18 Biographical Memoir of the late Dr Henry. 



I think, be great utility in such a work, because, independently 

 of all such tendency as that to which I have alluded, it would 

 place the reader on a station from whence he might enjoy a 

 distinct view of the surrovrndin^ world, of that world with 

 which he is brought closely into contact, and with which he is 

 every hour conversant, but whose most beautiful arrangements 

 he passes unheeded by. What a wide field of phenomena, for 

 instance, admit of explanation by the laws respecting heat ; — 

 the effects of its expansive power both on bodies themselves, 

 and in rendering them its vehicles to distant regions, borne on 

 the waters and the air, which envelope our globe — the influence 

 of the provision of latent heat in retaining it^in great store- 

 houses, where it is felt only for good and from whence it issues 

 m continued and vivifying abundance when the sun withdraws 

 his warmer beams — all that relates to the radiation of caloric 

 through infinite space, and its reception by the subjects of the 

 mineral, the vegetable, and the animal kingdoms ; — the admi- 

 rable contrivances especially, by which the latter are cheered 

 and animated, without injury even to the most delicately orga- 

 nized. Surely these are topics (and they are but a very small 

 portion of the whole) on Avhich no man can expatiate without 

 that pure dehght, which truth first breaking through ignorance 

 or error, sheds over the mind, refining and exalting both our 

 moral and intellectual natures." 



The other literary project, for which Dr Henry had also 

 collected some materials, was a history of chemical discovery 

 from the middle of the last century, and devoted in largest 

 measure to the glorious epoch of Scheele, Cavendish, Black, 

 Priestly, and Lavoisier. As the historian of his favourite 

 science, it was Dr Henry's design to have pursued the method 

 so successfully traced by Sir James Mackintosh in his invalu- 

 able dissertation on Ethical Philosophy — that of developing the 

 progressive advances of the science through the lives and 

 triumphs of its most eminent cultivators. The biographical 

 notice of Dr Priestly, made public in the first volume of the 

 Reports of the British Association, was to have formed one of 

 this gallery of historical portraitures. Such objects, and espe- 

 cially the calm retrospect of the advances of knowledge, and 

 the deliberate estimate of the services of genius, Dr Henry 



