phic
characters on a stone which had been brought to the British Museum from
Rosetta in Egypt. On that stone there is an inscription in
Hieroglyphics, the sacred symbolic language of the early Egyptians;
another in the Enchorial or spoken language of that most ancient people,
and a mutilated inscription in Greek. By the aid of some fragments of
papyri Dr. Young discovered that the Enchorial language is alphabetical,
and that nine of its letters correspond with ours; moreover, he
discovered such a relation between the Enchorial and the hieroglyphic
inscription that he interpreted the latter and published his discoveries
in the years 1815 and 1816.

M. Champollion, who had been on the same pursuit, examined the fine
collection of papyri in the museum at Turin, and afterwards went to
Egypt to pursue his studies on hieroglyphics, to our knowledge of which
he contributed greatly. It is to be regretted that one who had brought
that branch of science to such perfection should have been so
ungenerous as to ignore the assistance he had received from the
researches of Dr. Young. When the Royal Institution was first
established, Dr. Young lectured on natural philosophy. He proved the
undulatory theory of light by direct experiment, but as it depended upon
the hypothesis of an ethereal medium, it was not received in England,
the more so as it was contrary to Newton's theory. The French _savants_
afterwards did Young ample justice. The existence of the ethereal medium
is now all but proved, since part of the corona surrounding the moon
during a total solar eclipse is polarized--a phenomenon depending on
matter. Young's Lectures, which had been published, were a mine of
riches to me. He was of a Quaker family; but although he left the
Society of Friends at an early age, he retained their formal precision
of manner to the last. He was of a kindly disposition, and his wife and
her sisters, with whom I was intimate, were much attached to him. Dr.
Young was an elegant and critical scholar at a very early age; he was an
astronomer, a mathematician, and there were few branches of science in
which he was not versed. When young, his Quaker habits did not prevent
him from taking lessons in music and dancing. I have heard him accompany
his sister-in-law with the flute, while she played the piano. When not
more than sixteen years of age he was so remarkable for steadiness and
acquirements that he was engaged more as a companion than tutor to yo