T92 THE BOSTON JOURNAL OF Philosophy and the Arts, INTENDED TO EXHIBIT A VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY IN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, MECHANICS, CHEMISTRY, GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY, AND THE FINE AND USEFUL ARTS. CONDUCTED BY JOHN W. WEBSTER, M. D. Lecturer on Chemistry and Mineralogy in Harvard University; Member of the American AND MR DANIEL TREADWELL, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, &c. VOL. II-JULY, 1824 To JULY, 1825. Boston : PUBLISHED BY CUMMINGS, HILLIARD, & CO. NO. 1 CORNHILL. University Press-Hilliard & Metcalf. 1825. THE Boston Journal OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE ARTS. ART. I.-Memoir of the Life of MARTIN HENRY KLAPROTH.* By E. G. FISCHER. (Edin. Philos. Jour.) MARTIN HENRY KLAPROTH, who was born at Wernigerode on the 1st of December 1743, and died at Berlin on the 1st of January 1817, is a remarkable instance of the extent to which a powerful mind may deliver itself, by a calm, but conscientious and persevering assiduity, from a fate which seemed to have doomed it to mediocrity or insignificance. His father, a citizen of Wernigerode, had the misfortune to lose his whole goods by a great fire, on the 30th of June 1751, so that he was able to do little or nothing for the education of his children. The subject of this memoir was the second of three brothers, of whom the eldest, a respectable clergyman, died many years ago at Plauen on the Ĥavel,— the youngest, who was Private Secretary at War, and Keeper of the Archives of the Cabinet, died a few years ago at Berlin. Klaproth, like his two brothers, obtained such meagre instructions, in the Latin language, as the school of Wernigerode afforded, and was obliged, like them, also to procure his small school fees, by singing as one of the church choir. But the very circumstance which the wisdom of *Read at the Public Sitting of the Royal Academy of Sciences at BerVOL. II.-NO. 1. lin. 1 |