206 Mr Johnston's Visit to Berzelius. 



the greatest chemical philosopher that our days have seen, and 

 M^hen his little faults are forgotten, his merits and his disco- 

 veries will only be more highly appreciated. " He was the 

 clearest-headed man,''' says Berzelius, " I ever met with, and he 

 never wrote upon any subject without being interesting."" 



Of Wollaston in the North you hear nothing but praise. 

 There is nothing to detract from his merit. The profound 

 philosophy of his views, the nicety of his experimental inves- 

 tigations, and his amiable manners, are all highly estimated. 



Having spoken of these three, I may add a word of the re- 

 maining British chemists. Of Phillips they tell you '' he is a 

 clever man, but fond of paradoxes ;"" and I have heard Berze- 

 lius speak in deservedly high terms of many of his papers. 

 Of these 1 may mention among his later ones that upon the wa- 

 ter in nitric acid of greatest concentration, which he admired as 

 neat, conclusive, and elegant. Of Faraday, all have so much 

 good to say, that it would be vain to particularize, and Ber- 

 zelius holds him in the highest respect. Turner he esteems a 

 clever man, and a very promising chemist. His papers in the 

 last Edinburgh Transactions he considers to be both very ex- 

 cellent. Of his analysis of the Aerolite he says, " that it is 

 the only meteoric iron that has ever been rightly analyzed," 

 and that in consequence of the new and elegant method em- 

 ployed for separating the metals by the formation of a bicar- 

 bonate. Of the elaborate paper on the ores of Manganese, he 

 thus speaks in his last Arsberattlese (yearly statement), " One 

 of the finest works of which mineralogy has to boast during 

 the past year is Haidinger's and Turner's joint examination of 

 the different ores of Manganese, in which the mineralogical 

 and chemical parts are alike masterly, and by which this for- 

 merly obscure part of mineralogy is completely cleared up." 



It would lengthen too much this already long paper to en- 

 ter into any detail of the services rendered to science by Ber- 

 zelius, or of his many chemical writings ; but this is the less 

 necessary, as every system of chemistry bears ample testimony 

 to their extent and value, and every succeeding journal of 

 science is adding to their number. In what I have above 

 stated, are included many minutiae which in the case of com- 

 mon men, would have been unworthy of being detailed ; but 



