thian
columns. The alcoves below are conventional enough, and the high
tables down the centre, strewn with scientific periodicals in engaging
disorder, are equally conventional. But the color-scheme of the
decorations--sage-green and tawny--is harmonious and pleasing, and the
effect of the whole is most reposeful and altogether delightful.

Chief distinction is given the room, however, by a row of busts on
either side and by certain pieces of apparatus on the centre tables.

The busts, as will readily be surmised, are portraits of distinguished
fellows of the Royal Society. There is, however, one exception to this,
for one bust is that of a woman--Mary Somerville, translator of the
_Mecanique Celeste_, and perhaps the most popular of the scientific
writers of her time. It is almost superfluous to state that the row of
busts begins with that of Newton. The place of honor opposite is held by
that of Faraday. Encircling the room to join these two one sees, among
others, the familiar visages of Dr. Gilbert; of Sir Joseph Banks, the
famous surgeon of the early nineteenth century, who had the honor of
being the only man that ever held the presidential chair of the
Royal Society longer than it was held by Newton; of James Watts, of
"steam-engine" fame; of Sabine, the astronomer, also a president of
the society; and of Dr. Falconer and Sir Charles Lyell, the famous
geologists.

There are numerous other busts in other rooms, some of them stowed away
in nooks and crannies, and the list of those selected for the library
does not, perhaps, suggest that this is the room of honor, unless,
indeed, the presence of Newton and Faraday gives it that stamp. But in
the presence of the images of these two, and of Lyell, to go no farther,
one feels a certain sacredness in the surroundings.

If this is true of the mere marble images, what shall we say of the
emblems on the centre table? That little tubular affair, mounted on a
globe, the whole cased in a glass frame perhaps two feet high, is the
first reflecting telescope ever made, and it was shaped by the hand of
Isaac Newton. The brass mechanism at the end of the next table is the
perfected air-pump of Robert Boyle, Newton's contemporary, one of the
founders of the Royal Society and one of the most acute scientific minds
of any time. And here between these two mementos is a higher apparatus,
with crank and wheel and a large glass bulb that make it conspicuous.
This is the electrical mac