|
is a bookstall. Lounging for a moment over the exposed books, sieur meus est mos, I saw within a few moments of the posting of the letter a little catchpenny book of anecdotes of Macaulay, which I bought, and ran over for
by this sentence ' minute. My eye was soon
"One of the young fellows immediately wrote to the Editor (Mr. Walker) of the ' European Review.'" I thus got the clue by which I ascertained that there was no chance of recovering Fresnel's papers. Of the mention of current Reviews not one in a thousand names the editor.' It will be noticed that there was a double coincidence in this case. It was sufficiently remarkable that the first mention of a review, after the difficulty had been recognized, should relate to the 'European,' and give the name of the editor; but it was even more remarkable that the occurrence should be timed so strangely as was actually the case.
But the circumstance I am now to relate seems to me to surpass in strangeness all the coincidences I have ever heard of. It relates to a matter of considerable interest apart from the coincidence.
When Dr. Thomas Young was endeavoring to interpret the inscription of the famous Rosetta Stone, Mr. Grey (afterwards Sir George Francis Grey) was led on his return from Egypt to place in Young's hands some of the most valuable fruits of his researches among the relics of Egyptian art, including several fine specimens of writing on papyrus, which he had purchased from an Arab at Thebes, in 1820. Before these had reached Young, a man named Casati had arrived in Paris, bringing with him from Egypt a parcel of Egyptian manuscripts, among which Cham-pollion observed one which bore in its preamble some resemblance to the text of the Rosetta Stone. This
|
