We have lost this week two eminent scientific men, Mr.
Charles Babbage, the great mathematician and inventor of the calculating machine ; and Sir Roderick Murchison, the great geologist. They were, iu many respects, singularly different men, Mr. Babbage, doubtless much the more original, but also much the least suited to the world in which he lived, while Sir Roderick Murchison had all the urbane ease of a successful and practical man of the world, at well as the weight of great scientific achievements. Sir Roderick Murchison and Mr. Babbage were both born in 1792, the former in February, the latter in December, so that Mr. Babbage was near the end of his 79th and Sir R. Murchison of his 80th year. Mr. Babbage ought to be bettor known to the public than he is, for while he has interested London society by his morbid dread of organ-grinders, his very amusing and characteristic " Reminiscences of a Philosopher" (published in 1864) really furnished a most striking picture of himself. Fertile in invention to a degree which almost makes one wonder that he did not invent a wholly new life inaccessible to organ-grinders, full of a humour which was sometimes dry and sometimes odd, shrewd in his insight into character, but deficient in that indefinable somewhat that acts as a connecting medium between mind and mind, Mr. Babbage may be described as the great contriver whose very contriving genius must have kept him somewhat isolated, unless it were that his isolation of intellect fed his contriving power. Sir R. Murchison had a less genius, but probably in the single science to which he chiefly devoted himself he achieved larger results than Mr. Babbage with all his genius, for in that genius there was something fragmentary, which. delighted in multiplied rather than concentrated efforts.
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