58 A CHEMICAL TRIAD. 



to deliver a course of lectures in the Royal Institution of 

 Great Britain. Davy (then Mr. Davy) was professor of che- 

 mistry there at the time a young man of elegant manners, 

 and somewhat vain. Dalton was the reverse of all this. Davy, 

 fearing that the unstudied manners of the great philosopher 

 would leave a disagreeable impression on the minds of an 

 audience so fastidious as that of the Royal Institution, ad- 

 vised him to write his first lecture carefully. What followed 

 shall now be told in Dalton's own words. 'I studied and 

 wrote,' said he, in a letter to Mr. Johns, 6 for nearly two 

 days; then calculated to a minute how long it would take 

 me reading, endeavouring to make my discourse about fifty 

 minutes. The evening before the lecture, Davy and I went 

 into the theatre ; he made me read the whole of it, and he 

 went into the farthest corner ; then he read it, and / was the 

 audience.' Who would not like to have seen the two great 

 philosophers thus engaged 1 The first lecture went off satis- 

 factorily ; and Dalton's self-confidence was complete. 



Dalton's lectures at the Royal Institution were much ad- 

 mired for their philosophy; but the philosopher's manner 

 gave rise to comments and pleasantries. Among other things, 

 a laugh was raised against him for calling the elementary 

 bodies, oxygen, hydrogen, &c., ' these articles,' speaking of 

 them, it is said, with far less enthusiasm than a linen-draper 

 would have spoken of the articles on his shelves. Dalton was 

 now for a time absorbed in the vortex of fashionable club-life. 

 This was not to his taste, but it was kindly meant, and he 

 did not avoid it. Too often his abstractions caused him to 

 forget the time, and to arrive when dinner was over. On 

 this he would repair to the nearest eating-house and supply his 

 wants, duly recording what he had for dinner and what he 

 paid for it. The boiled-beef shops, which furnished him with 

 a dinner and beer for ll^d, were his admiration; but he 

 complains harshly of having had to pay, 011 one occasion, 

 eighteenpence for a basin of soup no more than a pint. 



