Mr.
For a more full account we refer to Dr. Priestley's description, which accom panies the chart ; from which we shall make a short extract, that cannot fail to entertain the reader.
" Laborious and tedious as the compi lation of this work has been (vastly more so than my first conceptions represented it to me,) a variety of views were con tinually opening upon me during the ex ecution of it, which made me less atten tive to the labour. As these views agree ably amuse the mind, and may, in some measure, be enjoyed by a person who on ly peruses the chart, without the labour of compilation, I shall mention a few of them in this place.
" It is a peculiar kind of pleasuie we receive, from such a view as this chart exhibits of a great man, such as Sir Isaac Newton, seated, as it were, in the circle of his friends and illustrious contempo raries. We see at once with whom he was capable of holding conversation, and in it manlier (from the distinct • view of their respective ages) upon what terms they might converse. And though it he melancholy, it is not onpleasing, to ob serve the order in • which we here see illustrious persons go ofrthe stake, and to iniagioe to ou•salves the reflections they might make upon the successive depar ture of their acquaintance or rivals.
" We likewise see in some measure, by the names which precede any person, what advantages he enjoyed from the la bours and discoveries of others ; and, by those which follow him, 'of what use his labours Were to his successors.
" By the several void spaces between such groups of great men, we have a idea dea of the great revolutions of all kinds of science, from the very origin of it ; so that the thin and void places in the chart are, in fact, no less instructive than the most crowded, in giving us an idea of the great interruptions of science, and the intervals at which it bath flourished.
The state of all the divisions appropriat ed to men of learning is, for many cen turies before the revival of letters in this western part of the world, exactly ex pressed by This following line of Virgil: Apparent rani nantes in gurgite vasto.
But we see no void spaces in the division of statesmen, heroes, and politicians. The world bath never wanted competitors for empire and power, and least of all in those periods in which the sciences and the arts have been the most neglected.
"But the noblest prospect of this na ture is suggested by a view of the crouds of names, in the divisions appropriated to the arts and sciences in the two last cen turies. Here all the classes of renown, and, I may add, of merit, are full ; and a hun dred times as many might have been admit ted, of equal attainments in knowledge with their predecessors. This prospect gives its a kind of security fbr the con tinual propagation and extension of know ledge ; and that, for the future, no more great chasms of men, really eminent for knowledge, will ever disfigure that part of the chart of their lives which I cannot draw, or ever see drawn. What a figure must science make, advancing as it now does, at the end of as many centuries as have elapsed since the Augustan age !"