DR. SAMUEL BROWN. 09 



poetic exaltations of Shelley, the erudite and metaphy- 

 sical views of Coleridge, and the transcendentalisms of 

 Goethe. Versed in the abstract, the abstruse, and the 

 alchemical past of the Bacons and Van Helmonts, and 

 daily sifting the current doctrines of Lavoisier and 

 Dalton, he longed for a higher analysis than had been 

 obtained by Cavendish, Priestley, or Davy, and the 

 laying of a more permanent foundation for his glorious 

 science. With the faith of Paul and all the zeal of 

 Palissy, he sought, with saintly fervour, to break down 

 the septum between man and the unknown, and to 

 penetrate the arcana and very adyta of nature's 

 temple. He was a profound thinker, with the hopes 

 of a theoretical seer, heralding the time when the com- 

 posite organic and inorganic worlds would be resolved 

 by man to a simple element, and the subtle agencies 

 of light, caloric, and magnetism to one entity. He 

 worked at the transmutation of metals, not figuratively 

 seeking the philosopher's stone that would reveal the 

 unit or seminal principle of the world's constitution — 

 the atom in the mighty chaos, the parthenogenesis or 

 nidus of organic forms; or the molecule, isomorphic in 

 relation or constructive of the earth's crust, and pro- 

 bably the foundation of universal orbs bearing t lie- 

 stamp of the Great and the Infinite. 



Another chemist, Dr. George Wilson, also flourished 

 in the Forbes and Goodsir "brotherhood" — a man of 

 admirable talents, and well known for his biographical 

 (Hurls, having a faculty of description in Bcience 

 and technology. Goodsir lived in close bonds with 



