Their works have outlived them, and commercial men and sailors have reason every day to bless the memory of both; and of the Englishman, his successor as Principal of the University of Edinburgh has said with truth, "Every lighthouse that burns round the shores of the British Empire is a shining witness to the usefulness of Brewster's life."
Hardly less important in forwarding the progress of science than his direct labors, was the part which Brewster took in the formation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "The decline of science" had been much talked of among scientific men for several years, and much thought had been given to the consideration of means of reviving scientific interest, when Brewster, reviewing in the "Quarterly Review" a work on the subject by Babbage, proposed "an association of our nobility, clergy, gentry, and philosophers," as that which "can alone draw the attention of the sovereign and the nation to this blot upon its fame." In the course of a few succeeding months, the plan of the British Association met with general acceptance, and was soon thoroughly matured; and the first meeting, held at York, in September, 1831, at which three hundred and twenty-five members enrolled their names, and a zeal for science was excited "which will not soon subside," was attended with a success that "infinitely surpassed all our most sanguine expectations." At the twentieth meeting of the Association, held in Edinburgh in 1850, Brewster was the president.
Brewster's literary activity kept pace with his scientific work. It was begun at the same time, in 1799, when he became a regular contributor to the "Edinburgh Magazine," and was continued in various shapes as he had new investigations of his own to describe, the work of others or any marked progress in science to review, or views of his own to publish on the topics which from time to time became prominent in the various regions of thought. In 1807, acting upon a casual hint given him by the Rev. Mr. Ramsay, of Tranent, of how much a good and thorough encyclopædia was needed, he began the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia," which was not completed till 1830. In connection with this work we find him, just after the first two numbers had been published, writing to his friend Veitch for a drawing and description of his new plow, to be inserted in the article "Agriculture," and mentioning an intention also "to publish in the same article a curious paper by Mr. Jefferson, President of the United States, on a plow-ear which offers the least possible resistance." This work was strongest in the scientific department, to which the editor contributed many of the most valuable articles. Like all such works requiring a combination of many minds, it was difficult to manage, and cost Brewster much labor, vexation, and anxiety. He was afterward a contributor to the "Encyclopædia Britannica," to the seventh and eighth editions of which he furnished articles on hydrodynamics, magnetism, microscope, op-
