70 Hofmann and Modern Chemistry. [Jan., 
Society, and on the 12th June, 1851, he was received as a Fellow 
into the Royal Society. 
In 1853, the Chemical chair of the then recently established 
School of Mines, connected with the Museum of Practical Geology, 
became vacant by the resignation of Dr. Lyon Playfair. Sir Henry 
De la Beche, the Director of the School ;—indeed the Founder of 
it; of the Museum of Practical Geology ; and of the Geological 
Survey of the United Kingdom, offered this appointment to 
Dr. Hofmann. The Council of the College of Chemistry strongly 
urged their Professor to accept it, and they at the same time came 
to a resolution, to the effect that the object for which the College 
had been originally established having in’ a great measure been 
achieved, the College with all its property should be offered to the 
Government, to be incorporated with the Institution in Jermyn 
Street. 
The negotiations to this end were carried out by the Office of 
Woods on the part of the Government, and brought to a satisfac- 
tory issue. Thus Dr. Hofmann became connected with the Royal 
School of Mines, without leaving his favourite laboratory in the 
College, which henceforth became the Chemical Department of the 
National Institution. This new position afforded Dr. Hofmann 
additional facilities to engage freely and largely in the experimental 
pursuits of his predilections. 
As Dr. Hofmann has been enabled from 1853 to almost the 
present time, to carry on without disturbance his system of chemical 
instruction, and to pursue without the annoyance of the interference 
of shareholders his own researches, we will leave him in this happy 
position, endeavour to review his labours, and examine the extent to 
which he has aided in bringing about that state of knowledge com- 
prehended in the term Moprrn Cuemistry. 
No inconsiderable portion of Dr. Hofmann’s power arose from 
the zeal which he threw into his teaching; the pains which he took 
by enlivening experiments and new apparatus to bring forcibly to 
the eye of the student the facts and reactions he desired to im- 
press on the mind. Although he never lost a strong German 
accent, he spoke our language with fluency and force; but the 
attraction of his style of lecturing consisted less in the language, 
than in the felicity of the illustrations, by which he endeavoured to 
bring the most abstract subject to the grasp of the popular under- 
standing. He positively made the inanimate subjects he was dealing 
with live and act their several parts in the presence of his hearers, 
and he certainly was never greater than in the lecture-room. Hence 
his evening lectures in the Museum of Practical Geology, his lec- 
tures at the Chemical Society, of which he was president in 1861, 
at the Royal Institution, and elsewhere, always drew large audiences, 
