264 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



practical interests of a select class which upheld those 

 traditions, prevented any of the Continental ideals, be 

 it the philological of F. A. Wolf, or the philosophical of 

 Fichte, or the scientific of Laplace and Cuvier, from 

 establishing themselves in the older seats of learning. 

 And they were, after all, the only organisations for higher 

 culture which possessed a historical character and con- 

 tinuity. Around these centres, partly in a friendly, more 

 frequently in a hostile spirit, other institutions, other 

 centres of culture and learning, had grown up. Let us 

 rapidly survey these more recent institutions. It is 

 hardly necessary again to mention the Eoyal Society, 

 which was an early offspring of the older universities, a 

 kind of overflow of the scientific interests from them into 

 31. the capital. More recent was the Royal Institution, the 



The Royal ^ "^ . . 



Institution, creation of that extraordinary man, Benjamin Thompson, 

 Count Eumford. Like the Eoyal Society, it was de- 

 pendent upon private subscriptions and on the popular 

 interest created by its lectures. These were very pro- 

 miscuous, exhibiting no plan or unity. In the early 

 years Dr Young and Davy lectured there, as well as 

 Coleridge and Sydney Smith. Later it became the home 

 of Faraday, and through him, and many other illustrious 

 lecturers, has done much to spread a taste for natural, 

 especially experimental, science, in the higher and cul- 

 tivated classes. It has been a means of diffusing the 

 scientific taste, more perhaps than the exact scientific 

 spirit, in the stricter sense of the word. Whilst its 

 lectures may have kindled in many a young listener the 

 love of scientific work, the Institution did not fulfil the 

 early intention of its founder, nor did its laboratory play 



