PALTON. 61 



of a red robe. In the preliminary course of drilling which 

 Dalton underwent, the friend who personated royalty detained 

 the presentee only for a moment : he had therefore but two 

 points of rehearsal left to gather up his robes, and retire. 



Fortune, it is said, proved treacherously kind to Dalton 

 on presentation day. The trumpet-blast of fame had pre- 

 ceded him. Somebody replying to a royal question, inti- 

 mated something about the man in red. The king, finding 

 that he had to do with no ordinary individual, contemplated 

 Dalton's face longer than a moment. Provision for this con- 

 tingency had not been made in rehearsal. Dalton thought, 

 as some people aver, that the king waited to be spoken to ; 

 and Dalton is said to have bid the king good-day, and asked 

 him how he did. Another version of the tale is, that Dalton, 

 instead of passing on, stood so long before his majesty, that 

 the latter was embarrassed wishing to be civil, yet knowing 

 not what to say. This much is clear Dalton's true place 

 was not in any gay throng of worldly splendour. 



Dalton was now growing old, full of honours, and in the 

 enjoyment of comparative wealth. He had been placed on 

 the civil list as a recipient of 300/. per annum, and he had 

 succeeded to a small patrimonial estate. His industry had 

 not diminished ; but the subtle penetration which character- 

 ised his younger days that genius, in short, of which the 

 atomic doctrine was the fruitage had paled and dimmed. 

 Industry and energy both remained, but they did not suffice 

 to increase his fame. Dalton had never been a great reader ; 

 on the contrary, he objected to book lore, boasting that 

 he could carry on his back all the books he had ever read. 

 This boast was an index of his leading characteristic self- 

 reliance on individual deductions. In a matter so t little han- 

 dled as the doctrine of atoms, this peculiarity might have 

 been an advantage. In Dalton's own brain, the ideas of 

 atomic constitution were harmonious and defined. External 

 to the domains of his intellect, all on that subject was dis- 



