LECTURE ON DALTON 397 



whereas after Dalton's time such calculation became easy 

 and certain. And this is why Dalton is honoured in the 

 City of Manchester, in which he lived and laboured, and 

 where we find his statue, and that of his equally great 

 scientific son, Joule, side by side in the vestibule of the 

 Manchester Town Hall. 



Let me first tell you something of the life-history of this 

 man. It may teach us much. It shows us what may be done 

 by strong will, by perseverance, and by energy, in spite of 

 serious obstacles. It shows us how the poorest, the most ill- 

 equipped in worldly goods, may, by patient endeavour, rise 

 to a high position, not in this instance, indeed, in the circles 

 of what is termed " Society " or in riches or social 

 distinction, but in what is far higher and nobler, in 

 benefiting his species, in giving to mankind a knowledge of 

 the secrets of Nature long hidden from mortal eye. 



As a rule the life of a man of science is restricted to the 

 chronicle of his discoveries, and to the notice of the influence 

 which his work has exerted on the progress of natural 

 knowledge. Most of such men live uneventful lives ; their 

 personal history is usually of but slight interest to the gene- 

 ral public, sometimes it is even commonplace. Their work 

 has lain in the laboratory or the observatory, where the even 

 tenor of their days is only broken by the discovery of a new 

 law, of a new chemical element, or of a new planet. 



In Dalton's case this does not apply. For although so 

 devoted to his science that he used to say he had no time 

 to get married, and although, as we shall see, the greater 

 part of his life was spent in working and teaching in a more 

 or less humble way in a provincial town, yet his character 

 presents so many aspects, and exhibits such originality, that 

 apart from his scientific labours, and independently of his 

 position as one of the world's greatest chemists, the life of 

 the man is a study full of interest from which both rich and 

 poor, learned and unlearned, may, if they please to do so, 

 draw many useful lessons. John Dalton was not born with a 

 silver spoon in his mouth. He came of a humble but thrifty 

 North-country Quaker stock. He was born in the village of 

 Eaglesfield, in the county of Cumberland, in 1766. There 

 stands the first meeting-house established in Cumberland by 

 the Society of Friends, and there, under the grassy turf, lie 

 the forbears of the Dalton family for on both sides he 

 came of Quaker parents. The cottage in which he was born 

 was then a thatched one. Since that time its exterior has 

 been modernised, but inside it is in much the same con- 



