Early in the year 1832, on the recommendation of Lord Brougham, then Lord High Chancellor, Leslie was created, along with several other eminent men of science, a Knight of the Guelphic Order. He was also a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1820 had been elected a corresponding member of the French Institute. During the month of October, whilst engaged in superintending some improvements on his grounds, he caught a severe cold, which was followed by erysipelas in one of his legs, and his neglect of this, owing to a contempt for medicine, and great confidence in his own strength and durability, resulted in his death, at Coates, in the November following, at the age of sixty-six.
Sir John Leslie has been described as rivalling all his contemporaries in that creative faculty which discovers, often by an intuitive glimpse, the hidden secrets of nature; but possessing in a less degree the powers of judgment and reason, being thus often led in his speculations to results glaringly inconsistent. His exquisite instruments, and his experimental combinations, will, however, ever test the utility, no less than the originality of his labours, and will continue to act as aids to farther discovery.—Encyclopædia Britannica, Eighth Edition.—Abstract of Memoir of Sir John Leslie, by Macvey Napier, English Cyclopædia. London, 1856.
NEVIL MASKELYNE, D.D., F.R.S.
MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, ETC.
Born October 6, 1732. Died February 9, 1811.
This most accurate and industrious astronomer was born in London, and was the son of Mr. Edmund Maskelyne, a gentleman of respectable family in Wiltshire. At the age of nine Maskelyne was sent to Westminster school, where he early began to distinguish himself, and to display a decided taste for the study of optics and astronomy.
The great solar eclipse, which occurred in 1748 was, however, the immediate cause of his directing his attention to these sciences, and from that period he devoted himself with ardour to the study of mathematics as subservient to that of astronomy. It is a curious fact that the same eclipse is said to have produced a similar effect upon the French astronomer Lalande, who was only three months older than his English contemporary.
Soon after this Maskelyne entered the University of Cambridge as a member of Catherine Hall, removing afterwards to Trinity, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts with great credit in 1754, and proceeded regularly through the succeeding stages of academical rank in divinity. In 1755 he was ordained to a curacy at Barnet, and in the following year obtained a fellowship at Trinity. In the year 1758 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, previous to which event he had become acquainted with Dr. Bradley, and had determined to make astronomy the principal pursuit of his life, feeling that it was perfectly compatible with an enlightened devotion to the duties of his own profession.