[8] "I have some good news to tell you: at the Bureau of Longitudes they have just received a letter from Germany announcing that M. Bessel has verified by observation your theoretical discoveries on the satellites of Jupiter." [9] "Man follows only phantoms." [10] See Vol. I, page 382, note 13 {786}. [11] Dieudonne Thiebault (1733-1807) was a Jesuit in his early life, but he left the order and took up the study of law. In 1765 he went to Prussia and became a favorite of Frederick the Great. He returned to France in 1785 and became head of the Lycee at Versailles. [12] _Memories of Twenty Years of Residence in Berlin._ There was a second French and an English edition in 1805. [13] Richard Joachim Heinrich von Mollendorff (1724-1816) began his career as a page of Frederick the Great (1740) and became field marshal (1793) and commander of the Prussian army on the Rhine (1794). [14] Hugues Bernard Maret (1763-1839) was not Duc de Bassano in 1807, this title not being conferred upon him until 1809. He was ambassador to England in 1792 and to Naples in 1793. Napoleon made him head of the cabinet and his special confidant. The Bourbons exiled him in 1816. [15] Denis Diderot (1713-1784), whose _Lettre sur les aveugles_ (1749) introduced him to the world as a philosopher, and whose work on the _Encyclopedie_ is so well known. [16] "Sir, (a + b^{n}) / n = x, whence God exists; answer!" [17] This was one James Laurie of Musselburgh. [18] Jelinger Cookson Symons (1809-1860) was an office-holder with a decided leaning towards the improvement of education and social conditions. He wrote _A Plea for Schools_ (1847), _The Industrial Capacities of South Wales_ (1855), and _Lunar Motion_ (1856), to which last work the critic probably refers. [19] "Protimalethes" followed this by another work along the same line the following year, _The Independence of the Testimony of St. Matthew and St. John tested and vindicated by the theory of chances_. [20] Wilson had already taken up the lance against science in his _Strictures on Geology and Astronomy, in reference to a supposed want of harmony between these sciences and some parts of Divine Revelation_, Glasgow, 1843. He had also ventured upon poetry in his _Pleasures of Piety_, Glasgow, 1837. [21] Mrs. Borron was Elizabeth Willesford Mills before her marriage. She made an attempt at literature in her _Sibyl's Leaves_, London (printed at Devonport), 1826. [22] See Vol. I, page 386, note 10 {801}. [23] See Vol. I, page 43, notes 7 {32} and 8 {33}. [24] His flying machine, designed in 1843, was one of the earliest attempts at aviation on any extensive scale. [25] Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was the grandfather of Charles Darwin. The work here mentioned had great influence, being translated into French, Portuguese, and Italian. Canning parodied it in his _Loves of the Triangles_. [26] See Vol. I, page 147, note 1 {312}.