162 Special General Meeting. [Dec. 15, 



he published many books and pamphlets ; he lectured in many places ; 

 but it was in the Royal Institution that his days were spent ; it was 

 in its laboratories that his well-devised, skilfully-executed, and far- 

 reaching researches were carried out ; it was in this theatre that, in 

 many fascinating chapters, the story of his work was told. So intimate 

 was his connection with this Institution, so thoroughly did he become 

 its genius loci, that there must be many of you here this afternoon 

 who, moved by your grief for his death, and touched by the associa- 

 tions of the scene, can almost fancy you see his lithe, nervous 

 figure standing where I now stand, and his keen, mobile countenance, 

 lighted up by the thick-coming conceptions of his nimble brain — can 

 almost fancy you hear his ringing voice making again clear to all the 

 dark and difficult sayings and discoveries of science. 



Impelled by the energy of Bunsen, and drawn by the magnetism 

 of Faraday, Tyndall may be said to have formally dedicated himself 

 to science when he delivered his first Friday evening discourse here on 

 " The Influence of Material Aggregation on the Manifestations of 

 Force," on the 11th of February, 1853. His last, his valedictory dis- 

 course, the last public lecture he ever gave, on " Thomas Young and the 

 Wave Theory," was delivered here on the 22nd of January, 1886, and 

 in the interval between these dates, covering more than a generation, he 

 poured forth an almost continuous stream of lectures and discourses, 

 marking the progress of those branches of science to which he devoted 

 himself, and to the advancement of which he so largely contributed 

 by his researches, marking also the expansions of science as a whole, 

 and the mutations of speculative thought, and distinguished — always 

 distinguished — by a rare lucidity of style and a rich drapery of lan- 

 guage, which, however, never concealed, but only gracefully expressed 

 thought. The late Professor Goodsir's constant monition to his assis- 

 tant in their anatomical researches was, " Let us have God's truth, 

 Mr. Arthur ; nothing but God's truth," and Tyndall was not less loyal 

 than GoixUir iu his allegiance to the eternal verities. He never 

 allowed himself to be seduced by the sunny glades of verbiage by 

 as much as one hair's breadth from the path of strict accuracy, and 

 his lectures will alw r ays be remarkable for the degree in which 

 they combine solid scientific information with appropriate literary 

 adornments. 



Tyndall delivered, in all, in this Institution 51 Friday evening 

 discourses, 307 afternoon lectures, and 12 Christmas courses, com- 

 prising 72 lectures, and no one who has not himself delivered a dis- 

 course or lecture here is in a position to estimate what an enormous 

 expenditure of mental energy such a record implies — especially in the 

 case of a lecturer like Tyndall who had often to sum up in a few 

 words the results of weeks and even months of patient original inves- 

 tigation, and who before each lecture had to make elaborate prepara- 

 tion for experiments. He was no idler in the field, and if he some- 

 times reaped what others had sown, it was his happy faculty to be 



