THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN. 219 



Institution. He has himself recortlcd, in a letter to one of his friends, what 

 occuiTcd on this occasion, and the relations which he had borne to Davy. "I 

 "was presented," he says, "to Mr. Davy, whose rooms at the Royal Institution 

 adjoin mine. He is a most agreeable and intelligent young man, and of an evening 

 "vve have some interesting conversations. His chief defect, as a philosopher, is 

 that he does not smoke. Mr. Davy advised me to spare no labor on my first 

 lecture. He told me that the world hereabouts would be disposed to form its 

 opinions from this introduction : conse(piently I resolved to ivrite my first lecture 

 throughout; to do nothing but give a statement of what it was my intention to 

 undei'take, and to expatiate on the importance and utility of the science. I studied 

 and wrote for nearly two days; I then calculated, almost to a minute, the time 

 which my lecture would occupy, adapting my discourse to a duration of 50 min- 

 utes. The day before that on which I was to deliver my lecture, Davy and I 

 repaired, in the evening, to the amphitheatre, where I read my lecture to the end, 

 while he remained stationed in the farthest corner; next, he read while I repre- 

 sented the auditory. We then discussed our respectiv'e styles. The next day I 

 read ray discourse before a company of 150 to 200 persons, which was more than 

 had been expected. When I had finished there was general applause, and a 

 great many of the audience came forward to compliment me. Since that occa- 

 sion I have rarely written at all, relying solely on experiment and verbal expla- 

 nation. In general, my experiments have been highly successful, and I have 

 not once become embaiTassed in my statements; so that now, Avhen I enter the 

 lecture room, I feel scarcely more concern than when I smoke a pipe with you 

 on Sunday and Wednesday evenings." To believe, however, an eminent critic, 

 Dalton must unconsciously have put too high an estimate on a success, of which 

 the politeness of the audience seems to have defrayed the chief expense, and to 

 which the simplicity and singularity of the man contributed probably more than 

 any talent he possessed as a professor. " It would be difficult to conceive," says 

 the writer referred to, (Quarterly Review, No. XCYI,) ''anything more awlv- 

 ward and inadequate than his manner of treating the great physical truths l)efore 

 him. His experiments in puldic frequently failed; his delivery was dry, indis- 

 tinct, and without expression, and he was far from possessing the language and 

 power of illustration necessary to the professor who deals with the lofty themes 

 of philosophy, and by means of which Davy and Faraday have shed so brilliant 

 a light on their great discoveries." 



Dalton survived Davy and Young, and, in 1830, was chosen to replace tlie 

 former as one of the foreign associates of the French Academy of Sciences. In 

 1832, having gone to Oxford to be present at the meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation, he received from the University the diploma of Doctor of Civil Law; 

 and hence, modest and simple as he was, a man whose chief pleasures on earth 

 were the pipe and playing at l>owls, he was to be seen, for several days, invested, 

 whenever he went abroad, with the red robe of the doctorate. He allowed him- 

 self, at the instance of Mr. Babl)age, to be presented at court, and that goitle- 

 man has recounted for us all the incidents of this grand event in the life of the 

 philosopher of ^Manchester Lord Brougham, at that time Lord Chancellor, 

 otlered his services to make the presentation, and had already spoken of it to the 

 King; but difficulties supervened. Dalton, in his quality of Quaker, could ncrt 

 assume the uniform of the court, which would have required him to wear a 

 sword. It was suggested to dress him in the robe of a doctor of laws of 

 Oxford ; but red was not a color admissible by Quakers. Luckily, the sight of 

 Dalton was of such a nature as did not enable him to distinguisli colors ; he 

 labored under a sort of blindness as regards them. There remained the cap of 



lessons on chemistry and mathematics, at the rate of two shillings and a halt' per hour wheu 

 he had but one scholar, and one and a half only for each scholar when ho had two or more. 

 In ]8;?:i, the g^overnment had spontaneously granted him a pension of 150 pounds, which 

 pension was doubled in 183G. 



