Tyndall. 



W'lTH the death of Professor TyndaU has passed av/ay the 

 second of the men whose names are associated as the three 

 Enghsh men of science of the Victorian era. His claim to be 

 included in this trio does not rest on his being the deepest thinker,, 

 the most accurate and ingenious experimentalist, or the most 

 original investigator in the branch of science upon which he was 

 engaged. If it did so, he might have to yield his place to another, 

 for Lord Kelvin is probably as much his superior as a physicist, as 

 Browning is thought by many to have surpassed Tennyson as a poet. 

 Nevertheless, in both cases, the lesser man may be the more typical of 

 and more influential on the age in which he lived. Though Tyndall's 

 work must be ranked far below that of Darwin, he was far more the 

 representative man of the two, owing to his brilliant versatility, restless 

 energy, his combination of the culture of the literary student with 

 the insight of the scientist and the power of the man of action, his 

 breadth of sympathy and the apostolic zeal with which he fought for 

 a sounder and more scientific system of education. 



Professor Tyndall was born in the village of Leighlin Bridge, in^ 

 Carlow, in 1820, but he came of a Gloucestershire family which is 

 said to have been connected with William Tyndale, the famous 

 Protestant martyr. His parents occupied but a humble position in 

 his native village ; his father had been a private in the Royal Irish 

 Constabulary, and after his retirement from this force, he was in 

 business as a small country shopkeeper. Tyndall, however, had the 

 advantage of a fairly good education in one of the small schools which. 

 used to be the pride of many an Irish village ; here he was well 

 grounded in mathematics and grammar, and acquired from the one 

 subject a habit of scientific method, and from the other an interest in 

 literature. He has himself told us^ how much he owes to the study of 

 the latter at this school, though he entertained less affection for the 

 discussions on the comparative merits of Popery and Protestantism 

 which occupied a large proportion of his time. In spite of his father's 

 poverty, Tyndall was kept at school till he was nineteen, but this was 

 by no means unusual in Ireland before the days when attendance till 

 thirteen was compulsory. On leaving school he obtained an appoint- 



1 An Address to Students ; University College, 1S68. 



