Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/458

 452 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

and Botany supporting a medallion of the philosopher beneath which is a globe with the winds portrayed on it in allusion to Hales's inven- tion of ventilators. The laudatory inscription is in Latin verse^ a translation of which I am enabled to give through the kindness of Professor Wallace Lindsay, LL.D., of the chair of Latin at the Uni- versity of St. Andrews.

To the Reverend Doctor Stephen Hales,

Augusta, mother of good George III,

Erected this monument.

She selected him for her chaplin.

He died, January 4th, 1761.

At Hales' tomb which Augusta caused to rise with gleaming stone and to have due beautj, Piety and grey haired Faith and supreme Virtue, a qacred band, drop constant tears; while above the dead prophet divine Wisdom pro- claims, ^'He was skilled in helping men's troubles, he too in tracing God's works. No lapse of time wiU weaken your praise, great Hales, or your titles 1 England is proud to enroll you amongst her noblest sons, England who can boast a Newton"!

This is interesting as being almost a contemporary estimate of Hales. His medical work and researches as a sanitarian are evidently alluded to in the phrase " helping men^s troubles " ; his more purely scientific work being alluded to in " tracing God's works.'' Sir James Edward Smith, the physician and naturalist, said " his philosophy was full of piety."

Seeing that the stone over the grave of Hales has done duty as one of the flag-stones of the porch of the old church of St. Mary^s, Tedding- ton, for more than 150 years, it is not surprising to find that its inscrip- tion is now almost entirely worn away. In January, 1911, a number of English botanists unveiled a tablet on the wall of the porch of the tower which they caused to be inscribed as follows :

Beneath is the grave of Stephen Hales. The epitaph now partly obliterated but recovered from a record of 1795 is here inscribed by the piety of certain botanists A.D. 1911. ''Here is interred the body of Stephen Hales, D.D. clerk of the closet to the Princess of Wales, who was minister of this parish 51 years. He died 14th of January, 1761, in the 84th year of his age. ' '

One of the few redeeming features in the character of Frederick, Prince of Wales, was his friendship for Hales. It is not very far from where the Prince lived at Kew to where Hales worked at Teddington, and so H. R. H. would frequently drop in and watch the scientific clergy- man surrounded by his pressure-gauges, bellows and crucibles.

Another, and much more distinguished neighbor of Hales, was the poet Pope with whom he seems to have been pretty intimate. Certain it is that the Eeverend Doctor was one of the three witnesses to the will of the wicked wasp of Twickenham dated December 12, 1743.

Pope alludes to Hales as "plain Parson Hale" in the second of the moral essays (the poem is "Epistle II. To a lady: of the characters of women"). The lines are:

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