4 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



greatest attainments, Dal ton was little occupied with those 

 numerous incidents closely relating to family and friends, 

 which, although productive of much true happiness, capable 

 equally of enlarging the smallest minds and deepening the 

 influence of the most gifted, involve the consumption of much 

 time, a loss much deplored as often as we consider how little 

 we have, and how much is needful in order to obtain from 

 nature even the smallest addition to our knowledge. For 

 Dalton, science was the occupation of life, of a life spent in 

 the most laborious manner. The amenities of life came to him 

 as memories of what had been in his childhood rather than as 

 pleasures realized at the time, memories certainly which he 

 willingly recalled, but as willingly, or perhaps resolutely, left, 

 because his work was before him. He was a student of 

 nature from his cradle. 



Few as the materials for his early life are, and bare as are 

 all the narratives, we have perhaps all that could really be 

 found to be interesting. To all appearance he was like those 

 around him, born to be a clodhopper, few things happening 

 to fix the attention of others upon him, no incidents worth a 

 record, because happening to millions daily; the first years 

 must be passed with a simple record of the meagre living and 

 the scantier education he received, until the glow of his life 

 became warmer than that of his fellows. From that time his 

 life is almost entirely in his works, like a devotee who has no 

 heart for the world, but for Divine truth only, his very visits 

 to his early friends were visits as much made for the inves- 

 tigation of truth, made to nature under that aspect which 

 first taught him to observe and to think, which in fact first 

 made him a philosopher and the love of which he never for a 

 moment lost. 



John Dalton was born at Eaglesfield, in Cumberland, on the 

 5th of September, 1766, in a small cottage on the estate of 



