ordinary genius, but the true direction of it was long unrecognized by those very countrymen of his who ridiculously put him forward as a rival of Champollion. "It fell to his lot," as Professor Tyndall has said, "to discover facts in Optics which Newton's theory was incompetent to explain; and he finally succeeded in placing on an immovable basis the Undulatory Theory of Light." Helmholtz, a kindred genius, thus speaks of him: "His was one of the most profound minds that the world has ever seen." But it is not true that he discovered the key to the decipherment of hieroglyphics, or even that his labours assisted Champollion in the discovery. When the key was once discovered and recognized as the true one, it was found that one or two of Young's results were correct. But there was nothing in his method or theory by which he or any one else could distinguish between his right and his wrong results, or which could lead him or any one else a single step in advance. Young was certainly right in assuming that the first two signs in the hieroglyphic name of Ptolemy[1] were P and T, but his next step was a failure, and so was the next after that. He did not succeed in analyzing this royal name or that of Berenike. All his other attempts were simple failures. "He mistook Autokrator for Arsinoe, and Cæsar for
