iv "BUNSENIANA" 89 



he agreed. And then I told him I had discovered a water- 

 colour drawing of Old Anna in a curiosity shop in Stockholm, 

 which Arrhenius forbade me, for the honour of his country, 

 to take away. Whereat he smiled. And then he began 

 to talk of old times. We had had, or were about to have, 

 the Jubilee dinner of the Presidents of the Chemical Society, 

 and he spoke of Playfair, and of the first Mrs. Playfair 

 a memory I did not probe and seemed tickled with the 

 picture he conjured up of the little Red Lyon in a very 

 big wig. He apparently imagined that the Chairman of 

 Committees is arrayed in all the Speaker's glory. We had a 

 delightful half-hour, and it was pleasant to see how he seemed 

 to glow once more with the old bright smile that we know so 

 well. I rose to go, and, expressing my pleasure at finding 

 him as he was, said I hoped to see him again before very 

 long. He took my hand between his. " No," he said, " you 

 will see me no more." And so it proved. I had looked 

 upon him for the last time. 



Yours very truly, 



T. E. THORPE. 



On looking back upon the life and interests I had in 

 Heidelberg, I do not think that such a time existed 

 there before, or has done since. Such distinguished 

 friends as Helmholtz, Bunsen, Kirchhoff, Kcenigs- 

 berger, and Quincke as men of science, and I may 

 add Haliser and Vangerow as men of letters, besides 

 eminent representatives of other professions, will never 

 meet together again. 



Amongst these great men the figure of Helmholtz 

 stands out pre-eminent. To use the words with which 

 as President I welcomed him as Faraday Lecturer to 

 the Chemical Society, " eminent as an anatomist, as a 

 physiologist, as a physicist, as a mathematician, and as 

 a philosopher, we chemists are now about to claim him 



as our own." 



The title of the lecture was "On the Modern 

 Development of Faraday's Conception of Electricity " 

 and the lecture may truly be said to have been a 



