1840-42. SCIENCE NOT ENCOURAGED. 139 



able to cross the threshold for a while, and then only to 

 creep about the door on a pair of crutches, so that it is 

 indifferent to me where I go, provided the sea and the sea- 

 air are present. Portobello is such an abominably public 

 place that I should fear to move about, and I am not 

 enticed by the attraction Mr. Syme held out of its pos- 

 sessing a circulating library. 



" We scientifics, I can tell you, are very indignant at the 

 recent knighting of three painters and a musician, while not 

 one of us has, for I don't know how long, partaken of any 

 of the smiles of royal favour. It is really too bad. We 

 have men, I make bold to say, of far higher deserts in their 

 crafts than the artists were in theirs. However, if Her 

 gracious Majesty would give us some hard cash, we should 

 not mind letting the artists pocket the stars and ribbons. 

 There is a petty German duke enabling Liebig to beat all 

 the English chemists hollow. If a tithe of what is spent 

 on masquerades and trumpery, dogs and stables, were 

 granted to some school or university to fit up and keep in 

 existence a well-appointed laboratory, the whole country 

 would be the gainer. Liebig is a man of genius of the 

 highest order, and would unfold himself though he had not 

 a sixpence ; but he could not have reached the eminence 

 he has done had not money in sufficiency been supplied 

 him. Here our very professors can scarcely keep life in 

 them. Chairs are not worth the having, even as sources of 

 income, and there is no surplus to spend on experiments. 

 As for private teachers, no one is much better than myself. 

 Teaching is at an absolute stand. 



" It is really disheartening to see the possibility of doing 

 something in a science you love and profess, almost annihi- 

 lated by the cost it takes being beyond you. I have been 

 urged to go to Paris, where I should be sure of practical 



