1900.] on Bunsen. 439 



These lectures were, like everything he touched, marked by origin- 

 ality of treatment. He did not attempt to catch the attention of his 

 audience by brilliancy of style or by firework experiments ; but his 

 exposition was luminous, and his experiments, always made with 

 his own hands, exactly illustrative of the matter under discussion. 

 If during a lecture he had occasion to refer to his own discoveries, 

 no hint — as I have said — as to its origin escaped his lips ; but the 

 students were well aware of the fact, and gave him a warm round of 

 applause as he concluded his discourse. Then he would bow, smile 

 as acknowledging the compliment, and quickly retire. As soon as 

 the lecture was over, Bunsen went into his laboratory. There he 

 would find about a hundred men waiting for his assistance and advice, 

 and there he spent the whole of his day, superintending the practical 

 work of the students. To work with Bunsen was a real pleasure, 

 and to every student who showed interest in his work this pleasure 

 came. He did not confine his attention merely to those who were 

 engaged in original work ; even the beginner had the benefit of seeing 

 how the master worked, and some of the most elementary operations in 

 analytical chemistry would be performed by the Professor, standing 

 at the working bench of the pupil. Thus, he taught us not only by 

 precept, but by example, and from him we learnt what accurate work 

 meant. We saw how to eliminate errors of experimentation, and to 

 find out where more errors lay. It was this complete devotion to 

 his science and to his students, that drew men from all quarters of 

 the globe to work under him ; and no one who cared to benefit from 

 his teaching was ever sent empty away, and all who had worked in the 

 Heidelberg laboratory, looked back upon the time spent there as one 

 of the most fruitful of their lives. But it was specially to the 

 advanced students engaged in original investigation that Bunsen's 

 heart went out, and to them he gave unstintedly his time and labour. 

 For to these men he knew the future of the science belonged, and it 

 was they who would hand down, burning more or less brilliantly, the 

 torch of progress. There would be, perhaps, twenty men thus en- 

 gaged, not, as in many laboratories, all working on closely cognate 

 subjects, but each one on matters differing widely from the other, and 

 therefore requiring much greater grasp and attention on the part of 

 the teacher, to whom the initiation and often the general conduct of 

 the research was due. This constant presence of the master, this 

 participation by him in the work of the pupils both young and old, 

 bore in on the minds of all the lesson that it is the personal and 

 daily contact with the leader which creates a successful school ; and 

 that whilst fine buildings and well-equipped laboratories are good 

 things in their way, they are as tinsel and dross, unless accompanied 

 by the devotion and collaboration of the teacher, illustrating the truth 

 of the proverb that ' mind is greater than matter.' 



How, it may well be asked, could Bunsen thus devoted to super- 

 vising the work of others in the laboratory ; who had to deliver a 

 lecture every day, and had much perfunctory university business to 



