76 Hofmann and Modern Chemistry. | Jan., 
de Paris to the youngest chemist present, expressed their sorrow at 
the departure of their master, and their hopes that his absence from 
the land of his adoption would not be a prolonged one. 
This notice of one of the men foremost in advocating those new 
doctrines which distinguish Modern Chemistry, and which are now 
acquiring an ascendency throughout Europe, cannot be more 
appropriately concluded than by borrowing a few thoughts from the 
last lecture delivered at the Royal Institution by Dr. Hofmann. 
The intricate formule of the modern chemists, and the bound- 
less variety of the phenomena which they illustrate, were not long 
since like an impassable labyrinth; but Dr. Hofmann has given 
us a clue, and a sense of mastery and power succeeds in our minds, 
to the sort of despair with which we first contemplated this tedious 
category. By the aid of a few general principles, however, we are 
now able to unravel the complexities of these formule, to marshal 
the compounds which they represent, in an orderly series, to multiply 
their numbers at will, and in a great measure to forecast their nature 
ere we have called them into existence. The great movement of 
Modern Chemistry is “a movement as of light spreading itself over 
a waste of obscurity, as of a law diffusing order throughout a 
wilderness of confusion, and there is surely in its contemplation 
something of the pleasure which attends the spectacle of a beautiful 
daybreak, something of the grandeur belonging to a world created 
out of chaos.” 
