394 LIFE OF DALTOX : 



great metropolis. It is a characteristic trait of him, that he 

 occupied himself while going to the Friends' Meeting-House 

 in counting the number of carriages he met on the road. 

 ' This,' he says, ' I executed with tolerable precision, and the 

 number was 104.' Dalton lived, in truth, in an atmosphere 

 of numbers ; and all his thoughts and observations took their 

 colouring from this strong propensity of his nature. 



In 1793 he first published his Meteorological Observations 

 and Essays, in which he records his obligations to Mr. John 

 (rough of Kendal ; that singular man, who, becoming totally 

 blind from small-pox when two years old, furnished a memo- 

 rable instance of" what the intellect can attain, unaided by 

 this one great sense. Profoundly versed in mathematics, he 

 became familiar also with every branch of natural philosophy ; 

 and had so cultivated his remaining senses that he could tell 

 by touch, smell, or taste, almost every plant within twenty 

 miles of his native place. Dalton's friendship for him COR- 

 tinued throughout the whole of Mr. Gough's long life. 



It was in the same year,- 1793, that Dalton made his 

 second and final change of residence, by accepting the place 

 of mathematical tutor at a College of Protestant Dissenters 

 lately established in Manchester. Though his connections 

 with the College ceased after six years, he remained at Man- 

 chester during the rest of his life, and in the same house for 

 the last thirty years of that time ; making an income which 

 sufficed for his few and simple wants by giving lessons to 

 pupils or by occasional lectures ; both at a very low rate of 

 remuneration. 



We suppose that few men of tolerable education have 

 passed through life without putting together some lines, 

 which either were poetry, or were believed by themselves to 

 be such. Among the exceptions to the rule we should fully 

 have expected Dalton to be one. But it was otherwise. His 

 biographer gives us, as the best among other specimens, ten 



