Chevalier Yelin

‘January 24 [1826].—…Went to the funeral of Chevalier Yelin, the literary foreigner mentioned on 22d. How many and how various are the ways of affliction! Here is this poor man dying at a distance from home, his proud heart broken, his wife and family anxiously expecting letters, and doomed only to learn they have lost a husband and father for ever. He lies buried on the Calton Hill, near learned and scientific dust—the graves of David Hume and John Playfair being side by side…’

 In Lockhart’s note to Scott’s Journal, he points out that Chevalier Yelin was told by his wife that he could not leave Edinburgh without meeting the great bard (Scott).  He hoped to meet Scott at a meeting of the Royal Society, days earlier, during which he was to deliver a paper.  The meeting with Scott never occurred.  Scott was not there that night, and Yelin died before reaching the Royal Society event.  The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal published the following on Chevalier Yelin:

 ‘M. Le Chevalier Yelin, a learned Bavarian, discovered some time ago, that needles of steel become magnetic when placed in a glass tube surrounded by a magnetic spiral, and when electrical sparks or the charge of a Leyden battery were transmitted along the spiral…’ 

Hadrian

The Roman Emporer Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born this day, January 24, in the year 76 AD.  In addition to the famous wall crossing Great Britain, Hadrian is responsible for the Pantheon in Rome.  Hadrian's Wall was built over approximately a six year period, beginning around 122 AD.

The wall has held up well over nearly two millennia.  Better than Triermain Castle, which was built of stones from Hadrian's Wall in the 14th century.  There is a legend associated with Triermain of a weeping ghost lad, which Walter Scott placed into a poem; "The Bridal of Triermain".  The beginning of this poem, which is available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/trierma.htm, is as follows:

The Bridal of Triermain

Introduction.


I.

Come Lucy! while 'tis morning hour
The woodland brook we needs must pass;
So, ere the sun assume his power,
We shelter in our poplar bower,
Where dew lies long upon the flower,
Though vanish'd from the velvet grass.
Curbing the stream, this stony ridge
May serve us for a silvan bridge;
For here, compell'd to disunite,
Round petty isles the runnels glide,
And chafing off their puny spite,
The shallows murmurers waste their might,
Yielding to footstep free and light
A dry-shod pass from side to side.

II.

Nay, why this hesitating pause?
And, Lucy, as thy step withdraws,
Why sidelong eye the streamlet's brim?
Titania's foot without a slip,
Like, thine, though timid, light, and slim,
From stone to stone might safely trip,
Nor risk the glow-worm clasp to dip
That binds her slipper's silken rim.
Or trust thy lover's strength; nor fear
That this same stalwart arm of mine,
Which could yon oak's prone trunk uprear,
Shall shrink beneath, the burden dear
Of form so slender, light, and fine;
So! now, the danger dared at last,
Look back, and smile at perils past!

John Audubon

John Audubon visited Walter Scott on January 24, 1827, as recorded in his journal:

Visit from Mr. Audubon, who brings some of his birds. The drawings are of the first order—the attitudes of the birds of the most animated character, and the situations appropriate; one of a snake attacking a bird's nest, while the birds (the parents) peck at the reptile's eyes—they usually, in the long-run, destroy him, says the naturalist. The feathers of these gay little sylphs, most of them from the Southern States, are most brilliant, and are represented with what, were it [not] connected with so much spirit in the attitude, I would call a laborious degree of execution. This extreme correctness is of the utmost consequence to the naturalist, [but] as I think (having no knowledge of virtu), rather gives a stiffness to the drawings.

Like Scott, Audubon found an interest early in life, and found an outlet by which to develop that interest.  According to the audubon.org website:

Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and his French mistress. Early on, he was raised by his stepmother, Mrs. Audubon, in Nantes, France, and took a lively interest in birds, nature, drawing, and music.