The Home Life of Sir David Brewster - Livres de poche

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE COMPANIONS. Say, shall my hand with pions love restore The faint fair picture Time beholds no more, How the grave senior .... Saw from on high, with half paternal joy, Some spark of promise in the studious boy, And bade him enter with paternal tone The homely precincts which he called his own. Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is always interesting to know the quantity and quality of the mental pabulum which has fed and nourished the men who have left their mark on the age. In David Brewster's case the quantity was great, and the quality of unusual excellence. Besides several intelligent gentlemen resident in the neighbourhood, there were among the citizens of Jedburgh, during Brewster's youth, various men of original character, scientific tendencies, and especially of inventive genius. There was Mr. John Ainslie, land-surveyor, well known in Edinburgh for his large map of Scotland; Mr. Alexander Scott of Fala, afterwards factor to the Earl of Hopetoun, a man of sterling integrity of action and speculative mind, inquisitive about every new invention and discovery, whether steam-engines or balloons, reaping-machines or orreries; Mr. George Forrest, gun- maker, whose inventions were honourably mentioned in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal; Mr. WilliamHope, ironmonger, who invented a printing-press, for which he held a patent for many years, and who also introduced gas into his shop and foundry at a very early period; and Mr. Gibson, watchmaker, who made barometers and reflecting telescopes. We are told also " that there then resided in the town several families, if not wealthy yet of good intelligence and respectability; amongst whom were the Eutherfurds; the Mur- rays, cousins of the Earl of Home; the Halls, of the Covenanting family of Ha...