out the maker's assistance. Ferguson, however, had seen enough for his purpose; he immediately set about constructing one for himself; and, in a short time, he produced a machine that exhibited "the sun's motion round his axis, the diurnal and annual motions of the earth on its inclined axis, which kept its parallelium in its whole course round the sun; the motions and phases of the moon, with the retrograde motion of the nodes of her orbit; and, consequently, all the varieties of the seasons, the different lengths of day and night, the days of the new and full moon and eclipses." He subsequently made a smaller, and a neater orrery; and, in the course of his life, he tells us, he made six more, all with improvements upon each other.

His mind now became so strongly attached to philosophical pursuits, that he made an effort to escape from his profession, which he had always followed rather from necessity than choice. With this view he came to London, in 1743, and sought employment as a teacher of mechanics and astronomy, though he did not refuse to take the portraits of such sitters as private friendship procured him. At length, the demonstration of a new astronomical truth brought him into the kind of notice for which he so ardently desired. This was his discovery that the moon must always move in a path concave to the sun, which he communicated to Mr. Folkes, the president of the Royal Society, to whom he was, in consequence, immediately introduced. He shortly after published A Dissertation on the Phenomena of the Harvest Moon, with the Description of a New Orrery, having only Four Wheels. This work was very favourably received by the public; though the author modestly says of it,—“ Having never had a grammatical education, nor time to study the rules of just composition, I acknowledge that I was afraid to put it to the press; and, for the same cause, I ought to have the same fears still."

In 1748, he began to give lectures on astronomy and mechanics, and with such success, that he at length found himself in a condition to relinquish portrait painting altogether, as a means of subsistence. Among his hearers is said to have been George III., then a boy; and when that sovereign came to the throne, he bestowed upon Ferguson a pension of £50 per annum. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1763, but was still poor enough to request a remission of the usual fees, which, as in the cases of Newton and Thomas Simpson, was granted him. He died in 1776; after having distinguished himself, both abroad and at home, by the publication of a number of singularly lucid and valuable works. Their titles are as follow:-A Brief Description of the Solar System, to which is subjoined an Astronomical Account of the Year of our Saviour's Crucifixion; An Idea of the Material Universe, deduced from a Survey of the Solar System; Astronomy explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's principles, and made easy to those who have not studied Mathematics; Lectures on Sub

jects in Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, and Optics, with the use of the Globes, the art of Dialling, and the calculation of the mean times of New and Full Moons and Eclipses; Plain Method of Determining the Parallax of Venus by her Transit over the Sun, and thence, by analogy, the Parallax and Distance of the Sun, and of all the rest of the Planets; Astronomical Tables and Precepts for calculating the true times of New and Full Moon, and showing the method of projecting Eclipses, from the creation of the world, to A. D. 7800; to which is prefixed, A Short Theory of the Solar and Lunar Motions; Tables and Tracts relative to several Arts and Sciences; Supplement to the Lectures on Mechanics, Hydrostatics, &c.; Young Gentleman and Lady's Astronomy, familiarly explained in Ten Dialogues; Introduction to Electricity; Select Mechanical Exercises, &c., with an account of his life prefixed, written by himself; Two Letters to the Rev. John Kennedy, containing an account of many mistakes in the astronomical part of his Scripture Chronology, and his abusive treatment of astronomical authors; and, The Art of Drawing in Perspective made Easy to those who have no previous knowledge of the Mathematics. Several of these have been translated into foreign languages, and have been universally admired for the simplicity and ingenuity of their elucidations. Speaking of his Dialogues on Astronomy, Madame de Genlis says, "This book is written with so much clearness, that a child of ten years old may understand it perfectly, from one end to the other;" a eulogy not unmerited.

The private character of Ferguson is spoken highly of by all his biographers; and, in particular, by the writer of his life in Rees's Cyclopædia, who certifies from personal knowledge, that he possessed, in a very eminent degree, the most engaging and amiable qualities. His disposition was humble, meek, and benevolent; his manners were simple and courteous ; and, as it has been justly said, his whole life exemplified resignation and Christian piety; and philosophy seemed to produce in him only diffidence and urbanity, a love for mankind, and for his Maker. As a philosopher, he possessed, in a pre-eminent degree, the faculties of distinct apprehension and luminous exposition. He possessed, however, but a very limited and superficial knowledge of pure mathematics; and, if we may credit the authority of Dr. Hutton, he was unable to demonstrate one proposition in Euclid's Elements. He remained, in fact, says one of his biographers, to the end of his life, rather "a clever empiric," to use the term in its original and more honourable signification, as meaning a practical and experimenting philosopher, than a man of science.

IR PHILIP FRANCIS was the son of the Rev. Dr. Philip Francis, and was born in Dublin, October 22d, 1740. When his father came over to England in 1750, he was placed on the foundation of St. Paul's School, London, ewhere he remained about three years. Here, it is worth observing, one of his school-fellows was Mr. Henry S. Woodfall, afterwards the printer of the "Public Advertiser," and the publisher of the "Letters of Junius." In 1756, he was appointed to a place in the office of his father's patron, Mr. Fox, then secretary of state; and when Mr. Fox was succeeded by Pitt in December of this year, young Francis had the good fortune to be recommended to, and retained by the new secretary. In 1758, through the patronage of Mr. Pitt, he was appointed private secretary to General Bligh, when that officer was sent in command of an expedition against the French coast; and while serving in this capacity he was present at an action fought between the British and French forces in the neighbourhood of Cherbourg. In 1760, on the same recommendation, the Earl of Kinnoul, on being appointed ambassador to Portugal, took Francis with him as his secretary. He returned to England in 1763, when the Right Hon. Wellebore Ellis, afterwards Lord Mendip, gave him an appointment of considerable consequence in the War Office, over which he then presided. He retained this place till March, 1772, when he resigned in consequence of a quarrel with Lord Barrington, who had by that time succeeded Mr. Ellis. The remainder of that year he spent in travelling through Flanders, Germany, Italy, and France. In June, 1773, soon after his return, he was appointed to the distinguished place of one of the civil members in council for the government of Bengal, with a salary of £10,000. He is said to have wed this appointment to the influence of Lord Barrington, whose hostility

therefore would appear to have been now converted into very substantial friendship, or who must be supposed to have had private reasons for such an exercise of his patronage. He set out for India in the summer of 1774, and remained in that country till December, 1780, when he resigned his situation, and embarked for England, after having had a quarrel with the governor-general, Mr. Hastings, which produced a duel, in which Mr. Francis was shot through the body. He had opposed Mr. Hastings, and for some time effectually, from his entrance into the council, but the sudden death of two of his colleagues, by whom he had been generally supported, had latterly left him in a helpless minority in his contest against the policy of the governor-general. In 1784, Mr. Francis was returned to parliament for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight, and soon began to take an active part in the business of the House of Commons, where, although he was not a fluent speaker, the pregnancy of his remarks and the soundness and extent of his information always commanded attention. He took his side from the first with the Whig opposition, and to that party he adhered while he lived. When it was resolved in 1786 to impeach Mr. Hastings, it was proposed that Mr. Francis should be appointed one of the managers of the impeachment; but all the eloquence of Burke, Fox, and Windham, (aided by his own,) could not overcome the feeling of the house against placing in this situation, a man with whom the accused had had a personal quarrel. The motion was twice negatived by large majorities. Nevertheless, there was much force in what was urged in its support, and the casuistry of the question was not a little curious and perplexing. The benefit of the talents and information of Mr. Francis was eventually secured to the prosecution by a letter inviting his assistance, which was addressed to him by the unanimous vote of the committee of managers; and this business occupied his chief attention for many years. When the war with France broke out, Mr. Francis adhered to the party of Fox and Grey, and was one of the first and most active members of the famous association of the Friends of the People. At the new election in 1796, he stood candidate for Tewkesbury, but failed in being returned, and he did not sit in that parliament. In 1802, however, he was returned for Appleby, by Lord Thanet, and he continued to sit for that borough while he remained in parliament. The question of the abolition of the slave-trade was that in which he took the keenest and most active part in the latter term of his parliamentary career; and it is said that in advocating the abolition, he took a course as much opposed to his private interests as it was in conformity with his public principles. On the formation of the Grenville administration, Mr. Francis was made a knight of the bath, October 29, 1806; and it is believed that it was at first intended to send him out to India as governorgeneral. That appointment, however, never took place. He retired from parliament in 1807; and after this, the interest which he continued t

take in public affairs was chiefly evinced by occasional political pamphlets and contributions to the newspapers. In 1816, great attention was drawn to Sir Philip Francis, by Mr. John Taylor's very ingenious publication, entitled, "Junius identified with a distinguished Living Character," the object of which was to prove that he was the author of the celebrated "Letters of Junius." It may at least be confidently affirmed, that no case half so strong has yet been made out in favour of any one of the many other conjectures that have been started on the subject of this great literary puzzle. Sir Philip Francis, however, it is said, persisted to the last in rejecting the honour thus attempted to be thrust upon him. His acknowledged publications (all of them pamphlets) amount to twenty-six in number, according to a list appended to the memoir of his life in the "Annual Obituary." One of the most curious of them is the last, entitled, "Historical Questions, exhibited in the Morning Chronicle, in January, 1818, enlarged, corrected, and improved," 8vo. 1818, which originally appeared in a series of articles in the "Morning Chronicle." Sir Philip Francis died after a long and painful illness, occasioned by disease of the prostate gland, at his house in St. James's-square, December 22, 1818. He was twice married, the second time after he had reached the age of seventy, to a Miss Watkins, the daughter of a clergyman. By his first wife he left a son and two daughters.