Pretty nearly a Clodhopper. 4I seeing that healthful occupation in the fields cleared his brain, and fitted him the more for evening studies. At this period, when entering upon his teens, he can have had no ideas beyond the bucolic life around him; and the highest aim of his ancestors was farming, with the prospect of some day realising by wholesome industry the ownership of a dwelling and some acres of land-a cottage and cow, garth and hempland, so as to become passing rich on £40 a year. And it is doubtful if his father's handicraft had advanced his status beyond the possession of a cow and a cow's grassing until the death of his brother Jonathanuncle to John. From the circumstance of John Dalton joining the rank and file of husbandmen, it may be inferred that his "Ambition did not mock their useful toil," and that he did not disregard their "homely joys." His disposition to farming may have been influenced by the fact of his Uncle Jonathan, then in the enjoyment of a few acres, being in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and without any probability of issue, and that the Isaid uncle had noticed with favour the merits of his nephew, upon whose shoulders the burden of the day might soon fall. Moreover, an honest farmer, with a small yeoman's position in prospect, would be viewed quite as respectable, and much more profitable, than the grade of a country schoolmaster on the uplands of Cumberland. Thus circumstances might have thrown John Dalton into the position of a poor farmer, with aims no larger than selling corn and cows at Cockermouth market, instead of becoming a chemical philosopher honoured by the savans of Europe. All biographical notices of John Dalton's assign to him yeoman's ancestry. This would appear to be a mistake, as the foregoing pages prove the artisanship of both his father and grandfather, and probably arose from the fact of Jonathan, the shoemaker, possessing a few acres of land through his own industry, or as the dowry of his wife Abigail, which eventually fell to John Dalton on the death of his brother, the schoolmaster at Kendal. In a statement of John Dalton's (hereafter to be noticed), complaining of the distribution of his father's property, there is no mention of any other possession of his father's than what had accrued to him as the successor of his brother Jonathan-uncle to the chemist. The only circumstance to lead to a contrary opinion is a mortgage of £150, or thereabouts, on the Eaglesfield property, and this may have been laid on by Joseph Dalton, the weaver, after his brother Jonathan's death, with the view of assisting his two sons in the establishment of a boarding-school at Kendal in 1786. Whilst John Dalton was plodding away in his capacity of schoolmaster, or taking his honest share in husbandry operations, by which his bone and muscle got their truthful balance and vigour along with the development of his nerve-power, his brother Jonathan was acting as usher or assistant to his cousin, George Bewley, who kept a school at Kendal. It was probably owing to Mr Bewley's wish to retire that Jonathan Dalton held out to his brother John the desirability of leaving Eaglesfield and joining him, with a view to a school-partnership. Joseph and Seeks fresh fields and pastures new. 43 Deborah, the parents, having taken counsel of "Friends," approved of the son's proposal; and in the summer or autumn of 1761, when he was about to complete his sixteenth year, John Dalton bade farewell as a resident to Eaglesfield. CHAPTER III. "For Nature's crescent does not grow alone, Grows wide withal." -SHAKESPEARE. KENDAL SCHOOL AND SOCIAL LIFE-LECTURES ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY-MR GOUGH'S FRIENDSHIP-CONTRIBUTION ΤΟ THE DIARIES NAMES. -INVESTIGATIONS OF ENGLISH SUR N anticipation of getting on in the world, and disposed to covet the latest novelty of a gentleman's outfit, John Dalton bought an umbrella—a curiosity of its kind a hundred years ago-at Cockermouth, and with this equipment in one hand, and a bundle of body-clothes in the other, started on his journey for Kendal, a distance of forty-four miles, which he accomplished in a day. This was his first break off from the home circle, and if his emotions at all responded to the natural scenery through which he passed, he may have framed for himself a sort of earthly paradise en route. Journeying through Cockermouth, and by the banks of the placid lake of Bassenthwaite, he soon came in view of Derwentwater in all its glorious beauty and surroundings, with the unrivalled peaks of Borrowdale beyond, each step revealing new features of picturesque hill and dale, grey homestead His first sight of the Lakes. 45 and green meadow. Crossing Dunmail Raise showed him another sight, the attractions of which could not fail to lighten his descent to Grassmere, Rydal, and Windermere "the queen," and fair daughters of the lakes-and to fill his mind with poetical fancy and unspeakable admiration. The mental enjoyment of such a day would bar all feeling of physical fatigue, and enable him to reach Kendal with a mind as buoyant and bright as the ethereal atmosphere floating o'er the mountain-tops of Skiddaw and Langdale Pikes. As a boy in his early teens, travelling alone amid the indescribable loveliness of the lake country, and gazing at the flickering lights and shadows on the everlasting hills, he little conjectured the strange evolutions of the coming time-that a day of historical distinction was about to dawn over the scene of his journey, mainly owing to the genius of Wordsworth, the Coleridges, Southey, and De Quincey; and still less did he suppose that the meteorological characteristics of the district would some day become a theme of fertile interest to himself, the successful investigation of which would give him rank among the scientific discoverers of the age, and a niche in the pantheon of English celebrities. Kendal, at the time of John Dalton's entry, had a population of 5000, and a flourishing wool and cotton trade, demanding hundreds of packhorses* to carry * Before Dalton's time stage-waggons had partly displaced "packhorses," and a stage-coach-the "Flying Machine"-drawn by six horses, arrived twice a week from London; but it was 1786 before a mail-coach ran from London to Kendal. Though churches and schools were getting built, and a newsroom established, and much educational |