Cuar. VI., § 3.] 
early as 1816, elected a corresponding member of the 
Institute of France—Wollaston being then probably 
the only other English name on the list.1 Dalton 
found his way to Paris in 1822, and was agreeably 
surprised by the distinetion with which he was re- 
ceived by the most eminent members of the Academy 
of Sciences. Perhaps this first personal recognition 
of his exalted station, as a man of science, had some- 
thing to do with the tardy adjudication to him four 
years later of one of the medals of the Royal Society 
of London. In 1830 he was elected one of the eight 
associates of the Academy of Sciences in the room of 
Sir Humphry Davy. 
HEAT (ATOMIC CHEMISTRY).—DALTON—GAY-LUSSAC., 
939 
of his writings; and he always spoke in terms of 
high respect both of those who pursued science in a 
similar direction with himself, and (what was more 
difficult) likewise of those who, having the good for- 
tune to hold more conspicuous positions, showed him 
the smallest degree of kindness, which he always 
gratefully acknowledged. He was unlike Black and 
Cavendish, in the rapidity with which he seized on a 
few isolated facts, and made them the basis of an 
inference of great generality ; this, indeed, was his 
leading characteristic; and he differed from them 
equally in the boldness with which he claimed from 
the public a general acceptance of his conclusions. 
(628.) In 1833, at the age of sixty-seven, he received a Some of his inferences were unguarded enough, and 
His charae- bension from government, up to which time he had have not been confirmed; and the reception of what 
maintained himself in the way already mentioned, 
with the utmost simplicity and contentment. Even 
in his lifetime it was impossible for his eulogists 
to forbear from some reference to this essential part 
of his really philosophic character. “ Mr Dalton 
has been labouring,” says Sir Humphry Davy, “ for 
more than a quarter of a century with the most dis- 
interested views. With the greatest modesty and 
simplicity of character, he has remained in the ob- 
security of the country, neither asking for approba- 
tion, nor offering himself as an object of applause.” 
‘There is little doubt,’ says Dr Thomson, “ that 
Mr Dalton, had he so chosen it, might, in point of 
pecuniary circumstances, have exhibited a much more 
brilliant figure. But he has displayed a much more 
noble mind by the career which :he has chosen ; 
equally regardless of riches as the most celebrated 
sages of antiquity, and as much respected and be- 
were correct was naturally delayed by the evident 
facility with which his theories were shaped in his 
own mind. Most of his papers appeared in rapid 
succession ; only the Atomic Theory was brought 
with some evident hesitation before the world. In 
all this we see the results of a vigorous imagination, 
united with great perseverance, in working out an 
idea, The imaginative element would have been 
more under control had his education been of a less 
irregular kind. We see the effect of an opposite 
turn in his eminent predecessors just named. They 
would have done more, had they trusted more. Dal- 
ton’s discoveries may be said to have terminated at . 
the age of forty. Though he laboured for thirty 
years after, the conceptive faculty seems to have 
spent itself in its earlier efforts. 
JoserpH Louris Gay-Lussac, an eminent French 
chemist and physicist, contemporary with Dalton, Gay-Lus- 
has been mentioned in the course of the present sec- 8ac—che 
loved by his friends, even in the rich commercial 
town of Manchester, as if he were one of the greatest : 
mist and 
All who 
and death. 
Dalton’s 
philosophi- 
- cal charac- 
ter. 
and most influential men in the country.” 
had the good fortune to know him personally—to see 
him, as the writer of these pages has done, in his 
modest school-room, and surrounded by his unpre- 
tending apparatus—will own that these eulogies are 
not overdrawn. His latter days were spent in cheer- 
fulness and comfort; he expired on 27th July 1844, 
having nearly completed his seventy-eighth year. 
The philosophical character of Dalton may be 
briefly summed up. He had immense vigour of con- 
ception, and an ardent love of truth. He was tho- 
roughly devoted to the pursuit of science during his 
long career, and he evidently sought and expected 
no higher reward than the insight which he obtained 
into the laws of nature. His mind, like his frame, 
was of a strongly masculine character, and happily 
exempt from nervous sensibility and other like in- 
firmities of genius. Whilst he held his own opinions 
with tenacity, and criticised freely those of his op- 
ponents, there is not a trace of acrimony in any 
tion, as having discovered independently the equal 
dilatation of the gases, and also a law of their com- 
binations in connection with their volumes, which 
was peculiar to himself. Besides these researches, 
science owes many useful observations in physics to 
his energy and talent, which, in the origin of his 
career, promised more of originality than his ma- 
turer life perfectly fulfilled. He was born in the old 
province of Limousin in 1778, and became the pupil 
of Berthollet in chemical researches, and was one of 
the earliest and most active members of the Société 
d’Arceuil. In physics, he was the collaborator of 
MM. Biot, Humboldt, and Laplace. 
16th September 1804, when he attained the amaz- 
ing height of 7016 métres (23,019 English feet), an 
elevation previously unattained, and which in the 
course of the succeeding half century has only twice 
been touched, or exceeded by a small quantity.? Con- 
1 So stated by Dalton himself (Life by Dr Henry, p. 163); but I suspect some misapprehensi C 
idering the importance 
attached to these nominations, it is to be regretted that it is at all times difficult to ascertain who are, or have been, associates 
and correspondents of the Academy of Sciences. 
2 Once by MM. Bixio and Barral in 1850, and once by Mr John Wels» ‘n 1852. 
With the first Remark- 
of these philosophers he made his earliest experi- able bal- 
ment in aérostation, which he repeated alone on the !0on ascent. 
