COUNT RUMFOKD. 143 



house, and scientific committees to do everything, was 

 much too big and unworkable for a private body, and 

 was fitted only for an absolute and wealthy Government.' 

 In 1803 Dr. Bence Jones informs us that difficulties 

 were gathering round the Institution, and it was even 

 proposed to sell it off. Kumford had quitted London 

 and gone to Paris. By Davy's aid, Mr. Bernard and 

 Sir John Hippesley carried on the work, but in a 

 fashion different from that contemplated by Kumford 

 — that is to say, ' without workshops, or mechanics' 

 institute, or kitchen, or model exhibition. 5 The place 

 of these was taken by experimental and theoretical re- 

 searches, which, instead of dealing with things already 

 achieved, carried the mind into unexplored regions of 

 Nature, forgetful, if not neglectful, whether the dis- 

 coveries made in that region had or had not a bearing 

 on the arts, comforts, or necessities of material life. 



Kumford and his Institution had to bear the brunt 

 of ridicule, and he felt it ; but men of ready wit have 

 not abstained from exercising it on societies of greater 

 age and higher claims. Shafts of sarcasm without 

 number have been launched at the Koyal Society. It 

 is perfectly natural for persons who have little taste for 

 scientific inquiry and less knowledge of the methods of 

 Nature, to feel amused, if not scandalised, by the ap- 

 parently insignificant subjects which sometimes occupy 

 the scientific mind. They are not aware that in 

 science the most stupendous phenomena often find their 

 suggestion and interpretation in the most minute — 

 that the smallest laboratory fact is connected by in- 

 dissoluble ties with the grandest operations of Nature. 

 Thus, the iridescences of the common soap-bubble, 

 subjected to scientific analysis, have emerged in the 

 conclusion that stellar space is a plenum filled with a 

 material substance, capable of transmitting motion 



