the realty, which consisted of six houses, bequeathed to Mr Alderman Nield and Mr Peter Clare, two of his oldest friends. He made his will on December 22, 1841, and a codicil in June 1843. With the exception of £500 to the Quaker's school at Ackworth, Yorkshire, and £300 to a similar school at Brookfield, and £50 to the Eaglesfield and Blind Bothell School at Paddle, Cumberland, he distributed his money pretty equally among his relatives and friends.

A meeting was held on January 26, 1853, in the Town Hall, Manchester, for promoting a testimonial to the memory of John Dalton; a committee was appointed to collect subscriptions for the erection of a monument over his grave in the Ardwick Cemetery, and of a statue in front of the Manchester Royal Infirmary; and also to found one or more scholarships for the best original investigation in Chemistry, to be prosecuted in the laboratory of the Owens' College. A sum of upwards of £4000 was devoted to this latter object, and a more fitting testimonial could not have been proposed. "The establishment in England," sagaciously observes Professor Roscoe, "of a scholarship for original research, was, twenty-one years ago, a circumstance without a parallel; but in spite of the novelty of the experiment, time has fully proved the wisdom of the course which its originators adopted, and already a considerable number of men have had the Dalton Scholarship awarded to them for original work of a more or less important character, and are now holding high and responsible positions in scientific, manufacturing, and official life."

CHAPTER XV.

"Truth is the daughter of Time, and not of Authority."

-LORD BACON.

BONAPARTE'S LOVE OF SCIENCE-OPINIONS OF THOMSON, WOLLASTON, HERSCHEL, GRAHAM, BERZELIUS, FARADAY, LIEBIG, ROSCOE, CANNIZZARO, TYNDALL, DUMAS, AND WURTZ ON THE ATOMIC THEORY.

JENERAL NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, in his expedition to Egypt, was accompanied by naturalists, historians, and others eminent in art and science, selected for special services in exploring the land of the Pharaohs. After the decisive battle of the Pyramids, Bonaparte, stationed at Cairo, was one day riding through the Uzbekéëh gardens with M. Monge,* one of the Scientific Institute the General had founded in Egypt, whom he thus addressed :—“I find myself here the conqueror of Egypt, marching in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, but I should have greatly preferred following those of Sir Isaac Newton." M. Monge remarked that Newton had exhausted the field of discovery in physics, leaving nothing to those who might follow him. "By no means," was Bonaparte's reply, "Newton dealt with masses of matter, and with their movements; I

* This was Gaspard Monge, who founded the Normal and Polytechnic Schools of Paris, and proved himself equal to the organisation of numerous schemes for the benefit of the French Empire.

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should have sought in the atoms for the laws by which worlds have been constructed." What a testimony to the genius of the young Corsican, who, with a full appreciation of the light that Newton's mind had revealed of the laws of gravitation affecting the great orbs, was incited by motives of ambition to soar for the light that should disclose the infinitesimal small in the worlds of atoms. Whilst the bright Eastern sun was warming the lofty inspirations of the soldier of France towards scientific discovery, the son of a poor weaver, a humble schoolmaster and man of peace, in a dingy room of smoky Manchester, was preparing his balances and crude apparatus for the solution of that great problem in the physics of chemistry that Bonaparte longed to be master of.

Though the laws of definite, reciprocal, and multiple proportions remain in their integrity as laid down by Dalton, it must not be supposed that all his experiments, much less his combining weights of elements and calculations, are to be viewed as faultless. Thus, more accurate experimenting than his has proved that certain atoms are a little heavier, and others a little lighter than he believed; and the work of perfecting the observations of chemists is constantly going on, aided very materially by improved instruments and methods of operating. Rarely can the claim be made for approximative perfection, even in the arts guided by the best mechanical skill. In science, it need not be said, there are greater difficulties to contend with, inasmuch as science has to do with phenomena more subtle in nature, more diversified in relations, than mere technological plans and arrangements. Hence it may be inferred that the

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exposition, if not a portion of the doctrines promulgated by Dalton, has undergone certain modifications, not affecting that part of his views which ascribed the union of indestructible atoms to chemical affinity, but rather the accuracy of his balance and the relative weights of the substances he treated. This is of minor import compared with the great strides he made upon the ancient atomists, and the more modern Cartesian philosophers, who could only see the irregular and fortuitous in the arrangement of atoms, and not a constant and methodical action affecting all molecular arrangements.

Dalton met with opponents in his own day, and there are still some to be found who object to his theory; but hitherto they have not shown any inconsistency in the atomic theory, nor in the conclusions to which it leads. As Professor Williamson, in his able address as President of the British Association at Bradford in 1873, observed on this subject, that no philosopher had been able to explain "the facts of chemistry on the assumption that there are no atoms, but that matter is infinitely divisible." Nay more, that "when they interpret their analyses, these chemists allow themselves neither more nor less latitude than the atomic theory allows: in fact, they are unconsciously guided by it." No doubt it is by examining the combining proportions of atoms that we get clear ideas of the constitution of matter— that great desideratum in the mental vision of Napoleon le Grand.

The test of a good hypothesis is its conformity with observed facts, and Dalton's theory is thoroughly reconcilable with this view. The most satisfactory

theories often involve suppositions of an irreconcilable character. Thus, how difficult it is to frame one's notions of the force of gravity acting instantaneously, between the most distant parts of the planetary system; or that a touch of electricity should be made to pass along a wire of 23,000 miles in length in a single second; or that a ray of violet light should consist of 700 billions of vibrations in each second: yet these statements, however extraordinary in character, are essential to enable us to explain the phenomena observed by the physicist.

The Abbé Boscovich said that we are to understand by hypotheses "not fictions altogether arbitrary, but suppositions conformable to experience or analogy." Newton's motto of "Hypotheses non fingo," heralding his "Principia," was not only called in question, but treated as somewhat ironical; so much so, that Liebnitz and other philosophers on the Continent repelled the Newtonian tenet, and animadverted strongly on his re-introducing part of his occult chemistry into the science of facts.

In a previous chapter of this memoir, circumstances of historical note and proof were adduced to clear the ground of those doubts at one time prevalent regarding the originality of the discovery of the modern atomic theory by John Dalton; now it behoves me to notice the manner in which the new chemical doctrines were received by his contemporaries.

To Dr Thomson of Glasgow must be awarded the honour of first embracing and making known to the world the atomic philosophy. It was during his visit to Manchester in 1804, already mentioned, that

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