HERSCHEL'S LOVE OF MUSIC.
Sir William Herschel was a good musician, yet such was his ardour for astronomical discovery, that at some benefit concert which he gave, he had his telescope fixed in a window, and made his observations between the acts.
POWER OF THE LEVER.
Archimedes said, "Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and with my own weight I will move the world." "But," says Dr. Arnott, "he would have required to move with the velocity of a cannon-ball for millions of years, to alter the position of the earth a small part of an inch. This feat of Archimedes is, in mathematical truth, performed by every man who leaps from the ground; for he kicks the world away from him whenever he rises, and attracts it again when he falls."
AN ELECTRIFYING MACHINE IN PERSIA.
When Sir James Malcolm was in Persia, on his first expedition, an electrifying machine which he took with him was one of the chief means of astonishing his Persian friends; and with its effects he surprised and alarmed all, from majesty itself to the lowest peasant.
At Isfahan, all were delighted with the electric machine, except one renowned doctor and lecturer of the college, who, envious of the popularity gained by this display of superior science, contended publicly that the effects produced were moral, not physical; that it was the mummery the Europeans practised, and the state of the nervous agitation they excited, which produced an ideal shock; but he expressed his conviction that a man of true firmness of mind would stand unmoved by all that could be produced out of the glass bottle, as he scoffingly termed the machine. He was invited to the next experiment, the day arrived, and he came accordingly.