HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC THEORY. 



279 



have made an attempt to rise, but fell from the bed, and was 

 found with his head on the floor, perfectly lifeless. 



Mr. Harland, in the Manchester Guardian of the period, 

 gives a copy of the last three lines he wrote : they will serve 

 as an illustration of his method. 



He had ceased for some months to make observations on 

 the amount of rain and evaporation. Mr. Harland reckons 

 his total observations at 200,000. 



His life ended with science, and these few of his observa- 

 tions are therefore not out of place even when recording that 

 solemn moment. So calm had been his life, that it is not 

 surprising that in death his countenance should show a " beau- 

 tiful repose," as the same writer observed in a memoir fitted 

 for a more permanent place than a newspaper. 



Many would like to know something more of Dalton's 

 religious faith, and would expect to learn from his con- 

 cluding words the hope and direction of his spirit, as if from 

 its position at that moment they were able to calculate the 

 angle of its divergence from earth. But that spirit had ceased 

 to find utterance for itself, and we are compelled to look at 

 the more solid points of a laborious lifetime. Scientific men 

 are often far from orthodox Christianity, although sometimes 

 living like saints, lives of purity, charity, devotion, and deep 

 reverence. Dalton " did justly," he " loved mercy," he 

 "walked humbly," he remembered carefully, as his will 

 especially shews, the mercy due to " the fatherless and widows," 

 and all our accounts speak of him as one to all appearance in 

 an unusual degree "unspotted from the world." His profession 



