concerning her character, affirms that she was a virtuous woman, and refers to the will to prove it: though the will denies it in the plainest English, on any supposition except that of a private marriage. Finally, the lady married a respectable man after the death of Lord Halifax, and lived with him in the house of her illustrious uncle. That she was either the wife or the mistress of Halifax, I take to be established; it is the natural conclusion from the facts above stated, all made public during her life, all left uncontradicted by herself, by her husband, by her daughter, by Lord Lymington her son-in-law, and by the uncle who had stood to her in the place of a father. It is impossible that Newton could have been ignorant that his niece was living in Montague's house, enjoyed an annuity bought in his own name, and was regarded by the world as the mistress of his friend and political patron. The language of the codicil shows that, be the nature of the connexion what it might, Halifax meant to tell the world that it might be proclaimed in all its relation to the name of Newton. To those who cannot, under all the circumstances, believe the connexion to have been what is called platonic, the probability that there was a private marriage is precisely the probability that Newton would not have sanctioned the dishonour of his own niece: and even if the connexion were only that of friendship, Newton must have sanctioned the appearance and the forms of a dishonourable intimacy: the co-habitation, the settlement, and the defiance of opinion. Now there is no reason to suppose of Newton that he would be a party to either proceeding, which would not apply as well to any man then alive: to Locke, for instance. Looking at the morals of the day, we are by no means justified in throwing off at once, with disgust, the bare idea of the possibility of a distinguished philosopher consenting to an illicit intercourse between his friend and his niece: we are bound, {432} in discussing probabilities, to distinguish 1850 from 1700. But, even putting out of view the purity of Newton's private life, and of the lives of his most intimate friends, there is that in the weaker part of his character which is of itself almost conclusive. Right or wrong, Newton never faced opinion. As soon as he found that publication involved opposition, from that time forward he published only with the utmost reluctance, and under the strongest persuasions; except when, as in the case of some of his theological writings, he confided the manuscript to a friend, to be anonymously published abroad. The _Principia_ was extorted from him by the Royal Society; the first publication on fluxions was under the name of Wallis; the _Optics_ were delayed until the death of Hooke; the first appearance against Leibnitz was anonymous; the second originated in a hint from the King. This morbid fear, which is often represented as modesty,