278 MEMOIR OF DR. D ALTON, AND 



In six weeks he had recovered, but on February ISth, 1838, 

 he was again attacked, and was left very much enfeebled. 

 His habits were not changed ; idleness did not follow on weak- 

 ness ; he still made his experiment, but took, as he said, four 

 times longer to perform it ; still saw his friends, and kept up 

 the average of his cheerfulness, although the sad feeling that 

 his frame had decayed, was not absent from his mind. Of 

 this he gave little indication, but when the conversation hap- 

 pened once to turn upon an eminent scientific man whom he 

 admired, and had seen in France, he said, "Ah ! he was a 

 wreck then as I am now." 



Mr. Ransome, once his pupil, and latterly his friend and 

 medical attendant, informs us that from 1838 he required con- 

 stant attendance, although he had no other attack until near 

 his death. During the 1843-4 session of the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society, he attended occasionally, where since 

 1817 he had been president. He had then lost his strength 

 so much, that to walk across the two intervening streets 

 to his own house in Faulkner-street, leaning on the arm of 

 Mr. Clare, was a great exertion. His speech was feeble and 

 inarticulate, so that he did not attempt to address the society. 

 On May 20th, 1844, another slight fit occurred. Still 

 we find him at his work, feebly, but regularly putting down 

 his metereological observations. His earliest thoughts were 

 on science, and they endured to the latest period of his life. 

 On July 26th his servant observed that his hand was unusually 

 tremulous, but, as Dr. Wilson observes, " there was the same 

 care and corrective watchfulness manifested in the last stroke 

 of his pen." He had written down " little rain this," and ob- 

 serving after a while that he had left out " day," he returned to 

 complete it. On the morning of the 27th, about six o'clock, 

 his attendant left him for a little, enforcing on him the propriety 

 of not moving until his return. His feeble limbs had not 

 even then got reconciled to perfect helplessness ; he seems to 



