same direction as Lavoisier's, and should have exercised a marked influence, inasmuch as they contained part of the germ or scheme that in Dalton's hands led to great results.

The crowding of men of genius to the goal of the last century naturally betokened well for the progress of chemistry in the present; yet much light was required to clear away the misty phlogiston atmosphere, and to give tangible form to the dicta collectanea furnished by the workers of the past. At the dawn of the nineteenth century England rose to the foremost position, and France and Sweden nobly closed up the ranks of scientific competition. In the wholesome development of science, every step gracefully follows another, and every movement adds life and enterprise to it. True science recognises neither nationality nor creed, nor political bias; thus, the rivalry of the Saxon and the Celt was healthfully bestowed in promoting the public good by the spread of chemical knowledge.

As the phlogistic theory fell into the shade, the discoveries of Galvani and Volta happily came in aid of chemical investigation, opening out a new world of research, that has already yielded marvellous results, and bids fair to eclipse the cravings of the most poetic imagination. Messrs Nicholson and Carlisle, in 1800, then Cruikshanks, Henry, Wollaston, Pfaff, Biot, Thenard, and perhaps more than all, Berzelius, laboured in the work, and showed that various compounds were capable of decomposition by electricity. These competitors, however, were speedily outstripped in the race by Humphrey Davy, the woodcarver's son, of Penzance, and "mere

Swedish, French, and English Chemists.

19

apothecary," who, entering upon a comparatively new field of chemistry, startled his contemporaries both at home and abroad by the brilliancy of his discoveries.

Though necessarily sparing in historical comment, and afraid of selecting single examples from a galaxy of worthies, I must not overlook Berzelius, the Swede, of the highest rank in science, so grandly methodical in all his work, and no less inductive in his beautiful methods of experimenting; Gay Lussac, of noble aim and nobler achievement; Berthollet, the voluminous writer; Thenard, Proust, Fourcroy, and others of the French school; all of whom highly distinguished themselves; and, ranking with these were Wollaston, Professor Thomas Thomson of Glasgow, and the famed Count Rumford.*

Of this noble band of workers and discoverers, to whom the civilised world is so largely indebted, none had the good fortune to meet the exigencies of the hour, that called for a new hand to bind the accumulated and heterogeneous facts into a homogeneity of doctrine, upon which chemistry might step forth and claim high place among the pure sciences.

The light so long and earnestly solicited, to dispel

* My scientific friends will please to look upon this introductory chapter as meant for the general reader. So slight a historical sketch of the rise of chemistry can only offer a glance at the tentative efforts of the early workers in the field, polypharmists, alchemists, and the like. At the same time, it may serve to show the slow growth of the leading principles upon which a true science has at length been founded. Those who wish for an interesting resume of the rise and progress of chemistry will do well to consult Mr G. F. Rodwell's interesting volume on "The Birth of Chemistry," issued as one of the "Nature Series," and with apt illustrations by Macmillan & Co., 1874.

the mists overclouding the dawning science of chemistry, and to give precision and tangible method to its study and profitable pursuit, came from a very unexpected quarter of England-a city of cotton interests and hard cash, not without laudable ambition to become "the Cottonopolis of the North.” The lamp of knowledge got trimmed amid the din of shuttles and spinning-jennies and multifarious handicrafts by an unobtrusive Quaker, pursuing his calling of schoolmaster in a back street of Manchester, and thankful to earn the wages of a skilled artisan. Yet this humble individual, scarcely known outside the pale of his peculiar religious denomination, was daily absorbed in profound intellectual studies, the discoveries arising from which placed him among the great chemists of the day, and ranked him in a position only secondary to that of the immortal Lavoisier.

The early history of the man was in every way so antipodal to the favours of fortune, that the most imaginary and hopeful of temperaments could not have foreshadowed for him any great rise in the world, much less a claim to distinction in the higher sciences. Of the humblest origin, and apparently born to manual labour and the lowest grade of social life, schooled in a retired hamlet of the North country, and reared amid coarse bucolicism and marked barrenness of thought, he had no propitious patron to advance him to the associations and emulation of our public schools, and no friends in court to secure him a place among the humblest alumni of our Universities. In short, possessing none of the advantages surrounding ingenuous youth, and springing

Humble in Means, Rich in Science.

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from a poor household on the bare uplands of Cumberland, away from the main arteries of England, and the great centres of industry and enterprise, John Dalton appeared on the horizon of inductive research, a self-taught man, whose genius and assiduity elicited an original and comprehensive law in the Physics of Chemistry, that gave breadth, and form, and solid structure to a science deeply interwrought with the essential interests of mankind.

CHAPTER II.

"It is not so essential to have a fine understanding, as to apply it

rightly."-DESCARTES.

JOHN

GEORGE FOX IN CUMBERLAND — EAGLESFIELD DALTON'S ANCESTORS-HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND FRIENDS SCHOOLMASTER AND PLOUGHMAN—ADIEU TO HOME.

W

HEN George Fox, the Leicestershire shoemaker, could find no means to salvation at the hands of the spiritual directors of the State Church, some of whom advised him beer and concubinage, others tobacco and psalmsinging, he sought the Scriptures for himself, and speedily made up his mind to doff his leathern apron, and to go into the world on a mission of evangelisation. In his tour northwards he spent some time in Cumberland, and obtained a great success by carrying the pluralist Vicar of Brigham off his tithe legs, and all his congregation, to a free ministry. The religious fervour of the Cumbrians was heightened by the preacher appearing in a buckskin suit of his own. tailoring, greased by use and compulsory companionship with the filthy occupants of filthy jails, to which his strong speech and heterodoxy often consigned him. Fox addressed an open-air-meeting at Pardsey Crag in Brigham parish, and among the motley thousands who flocked to his standard were the ancestors of