106 THE KOYAL INSTITUTION. [CHAP. II. 



Underwood. It was published in the 'Gentleman's 

 Magazine 'in 1814 : 



After the death of his worthy friend, the illustrious 

 Lagrange, he saw only his next-door neighbour, the Senator 

 Leconteux Caneleux ; Mr. Underwood, a member of the 

 Royal Institution, who assisted him in his experiments ; 

 and an old friend, Mr. Parker, a learned American, who 

 possesses a splendid mansion in Paris and a very fine 

 landed estate and. agricultural establishment in its environs. 

 He ceased to attend the sittings of the National Institute ; 

 but for the perpetual secretary, Cuvier, a man as morally 

 estimable as his talents are superior to his French fellow- 

 members, he always preserved the highest admiration and 

 esteem. 



One object of his later occupations was a work not yet 

 finished, though it has been constantly going on for more 

 than twenty years on the ' Nature and Effects of Order,' 

 which, had he been spared to finish it, would probably have 

 been one of the most valuable presents ever made to 

 domestic society. No man in all his habits had more the 

 spirit of order ; everything was classed ; no object was ever 

 allowed to remain an instant out of its place the moment 

 he had done with it, and he was never behind his time in 

 an appointment a single instant. 



He was also latterly employed on a series of experiments 

 on the propagation of heat in solids. He had by him 

 several unpublished works, particularly one of considerable 

 interest on Meteorolites, in which he demonstrated that 

 they came from regions beyond the atmosphere of the earth. 

 He has left several memoirs in French (of which he had a 

 few copies printed for the use of his friends) on the quantity 

 of heat obtained by the combustion of various substances 

 and the relative quantity of light from others, with a 

 description of different improvements in the construction 

 of lamps, which he had the satisfaction of seeing very 

 generally adopted in Paris. His admirable paper on the 



