the comfort of my life. I never sought out of myself for patrons. My own
industry and God's providence have been my whole reliance. The great are
not great to me unless they are good, and it is a glorious privilege
that a middling man enjoys, who has preserved his independency, and can
occasionally (though not stoically) tell the world what he thinks of
that world, in hopes to contribute, though by his mite, to mend it."

The late Dr. Olynthus Gregory, in addressing the Deptford Mechanics'
Institution at their first anniversary, took the opportunity of
mentioning various men in humble circumstances (some of whom he had been
able to assist), who, by means of energy, application, and self-denial,
had been able to accomplish great things in the acquisition of
knowledge. Thus he described the case of a Labourer on the turnpike
road, who had become an able Greek scholar; of a Fifer, and a Private
Soldier, in a regiment of militia, both self-taught mathematicians, one
of whom became a successful schoolmaster, the other a lecturer on
natural philosophy; of a journeyman Tin-plate worker, who invented rules
for the solution of cubic equations; of a country Sexton, who became a
teacher of music, and who, by his love of the study of musical science,
was transformed from a drunken sot to an exemplary husband and father;
of a Coal Miner (a correspondent of Dr. Gregory's), who was an able
writer on topics of the higher mathematics; of another correspondent, a
labouring Whitesmith, who was also well acquainted with the course of
pure mathematics, as taught at Cambridge, Dublin, and the military
colleges; of a Tailor, who was an excellent geometrician, and had
discovered curves which escaped the notice of Newton, and who laboured
industriously and contentedly at his trade until sixty years of age,
when, by the recommendation of his scientific friends, he was appointed
Nautical Examiner at the Trinity House; of a ploughman in Lincolnshire,
who, without aid of men or books, discovered the rotation of the earth,