208
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
January. The temperature was above the average in the Metropolis on 213
days during the year, and below the average on 152 days. There were as
many as 20 warm days in August and 20 or more in January, July, September,
and November. May, October, and December were the coldest months,
there being in each of these 20 or more cold days."
MISCELLANEA.
Waltham Bells.—In the extract from Mr. Bramley's paper, "Walton's
Favourite River," quoted on page 140 ante, is a sentence which perhaps should
be corrected.
Robert Fuller, the last Abbot (who surrendered the abbey and all it s
possessions on March 23rd, 1540) was not the author of the saying about
Waltham bells. Thomas Fuller, curate of Waltham, in his History of
Waltham Abbey in Essex, 1655 (p. 14), noted sundry payments made in the year
1542.
" Item. Paid to the Ringers at the coming of the King's Grace, sixpence."
To this Thomas Fuller adds :—
" Yet Waltham Bells told no tales every time King Henry came hither, having a small
house in Romeland to which he is said oft privately to retire, for his pleasure."
I. C. Goold, Loughton, Jan., 1900.
The Hopefulness of Science.—"Looking back, then, in this last year
of the eighteen hundreds, on the century which is drawing to its close, while
we may see in the history of scientific inquiry much which, telling the man of
science of his shortcomings and his weakness, bids him be humble, we also
see much, perhaps more, which gives him hope. Hope is indeed one of the
watchwords of science. In the latter-day writings of some who know not
science, much may be read which s hows that the writer is losing or has lost
hope in the future of mankind. There are not a few of these; their repeated
utterances make a sign of the times. Seeing in matters lying outside science
few marks of progress and many tokens of decline and decay, recognising in
science its material benefits only, such men have thoughts of despair when
they look forward to the times to come. But if there be any truth in what I
have attempted to urge to-night, if the intellectual, if the moral influences of
science are no less marked than her material benefits, if, moreover, that
which she has done is but the earnest of that which she shall do, such men
may pluck up courage and gather strength by laying hold of her garment.
We men of science, at least, need not share their views or their fears. Our
feet are set, not on the shifting sands of the opinions and of the fancies of the
day, but on a solid foundation of verified truth, which by the labours of each
succeeding age is made broader and more firm. To us the past is a thing to
look back upon, not with regret, not as something which has been lost never
to be regained, but with content, as something whose influence is with us
still, helping us on our further way. With us, indeed, the past points not to
itself, but to the future ; the golden age is in front of us, not behind us; that
which we do know is a lamp whose brightest beams are shed into the
unknown before us, showing us how much there is in front and lighting up
the way to reach it. We are confident in the advance, because, as each one of
us feels that any step forward which he may make is not ordered by himself
alone and is not the result of his own sole efforts in the present, but is, and
that in large measure, the outcome of the labours of others in the past, so
each one of us has the sure and certain hope that as the past has helped him
so his efforts, be they great or be they small, will be a help to those to come.'
—Sir Michael Foster, Address to British Association at Dover, 1899.