representative of science in this country—is a public loss. Yesterday, in a writing by the veteran Sir Edward Sabine, we referred to Mr. William Spottiswoode as among the living lights of science; only a few hours after the words were written, the savant in his prime joined the veteran who had for years been waiting for the final summons. At half past eleven yesterday morning, Mr. Spottiswoode succumbed to the attack of typhoid fever with which he was seized three weeks ago. He does not seem to have quite recovered from the effects of the accident he met with some months ago, and this, combined with weakness induced by overzealous attention to his multifarious duties, left him little strength to struggle with a prostrating illness.
He was only 58 years of age, nearly 40 years younger than his predecessor in the Presidency of the Royal Society, who died only a few hours before, and who continued to work up to within a few years of his death. We do not have so many first-rate workers in science that we can afford to lose them before their work is done; and Mr. Spottiswoode may be said to have been only on the threshold of a series of inquiries from which great results might have been expected Not much more than a year ago we had to lament the death, at a ripe old age, of one of the world's few greatest men—Darwin—followed shortly after that of one who had not reached his prime, but who had given every promise of following to some purpose in the master's footsteps—Francis Balfour. The two were of kindred minds, and were devoted to kindred subjects; and so also to a large extent may we say of Sabine and Spottiswoods. But the progress of science, like the march of events, will go on, even though the leaders should fall; doubtless others will soon step in to take up the swords of the fallen, and the best tributo that can be paid to their memory is to continue the conquests they have begun with unflag-ging zeal.
The death of a President of the Royal Society in his term of office, especially since that became limited, has been rare indeed. True, both Newton and Banks died in their presidential chairs, but the former had filled the office for 24 and the latter for 42 years. Mr. Spottiswoode was elected only four years ago. His death will be felt as a serious loss in many quarters. Although his name is not as familiar to the public as are those of some of the other leaders of science of today, yet few men had wider sympathies. His varied functions ranged over extensive field, from President of the Royal Society to member of Mr. Irving's dinner committee; while the active head of a great printing establishment, he found leisure to fill important official positions in some of the leading societies and undertake rosearches of a high order in the most abstruse regions of mathematics and physics; he showed himself equally at home in unveiling some new method of mathematical inquiry and in exploring the leas-frequented regions of Eastern Russia. Mr. Spottiswoode was the type of student of science almost peculiar to this country, one who does not follow science as a vocation, but as an avocation, who cultivates it out of pure love in the leisure time left him by the busy life of a man of business or affairs. We have had several notable examples of this class of investigator, but among living men we need only the names of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. De La Rue. Such men have done substantial service to science, and none more so than the late President of the Royal Society, although in fields which are in the main accessible only to the esoteric few. But these services are none the less momentous or far-reaching on this account; they deal with the deepest principles which underlie all physical research.
William Spottiswoode belonged to a very old Scottish family, which has produced several notable men since the time of the Archbishop of St. Andrews in the 16th and 17th centuries, while a branch of it has achieved in some of its members considerable prominence in the United States. He was born in London on January 11, 1825, the son of Andrew Spottiswoode, brother of the Laird of Spottiswoode, and then head of the printing business. After spending some time at Laleham at a school kept by Mr. Buckland, brother of Dean Buckland, and a severe disciplinarian, young Spottiswoode was sent to Eton, where, however, he stayed only a short time; he and his brother attempted some chemical experiments (in which detonation played a prominent part) at a time when science had no place in our public schools. No blame, however, it is admitted, was attached to the brothers, who were transferred to Harrow, then under the rule of the present Bishop of London. Here William Spottiswoode had the reputation of being studious and thoughtful, and, after a stay of three years, entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1842, having obtained at Harrow a Lyon Scholarship . In 1845 Spottiswoode took a first-class in mathematics, winning in 1846 the Junior and in 1847 the Senior University Mathematical Scholarship. Although on quitting college he entered upon the active management of the Queen's Printers business, resigned to him by his father, still he gave lectures for a term or two at Balliol, and ten years later was examiner in the Mathematical schools.
Mr. Spottiswoode was nearly as good a linguist as he was a mathematician, and so accomplished an Oriental scholar was he that he was urged to undertake an edition of a great work on Indian Astronomy, on which he contributed a paper to the Journal of the Asiatic Society. During the 35 years that have elapsed since Mr. Spottiswoode left college, his life has been an unusually busy one; He has all along taken an active part in the management of the printing business, while a mere list of the subjects on which he has written papers and undertaken researches would fill a column of The Times. In 1856 he made a journey in Eastern Russia, the narrative of which ("A Tarantasse Journey through Eastern Russia in the Autumn of 1856," Longmans, 1857), is even yet interesting to the thoughtful reader; and in 1860 he, in company with a brother and sister, travelled through Croatia and Hungary. Mr. Spottiswood's earliest scientific work consisted of five quarto pamphlets, published in 1847, under the title of "Meditationes Analyticae," and since then scarcely a year has passed without a contribution from him to one or other of the branches of science in which he was interested. Many of these papers, as we have said, appeal only to specialists and deal with abstruse mathematics; But in these, as in his more purely physical work, fellow students, both in this country and abroad, admit he showed an intellect not only of the highest training, but of rare clarity, penetration, and even originality. No one had an easier familiarity with the mysterious symbols of the modern mathematician, and some of the methods originated by him have become classical. Spottiswoode has been called the "incarnation of symmetry," and this feature of his mind comes out not only in his mathematical work, but in those beautiful researches in physics connected with polarized light and certain forms of electrical discharge with which his name is intimately associated. Indeed, his researches in these departments have in some respects all the merit of originality, and especially in connection with the exquisite phenomena of polarization his work, both as an investigator and expounder, takes the highest rank.
Many of our readers have undoubtedly witnessed his beautiful experiments in these departments at the Royal Institution, and many more may be familiar with his interesting little volume in the "Nature Series" on the "Polarization of Light." While the great bulk of Mr. Spottiswoode's researches was given to the scientific world through the medium of the Royal Society and such journals as the Philosophical Magazine, his many-sidedness found outlets through other channels. Thus we find him reading a paper to the Geographical Society (on the Council of which he sat for some time) on "Typical Mountain Ranges, an application of the Calculus of Probabilities to Physical Geography;" to the Musical Society, a lecture on "Beats and Combination Tones;" and to the Astronomical Society a paper on "A Method of Determining Longitude."
That Mr. Spottiswoode was more than an observer and investigator of facts was shown in several ways, but most explicitly in his memorable pre-dential address at the Dublin meeting of the British Association in 1878. Here he gave evidence of a mind of real philosophical power and of a capacity for far-reaching speculation on subjects of the highest human interest, directed, however, and coped within the limits of rationality by his deep and clear knowledge in his own special lines of research. Some of the passages in that address are indeed marked by the purest eloquence, and throughout all we find not only that prevailing line of symmetry to which we have referred, but the tenderest and truest sympathy with the varied forms in which the human mind manifests itself. He said:-
It goes without saying that honours were showered upon Mr. Spottinwond; our leading universities enrolled him among their "Doctors", the Paris Academy of Sciences made him a corresponding member, while other foreign societies gave similar evidence of the estimate in which they held him. Finally, in 1879, he was chosen to the highest honour which science in this country has to bestow—the Presidency of the Royal Society. Here he filled a position of no small difficulty with the greatest tact. His annual addresses were models of what such productions should be, while his beautiful country seat at Sevenoaks was famous on both continents for its cultured hospitality.
Mr. Spottiswoode's relations with the workmen in his large establishment were of the best and friendliest, and these will feel that in them have lost a real friend. Thus, as we have said, his death will be felt as a grievous loss in many quarters, most of all among that wide circle to whom he was endeared as a true and ever-sympathetic friend.
In 1861 he married the eldest daughter of the late Mr. William Urquhar Arbuthnot, a distinguished member of the Indian Council.
_________________________________________
The following memorial has been signed by a large number of distinguished persons: To the Very Reverend the Dean of Westminster. Your memorialists, in common with all who knew the late Mr. William Spottiswoode, President of the Royal Society, are deeply sensitive to the great national loss that has been sustained through his death. Your memorialists feel that it is needless to enlarge or insist on his great merits. It is known to all how, alike by his intellectual gifts and scientific achievements, and by his great personal worth and purity of character, he was able to render inestimable services to the cause of science and the public good It would, in the opinion of your memorialists, be fitting and proper that one who was thus the chosen head of science in England, and who, by his intellect and character, filled that office so worthily and with such advantage to the world, and who has left such a bright example to those that follow, should be honored by being buried in Westminster Abbey; and your memorialists therefore trust that you will see fit to permit him to be buried there.
In our obituary notice of yesterday, by a clerical, the Bishop of London was mentioned as having been Head Master of Harrow at the time young Spottiswoode was there. It should, of course, have been the Bishop of Lincoln.
________________________________________
The following is the list of the persons who have signed the memorial to the Dean of Westminster for the burial of Mr. Spottiswoode in Westminster
Abbey Many more signatures are expected: The Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Salisbury, the Earl of Derby, Earl Granville, Earl Ducie, the Earl of Dalhousie, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, Lord Coleridge, Lord Rayleigh, Lord Lawrence, Lord Aberdare, Lord Reay, Lord Colin Campbell, Lord George Hamilton, the Right Hon. Sir Stafford Northcote, M.P., the Right Hon. Hugh Childers, M.P., the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, M.P., the Right Hon. A. Beresford-Hope, M.P., the Right Hon. G. J. Goschen, M.P., the Right Hon. Sir Richard Oress, M.P., the Right Hon. A. J. Murdella, M.P., the Right Hon. Sir Lyon Playfsir, M.P., the Right Hon. Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., the Right Hon, Sir Charles Bowen, the Right Hon. Henry Fawcett, M.P., the Dean of Christ Church, the Warden of Merton, the Headmaster of Eton, the President of the Royal Academy, the Astronomer Royal, Sir James Stephen, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Sir John Lubbock, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir William Thomson, Sir James Paget, Sir William Gull, Sir William Jenner, Admiral Sir Astley Cooper Key, General Sir Patrick Grant, Admiral Sir L. M'Clintock, General Sir J. Lefroy, Admiral Sir E. Richards, Admiral Sir E. Fanshawe, General. Sir Montazae M'Murdo, Sir Charles Mills, Sir Walter Elliot, Sir Bartle Bar Frere, Sir Arthur Hobhouse, Sir Rutherford Aleock, Sir Herry Rawlinson, Sir James Lacaita, Sir Henry Thompson, Sir Lewis Pelly, Sir F. Bramwell, Sir John Hawkshaw, Sir William Siemens, Sir Louis Mallet, Sir Henry Bessemer, Sir Julian Henry Goldsmid, Sir Joseph Fayzer, Sir William Gregory, Mr. Story Maskelyne, M.P., Mr. W. C. Cartwright, M.P., Professor Busk, Professor Huxley, Professor Sylvester, Professor Tyndall, Professor Williamson, Professor Hirst, Professor Cayley, Professor Darwin, Professor Bryce, Professor Roscoe, Professor Osborne Reynolds, Professor Michael Foster, Professor Flower, Professor Debus, Professor Glaisher, Professor Carey Foster, Professor Marshall, Professor Boyd Dawkins, Professor Ray Lankester, Professor Humphrey, Professor Dewar, Professor Frankland, Professor Guthrie, Professor Warrington Smyth, Professor Odling, Professor Clifton, Professor Thisleton Dyer, Dr. Hughlings Jackson, Dr. Duncan, Dr. William Pole, Dr. Priestly, Dr. Prescott Hewett, Dr. Quain, Dr. Lander Brunton, Warren de la Rue, D.O.L., Dr. John Evans, Dr. Gunther, Dr. Huggins, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Hopkinson, Dr. Gladstone, Dr. W. Grey, General Hutt, Mr. Douglas Freshfeld, Mr. F. W. Burton, Mr. T. Cherery, Colonel Grant, Mr. J. Fergusson, Mr. Willoughby Smith, Mr. R. B. Hayward, Captain Abney, the Rev. W. H. Milman, Mr. T. E. H. Gordon, Mr. J. Fletcher Moulton, Mr. F. Galton, Mr. Douglas Galton, Mr. Lawrence T. Cave, Mr. Robert Scott, Mr. T. Woolner, Mr. A. Brandreth, Mr. F. E. Godman, Mr. Pascoe Grenfell, Mr. F. Pollock, Mr. W. Haseltine, Mr. Wollaston Blake, Mr. W. H. Preece, Mr. W. Crookes, Mr. A. Milman, Mr. J. Heywood, Mr. J. Boehm, Mr. J. Ball, and Mr. T. Hawkesley.
___________________________________________________________
The following is the reply of the Dean of Westminster to the memorial which was formally presented to him on Saturday by Sir F. Pollock and Mr. J. Fletcher Moulton, praying him to permit the late President of the Royal Society to be buried in Westminster Abbey:
"I am deeply sensible of the loss which the country has sustained in the death of the President of the Royal Society. The names appended to the weighty memorial which you have just laid before me are sufficient evidence of the widespread desire that the highest public honors should be paid to the memory of one whose peculiar claims have been urged so forcibly. In addition to that memorial, I have this morning received one expressing the same desire, and bearing the signatures of many hundreds of working men with whom he was brought into daily intercourse. Although in consideration of the limited space yet remaining for interment within the Abbey, I should have myself suggested a monument rather than a grave, yet I cannot but assent, after much anxious consideration, to the wish that your memorial expresses I recognize in the late Mr. Spottiswoode not merely a man of special scientific attainments, but one who from his interest in and sympathy with all the many branches and departments of scientific knowledge was peculiarly fitted to represent English science in its broadest aspect, and who was at the moment of his death the chosen and honored President of the Royal Society. I recognize in him also a man of the very highest and most stainless character—one whose great gifts were only equalled by the purity and attractiveness, and, I may be allowed to add, the kindness, the devoutness and humility of his daily life. And, not least of all, I feel that in honoring him we are not only honoring one whose name is dear to men of science and literature, and of eminence in every sphere of public and social life, but one whose memory will long be treasured by the working classes, to whose highest interests and welfare he was so deeply devoted."
___________________________________________
The following is a supplementary list of signatures to the memorial: The Archbishop of York, Earl of Dufferin, Earl Sydney, Earl Stanhope, the Earl Northbrook, Lord Eustace Cesil, the Bishop of Exeter, Lord Chelmsford, the Right Hon. J. Chamberlain, M.P., the Right Hon. G. Osborne Morgan, M.P., the Hon. Robert Butler, the Hon. Ralph Dutton, the Master of Balliol, the liol, the Provost of Eton, the Head Master of Rugby, the Dean of Salisbury, Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Sir Frederick Abel, Sir Charles Bunbury, Professor Lister, V.P.R.S., Mr. Horace Davey, Q.C., M.P., Mr. J. Norman Lockyer, Mr. G. J. Romanes, Professor Geikie, Dr. Acland, Dr. Guy, Mr. Curling, the Rev. B. Compton, Mr. J. Lowthian Bell, Mr. Ed a Bell, Mr. Edward Bunbury, Mr. W. H. Pollock, and Professor Johnstone Stoney.
___________________________________________
A correspondent writes:
Mr. Spottiswoode on four occasions rowed in his University boat, once in the Thames (in 1844), twice at Henley in 1844 and 1845), and Regatta (once against Cambridge at Putney (in 1845). It is within my knowledge that at considerable personal inconvenience he attended the University Boat-race commemoration dinner held in April, 1881, and subsequently gave cheerful and valuable professional assistance to the committee in the publication of the record of the beat-race which followed the dinner. On the title page of that book appears a line (inserted with Mr. Spottiswoode's distinct approval) - Printed by William Spottiswoode, O.U.B.C., P.R.S.
___________________________________________
Although the arrangements for the interment of the late President of the Royal Society are not yet completed, it may be stated that the Dean has kindly sanctioned the use of the Jerusalem Chamber for the assembling of the many distinguished men who will act as pallbearers or follow in the procession as representatives of and members of the varied public, literary, and spiritual bodies with which Mr. Spottiswoode's wide-ranging sympathies and tastes brought him into communication. A certain number of tickets for admission to the choir have also been placed at the disposal of the representatives of the family. The chamber will be open to the public The remains will be brought to the cloister gateway in Dean's-yard shortly before noon, and at once, followed by the mourners, will be borne to the west cloister door, where the Dean and the Abbey clergy will begin the funeral service as they move down the aisle to the west door, where they will turn and then advance up the whole length of the nave, those who are gathered in the Jerusalem Chamber taking their places in the procession as it passes the door at the west end of the aisle, and passing into the sacrarium to bear the funeral service read. The position of the grave is not yet fixed, but if a room can be found it will be near that in which an ancestor of Mr. Spottiswood lies buried.
Just below the bust of Dryden, and near the entrance to the little chapel of St. Benedict, is a large slab bearing the inscription: "Near this spot is buried Isaac Casaubon (whose monument is opposite), 1614. And also his friend, John Spottiswood, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1639." If space cannot be found without trenching upon the ground which the custom of some centuries has treated as the peculiar burial-place of our great poets, a grave will be made somewhere in the nave, near those of Herschel and Darwin.
The funeral, which it was originally intended should take place yesterday, was postponed until Thursday in deference to the wishes of the very large number of signatories of the request to the Dean for the interment of the remains in the Abbey. A second petition was received by the Dean on Saturday, but too late to be answered at the time, which bore some 1,600 signatures. It ran: "Your memorialists, persons employed by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode and Messrs. Spottiswoode and Co., are deeply sensitive of the great loss we have sustained by the death of Mr. Spottiswoode. He at all times studied our interests and welfare, and the kindness and consideration he has always shown us can never be forgotten. Your memorialists believe that a request is about to be made by many eminent men that Mr. Spottiswoode's remains may be buried in Westminster Abbey, and we therefore respectfully ask that this petition may be accepted in support of the one to which we allude."
The tickets issued admit to the Jerusalem Chamber and to the choir at 11 a.m. on Thursday. The funeral service will be commenced at 12 p.m. All applications for tickets should be made to Messrs. T. and W. Banting, of St. James's Street, the undertakers, and not to the Dean.
At the annual general meeting of the Society of Arts, held last Wednesday, the following resolution was passed:
"That this meeting of the Society of Arts desires to express the deep regret with which it has received the news of the death of Mr. William Spattiswoode, one of its Vice-Presidents, and its sense of the loss which the Society has sustained by his decease. In him England loses one of her most remarkable men of science, science itself one of its greatest ornaments, and all who knew him a sincere and valued friend. Besides devoting his own time and thought to the advancement of knowledge, he was ever ready to lend to all engaged in like pursuits the assistance of his experience and his wise counsel. In thus placing on record their own appreciation of his services, the Society desires to express its feelings of sympathy with his widow and his family, and also with the Fellows of the Royal Society, of which he was the honored and beloved President."
The name of Sir Frederick Evans, Hydrographer the Admiralty was accidentally omitted from the list of signatories to the memorial for the interment of Mr. Spottiswoode in Westminster Abbey.
___________________________________________________
To the Editor of The Times.
Sir,
In your obituary notice of the late Mr. Spottiswoode no reference is made to the important duties he discharged as a member of the council of the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education. For the last three years, Mr. Spottiswoode had been an ex-officio member of this body; and I am sure I am only expressing the views of all members of the council when I state how much the institute was indebted to his thoughtful advice, his courteous and conciliatory assistance, and to the considerable amount of time he devoted to the work of the institute. In no mere perfect manner did he discharge the duties of his office Appointed by Her Majesty's Commissioners of 1851 as a representative of science at the time when the free grant of land, on which the Central Institution in Exhibition Road is being erected, was granted to the institute, Mr. Spottiswoode was one of the most regular attendants at the meetings of the executive committee and of two of the sub-committees on which he served. Since his return from Rome, and scarcely more than a month ago, he was present at a meeting of the sub-committee charged with the organization of the Central Institution; and among the numerous public bodies and private individuals who deplore his loss, I am sure, none will lament it more sincerely than the City and Guilds of London Institute and the members of the committees and sub-committees who had the honor of working with him and who were accustomed to seeking his wise counsel and to avail themselves of his wide and technical knowledge. In his annual addresses to the Royal Society's full reference will be to the work done by the council of the institute, in which he took such an active part; and among the many indications of interest which he showed in the educational movement with which he was then connected, his well-considered evidence given before the Livery Companies' Commission on behalf of the institute will always be remembered as by no means least valuable or least important.
Begging the favour of your insertion of these few lines as a tribute to the memory of one whose loss will be severely felt by the members of the City and Guilds of London Institute.
I am, Sir, yours obediently,
PHILIP MAGNUS,
Gresham College, June 30,
______________________________________________
To-day, the remains of William Spottiswoode will receive what in our generation is the highest tribute of respect that can be paid to an honored fellow-citizen. Burial in Westminster Abbey, always highly prized, has come in these latter years to mean much more than that of old. The limited possibilities in the already crowded space and the universal desire that those whom we most delight to honor should all rest there have led to a discrimination, we might say to a severity of criticism, of the claims of those for whom the honor is sought, that makes it as if accorded double value. Not that it is within the range of hope that all the greatest names that England knows or will know can be associated with Westminster Abbey. The honor is one that implies not only greatness and worth in the recipient, but also that this greatness and worth have been recognized and valued by its contemporaries The great men who live a stormy life amid the battles of their generation, and die before the cause with which they have identified themselves has triumphed, will not be found there. But it will always be associated with those great men whom England has learned to esteem and venerate during their lifetime, and of these the late President of the Royal Society was eminently one. The remarkable inanimity among those best entitled to speak as to the fitness of according to him interment in the Abbey shows how widely his exceptional merits and the services he has rendered to his age have been recognized. Those who knew Mr. Spottiswoode intimately will feel that no fitter crown to his stainless and useful career, and no honour more consonant with that ambition which must have lived within him, as it lives within all men of noble aims, could have been dovised than that he should be laid to rest beside so many earnest thinkers and workers of days gone by, while the thinkers and workers of to-day, his comrades throughout his life, stand in deep and genuine sorrow around his grave.
Mr. Spottiswoode belonged to that class which it is specially the glory of England to possess—namely, scientific men who have other pursuits and duties than the cultivation of science. Among the various continental nations, the study of mathematics and science is almost exclusively confined to a professional class who devote their whole time and energies to it, and to whom it is a career. But when one recalls the great names of English science, one finds a large class, yielding to none in distinction, composed of men who have had no professional connection with science, but who have been among the busiest workers in various departments of practical life. It is an important testimony to the energy of the English character that this should be the case, and that men, the bulk of whose time is devoted to other pursuits, should be able to keep a distinguished place among those engaged in original research. This feature of the English scientific world never fails to be remarked upon by foreigners when first brought into connexion with it.
Of this class of workers, Mr. Spottiswoode was a typical example. From the day when he was suddenly called from his University studies to assume the direction of a large business to the day of his death no one could have been more thoroughly a man of business or could more completely or successfully have discharged the duties which devolve upon the need of a large commercial house. But all this was insufficient to cripple or even check his efforts in the pursuit of truth. It may well be that the influence was salutary, for his intellect was of such good quality throughout, and his tastes so catholic that, for the restraining influence of his business avocations, he might have dissipated his energies in the cultivation of too many branches of knowledge. As it was, his culture was singularly broad in its character, but fortunately for himself and for others the catholicity of his taste was so tempered by a sound and deep-seated abhorrence of all mere smatterings of knowledge that it did not prevent him from devoting all the most valuable part of his spare time and energies to mathematics and physics.
This catholicity of taste probably aided considerably in obtaining for him early scientific distinction. Those who know the history of English science and its near congener, mathematics, are aware that in the last 30 years there have been marvellous developments in two almost opposite directions. On the one hand, a school of mathematicians of unrivalled brilliance has carried the more abstract departments of mathematical and geometrical thought to lengths which were not only previously unknown, but which have passed beyond the reach of all mathematicians who specially devote themselves to them as their peculiar study. On the other hand, the enormously rapid development of physical science has claimed assistance from applied mathematics to an extent which has fairly taxed its powers and, indeed, has, in many cases, been inadequately responded to. Hence there has grown up something like dissension between the two schools. The pure mathematician seems to view with scorn the laborious modes of approximation by which alone we can yet attack the great physical problems that nature propounds to us. On the other hand, the physicist is too apt to show his impatience in the sight of great intellects spending themselves in efforts to solve problems which never had been propounded but for their own marvellous, and in his eyes perverse, ingenuity. One world taxes the physicist, though armed with all the weapons that mathematics can give him. He chafes that those who should be his right-hand helpers should be conducting campaigns in worlds of their own creating. The battle between the two schools waxes warm at times. One of the most distinguished astronomers of the age has been known to pay a visit to an English University for the special purpose of denouncing the favorite studies of some of its most distinguished professors. But to this strife Willism Spottiswoode was a stranger. Both camps claimed him as their own. The close friend and fellow worker of men like Professors Sylvester and Cayley, and of their lamented comrades Professor Henry Smith and Professor Clifford, could not be suspected of being unfriendly to pure mathematics, however far it soared from mundane things. The unwearied physicist and investigator, whose wealth and time was so lavishly spent on experimental research into light and electricity, could not be supposed to look slightingly on the pre-eminent claims of physical science. Thus both schools of thought rightly regarded him as their friend and supporter, and it was, no doubt, this, coupled with his loyal sympathy with and attachment to all other forms of scientific research, in which he was not, and never claimed to be, an original worker, that marked him out as so eminently fitted to be the head of the great English Society which in such an impartial way embraces within it all the leading workers in England in every branch of science. It cannot be expected that many beyond a very limited circle should appreciate, or even more than dimly understand, the drift of much of Mr. Spottiswoode's best work in pure mathematics. The very names of the numerous papers by him scattered through journals and proceedings of learned societies in languages seem to the uninitiated like hieroglyphics or conundrums. The reduction of a Decadic Binary Quantic seems a formidable undertaking, even although it has ap-parently put itself in the wrong by appearing in an uncanonical form; but those who can judge of such work know that his papers are of excellent quality, the productions of a graceful as well as a powerful mind, and that none more fully than he has sympathized with and made his own, that strange logic of form whereby the modern devotees of pure mathematics seem to draw the most complex and marvellous conclusions from the mere form in which data of the problems present themselves; but the world in general must be content to believe in the esoteric beauty of these mysteries, so pro-foundly sealed from their gaze. They can only gauge the power of these hidden charms by the fervour of the favored few who worship at the shrine.
Fortunately the other departments of Mr. Spottiswoode's scientific labors were not so far removed from this world of ours. It will never be known whether mathematics or physical science would naturally have first claimed him; but it is certain that when the discerning cares of a well-ordered and regulated business, and the wealth which had flowed from it, permitted him to spend the time and money requisite for the experimental research with which his name is associated, he promptly turned to physical science, although never quite neglecting his first love. His physical research commenced with investigations into various branches of phenomena of polarized light. His pleasant little "talk with his workmen" is still the best elementary treatise on this subject, though it gives but little idea of the splendors of the phenomena when shown by the magnificent apparatus which he caused to be constructed for his laboratory, and which is undoubtedly the most splendid collection of such apparatus in the world. But the growth of electricity which has been such a prominent feature of recent science attracted him and led him to take up the investigations by which he is best known - the investigations into vacuum discharges.
At first sight it would appear as though this subject was a little more akin to the world in which we live than the mystic mathematics of which we have spoken. Yet such is far from being the case. Whether considered as enlarging our knowledge of the phenomena and the structure of the Universe, or as increasing our power to bend the forces of Nature to our practical needs, there is no recent development of science more remarkable than the recent researches into the phenomena of high vacua, in which department of research the English school has played by far the most prominent part. If we are ever to wring from nature the secret of electricity and learn the hidden structure (if such a term can be used) of that mysterious form of force, it is probable that it will be largely due to the study of the phenomena presented by electrical discharges when passing across the intensely rarified gas in vacuum tubes, where nothing but a few rapidly moving particles of ponderable matter are present to distinguish it from the utter void that probably exists in the interplanetary spaces; and, on the other hand, the existence of the incandescent electric lamp, which will probably before long be the chosen light for domestic use wherever circumstances will permit it, is due in no small degree to kindred researches. It would take too long to enumerate, or even to indicate, the main outline of Mr. Spottiswoode's researches in this department of science. They were carried on with the utmost wealth of physical apparatus, and many of the experiments could only have been performed by the aid of the resources of his magnificent electrical laboratory. He has died in the middle of these researches; but what he had done made him the worthy coadjutor of such men as Mr. Warren De La Rue and Professor Crookes, who, with Mr. Spottiswoode, have secured for England the main glory of this branch of discovery. But it would be very misleading to treat the honour paid to the late President of the Royal Society solely as due to his mathematical or scientific achievements. Fortunately, science has in these days such splendid recruits that there is no cause to fear that the loss of our great scientific men will leave science permanently the poorer. It will not be as a scientific worker that his loss will be most keenly and most permanently felt. The right judgment, the unchallongeable impartiality of mind, the dignity of heart which distinguished him, combined with his intellectual and scientific powers, made him a figure in the scientific world than which none could be more missed or more difficult to be replaced,
________________________________________________
The ceremonial arrangements for the burial of the late Mr. Spottiswoode in Westminster Abbey at noon to-day were completed last evening. When the bearers of the coffin reach the west cloister door they will be met by a procession formed of the choir, minor canons, the junior masters, scholars, and the Head Master of Westminster School, the Canons, sub-Dean, and Dean of Westminster. As the procession passes the entrance from the Jerusalem Chamber the pall-bearers will take the places assigned to them on either side of the coffin. These will be the Chancellors of the Universities, the presidents of learned societies and scientific institutions, and others (or their representatives attending ex-officio) the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (the Duke of Devonshire), the Chancellor of the University of Oxford (the Marquis of Salisbury), the Chancellor of the University of London (Earl Granville), the President of the Royal Institution (the Duke of Northumberland, represented by Mr. George Busk), the Archbishop of Canterbury (as trustee of the British Museum), the Chancellor of the Exchequer, President of the Royal Academy (Sir F. Leighton), the President of the Royal Asiatic Society (Sir Bartle Frere), the President of the Royal Geographical Society (Lord Aberdare), Sir John Labbock, M.P. (Linnean Society), Sir W. Armstrong (Institute of Civil Engineers), Mr. E. J. Stone (Royal Astronomical Society), Dr. Evans (treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society, and principal pallbearer), Professor Flower (Royal Zoological Society), the Vice-President of the Society of Arts, the Master of the Stationers' Company, the President of the British Association (Sir W. Siemens), and other presidents of societies, and six representatives of the employés of the firm of which Mr. Spottiswoode was the head. After the chief mourner, the members of the family, and the servants of the house, who, of course, immediately follow purse the coffin, will come Mr. Andrew Cockerell, representing His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and then the members of the Royal Society. The service will be choral.
The death of the President of the Royal Society—a body which may be regarded as the official representative of science in this country—is a public loss. Yesterday, in a writing by the veteran Sir Edward Sabine, we referred to Mr. William Spottiswoode as among the living lights of science; only a few hours after the words were written, the savant in his prime joined the veteran who had for years been waiting for the final summons. At half past eleven yesterday morning, Mr. Spottiswoode succumbed to the attack of typhoid fever with which he was seized three weeks ago. He does not seem to have quite recovered from the effects of the accident he met with some months ago, and this, combined with weakness induced by overzealous attention to his multifarious duties, left him little strength to struggle with a prostrating illness.
He was only 58 years of age, nearly 40 years younger than his predecessor in the Presidency of the Royal Society, who died only a few hours before, and who continued to work up to within a few years of his death. We do not have so many first-rate workers in science that we can afford to lose them before their work is done; and Mr. Spottiswoode may be said to have been only on the threshold of a series of inquiries from which great results might have been expected Not much more than a year ago we had to lament the death, at a ripe old age, of one of the world's few greatest men—Darwin—followed shortly after that of one who had not reached his prime, but who had given every promise of following to some purpose in the master's footsteps—Francis Balfour. The two were of kindred minds, and were devoted to kindred subjects; and so also to a large extent may we say of Sabine and Spottiswoods. But the progress of science, like the march of events, will go on, even though the leaders should fall; doubtless others will soon step in to take up the swords of the fallen, and the best tributo that can be paid to their memory is to continue the conquests they have begun with unflag-ging zeal.
The death of a President of the Royal Society in his term of office, especially since that became limited, has been rare indeed. True, both Newton and Banks died in their presidential chairs, but the former had filled the office for 24 and the latter for 42 years. Mr. Spottiswoode was elected only four years ago. His death will be felt as a serious loss in many quarters. Although his name is not as familiar to the public as are those of some of the other leaders of science of today, yet few men had wider sympathies. His varied functions ranged over extensive field, from President of the Royal Society to member of Mr. Irving's dinner committee; while the active head of a great printing establishment, he found leisure to fill important official positions in some of the leading societies and undertake rosearches of a high order in the most abstruse regions of mathematics and physics; he showed himself equally at home in unveiling some new method of mathematical inquiry and in exploring the leas-frequented regions of Eastern Russia. Mr. Spottiswoode was the type of student of science almost peculiar to this country, one who does not follow science as a vocation, but as an avocation, who cultivates it out of pure love in the leisure time left him by the busy life of a man of business or affairs. We have had several notable examples of this class of investigator, but among living men we need only the names of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. De La Rue. Such men have done substantial service to science, and none more so than the late President of the Royal Society, although in fields which are in the main accessible only to the esoteric few. But these services are none the less momentous or far-reaching on this account; they deal with the deepest principles which underlie all physical research.
William Spottiswoode belonged to a very old Scottish family, which has produced several notable men since the time of the Archbishop of St. Andrews in the 16th and 17th centuries, while a branch of it has achieved in some of its members considerable prominence in the United States. He was born in London on January 11, 1825, the son of Andrew Spottiswoode, brother of the Laird of Spottiswoode, and then head of the printing business. After spending some time at Laleham at a school kept by Mr. Buckland, brother of Dean Buckland, and a severe disciplinarian, young Spottiswoode was sent to Eton, where, however, he stayed only a short time; he and his brother attempted some chemical experiments (in which detonation played a prominent part) at a time when science had no place in our public schools. No blame, however, it is admitted, was attached to the brothers, who were transferred to Harrow, then under the rule of the present Bishop of London. Here William Spottiswoode had the reputation of being studious and thoughtful, and, after a stay of three years, entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1842, having obtained at Harrow a Lyon Scholarship . In 1845 Spottiswoode took a first-class in mathematics, winning in 1846 the Junior and in 1847 the Senior University Mathematical Scholarship. Although on quitting college he entered upon the active management of the Queen's Printers business, resigned to him by his father, still he gave lectures for a term or two at Balliol, and ten years later was examiner in the Mathematical schools.
Mr. Spottiswoode was nearly as good a linguist as he was a mathematician, and so accomplished an Oriental scholar was he that he was urged to undertake an edition of a great work on Indian Astronomy, on which he contributed a paper to the Journal of the Asiatic Society. During the 35 years that have elapsed since Mr. Spottiswoode left college, his life has been an unusually busy one; He has all along taken an active part in the management of the printing business, while a mere list of the subjects on which he has written papers and undertaken researches would fill a column of The Times. In 1856 he made a journey in Eastern Russia, the narrative of which ("A Tarantasse Journey through Eastern Russia in the Autumn of 1856," Longmans, 1857), is even yet interesting to the thoughtful reader; and in 1860 he, in company with a brother and sister, travelled through Croatia and Hungary. Mr. Spottiswood's earliest scientific work consisted of five quarto pamphlets, published in 1847, under the title of "Meditationes Analyticae," and since then scarcely a year has passed without a contribution from him to one or other of the branches of science in which he was interested. Many of these papers, as we have said, appeal only to specialists and deal with abstruse mathematics; But in these, as in his more purely physical work, fellow students, both in this country and abroad, admit he showed an intellect not only of the highest training, but of rare clarity, penetration, and even originality. No one had an easier familiarity with the mysterious symbols of the modern mathematician, and some of the methods originated by him have become classical. Spottiswoode has been called the "incarnation of symmetry," and this feature of his mind comes out not only in his mathematical work, but in those beautiful researches in physics connected with polarized light and certain forms of electrical discharge with which his name is intimately associated. Indeed, his researches in these departments have in some respects all the merit of originality, and especially in connection with the exquisite phenomena of polarization his work, both as an investigator and expounder, takes the highest rank.
Many of our readers have undoubtedly witnessed his beautiful experiments in these departments at the Royal Institution, and many more may be familiar with his interesting little volume in the "Nature Series" on the "Polarization of Light." While the great bulk of Mr. Spottiswoode's researches was given to the scientific world through the medium of the Royal Society and such journals as the Philosophical Magazine, his many-sidedness found outlets through other channels. Thus we find him reading a paper to the Geographical Society (on the Council of which he sat for some time) on "Typical Mountain Ranges, an application of the Calculus of Probabilities to Physical Geography;" to the Musical Society, a lecture on "Beats and Combination Tones;" and to the Astronomical Society a paper on "A Method of Determining Longitude."
That Mr. Spottiswoode was more than an observer and investigator of facts was shown in several ways, but most explicitly in his memorable pre-dential address at the Dublin meeting of the British Association in 1878. Here he gave evidence of a mind of real philosophical power and of a capacity for far-reaching speculation on subjects of the highest human interest, directed, however, and coped within the limits of rationality by his deep and clear knowledge in his own special lines of research. Some of the passages in that address are indeed marked by the purest eloquence, and throughout all we find not only that prevailing line of symmetry to which we have referred, but the tenderest and truest sympathy with the varied forms in which the human mind manifests itself. He said:-
Truth to say, considering the severance which still subsists in education and during our early years between literature and science, we can hardly wonder if, when thrown together in the afterwork of life, they should meet as straugers; or if the severe garb, the curious implements, and the strange wares of the latter should seem little attractive when contrasted with the light companionship of the former. The day is yet young and in the early dawn many things look weird and fantastic which in fuller light prove to be familiar and useful. The outcomings of science, which at one time have been deemed to be but stambling blocks scattered in the way, may ultimately prove stepping-stones which have been carefully laid to form a pathway over difficult places for the children of sweetness and light.And again, concluding a passage of rare beauty and eloquence in the range and limits of mathematics, he says:-
While, on the one hand, the mathematician agrees to his neighbors full liberty to regard the unknown in whatever way they are led by the noblest powers that they possess, so, on the other, he claims an equal right to draw a clear line of demarcation between that which is a matter of knowledge and that which is, at all events, something else, and to treat the one category as fairly claiming our assent; the other as open to further evidence. And yet when he sees around him those whose aspirations are so fair, whose impulses so strong, whose receptive faculties so sensitive as to give objective reality to what is often but a reflex from themselves, or a projected image of their own experience, he will be willing to admit that there are influences which he cannot as yet either fathom or measure, but whose operation he must recognize among the facts of our existence.Such utterances as these show that we have lost a mind not only of rare clarity, discrimination, and insight, but of a tenderness and tolerance characteristic only of men of the most complete culture.
It goes without saying that honours were showered upon Mr. Spottinwond; our leading universities enrolled him among their "Doctors", the Paris Academy of Sciences made him a corresponding member, while other foreign societies gave similar evidence of the estimate in which they held him. Finally, in 1879, he was chosen to the highest honour which science in this country has to bestow—the Presidency of the Royal Society. Here he filled a position of no small difficulty with the greatest tact. His annual addresses were models of what such productions should be, while his beautiful country seat at Sevenoaks was famous on both continents for its cultured hospitality.
Mr. Spottiswoode's relations with the workmen in his large establishment were of the best and friendliest, and these will feel that in them have lost a real friend. Thus, as we have said, his death will be felt as a grievous loss in many quarters, most of all among that wide circle to whom he was endeared as a true and ever-sympathetic friend.
In 1861 he married the eldest daughter of the late Mr. William Urquhar Arbuthnot, a distinguished member of the Indian Council.
_________________________________________
The following memorial has been signed by a large number of distinguished persons: To the Very Reverend the Dean of Westminster. Your memorialists, in common with all who knew the late Mr. William Spottiswoode, President of the Royal Society, are deeply sensitive to the great national loss that has been sustained through his death. Your memorialists feel that it is needless to enlarge or insist on his great merits. It is known to all how, alike by his intellectual gifts and scientific achievements, and by his great personal worth and purity of character, he was able to render inestimable services to the cause of science and the public good It would, in the opinion of your memorialists, be fitting and proper that one who was thus the chosen head of science in England, and who, by his intellect and character, filled that office so worthily and with such advantage to the world, and who has left such a bright example to those that follow, should be honored by being buried in Westminster Abbey; and your memorialists therefore trust that you will see fit to permit him to be buried there.
In our obituary notice of yesterday, by a clerical, the Bishop of London was mentioned as having been Head Master of Harrow at the time young Spottiswoode was there. It should, of course, have been the Bishop of Lincoln.
________________________________________
The following is the list of the persons who have signed the memorial to the Dean of Westminster for the burial of Mr. Spottiswoode in Westminster
Abbey Many more signatures are expected: The Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Salisbury, the Earl of Derby, Earl Granville, Earl Ducie, the Earl of Dalhousie, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, Lord Coleridge, Lord Rayleigh, Lord Lawrence, Lord Aberdare, Lord Reay, Lord Colin Campbell, Lord George Hamilton, the Right Hon. Sir Stafford Northcote, M.P., the Right Hon. Hugh Childers, M.P., the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, M.P., the Right Hon. A. Beresford-Hope, M.P., the Right Hon. G. J. Goschen, M.P., the Right Hon. Sir Richard Oress, M.P., the Right Hon. A. J. Murdella, M.P., the Right Hon. Sir Lyon Playfsir, M.P., the Right Hon. Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., the Right Hon, Sir Charles Bowen, the Right Hon. Henry Fawcett, M.P., the Dean of Christ Church, the Warden of Merton, the Headmaster of Eton, the President of the Royal Academy, the Astronomer Royal, Sir James Stephen, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Sir John Lubbock, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir William Thomson, Sir James Paget, Sir William Gull, Sir William Jenner, Admiral Sir Astley Cooper Key, General Sir Patrick Grant, Admiral Sir L. M'Clintock, General Sir J. Lefroy, Admiral Sir E. Richards, Admiral Sir E. Fanshawe, General. Sir Montazae M'Murdo, Sir Charles Mills, Sir Walter Elliot, Sir Bartle Bar Frere, Sir Arthur Hobhouse, Sir Rutherford Aleock, Sir Herry Rawlinson, Sir James Lacaita, Sir Henry Thompson, Sir Lewis Pelly, Sir F. Bramwell, Sir John Hawkshaw, Sir William Siemens, Sir Louis Mallet, Sir Henry Bessemer, Sir Julian Henry Goldsmid, Sir Joseph Fayzer, Sir William Gregory, Mr. Story Maskelyne, M.P., Mr. W. C. Cartwright, M.P., Professor Busk, Professor Huxley, Professor Sylvester, Professor Tyndall, Professor Williamson, Professor Hirst, Professor Cayley, Professor Darwin, Professor Bryce, Professor Roscoe, Professor Osborne Reynolds, Professor Michael Foster, Professor Flower, Professor Debus, Professor Glaisher, Professor Carey Foster, Professor Marshall, Professor Boyd Dawkins, Professor Ray Lankester, Professor Humphrey, Professor Dewar, Professor Frankland, Professor Guthrie, Professor Warrington Smyth, Professor Odling, Professor Clifton, Professor Thisleton Dyer, Dr. Hughlings Jackson, Dr. Duncan, Dr. William Pole, Dr. Priestly, Dr. Prescott Hewett, Dr. Quain, Dr. Lander Brunton, Warren de la Rue, D.O.L., Dr. John Evans, Dr. Gunther, Dr. Huggins, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Hopkinson, Dr. Gladstone, Dr. W. Grey, General Hutt, Mr. Douglas Freshfeld, Mr. F. W. Burton, Mr. T. Cherery, Colonel Grant, Mr. J. Fergusson, Mr. Willoughby Smith, Mr. R. B. Hayward, Captain Abney, the Rev. W. H. Milman, Mr. T. E. H. Gordon, Mr. J. Fletcher Moulton, Mr. F. Galton, Mr. Douglas Galton, Mr. Lawrence T. Cave, Mr. Robert Scott, Mr. T. Woolner, Mr. A. Brandreth, Mr. F. E. Godman, Mr. Pascoe Grenfell, Mr. F. Pollock, Mr. W. Haseltine, Mr. Wollaston Blake, Mr. W. H. Preece, Mr. W. Crookes, Mr. A. Milman, Mr. J. Heywood, Mr. J. Boehm, Mr. J. Ball, and Mr. T. Hawkesley.
___________________________________________________________
The following is the reply of the Dean of Westminster to the memorial which was formally presented to him on Saturday by Sir F. Pollock and Mr. J. Fletcher Moulton, praying him to permit the late President of the Royal Society to be buried in Westminster Abbey:
"I am deeply sensible of the loss which the country has sustained in the death of the President of the Royal Society. The names appended to the weighty memorial which you have just laid before me are sufficient evidence of the widespread desire that the highest public honors should be paid to the memory of one whose peculiar claims have been urged so forcibly. In addition to that memorial, I have this morning received one expressing the same desire, and bearing the signatures of many hundreds of working men with whom he was brought into daily intercourse. Although in consideration of the limited space yet remaining for interment within the Abbey, I should have myself suggested a monument rather than a grave, yet I cannot but assent, after much anxious consideration, to the wish that your memorial expresses I recognize in the late Mr. Spottiswoode not merely a man of special scientific attainments, but one who from his interest in and sympathy with all the many branches and departments of scientific knowledge was peculiarly fitted to represent English science in its broadest aspect, and who was at the moment of his death the chosen and honored President of the Royal Society. I recognize in him also a man of the very highest and most stainless character—one whose great gifts were only equalled by the purity and attractiveness, and, I may be allowed to add, the kindness, the devoutness and humility of his daily life. And, not least of all, I feel that in honoring him we are not only honoring one whose name is dear to men of science and literature, and of eminence in every sphere of public and social life, but one whose memory will long be treasured by the working classes, to whose highest interests and welfare he was so deeply devoted."
___________________________________________
The following is a supplementary list of signatures to the memorial: The Archbishop of York, Earl of Dufferin, Earl Sydney, Earl Stanhope, the Earl Northbrook, Lord Eustace Cesil, the Bishop of Exeter, Lord Chelmsford, the Right Hon. J. Chamberlain, M.P., the Right Hon. G. Osborne Morgan, M.P., the Hon. Robert Butler, the Hon. Ralph Dutton, the Master of Balliol, the liol, the Provost of Eton, the Head Master of Rugby, the Dean of Salisbury, Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Sir Frederick Abel, Sir Charles Bunbury, Professor Lister, V.P.R.S., Mr. Horace Davey, Q.C., M.P., Mr. J. Norman Lockyer, Mr. G. J. Romanes, Professor Geikie, Dr. Acland, Dr. Guy, Mr. Curling, the Rev. B. Compton, Mr. J. Lowthian Bell, Mr. Ed a Bell, Mr. Edward Bunbury, Mr. W. H. Pollock, and Professor Johnstone Stoney.
___________________________________________
A correspondent writes:
Mr. Spottiswoode on four occasions rowed in his University boat, once in the Thames (in 1844), twice at Henley in 1844 and 1845), and Regatta (once against Cambridge at Putney (in 1845). It is within my knowledge that at considerable personal inconvenience he attended the University Boat-race commemoration dinner held in April, 1881, and subsequently gave cheerful and valuable professional assistance to the committee in the publication of the record of the beat-race which followed the dinner. On the title page of that book appears a line (inserted with Mr. Spottiswoode's distinct approval) - Printed by William Spottiswoode, O.U.B.C., P.R.S.
___________________________________________
Although the arrangements for the interment of the late President of the Royal Society are not yet completed, it may be stated that the Dean has kindly sanctioned the use of the Jerusalem Chamber for the assembling of the many distinguished men who will act as pallbearers or follow in the procession as representatives of and members of the varied public, literary, and spiritual bodies with which Mr. Spottiswoode's wide-ranging sympathies and tastes brought him into communication. A certain number of tickets for admission to the choir have also been placed at the disposal of the representatives of the family. The chamber will be open to the public The remains will be brought to the cloister gateway in Dean's-yard shortly before noon, and at once, followed by the mourners, will be borne to the west cloister door, where the Dean and the Abbey clergy will begin the funeral service as they move down the aisle to the west door, where they will turn and then advance up the whole length of the nave, those who are gathered in the Jerusalem Chamber taking their places in the procession as it passes the door at the west end of the aisle, and passing into the sacrarium to bear the funeral service read. The position of the grave is not yet fixed, but if a room can be found it will be near that in which an ancestor of Mr. Spottiswood lies buried.
Just below the bust of Dryden, and near the entrance to the little chapel of St. Benedict, is a large slab bearing the inscription: "Near this spot is buried Isaac Casaubon (whose monument is opposite), 1614. And also his friend, John Spottiswood, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 1639." If space cannot be found without trenching upon the ground which the custom of some centuries has treated as the peculiar burial-place of our great poets, a grave will be made somewhere in the nave, near those of Herschel and Darwin.
The funeral, which it was originally intended should take place yesterday, was postponed until Thursday in deference to the wishes of the very large number of signatories of the request to the Dean for the interment of the remains in the Abbey. A second petition was received by the Dean on Saturday, but too late to be answered at the time, which bore some 1,600 signatures. It ran: "Your memorialists, persons employed by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode and Messrs. Spottiswoode and Co., are deeply sensitive of the great loss we have sustained by the death of Mr. Spottiswoode. He at all times studied our interests and welfare, and the kindness and consideration he has always shown us can never be forgotten. Your memorialists believe that a request is about to be made by many eminent men that Mr. Spottiswoode's remains may be buried in Westminster Abbey, and we therefore respectfully ask that this petition may be accepted in support of the one to which we allude."
The tickets issued admit to the Jerusalem Chamber and to the choir at 11 a.m. on Thursday. The funeral service will be commenced at 12 p.m. All applications for tickets should be made to Messrs. T. and W. Banting, of St. James's Street, the undertakers, and not to the Dean.
At the annual general meeting of the Society of Arts, held last Wednesday, the following resolution was passed:
"That this meeting of the Society of Arts desires to express the deep regret with which it has received the news of the death of Mr. William Spattiswoode, one of its Vice-Presidents, and its sense of the loss which the Society has sustained by his decease. In him England loses one of her most remarkable men of science, science itself one of its greatest ornaments, and all who knew him a sincere and valued friend. Besides devoting his own time and thought to the advancement of knowledge, he was ever ready to lend to all engaged in like pursuits the assistance of his experience and his wise counsel. In thus placing on record their own appreciation of his services, the Society desires to express its feelings of sympathy with his widow and his family, and also with the Fellows of the Royal Society, of which he was the honored and beloved President."
The name of Sir Frederick Evans, Hydrographer the Admiralty was accidentally omitted from the list of signatories to the memorial for the interment of Mr. Spottiswoode in Westminster Abbey.
___________________________________________________
To the Editor of The Times.
Sir,
In your obituary notice of the late Mr. Spottiswoode no reference is made to the important duties he discharged as a member of the council of the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education. For the last three years, Mr. Spottiswoode had been an ex-officio member of this body; and I am sure I am only expressing the views of all members of the council when I state how much the institute was indebted to his thoughtful advice, his courteous and conciliatory assistance, and to the considerable amount of time he devoted to the work of the institute. In no mere perfect manner did he discharge the duties of his office Appointed by Her Majesty's Commissioners of 1851 as a representative of science at the time when the free grant of land, on which the Central Institution in Exhibition Road is being erected, was granted to the institute, Mr. Spottiswoode was one of the most regular attendants at the meetings of the executive committee and of two of the sub-committees on which he served. Since his return from Rome, and scarcely more than a month ago, he was present at a meeting of the sub-committee charged with the organization of the Central Institution; and among the numerous public bodies and private individuals who deplore his loss, I am sure, none will lament it more sincerely than the City and Guilds of London Institute and the members of the committees and sub-committees who had the honor of working with him and who were accustomed to seeking his wise counsel and to avail themselves of his wide and technical knowledge. In his annual addresses to the Royal Society's full reference will be to the work done by the council of the institute, in which he took such an active part; and among the many indications of interest which he showed in the educational movement with which he was then connected, his well-considered evidence given before the Livery Companies' Commission on behalf of the institute will always be remembered as by no means least valuable or least important.
Begging the favour of your insertion of these few lines as a tribute to the memory of one whose loss will be severely felt by the members of the City and Guilds of London Institute.
I am, Sir, yours obediently,
PHILIP MAGNUS,
Gresham College, June 30,
______________________________________________
To-day, the remains of William Spottiswoode will receive what in our generation is the highest tribute of respect that can be paid to an honored fellow-citizen. Burial in Westminster Abbey, always highly prized, has come in these latter years to mean much more than that of old. The limited possibilities in the already crowded space and the universal desire that those whom we most delight to honor should all rest there have led to a discrimination, we might say to a severity of criticism, of the claims of those for whom the honor is sought, that makes it as if accorded double value. Not that it is within the range of hope that all the greatest names that England knows or will know can be associated with Westminster Abbey. The honor is one that implies not only greatness and worth in the recipient, but also that this greatness and worth have been recognized and valued by its contemporaries The great men who live a stormy life amid the battles of their generation, and die before the cause with which they have identified themselves has triumphed, will not be found there. But it will always be associated with those great men whom England has learned to esteem and venerate during their lifetime, and of these the late President of the Royal Society was eminently one. The remarkable inanimity among those best entitled to speak as to the fitness of according to him interment in the Abbey shows how widely his exceptional merits and the services he has rendered to his age have been recognized. Those who knew Mr. Spottiswoode intimately will feel that no fitter crown to his stainless and useful career, and no honour more consonant with that ambition which must have lived within him, as it lives within all men of noble aims, could have been dovised than that he should be laid to rest beside so many earnest thinkers and workers of days gone by, while the thinkers and workers of to-day, his comrades throughout his life, stand in deep and genuine sorrow around his grave.
Mr. Spottiswoode belonged to that class which it is specially the glory of England to possess—namely, scientific men who have other pursuits and duties than the cultivation of science. Among the various continental nations, the study of mathematics and science is almost exclusively confined to a professional class who devote their whole time and energies to it, and to whom it is a career. But when one recalls the great names of English science, one finds a large class, yielding to none in distinction, composed of men who have had no professional connection with science, but who have been among the busiest workers in various departments of practical life. It is an important testimony to the energy of the English character that this should be the case, and that men, the bulk of whose time is devoted to other pursuits, should be able to keep a distinguished place among those engaged in original research. This feature of the English scientific world never fails to be remarked upon by foreigners when first brought into connexion with it.
Of this class of workers, Mr. Spottiswoode was a typical example. From the day when he was suddenly called from his University studies to assume the direction of a large business to the day of his death no one could have been more thoroughly a man of business or could more completely or successfully have discharged the duties which devolve upon the need of a large commercial house. But all this was insufficient to cripple or even check his efforts in the pursuit of truth. It may well be that the influence was salutary, for his intellect was of such good quality throughout, and his tastes so catholic that, for the restraining influence of his business avocations, he might have dissipated his energies in the cultivation of too many branches of knowledge. As it was, his culture was singularly broad in its character, but fortunately for himself and for others the catholicity of his taste was so tempered by a sound and deep-seated abhorrence of all mere smatterings of knowledge that it did not prevent him from devoting all the most valuable part of his spare time and energies to mathematics and physics.
This catholicity of taste probably aided considerably in obtaining for him early scientific distinction. Those who know the history of English science and its near congener, mathematics, are aware that in the last 30 years there have been marvellous developments in two almost opposite directions. On the one hand, a school of mathematicians of unrivalled brilliance has carried the more abstract departments of mathematical and geometrical thought to lengths which were not only previously unknown, but which have passed beyond the reach of all mathematicians who specially devote themselves to them as their peculiar study. On the other hand, the enormously rapid development of physical science has claimed assistance from applied mathematics to an extent which has fairly taxed its powers and, indeed, has, in many cases, been inadequately responded to. Hence there has grown up something like dissension between the two schools. The pure mathematician seems to view with scorn the laborious modes of approximation by which alone we can yet attack the great physical problems that nature propounds to us. On the other hand, the physicist is too apt to show his impatience in the sight of great intellects spending themselves in efforts to solve problems which never had been propounded but for their own marvellous, and in his eyes perverse, ingenuity. One world taxes the physicist, though armed with all the weapons that mathematics can give him. He chafes that those who should be his right-hand helpers should be conducting campaigns in worlds of their own creating. The battle between the two schools waxes warm at times. One of the most distinguished astronomers of the age has been known to pay a visit to an English University for the special purpose of denouncing the favorite studies of some of its most distinguished professors. But to this strife Willism Spottiswoode was a stranger. Both camps claimed him as their own. The close friend and fellow worker of men like Professors Sylvester and Cayley, and of their lamented comrades Professor Henry Smith and Professor Clifford, could not be suspected of being unfriendly to pure mathematics, however far it soared from mundane things. The unwearied physicist and investigator, whose wealth and time was so lavishly spent on experimental research into light and electricity, could not be supposed to look slightingly on the pre-eminent claims of physical science. Thus both schools of thought rightly regarded him as their friend and supporter, and it was, no doubt, this, coupled with his loyal sympathy with and attachment to all other forms of scientific research, in which he was not, and never claimed to be, an original worker, that marked him out as so eminently fitted to be the head of the great English Society which in such an impartial way embraces within it all the leading workers in England in every branch of science. It cannot be expected that many beyond a very limited circle should appreciate, or even more than dimly understand, the drift of much of Mr. Spottiswoode's best work in pure mathematics. The very names of the numerous papers by him scattered through journals and proceedings of learned societies in languages seem to the uninitiated like hieroglyphics or conundrums. The reduction of a Decadic Binary Quantic seems a formidable undertaking, even although it has ap-parently put itself in the wrong by appearing in an uncanonical form; but those who can judge of such work know that his papers are of excellent quality, the productions of a graceful as well as a powerful mind, and that none more fully than he has sympathized with and made his own, that strange logic of form whereby the modern devotees of pure mathematics seem to draw the most complex and marvellous conclusions from the mere form in which data of the problems present themselves; but the world in general must be content to believe in the esoteric beauty of these mysteries, so pro-foundly sealed from their gaze. They can only gauge the power of these hidden charms by the fervour of the favored few who worship at the shrine.
Fortunately the other departments of Mr. Spottiswoode's scientific labors were not so far removed from this world of ours. It will never be known whether mathematics or physical science would naturally have first claimed him; but it is certain that when the discerning cares of a well-ordered and regulated business, and the wealth which had flowed from it, permitted him to spend the time and money requisite for the experimental research with which his name is associated, he promptly turned to physical science, although never quite neglecting his first love. His physical research commenced with investigations into various branches of phenomena of polarized light. His pleasant little "talk with his workmen" is still the best elementary treatise on this subject, though it gives but little idea of the splendors of the phenomena when shown by the magnificent apparatus which he caused to be constructed for his laboratory, and which is undoubtedly the most splendid collection of such apparatus in the world. But the growth of electricity which has been such a prominent feature of recent science attracted him and led him to take up the investigations by which he is best known - the investigations into vacuum discharges.
At first sight it would appear as though this subject was a little more akin to the world in which we live than the mystic mathematics of which we have spoken. Yet such is far from being the case. Whether considered as enlarging our knowledge of the phenomena and the structure of the Universe, or as increasing our power to bend the forces of Nature to our practical needs, there is no recent development of science more remarkable than the recent researches into the phenomena of high vacua, in which department of research the English school has played by far the most prominent part. If we are ever to wring from nature the secret of electricity and learn the hidden structure (if such a term can be used) of that mysterious form of force, it is probable that it will be largely due to the study of the phenomena presented by electrical discharges when passing across the intensely rarified gas in vacuum tubes, where nothing but a few rapidly moving particles of ponderable matter are present to distinguish it from the utter void that probably exists in the interplanetary spaces; and, on the other hand, the existence of the incandescent electric lamp, which will probably before long be the chosen light for domestic use wherever circumstances will permit it, is due in no small degree to kindred researches. It would take too long to enumerate, or even to indicate, the main outline of Mr. Spottiswoode's researches in this department of science. They were carried on with the utmost wealth of physical apparatus, and many of the experiments could only have been performed by the aid of the resources of his magnificent electrical laboratory. He has died in the middle of these researches; but what he had done made him the worthy coadjutor of such men as Mr. Warren De La Rue and Professor Crookes, who, with Mr. Spottiswoode, have secured for England the main glory of this branch of discovery. But it would be very misleading to treat the honour paid to the late President of the Royal Society solely as due to his mathematical or scientific achievements. Fortunately, science has in these days such splendid recruits that there is no cause to fear that the loss of our great scientific men will leave science permanently the poorer. It will not be as a scientific worker that his loss will be most keenly and most permanently felt. The right judgment, the unchallongeable impartiality of mind, the dignity of heart which distinguished him, combined with his intellectual and scientific powers, made him a figure in the scientific world than which none could be more missed or more difficult to be replaced,
________________________________________________
The ceremonial arrangements for the burial of the late Mr. Spottiswoode in Westminster Abbey at noon to-day were completed last evening. When the bearers of the coffin reach the west cloister door they will be met by a procession formed of the choir, minor canons, the junior masters, scholars, and the Head Master of Westminster School, the Canons, sub-Dean, and Dean of Westminster. As the procession passes the entrance from the Jerusalem Chamber the pall-bearers will take the places assigned to them on either side of the coffin. These will be the Chancellors of the Universities, the presidents of learned societies and scientific institutions, and others (or their representatives attending ex-officio) the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (the Duke of Devonshire), the Chancellor of the University of Oxford (the Marquis of Salisbury), the Chancellor of the University of London (Earl Granville), the President of the Royal Institution (the Duke of Northumberland, represented by Mr. George Busk), the Archbishop of Canterbury (as trustee of the British Museum), the Chancellor of the Exchequer, President of the Royal Academy (Sir F. Leighton), the President of the Royal Asiatic Society (Sir Bartle Frere), the President of the Royal Geographical Society (Lord Aberdare), Sir John Labbock, M.P. (Linnean Society), Sir W. Armstrong (Institute of Civil Engineers), Mr. E. J. Stone (Royal Astronomical Society), Dr. Evans (treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society, and principal pallbearer), Professor Flower (Royal Zoological Society), the Vice-President of the Society of Arts, the Master of the Stationers' Company, the President of the British Association (Sir W. Siemens), and other presidents of societies, and six representatives of the employés of the firm of which Mr. Spottiswoode was the head. After the chief mourner, the members of the family, and the servants of the house, who, of course, immediately follow purse the coffin, will come Mr. Andrew Cockerell, representing His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and then the members of the Royal Society. The service will be choral.
