Permit me, therefore, by a kind of geometrical construction which I
once ventured to employ in London, to give you a notion of the
magnitude of this man. Let Newton stand erect in his age, and Young in
his. Draw a straight line from Newton to Young, tangent to the heads
of both. This line would slope downwards from Newton to Young,
because Newton was certainly the taller man of the two. But the slope
would not be steep, for the difference of stature was not excessive.
The line would form what engineers call a gentle gradient from Newton
to Young. Place underneath this line the biggest man born in the
interval between both. It may be doubted whether he would reach the
line; for if he did he would be taller intellectually than Young, and
there was probably none taller. But I do not want you to rest on
English estimates of Young; the German, Helmholtz, a kindred genius,
thus speaks of him: "His was one of the most profound minds that the
world has ever seen; but he had the misfortune to be too much in
advance of his age. He excited the wonder of his contemporaries, who,
however, were unable to follow him to the heights at which his daring
intellect was accustomed to soar. His most important ideas lay,
therefore, buried and forgotten in the folios of the Royal Society,
until a new generation gradually and painfully made the same
discoveries, and proved the exactness of his assertions and the truth
of his demonstrations."

It is quite true, as Helmholtz says, that Young was in advance of his
age; but something is to be added which illustrates the responsibility
of our public writers. For twenty years this man of genius was
quenched--hidden from the appreciative intellect of his
country-men--deemed in fact a dreamer, through the vigorous sarcasm of
a writer who had then possession of the public ear, and who in the
_Edinburgh Review_ poured ridicule upon Young and his speculations. To