Mr Johnston's Visit to Berzelius, 1D5 



resting. " You cannot expect to interest people in such things," 

 he would say, '' unless you personally address them ; reading 

 does not instruct them so effectually." ;j1i 



Berzelius has had a long and splendid chemical career, and 

 his personal appearance seems to promise yet a long continu- 

 ance of his valuable life. He is troubled at times by the gout, 

 and by a disease resembling the tic douloureux, which af- 

 fects him with violent pains in the head, but his ordinary state 

 is that of good health. No man living has done so much for 

 chemistry as he has done, and none can turn to better pur- 

 pose whatever years may yet be spared to him. The loss 

 which England sustained so lately of three of her most emi- 

 nent scientific men in the short space of six months, makes us 

 tremble for the lives of those who are still left to us abroad. 



Though in good health, and apparently strong, Berzelius 

 complains of the approach of age. For two or three years he 

 has been unable to read well without spectacles, and he speaks 

 of a change in his memory. " Formerly, " says he, " one 

 reading of a scientific paper made me master of its contents, 

 now I must read it twice ; and while formerly I knew what 

 was in every glass around me though they stood for months 

 unlabelled, now I must label each, or I immediately forget 

 what it contains.*" If any man has a right to retire from ac- 

 tive life it is Berzelius, but this fortunately for science he can- 

 not do. His nature commands him to seek employment, and 

 it will only be with his life that he can cease to be active. 



Though, therefore, in consequence of what he considers as 

 symptoms of the approach of old age, he retire this winter 

 from the duties of professor in favour of his assistant, Dr Mo- 

 sander, science, it is to be ho^ed, will only gain by the ar- 

 rangement. His time will be more entirely at his own dis- 

 posal, and his chemical investigations more undisturbed. He 

 still retains the office of Secretary to the Academy of Sciences, 

 and has apartments and a laboratory in the buildings which 

 belong to it. For another year he remains titular professor, 

 when he proposes to resign the title also to Mosander. "He 

 is better quahfied for the office than myself," says Berzelius 

 with his usual candour, " for, besides his scientific education, he 

 has also spent his youth in an apothecary's shop, and beirig, as 



