1815.] Smithson Tennant, Esq. z 
In the year, 1791 he communicated. to the Royal Society his 
Analysis of the carbonic acid. M. Lavoisier had proved by decisive 
synthetic experiments that fixed air was a compound of oxygen and 
charcoal; but no one had yet resolved that gas into its simple 
elements. Mr, Tennant observing that phosphate of lime was not 
decomposed, when heated with charcoal. inferred that the joint 
attractions of phosphorus for oxygen, and of :phosphoric acid for 
lime, exceeded those of charcoal for oxygen, and of carbonic acid 
for lime ; and consequently that phosphorus and heated marble, 
when made to act on each other, would be resolved into phosphate 
of lime and charcoal. ‘The correctness of this reasoning was fully 
justified by the event; and the result of the experiment was not 
merely the analysis of the carbonic acid, which was the immediate 
object of the investigation, but the discovery of a new compound, 
consisting of phosphorus .and. lime, possessed of several curious 
properties, mnitels 
__ The ingenuity and elegance of this experiment established Mr. 
Tennant’s reputation as a chemist ; and there being at the close o 
that year the prospect of a vacancy in the Jacksonian Professorship 
at Cambridge by the resignation of Dr. Milner, he was prevailed 
upon by his friends to become a candidate for that situation ; but 
desisted from the pursuit on finding that he had no reasonable 
prospect of success. ) 
In the year 1792 he again visited the Continent, with the inten- 
tion of travelling through France to Italy, and arrived at Paris not 
long before the memorable 10th of August. He hardly recognized 
some of his old scientific friends, now become Members of the 
Legislative Assembly, and deeply implicated in the revolutionary 
politics of the times. From various circumstances, he anticipated 
some great and speedy convulsion, and was fortunate enough to 
guit Paris on the 9th of August, before the flame actually broke 
out. 
In passing through Switzerland he visited Mr. Gibbon, at Lau- 
sanpe, and was much struck with his powers of conversation, and 
the sagacity of his remarks on the course and progress of the 
French revolution, and on the probable issue of the inyasion of 
France by the allied armies under the Duke of Brunswick. 
In Italy he was delighted with the softness and beauty of the 
climate, and the luxuriance of the vegetation, and was astonished 
by the wonders of ancient and modern art at Rome and Florence, 
He had hitherto been somewhat sceptical as to the degree of merit 
really belonging to the great masters in. painting, whose fame. he 
had supposed to be founded principally upon exaggeration. But he 
was converted from this error by the great works of Raphael and 
Correggio; and of the former, more especially, of these distin- 
guished artists, he was ever afterwards a devoted and euthusiasti¢ 
‘admirer, nt 
_ He returned from Italy through a part of Germany, and was 
Much amused with the mixture of science and credulity which he 
