ous many-sided life entirely devoted to missionary work and scientific observation in south Africa. Their pages do not much lend themselves to telling quotation: they are clear, well written records, recalling, in a manner, the maritime diaries or narratives of the later eighteenth century. And, in general, this is true of other works concerning African travel. Most of them are more notable for what they relate than for their manner of relating it. Burton's The Lake Regions of Central Africa expresses the virile and aggressive personality of that untiring traveller. Speke's Journal of the discovery of the source of the Nile, a fine record of exploration, is, perhaps, best in a literary sense where he describes the court of 'Mtesa, king of Uganda:

I was now requested to shoot the four cows as quickly as possible. I borrowed the revolving pistol I had given him and shot all four in a second of time. . . . The king now loaded one of the carbines I had given him with his own hands, and giving it full cock to a page, told him to go out and shoot a man in the outer court; which was no sooner accomplished than the little urchin returned to announce his success with a look of glee such as one would see in the face of a boy who had robbed a bird's nest, caught a trout, or done any other boyish trick. The king said to him, "And did you do it well?" "Oh, yes, capitally." He spoke the truth, no doubt, for he dared not have trifled with the king; but the affair created hardly any interest.

Travel in tropical west Africa is a lurid tale of barbaric negro states, of slave-hunting and human sacrifice, of monstrous animals and pestiferous swamps, of mysterious rivers and dangerous forests, of trading and carousing in the midst of pestilence and death, of explorers devoting health and life to their zeal for observation and for science. Among those whose lives were sacrificed to their passion for west African travel there are two whose literary power raises their books above the rest. These are W. Winwood Reade and Mary Kingsley. Reade, a nephew of the novelist, was himself a man of literary power and promise who gave his fortune and life to west Africa. His African Sketch-book, a charming record of three journeys, appeared in 1873. Not long after its publication, its writer died from the effects of his share in

the Ashantee campaign. Mary Kingsley, whose father and two uncles were all notable voyagers and authors, travelled for scientific observation. In 1900 she died at Simon's Town of enteric fever, caught in tending Boer prisoners. Her Travels in West Africa, though marred in parts by overlaboured humour, is very good at its best:

On first entering the great grim twilight regions of the forest, you hardly see anything but the vast column-like grey tree stems in their countless thousands around you, and the sparsely vegetated ground beneath. But day by day, as you get trained to your surroundings, you see more and more, and a whole world grows up gradually out of the gloom before your eyes. . . . Nor indeed do I recommend African forest life to anyone. Unless you are interested in it and fall under its charm, it is the most awful life in death imaginable. And if you do fall under its spell, it takes the colour out of other kinds of living.

One kind of travel, namely Alpine climbing, has produced a copious modern literature-peculiarly British in character— which scarcely goes farther back than the middle of the nineteenth century. Peaks, passes and glaciers, a series of episodes described by different writers, appeared in 1859. The playground of Europe by Sir Leslie Stephen is marked by a peculiar literary distinction. Whymper's books on the Alps and on the Andes provide plenty of exciting matter. Alpine writing, including the works of living writers and also the pages of The Alpine Journal, is generally of good literary quality, being largely the work of accomplished men whose recreation is Alpine climbing.

The growth of the British oversea dominions has produced many books of travel. Conspicuous among them are Sir Charles Dilke's two books Greater Britain (1868) and Problems of Greater Britain (1890) which contain the observations of two journeys in America and the Antipodes. They are notable both for their lucid, easy mode of expression, and still more for their political insight and clear perception of immediate difficulties and of future possibilities-possibilities which have since, in great part, been realised.

Only actual books of travel have here been mentioned. It would pass the scope of this chapter to do more than hint at the

influence of these books and of personal travelling reminiscences upon English poetry and prose fiction. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Michael Scott's Tom Cringle's Log, Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho!, Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, are typical examples, and the list might be endlessly extended. Every poet of the nineteenth century, from Wordsworth to Tennyson and Browning, has left upon his pages some impression of his travels. From Fielding to Stevenson one may dip into the novelists almost at random to find sketches of travel. The first chapter of Guy Mannering is a vivid picture of a Scottish journey. Tom Jones and Humphrey Clinker take us along the country roads of England. Vanity Fair gives a picture of continental travel before the days of railways: Pickwick is fresh with the more homely humours of the English roadside and coaching inn. Upon another plane, Charles Lever's wanderings inspire his pen. Later literature abounds with smaller books of the same family-fictitious or half-fictitious stories of trips on foot or bicycle, in canoe or caravan, at home and abroad.

One other reflection occurs. Although the literature of travel is not the highest kind, and, indeed, cannot be called a distinct branch, of literature, yet a history of English literature rightly assigns a space apart to such books, because this kind of writing, perhaps more than any other, both expresses and influences national predilections and national character. In view of the magnificent achievements and splendid records of other nations who have preceded or accompanied the British in the fields of travel and discovery, it would be most inappropriate to attempt any kind of national comparison. But books of travel and books inspired by travel have, probably, been more read in Great Britain than any other books except novels. The educational value of pleasant travel-books is great. They have provided the substance of a thousand books for boys; and thus, both directly and indirectly, have guided and fired the inclinations of many generations of boys. And every reader, whether boy or man, finds in his favourite books of travel some image of himself and some hint towards moulding himself.

CHAPTER VIII

The Literature of Science

A. PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS

HE brilliant achievements of British mathematicians,

THE

astronomers and physicists under the influence of Isaac Newton were followed by a long period of comparative inactivity. This was largely due to the fact that, during a considerable part of the eighteenth century, members of the British school were, more or less, out of touch with their continental contemporaries. A free exchange of views is essential to vigour and, the more varied the outlook and training of those concerned, the more fruitful is the intercourse. The effect of this isolation, moreover, was intensified by the manner in which English writers strove in their demonstrations to follow Newtonian forms. If Newton, in his Principia, confined himself to geometrical proofs, it was because their validity was unimpeachable; and, since his results were novel, he did not wish the discussion as to their truth to turn on the methods used to demonstrate them. But his followers, long after the principles of the calculus had been accepted, continued to employ geometrical proofs, whenever it was possible, even when these did not offer the simplest and most direct way of arriving at the result.

In short, we may say that, in the course of English mathematical science, the last seventy years of the eighteenth century form a sort of isolated backwater; for this reason, it is unnecessary here to describe in detail the work of the writers of this period. We must not, however, fall into the error of thinking that, among them, there were no men of ability. The investi

gations of Colin Maclaurin, of Edinburgh, on attractions, are excellent, and his treatise on fluxions is, perhaps, the best exposition of that method of analysis. We may also refer to the work of Thomas Simpson, of London, on the figure of the earth, tides and various astronomical problems; of John Michell, of Cambridge, who determined the law of force between magnetic poles, invented the torsion balance and devised the plan of determining the density of the earth carried out by Cavendish in 1798; of Henry Cavendish,' who discovered the law of attraction in static electricity, introduced the ideas of electrostatic capacity and specific inductive capacity and determined the density of the earth by his well-known experiments; and of Joseph Priestley,' who also discovered, independently of others, the law of attraction in electrostatics and the existence of oxygen; while, in observational astronomy, we need only refer to the great achievements of James Bradley and (Sir) William Herschel. In applications of science, this period and the early years of the nineteenth century were notable for the development of the steam-engine. Somewhat earlier, Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen had done much to bring it into practical use; but modern forms may be said to date from the improvements introduced by James Watt, Richard Trevithick and Henry Bell.

With the nineteenth century, a new era in the history of mathematics and theoretical physics in Great Britain opened. We shall deal here only with its main features, and, so far as possible, shall avoid technical details. Unfortunately, limits of space forbid the introduction of those biographical touches which would have added to the human interest of the story we have to tell.

The first thirty or thirty-five years of this period were largely occupied with work preparatory to the outburst of activity that characterised the Victorian renascence. Early in the nineteenth century, the use of analytical methods was introduced in the Cambridge mathematical curriculum. The advocacy of this change, originated by Robert Woodhouse, was warmly taken up by George Peacock, Charles Babbage, (Sir) John Herschel, William Whewell and (Sir) George Airy. These men worked under the influence of the great French See section B of the present chapter.