William Leitch – Man of Faith, Man of Science by Robert Godwin

From The Space Library

This essay was written in early 2016. It has since been considerably updated and revised. The new information is available in the book "William Leitch Presbyterian Scientist - The Concept of Rocket Space Flight 1854-64" available from Apogeeprime.com

William Leitch originally hailed from the Isle of Bute, an idyllic outpost off the west coast of central Scotland. It is separated from the mainland by the Firth of the River Clyde and the Kyles of Bute a spectacular carved waterway often seen on Scottish postcards. The Leitch's were highly visible citizens in the town of Rothesay, the main town on Bute, and before that in the small villages and towns of mainland Argyle.

Rothesay is a port town facing east towards Scotland. Ferries have been regularly traversing the 10km width of the Clyde to the mainland for generations.

William's parents were John Leitch, a customs inspector in the town of Rothesay, and Margaret Sharp. William's grandfather was also named John and he was part of the anti-burgher movement preaching in the tiny hamlet of Toward. On a clear day you could stand on the doorstep of the church in Toward and see across the 5km of water to Rothesay. The history of the Scottish church is a complex and convoluted story which would require many pages to explain, but it is sufficient to say here that the anti-burgher movement to which John Leitch (Sr.) belonged was one of the very first in the Christian church to refuse to allow secular politics to interfere with their religious practices. Ultimately the position of the anti-burghers can be seen as the early stirrings of the separation of church and state.

One of the major schisms within the Scottish church occurred in 1761 leading to the secession of many ministers in the outlying regions of Scotland and so by March 1767 the people of Rothesay were in desperate need of a minister who could preach to them in Irish. John Leitch Sr. was one of the secessionists approached to fill the vacancy in Rothesay and after agreeing to take the job he built a house which he called "The Claddy" on the corner of Bridge Street and Bridge End Street, which at that time was still on the waterfront. On 11 March 1778 John Leitch gained permission to build a new church in Rothesay.

William's father, John Leitch junior, also grew up to become a respected citizen of Rothesay and his six children were never far from the waterfront where a constant fleet of shipping could be seen plying the Clyde in and out of Glasgow. Young William Leitch was born in May 1814 and it seems he was an adventurous young man. At the age of 14 he was atop the mast of one of the many sailing ships in Rothesay harbour when he fell to the deck. The impact was so severe that William would remain infirm for the rest of his life.

Condemned to a long convalescence the only solace he could find was in reading books. On weekdays he chose to read about mathematics and science, but on Sundays the only acceptable reading material was scripture, and so for more than a year the impressionable teenager studied and struggled to better understand the universe from the confines of his bed; bouncing back and forth between two seemingly irreconcilable interpretations of the truth. The parallels between Leitch's early circumstances and those of his more famous intellectual heirs are remarkable.

The three men given the most credit for recognizing rockets as a means to escape the confines of the Earth are the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the American Robert Goddard and the German/Rumanian Hermann Oberth. All three men were struck down in their youth by an assortment of ailments; Tsiolkovsky with Scarlet Fever, Goddard with Tuberculosis and Oberth with Spanish flu. In all three cases the budding genius was bed-ridden for a lengthy convalescence and found solace in reading; specifically books that contemplated bigger things. So it was with William Leitch.

When he was finally able to walk again William was sent to study at the Grammar school in Greenock, another waterfront town on the Firth of Clyde. The most distinguished alumni of this small school was one of the most famed engineers in history, the man who had fixed Newcomen's steam engine and brought the world the industrial revolution, James Watt.

While Leitch studied at Greenock he was introduced to the well known scientist and fossil hunter Dr. Thomas Brown. This instilled an interest in Leitch for biology and most specifically, botany.

The priesthood had skipped a generation in the Leitch family. While his father attended to his duties as a customs officer young William was the next to be groomed as a minister. At the age of seventeen he was matriculated to the prestigious university in Glasgow, which at that time was one of the most celebrated centers of learning in the world. James Watt had worked there a generation earlier (but not as a student or faculty member.) One of the tasks Watt had undertaken was to maintain and repair instruments, and most particularly the optical instruments bequeathed to the University in 1755 for conducting astronomy. By the time Leitch arrived, James Watt was long gone, but another prodigy was about to arrive on the scene, William Thomson, who was one day destined to become the most famous scientist in the world. Thomson's father James was professor of Mathematics at Glasgow and almost certainly taught Leitch.

In 1837 William Leitch received his B.A. before following it up with an M.A. in 1838. He soon found himself offered an assistant's position at the university observatory under the tutelage of John Pringle Nichol. He had apparently distinguished himself in the classroom and shown a good grasp of mathematics and astronomy and so Nichol offered him the thankless job of assistant observer. Another student in Nichol's class who also excelled that year was the aforementioned William Thomson who won a prize translating one of the works of Lucian of Samosata, which is of particular interest because it emphatically places the works of Lucian at Glasgow, and possibly in the same room as Leitch. Today Lucian is universally accepted as the earliest writer of a fictional trip to the moon. In one of his “Menippean” dialogues, written in the second century A.D. titled Icaromennipus, Lucian took his readers on a deliberately satirical voyage into space using the wings of an eagle and a vulture. So it would seem that an education at Glasgow in the early 19th century can be seen to have covered a wide range of disciplines, including proto-science fiction.

The observatory where Leitch worked was on the summit of Horslet Hill in Glasgow. An earlier observatory had been surrounded by factories making it effectively unusable, so a location on the western outskirts of Glasgow was selected. After much discussion and fund-raising, beginning in 1835, the new structure was approved but with the specific intention that it have a magnetic observatory as well as the traditional optical observatory, and that it would be able to make Extra-meridional observations. This was a time when the Royal Society was becoming keenly aware of the importance of magnetic observations and it was almost exactly at this time that members of that same august body proposed building a similar observatory in Toronto, Canada.

The Glasgow observatory began construction in 1840 and the Nichol family took up residence in early 1841. Erected on the highest piece of ground in the area the observatory was inevitably destined to be struck by bad weather and by 1845 the magnetic building was completely destroyed by gale force winds and the enormous telescope ripped out of the ground.

The observatory at Horslet Hill is long gone, replaced today by Notre Dame High School, the only clues to its existence are today's Horselethill Road and Observatory Road. In 1841, when the observatory opened, the only thing in close proximity was the Royal Botanical Garden, which stretched from the gates of the observatory down to the River Kelvin. These were opened with great fanfare in 1842, at approximately the time that Leitch would have been regularly working at the observatory. We can perhaps presume that this also contributed to his interest in Botany.

Around 1841 Leitch took up the position of assistant to Nichol. It is not known exactly how long that he stayed there (probably less than a year) but it is also clear that when Nichol was unable to account for all of the funds he had used, and was pressed to take a sabbatical, Leitch therefore took on the temporary role of teaching Nichol's astronomy class at the University.

Another teacher at the University had also become indisposed during this same period; the professor of natural philosophy William Meikleham. It was well-known that Meikleham was rapidly approaching retirement and James Thomson wanted the job to go to his young son William. However, it was later recorded that for a short time, when Meikleham became prone to missing classes due to ill health, William Leitch filled in as science teacher. It cannot be stated with any certainty that Leitch actually taught the younger Thomson, since the class records from this period seem to be missing at Glasgow, and Thomson's notebooks at Cambridge don't mention who was at the front of the class on any given day, but it's a pretty good bet that the two crossed paths directly either in Nichol's or Meikleham's classroom. Of course William Thomson would go on to become Lord Kelvin and would ultimately occupy Meikleham's seat at Glasgow for the rest of the 19th century.

While he was studying at Glasgow, William Leitch's brother John was living on Great Russell Street in London and attending King's College (which was much later famous as the alma mater of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and also where the double helix of DNA was first documented, amongst many other notable achievements.) John acquainted himself with many of the smartest men in the fields of science and theology and took a particular interest in the cross-over between religion, mythology and science in ancient cultures. He translated a famous book on this subject which almost certainly had an effect on William.

Meanwhile, William was doing what most young students seem to do at college, making lifelong friendships and generally enjoying the vibrant campus culture. The most important friendship he made while at Glasgow was with the brilliant and charismatic Norman Macleod. Along with several other students, they put together a short-lived literary club and published some satirical pamphlets one of which was named “Sparks of Promethean Fire; or Chips from the Thunderbolts of Jove.” Apparently Leitch was given the nickname "Boss" by his companions. Macleod even wrote two songs in honour of his friend, “Professor Boss’s Drinking-Song,” and “Invocation to Professor Boss, who fell into the Crater of Hecla.”

Macleod would become an important force in Leitch's life in the years ahead, but circumstances would separate them after completing their studies at Glasgow. They would each independently begin rapid ascents in the hierarchy of the Church of Scotland. Macleod would soon become tutor to the children of an important English family which would lead him to the court of Queen Victoria, eventually becoming one of her most trusted confidants. In the meantime Leitch would be head-hunted by the 8th Earl of Leven, an up-and-coming figure in the Royal Navy. The Earl proposed Leitch to fill the role of Minister of Monimail, a parish situated south of Dundee in the presbytery of Cupar in Fife. Leitch settled into the role of country minister by 1843 and within three years he had found his future bride living a short two mile walk away in Cunnoquhie.

Before leaving Glasgow a group of students had gathered together enough money to purchase a telescope for Leitch as a gift. It is believed that this was a 7½" Gregorian reflector manufactured by James Shortt. Once he was ensconced at his parish in Monimail visitors later marveled at the enormous instrument sitting in the hallway of the Manse. It would later be donated to Queen's College in Canada.

While living in Fife William Leitch began a family with his bride, Euphemia Paterson. They would have three sons and one daughter but two of the boys would die while still infants. Euphemia would pass away at the young age of 32 leaving William with two small children to tend alone. As was fairly typical of the times he elected to transfer custody of the children to his in-laws who lived on the east coast near St Andrews. This would later prove to have a fortuitous side-effect and would elevate at least one of the Leitch clan to superstardom. But before we jump too far ahead we will remain in the 1850s when Leitch became a familiar face to all walks of society in Fife and beyond.

His lectures on astronomy and even ballistics would be informative and would serve to elevate his reputation in the world of science, while at the same time he continued his work advocating Christian missionary work in India and the other colonies. During this time Leitch was considered so important that he was one of only a handful of private individuals in Britain who would receive a gratis subscription to the bulletins from the Royal Astronomical Society.

Perhaps presaging things to come, in 1844 Leitch took on some of the local "Patrons, Titulars and Tacksmen" regarding the "Teinds" of his parish. In plain English it appears that he was going to investigate the way that local funds, promised to the church, were distributed.

While Leitch earned a place of respect in both the church and scientific communities his college friend Norman Macleod had risen to the highest ranks of his profession, preaching to the Queen. In 1859 an ambitious young man named Alexander Strahan living in Edinburgh had taken notice of Macleod's preeminence in the community. Strahan wanted to join the world of magazine publishing and so he approached Macleod to be editor for a new Christian magazine. It was to be called Christian Guest: A Family Magazine for Leisure Hours and Sundays. What might seem odd to modern sensibilities is that in 1859 it was considered highly inappropriate to read anything other than the Bible on Sundays. Strahan was advocating a somewhat minor revolution by suggesting a Sunday magazine, but he had heard that Macleod was particularly open-minded (much like Leitch's grandfather John had been.) For reasons we will likely never know Macleod agreed to work for Strahan for nothing more than a share in whatever profit Strahan might squeeze from the whole operation. The first issue was released in February 1859 and it ran weekly until the end of 1859 (a total of 46 issues) before it became evident that a more ambitious publication was possible. In the last issue Macleod and Strahan announced their intention to "fold" Christian Guest into a more expansive magazine to be called Good Words.

Only one small article had appeared in Christian Guest that might have foretold what was to come. It was called "The Bible on Physical Science". The article is unattributed and may well have been written by Macleod, Strahan or even Leitch. In only a few hundred words it opened the door to the notion that discussing science was not heretical, since the Bible said virtually nothing on the subject of the physical sciences, despite mentioning virtually every aspect of the physical world: birds, fish, animals, stars, planets, etc.

The Christian Guest's most significant major side-benefit was that Macleod developed a fondness for Strahan and was willing to continue their relationship. In an advert at the end of 1859 they unveiled their stated goal of providing a forum for civil and intellectual discourse from all denominations and by "many of the best known writers of the day."

Macleod had risen rapidly in the ranks of his peers and was now making a name for himself, not only in the burgeoning world of magazine publishing, but he had befriended the most powerful monarch in the world. Queen Victoria was in her 40s and had been sitting on the throne of England, Scotland and the rest of the Empire since 1837. Unknown to Macleod just as he was reaching a level of celebrity considered by many to be inappropriate for a man of the cloth, the Queen would lose her consort Prince Albert and spiral into a depression which she remained in for much of the rest of her life. Very few had access to her, but Macleod was one of the inner circle.

From 1843 until 1859 Leitch had been ministering to his parish in Fife and pursuing a series of scientific interests. He gave lectures on astronomy in Cupar, he kept his own beehives as a science experiment and published at least one paper on that subject; and he had kept in touch with the scientists at Glasgow University, including the young genius William Thomson. He also took an interest in ballistics and particularly the new science of spin-stabilized projectiles.

The Minié rifle was the latest development in weaponry. Instead of using the traditional round musket ball it used a soft-skirted slug with one end streamlined and the other with a concave opening. Combined with the rifling of the barrel the expansion of the gases made the skirt expand and as the slug left the barrel it was set spinning. This increased the range and accuracy and made the Minié rifle an extremely efficient killing machine. Interestingly the same spin-stabilization had been introduced to the war rocket by a British inventor named William Hale just a few years earlier. Hale was still introducing improvements to his patents as late as the 1860s but essentially his gunpowder rockets expelled the hot gas through a series of vents which caused the rocket to spin and thus fly true. The ability to do away with the long stick, which had traditionally been employed to make rockets fly straight, was a significant technological advance. Understanding these two devices certainly shows that Leitch grasped the Newtonian principles at work.

It is not known if Leitch attended the first Great Exhibition in London in 1851. It seems likely since it was the most ambitious event of the era and attracted untold thousands of visitors. One of the most highly visible exhibits was a giant 11" refracting telescope on a massive stand. It stood fully 25 feet high and was ultimately destined to be installed in an observatory in Scotland. The subsequent 1862 exhibition was even larger and both the Minié rifle and the Hale spin-stabilized war rocket were exhibited almost side by side. Again we don't know if Leitch attended in the summer of 1862 but it does serve to illustrate that these weapons were highly visible new additions to the arsenals of the world.

Returning to the summer of 1859 we find that Leitch was being courted by two emissaries from Canada, The Reverend Thomas Barclay and a well connected member of the Kingston Ontario community named Alexander Morris.

Barclay and Morris had been dispatched to Scotland with the express purpose of recruiting a new Principal to take over at Queen's College in Kingston. Morris would later be instrumental in the Confederation of Canada when he managed to broker a peace between the leaders of the two political parties, John A. Macdonald and George Brown. But his goal at this time was to fill a post at Queens which had remained vacant for 14 years. Not long after he arrived Morris was directed towards Leitch by an assortment of respectable members of the Church of Scotland, not least, Norman Macleod.

In August of 1859 Morris was in Edinburgh and met with Leitch, who evidently wasn't sure if he wanted the job in Canada, particularly if he had to "teach dogmatic theology". However, although Morris was persuasive it was probably not until John Pringle Nichol died a few weeks later that Leitch may have decided to accept the offer. Nichol had been Leitch's mentor and friend and, combined with the loss of two children and his wife, this new bereavement may have been the trigger that caused Leitch to succumb to Morris' solicitations.

Morris and Barclay would soon return to Canada and at a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Queen's College they were congratulated for having recruited a well-respected man of science who could also be trusted to represent the church. In November the Board approved the choice of Leitch and all that was left to do was for the man himself to show up. It would take another year before he would report for duty. But that year would not be wasted. Leitch immediately responded to his friend Macleod and began work on submissions for Strahan's new magazine, which only began to take shape in the last few months of 1859.

When the first issue of Good Words hit the streets on January 1st 1860 it was to appear as a weekly (just like The Christian Guest) but it was selling for four times the price. It was a gamble taken by Strahan because he knew that this might put it out of the reach of the general public. However, Strahan would take similar gambles for the rest of his professional career. In the case of Good Words, it paid off; or at least it paid off for the first decade.

Macleod had been fond of William Leitch since their school years together. He had even presided at Leitch's wedding. He must have been keenly aware of Leitch's anti-burgher upbringing as well as his remarkable propensity for hard work. Leitch had sat for many a freezing night making careful measurements in Nichol's observatory on Horslet Hill. His understanding of astronomy was on a par with any of his peers and his tendency to try and explain the physical universe without conflicting with scripture fit in perfectly with Strahan's attempt to reach a wider audience with Good Words.

Strahan knew that he was running the risk of alienating the church by publishing a magazine that he was actively soliciting as predominantly theological and pious, whilst still including content that was clearly of a more secular nature. He also knew that the schism which had developed between the evangelical wing of the Church of Scotland and the more liberal members (including Macleod and Leitch) had the potential to be far more damaging to his aspirations. Macleod's name on the masthead was a double edged sword. Strahan had to deliver carefully selected content in the new magazine so that the sword cut in his favour.

In the very first issue there was an unattributed column called "Sketches in Natural History" which seems clearly to have been written by someone with knowledge of astronomy, zoology, botany, geology and biology. This article appeared on page 10 of the very first issue of Good Words and set the stage for discussions of what might be perceived as radical scientific theories, inconsistent with a typical theological magazine. In two pages this article cited Chalmers Astronomical Discourses, the existence of billions of foraminifera making up the bulk of the world's limestone, the studies of Ehrenberg into the nature of rock fossils, the observations of Erasmus Darwin (his book "Love of the Plants") and James Hooker and the respiration of plants. The subject matter and language seems to fit Leitch's interests almost too perfectly. It seems highly probable that it was written by him. It may just as easily have been written by Macleod or Strahan or any number of like-minded individuals, but it establishes that Macleod and Strahan were going to take science seriously in their new magazine.

In the second week of January 1860 the first article identified as being written by Leitch appeared under the banner heading "God's Glory in the Heavens - The Teachings of the Stars. No 1. The Moon - Is it Inhabited?" There can be little doubt from this title, and the subsequent article, that Leitch was about to embark on a science lesson, and because of his credentials as a respected minister, Strahan could at least expect that the clergy might give him the benefit of the doubt. Leitch was a safe bet. Both Macleod and Strahan could rely with some degree of certitude that Leitch was not about to fly off on any sacrilegious tangents.

It is important to understand the world in which Leitch was writing. There was no clear understanding of how electricity worked. There was no radio. Telegraphy had only just begun to flourish but the first trans-Atlantic cable had failed after the gutta-percha water-proofing had succumbed to the pressure of the ocean floor. Watt's steam engine was only just being successfully adapted for use at sea, the very first solely steam-powered ship to cross to America was a recent event. Brunel had only just built the massive steamer, the SS Great Eastern, which ran on one steam driven propeller, two massive paddle wheels and six masts of sail. Oil had been discovered in America but the first shipment of black gold to Europe was only to occur that same year (1860). The atom was considered indivisible so the notion of atomic energy was decades in the future. Even the electron had yet to be discovered. Mendeleyev had not yet cracked the mysteries of the elements and drawn up his periodic table. Galaxies were all still considered to be nebulae inside our own Milky Way. Jules Verne hadn't even taken a fictional voyage in a balloon yet and was a year away from even starting his first conversations with his cousin about outer space.

But that isn't to suggest that Leitch was living in the dark ages: far from it. The scientific community was in a state of excitement and agitation that would bring the world untold new discoveries over the next few decades. On one occasion Leitch noticed how a lightning strike in his parish had caused metal and glass to leave strange markings in the structure of a local farm house. He reported his findings back to the science laboratories in Glasgow, which by now were being run by William Thomson. Further study of the phenomena was ordered by Thomson and he struck up a dialog with Leitch by mail. (By a strange coincidence, decades later, when Thomson had been elevated to the title of Lord Kelvin, he had a highly reliable assistant working for him; another graduate of Glasgow University, who would travel around the world assisting in making improvements to Kelvin's undersea cables. His name was also William Leitch, but he was evidently no relation.)

William Leitch was far from the first to speculate on the nature of the moon. We have other written accounts which predate him by centuries, (such as the aforementioned Lucian) but his has to be one of the earliest accurate descriptions of what it would be like to stand on the lunar surface. In the space of a few short paragraphs Leitch revealed that he understood the impact of a vacuum on everything from light and sound, to ballistics and winged flight. This first essay ran for only two and a half pages but it set the stage for everything that was to come.

"In the survey we mean to take of the heavens as illustrative of God's glory, we shall first direct our attention to the moon, our nearest neighbour. The moon will form the first step in the ladder by which we shall attempt to scale those heights from which we may command the widest range of the marvelous works of the Almighty. Although we cannot by searching find out God, although we are baffled in our attempts to comprehend the Absolute, still there are stepping stones across the abyss of space, which enable us to enlarge our view, and to form a juster conception of the Infinite and the Eternal."

In plain English what Leitch was saying was that he intended to take his readers on an imaginary journey to an outpost where the Earth's place in the Universe was plainly revealed. The metaphor of a ladder was one he would come back to in later essays. The choice of language was carefully refined, perhaps by Leitch, or perhaps by Macleod or even Strahan, to make it clear that this was a man of religion writing a secular description. Although we know that Macleod's name was prominently featured as the editor, Strahan was known to carry out the day-to-day duties. However, in this instance it may have been Macleod monitoring his friend's first essay since it includes a quote from Wordsworth, who Macleod had befriended previously.

Leitch went on to discuss the possible arrangement of life on the moon, and explained how "we can conceive of intellect united to a very different corporeal organisation". This was a straight-forward acknowledgement that nature was not bound to place intelligence only in the human frame. The idea of alien life had been under discussion for decades, indeed Christian Huygens book The Celestial Worlds Discovered published in 1695 had discussed aliens to an almost heretical degree, which probably explained why Huygens didn't allow it to be published until after his death. We might assume that following Huygens with similar suggestions in 1860 would have been easier, but far from it. In fact the subject of the nature of life, intelligence and the eternal soul had been turned on its ear at almost the exact moment that Leitch was writing his essay. Just six weeks earlier a man named Charles Robert Darwin had just published a book entitled "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". On June 3rd 1836 the HMS Beagle with its studious passenger had stopped at Cape Town. Darwin paid a visit to John Herschel where it is believed that they discussed biology, astronomy and cosmology. More than two decades later Herschel became good friends with Macleod and Strahan. But Darwin's book would almost completely capsize the ship of literal scripture.

Leitch could scarcely have chosen a more contentious moment to enter the debate about man's place in the universe. One of his oldest friends, the Duke of Argyle who had been a member of his writing club at Glasgow, also joined the debate with his own highly public interpretation of Darwin's theory. The first adverts for Darwin's book had appeared just two weeks before Leitch met with Morris in Edinburgh. A week before Leitch's approval as Principal of Queens, Thomas Huxley had already taken sides and written his first approbation of Darwin for MacMillans. As we well know this fight was far from over and it would not be until April of 1860 before Darwin's book would be reviewed in places like the Edinburgh Review, a prestigious magazine which had previously included contributions by Leitch. By this time Leitch had already completed three essays on the nature of the moon and was now addressing the contentious subject of the mythical planet Vulcan.

Mysterious perturbations in the orbit of Mercury had prompted astronomers to postulate the existence of another unknown planet closer to the sun. It was dubbed Vulcan and astronomers had spent many fruitless hours seeking its shadow passing in front of the sun. Leitch's essay for April of 1860 relates an almost eye-witness account of how an obscure French farmer managed to convince one of the world's leading astronomers that he had spotted the mythical planet. What is most telling about Leitch's essay is that he accepts the discovery as proof that human intellect was designed to use the scientific method to make discoveries. It is not the normal extrapolation you might expect from a religious man, but Leitch had no problem reconciling man's intellect with his faith-based conclusion that a supreme intelligence was guiding us. In this respect he seems to have been a fore-runner of the many men of science, even today, who maintain some form of religious faith.

In September of 1860 Leitch opened an essay in Good Words by discussing how the sun's power was bottled up in coal, falling water and wind. This explanation of our sources of energy had also been articulated by the anonymous author of the "Sketches in Natural History" column the previous February. That author also cited as the source of the idea "...a philosopher of our day, young in years but mature in thought and observation (Professor William Thomson)".

It would be another two years before William Thomson and his colleague Peter Guthrie Tait would begin work on their seminal book Treatise on Natural Philosophy and they would first present a sample of their thoughts on the subject in Good Words, under the simple title "Energy". Many of the things stated by Thomson and Tait about the natural storehouse of solar energy had been articulated by Leitch in Good Words two years earlier. Again this seems to point to Leitch as the author of the short-lived "Sketches in Natural History" column.

Leitch would continue his string of astronomy essays until he left for Canada in October of 1860. He took a steamer to Montreal and brought with him a library of more than 600 books. This collection is now dispersed into the collection of Queen's University library but it holds many insights into Leitch and his numerous interests. Of course there are works by Newton and Laplace, but there are also books on botany, physiology, geology, mathematics and many books of religion.

Just before Leitch arrived by Cunard steamer into Halifax the giant Brunel steamer SS Great Eastern had passed through on its first voyage to the Americas. The giant ill-fated ship would later become instrumental in laying Lord Kelvin's undersea cables, bringing communications to the world.

Shortly after Leitch arrived in Canada another essay appeared in Good Words entitled "Auroras". It is another article which is unattributed but again it reads a lot like Leitch's work. It is crystal clear that it was written by a scientist who studied the sky but it doesn't quite fit neatly into a work of astronomy. It is of particular interest to the story presented here because the comprehension of auroras and the Earth's magnetic field would ultimately be the main stimulus for Canada's space program and its position as a world leader in communications in the next century. Without any real understanding of how the sun worked, the author of this article was left to speculate on the cause of auroras and the interference they caused in the telegraphic communications cables of the time.

After settling into his new role at Queens College in Kingston Leitch took on a multitude of tasks. He created a new faculty of law, he worked to get the observatory and its Alvan Clark telescope into more permanent surroundings. He founded the Botanical Society of Canada. And perhaps most importantly he took on the voice of advocate for a free and expansive system of further education in Canada.

In 1861 he returned to Scotland and delivered three more essays to Macleod and Strahan. One of them was entitled "A Journey Through Space" and in this essay, published in September 1861, he pursued his earlier metaphor of scaling the rungs of an infinite ladder to get a better view of our solar system. It was his twelfth essay on astronomy but it was destined to be the opening chapter in his forthcoming book. In six thousand words he took his readers on an imaginary tour of the solar system. In just six pages he explained how the rocket was the only device which he could imagine as capable of propelling us through space. He explained that it would work better in space. He talked of asteroid colonies and rings around Neptune 120 years before they were actually discovered. He spoke of being frozen on a beam of light and watching time stop. He spoke of distances in millions of light years, decades before we knew that the universe was so vast. Later he would demonstrate his understanding of E=½mv2 in an essay on the safety of trains in Canada.

Over 18 months after publishing his book Charles Darwin would finally be challenged in the pages of Good Words; but not by Leitch. The article was written by one of the most respected scientists of the day, David Brewster. A fellow Scottish minister, Brewster was one of the world's foremost authorities on optics, which was yet another interest of Leitch's. Brewster, along with many other scientists couldn't accept the notion that all life came from a single primordial form. The main reason for including this point is to demonstrate that Good Words had become one of the most widely read and respected forums for scientific discourse of its time. Other articles in 1862 were written by Charles Piazzi Smith, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland who wrote "Above the Clouds" and "Time and its Measurement"; James David Forbes, FRS, discussed "Glaciers"; James Glaisher took the readers on a beautifully described scientific balloon voyage into the stratosphere, and by 1863 Sir John Herschel tackled the meteoric theory of solar power and the study of volcanoes. Leitch was in estimable company.

In November 1862 Leitch's essays would be published by Strahan as a book. It would be sold in every major English-speaking country. Editions were available in Canada, the USA, Australia and even India. Reviews were generally favourable, but the title had been reduced to simply "God's Glory in the Heavens" with no reference to astronomy, thus setting the stage for it to effectively vanish in its complete form.

By late 1863 Leitch was suffering from a heart condition. He was only 49 years old. Since arriving in Canada he undertook the same sort of battle he had fought back in Fife. To try and make sure that public money went to the places to which it was assigned. He had no idea that the battle at Queen's in Kingston, which had been raging for years, would become such an intractable problem. He brought all of his intellectual capital to bear while still performing his duties as Principal, teacher, Board Member, Senator at the University of Toronto and head of the Synod. He managed to establish a more permanent astronomical observatory at Queens. He associated with his fellow Scots, John A. Macdonald and Alexander Campbell. He worked diligently with others to establish a fair system of education that respected all of the denominations of the church, but his battle to try and make an equitable education system in Canada was taking its toll.

Leitch was also never far from the political strife which had begun in Scotland. He was either too pious for some or not pious enough for others. On one occasion news leaked out that he had been celebrating the Prince of Wales' birthday on a ship during the Sabbath. This apparent breach of etiquette made it into the newspapers in Scotland before someone forced a retraction to the story. It wasn't true. Leitch was a man of dedication, both to science and to his faith. He saw no contradictions between the two. He advocated the position that if science seemed to contradict the Bible, don't denounce the science, just don't make the inference that if the science is right then the Bible must be wrong. Find a third road and assume that both can still be right. In this regard he was, along with people like William Whewell, one of the last of the true natural philosophers.

Alexander Strahan had used the copyrights in Good Words as collateral with his printers and distributors. By 1872 Good Words had a circulation unrivalled anywhere in the English speaking world but it had been subjected to a backlash amongst the evangelical sector of the church. On one occasion people had rounded up every copy of the magazine they could find and burned them; which might partly explain why it is so difficult to locate individual copies of the magazine today. Strahan's creditors removed him from the head of his own company and by 1878 some of the material from Good Words was being migrated to other books and periodicals. William Leitch's seminal essay on space travel was appropriated for a series of "travel" books called "The Half Hour Library". It first appeared without his name attached in 1877 and continued to be printed until at least 1910. Adverts suggest that it sold over 500,000 copies during that time.

Leitch would not live to see his children grow up. He died in Kingston Ontario in May 1864 just before his 50th birthday. His role of explaining mankind's role in the universe to the readers of Good Words was taken over by Sir John Herschel, the very same man who had met with Darwin 28 years earlier. Leitch was buried in a new plot at Cataraqui Cemetery in Kingston. Several years later Canada's first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was buried nearby.

Despite William Leitch's premature departure, the Leitch family was to prosper back in Britain. Leitch's son John and his daughter Moncrieff were raised in St Andrews where they developed a taste for golf. John Leitch had six children who all knew of their famous grandfather, who had gone on a mission to Canada to spread the gospel and the teachings of science. The most talented of these six children was Cecil. By far the best golfer in the group, Cecil played a legendary tournament in the beating rain in October 1910 against British Open Champion Harold Hilton. Cecil lost by only two strokes. It was the first tightly contested game of its kind, since Cecil was actually William's granddaughter Cecilia. She went on to win more than a dozen championships in England, France and Canada. On one golfing tour she visited Queen's University because she knew of her grandfather's role there. Her fame was such that when she was struck by lightning on a course in Ireland it made the headlines of the Ottawa Citizen half a world away. The story of her almost fatal misfortune appeared just above a picture of a fresh-faced young man named Charles Lindbergh who was about to attempt a solo crossing of the Atlantic. Two days later Lindbergh would be the most famous man in the world and would use his fame to encourage the efforts of an unknown New England college teacher named Robert Goddard, who wanted to build a rocket to send into space.

Robert Godwin ©2015