106 Mr Johnston's Visit to Berzelius, 



professor of pharmacy, the surveyor and controller of all the 

 apothecaries in the kingdom, it is better he should know all 

 their tricks."" 



Berzelius is a man of incessant application, being employed 

 almost every day for twelve or fourteen hours. Yet for all 

 he has done as an experimental chemist he does not work in 

 his laboratory without intermission. Sometimes when engag- 

 ed in writing he does not work in it for months. If in writing, 

 as he has been much lately for the new edition of his chemis- 

 try, he meet with any subject which seems darker than usual, 

 he quits his pen, betakes himself to his laboratory, and there, 

 from six or seven in the morning to perhaps ten at night, he 

 continues his investigations day after day till he has removed 

 the obscurity as far as possible to his own satisfaction, when 

 he returns again to his writing. This was the case with his 

 late experiments on Indigo, which were undertaken solely for 

 the new edition now publishing at Paris. 



For this alternate writing and experimenting the arrange- 

 ment of his apartments is admirably adapted. A suite of three 

 rooms on one floor form his laboratory and study, while his 

 dwelling-house is above. His study is his sitting-room, in it 

 he receives his morning visitors, and, being unmarried, he has 

 few calls to leave it ; while his apparatus being all arranged at 

 the distance of a few yards, he can at any time commence a 

 series of experiments without the loss of a single moment. 

 Thus he is enabled to husband his time, and by turning every 

 hour to the best advantage to make them doubly valuable. 

 His library, his writing-table, his re-agents, and his furnaces, 

 all are collected into one convenient space, uniting together 

 the records of old investigation and the means of new disco- 

 very. 



Perhaps I shall not be thought tiresome if I attempt a short 

 description of this interesting locality. The stranger in Stock- 

 holm bends his way along the Droit ning Gatan^themost fashion- 

 able part of the city, till he comes to the KungsbacJca, and the 

 cross street called Kyrho Gatan, at the head of which stands the 

 church of Adolph Frederick. The corner house in this street 

 is Westmanska huset, the large building lately purchased by 

 the Academy. Entering from Drottning Gatan, he ascends 



