Mt J ohmioi\''s Visit to Ber melius. }d\ 



height, and slightly inclined to corpulency. lii a man <>f 

 great name, one, foolishly perhaps, yet naturally, looks for 

 something correspondent in external appearance. Berzelius 

 has none of this, — ;nothing either natural or assumed to dis- 

 tinguish him from other every-day men. He has nothing of 

 pretence, reserve, or singularity about him, so that his plain- 

 ness drew from a fellow-traveller of mine whom he allowed me 

 to introduce to him, the observation," I would never have 

 thought him the great man he is said to be." He has nothing 

 even of the hard student in his appearance ; and, on a first in^ 

 troduction, one would scarcely suppose he was the same Ber- 

 zelius of whose '' sayings and doings'" he had heard so much. 

 He is of an exceedingly pleasing disposition, and gentlemanly 

 manners ; and, on a longer acquaintance, one cheerfully falls 

 in with the general opinion, that if he differ at all from other 

 men, it is in being more amiable. His attention to strangers, 

 and particularly to foreigners, is always great ; and, from his 

 kindness to myself, I might perhaps have been suspected of 

 expressing myself too strongly as to his amiable manners, had 

 I not been confirmed in my opinion of him by that of many 

 others, as well Swedes as foreigners, whom I met in the course 

 of my tour. " You will find him,*" said they to me before I 

 reached Stockholm, and after I left it, " Did you not find him, 

 an exceedingly attentive and amiable man." 



The Academy of Sciences, of which Berzelius is perpetual 

 secretary, and in the buildings belonging to which he has his 

 residence and private laboratory, has lately purchased a larger 

 and more commodious house, and all things were in the act of 

 removal at the time of my visit. I came therefore at an in- 

 convenient time both for seeing Berzelius, and for profiting by 

 access to his laboratory. His former laboratory was dis- 

 mantled, and his new one still in a state of imperfection, so 

 that what he couid then find time to do was chiefly in the way 

 of writing. Still he with great kindness set about getting his 

 laboratory in order, proposed that we should make a set of ex- 

 periments together, — a highly flattering way of giving me the 

 opportunity for which I had come to Stockholm of seeing his 

 mode of operating, and, if possible, of picking up something 

 that might hereafter be useful to myself. In the course of 



