remembrance of such a man, and he made an offer to the members of the Literary and Philosophical Society which they were glad to accept. Dalton was requested to sit to him in 1814, and his portrait now adorns the Society's room of meeting. Subsequently his friends were anxious to secure its counterpart, and it was engraved. In 1833, a subscription was opened by some of his more ardent admirers, and the sum of £2000 having been raised, arrangements were made for obtaining a full-length statue of the great philosopher, from Sir Francis Chantrey, who has brought to the execution of his task, besides his great skill, a warm admiration of his subject and a proportionate desire to do him justice. The statue, when completed, will be deposited in the entrance hall of the Royal Manchester Institution.

It being necessary that Chantrey should take a bust of Dalton, he was invited to visit London for that purpose. During a stay of a fortnight in the great metropolis, he was treated with the utmost consideration by scientific men, and invited to the soirees of the Duke of Sussex, who received him most graciously, and in a manner somewhat original. “I am very glad to see you, (his Royal Highness is reported to have said,) I was too ill to go down to Manchester to see you, and it is very kind in you to come to town to see me." His friends in London, also, conceived it only fitting that our townsman should pay his respects to Royalty, and arrangements were accordingly made for his presentation at the levee. Mr. Babbage undertook to escort him to the Palace, and the then Chancellor (Lord Brougham) at once acceded to an application which was made to him to present the philosopher to his Majesty. With great skill, all the minute preparations for his appearance in such august presence, were made by his friends, and arrayed in the pompous vestments of a Doctor of Oxford, with the scarlet gown and black cap, the silk stockings, the buckles, and the whole paraphernalia of a learned courtier, our townsman mingled in the crowd of soldiers, sailors, statesmen and divines, who thronged the splendid apartments of St. James's, where he was very graciously received by the King. About the same time, some acknowledgment of his great deserts was made by the Government, in conferring upon him a pension. It was publicly announced at Cambridge, at a meeting of the British Association for the advancement of science, of which the first meeting had been held at York. Dalton attended this meeting, and took an active part in the business of the various sections, in which he had, almost for the first time, an opportunity of communicating freely with the scientific men of the day, all of whom offered him every mark of respect. The next meeting of the Association was held in the following year at Oxford, and

the University availed themselves of his presence to present him with the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. A public convocation was held for the purpose of conferring the same honor on Sir David Brewster, Farriday and Brown, each of whom was introduced by Dr. Philimore, in a Latin oration, to the Vice-Chancellor. Dalton was the last presented, and great as had been the applause bestowed on the other three philosophers, he carried away the meed of their warmest approbation. He was elected, by the Association, President of the Chemical Section for that year; and at all their meetings the highest seat was appointed for him. In 1833, the members, as has been said, assembled at Cambridge, and Dalton was once more among them. The learned professor Sedgwick, President for the year, took an early opportunity to express his regret that honorary degrees could not be conferred by the University of Cambridge, except by royal mandamus, but it fell to his lot to communicate a more gratifying and substantial award to Dr. Dalton, which he did in the following eloquent terms:-"They had all read a highly poetical passage of a sacred prophet, expressed in language to the beauty of which his feelings (he said) had never before been so forcibly awakened as at this moment. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.' If he might dare to make an adaptation of words so sacred, he would say that he felt himself in the position here contemplated-of one who had the delightful privilege entrusted to him of announcing good tidings, for it was his happiness to proclaim to them what would rejoice the heart of every true lover of science. There was a philosopher among them, whose hair was blanched by time, whose features had some of the lines of approaching old age, but possessing an intellect still in its healthiest vigour a man whose whole life had been devoted to the cause of truth-he meant his venerable friend Dr. Dalton. Without any powerful apparatus for making philosophical experiments-with an apparatus, indeed, many of them might think almost contemptible-and with very limited external means for employing his great natural powers, he had gone straight forward in his distinguished course, and obtained for himself in those branches of knowledge which he had cultivated a name not, perhaps, equalled by that of any other living philosoper of the world. From the hour he came from his mother's womb, the God of nature had laid his hand upon his head and ordained him for the ministration of high philosophy. But his natural talents, great as they were, and his almost intuitive skill tracing the relations of material phenomena, would have been comparatively of little value to himself and to society, had there not been superadded to them a beautiful moral simplicity and singleness of

heart, which made him go on steadily in the way he saw before him, without turning to the right hand or to the left, and taught him to do homage to no authority before that of truth.

Fixing his eye on the highest views of science, his experiments had never an insulated character, but were always made as contributions towards some important end, were among the steps towards some lofty generalization. And with a most happy prescience of the points towards which the rays of scattered experiments were converging, he had more than once seen light while to other eyes all was yet in darkness-out of seeming confusion had elicited order—and had thus reached the high distinction of becoming one of the greatest legislators of chemical science. While travelling among the highest mountains of Cumber. land, and scarifying the face of nature with his hammer, he (the President) had the happiness of first being admitted to the friendship of this great and good man, who was at that time employed, day by day, in soaring among the Heavens, and bringing the turbulent elements themselves under his own intellectual domination. He would not have dwelt so long on these topics, had it not been his delightful privilege to announce for the first time, (on the authority of a Minister of the Crown, who sat near him) that his Majesty, King William IV., wishing to manifest his attachment to science, and his regard for a character like that of Dr. Dalton, had graciously conferred on him, out of the funds of the Civil List, a substantial mark of his royal favour."

At one of the same meetings, opportunity was taken to couple the name of Dalton with a toast; and the brief, simple, and unaffected manner in which he replied to it, is highly illustrative of the character of the man. "He did not expect," he said, "to be called upon in this manner when he sat down to dinner; however, as it was the case, he should express, in a few words, what he had to say. He had come to this place anticipating a great deal of pleasure, in treading on the same ground which Bacon and Newton had trod before. That alone would have been a high gratification; but the addition of such an assembly as they had, and the quantity of scientific information thrown before them, was a still greater gratification; and to find those subjects so combined with religion and morality, would be a most powerful stimulus to fresh exertion."

The next meeting of the British Association was held at Edinburgh, and again distinctions were forced upon him. The Town Council presented to him the freedom of the City. In the same year (1834)

*The Right Hon. T. Spring Rice, M.P. for the town of Cambridge.

the University of Edinburgh conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., his diploma being signed by nearly thirty of the Professors, and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of that city. In 1835, Dr. Dalton once more attended the meeting of the Association in Dublin, where he was honorably noticed, and invited to partake of the hospitaltiies of the Castle.

Although seduced by these meetings to a short absence from his laboratory, Dr. Dalton is not a frequent traveller. For many years, however, he has paid a periodical visit to his native mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, pursuing there his philosophical investigations of the constitution of the atmosphere. On these occasions he invariably ascends Helvellyn, and often Skiddau, from the double impulse of gratifying his ruling passion for enquiry, and an ardent admiration of nature and the beauties of those magnificent regions. In his younger days, his passion for grand and picturesque scenery led him to visit various parts of the kingdom: on one of these tours he spent a day with the celebrated James Watt, at his residence near Birmingham-a day of which he has ever since entertained and expressed a pleasing recollection.

But his annual tour is not the only interval from study which Dr. Dalton permits himself. As the records of his life must testify, he is not less remarkable for the great powers of his mind, than for the extreme industry, the indomitable insensibility to fatigue or weariness, with which he pursues his daily avocations. No sooner is the fast of the morning broken, than Dr. Dalton repairs to his laboratory, where he remains teaching his pupils, and, at the same time, pursuing his manipulations, till nine at night. These long hours of mental toil have for years been persisted in during six days in the week, with the exception of the Thursday afternoon, which Dr. Dalton has allowed himself as a period of relaxation, in the society of a number of gentlemen who meet in the country for the same healthful object as their illustrious associate.

It has already been said, that Dr. Dalton is not merely the instructor of the young, but that persons comparatively advanced in life avail themselves of his assistance in studying various branches of science. Many of these individuals, who of course can appreciate more fully than ordinary pupils the advantages accruing from his instruction, have spoken of the great benefit they have derived from their intercourse with him, and the peculiarly new and striking manner in which he presented to their view points with which they conceived themselves to be already conversant.

It is only necessary to advert to one other topic in connexion with our illustrious townsman, and it is one to which it is fitting the inhabitants of this vast mercantile and manufacturing community should be fully alive. The merits of Dr. Dalton, as a man of science and a philosopher, resting as they do upon discoveries of the utmost value at all times and in every place, cannot be exalted by the considerations to which we are about to refer; but the respect with which his townsmen now regard him will certainly be much enhanced by a knowledge that during his long connexion with us, he has ever evinced the utmost readiness to make the powers of his lofty mind subservient to the promotion of our welfare. In this way he has rendered the most essential services to bleachers, calico-printers, dyers and others, who have found his chemical experiments of the greatest value in pursuing their several arts. Not a week passes in which Dr. Dalton is not thus consulted, and the most ordinary reader will at once perceive how substantial must be the benefits he hereby confers upon our commerce and manufactures.

Even to his great discovery, the atomic theory, the same character of practical usefulness peculiarly belongs. In speaking of this "the last improvement which chemistry has received," Dr. Thompson has said that it is "an improvement which has given a degree of accuracy to chemical experimenting almost equal to mathematical precision-which has simplified prodigiously our views respecting chemical combinations -which has enabled manufacturers to introduce theoretical improvements into their processes, and to regulate, with almost perfect precision, the relative quantities of the various constituents necessary to produce the intended effects. The consequence of this is that nothing is wasted, nothing is thrown away. Chemical products have become not only better in quality, but more abundant and much cheaper." This theory, he adds, is “still in its infancy, but is already productive of the most important benefits. It is destined one day to produce still more wonderful effects, and to render Chemistry not only the most delightful, but the most useful and indispensable of all the sciences."

Towards the end of the last century, a Literary and Scientific Society had been established in Manchester, of which Mr. Thomas Henry, the translator of Lavoisier's Essays, and who distinguished himself so much in promoting the introduction of the new mode of bleaching into Lancashire, was long President. Mr. Dalton, who had already distinguished himself by his Meteorological Observations, and particularly by his account of the Aurora Borealis, soon became a member of the Society; and in the fifth volume of their Memoirs, part II., published in the year 1802, six papers of his were inserted, which laid the foundation of his future celebrity. These papers were chiefly. connected with meteorogical subjects; but by far the most important of them all was the one entitled "Experimental Essays on the Constitution of mixed gases; on the Force of Steam or Vapour from water and other liquids in different temperatures, both in a torricellian vacuum and in air; on Eva