NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



singular indifference to science alike of the English 

 universities and of the English people themselves, 

 taken broadly, is considered. Although it was at 

 Oxford that Sir Robert Boyle laid the foundations 

 of chemistry, the contributions of the old English 

 university to the advancement of knowledge have 

 been humiliatingly small. Cambridge, within the 

 last forty years, has done a very distinguished work ; 

 and the same may be said of the Scotch universities. 



But the stronghold of English science within the 

 last century has distinctly been the Royal Institu- 

 tion in Albemarle Street. Thence have the most 

 brilliant discoveries in England come. There the 

 singularly varied mind of Dr. Thomas Young elabo- 

 rated the undulatory theory of light, and deciphered 

 the hieroglyphs from the tombs of the Ptolemies. 

 There the flashing genius of Sir Humphry Davy 

 devised the first electric light, and set the man in 

 the street talking of the latest marvels of chemis- 

 try. There the whole life-work of Faraday was 

 done. There the picturesque imagination of Tyn- 

 dall made the hardest subjects of physics as fasci- 

 nating as a tale of far Cathay. There Professor 

 Dewar and Lord Rayleigh have made their strik- 

 ing discoveries of new elements and opened up new 

 realms for investigation. 



The Royal Institution was founded by an Amer- 

 ican. Benjamin Thompson, later Count Rumford, 



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