A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



enterprise now made their influence felt. With true 

 British reserve, they announced their belief that the 

 education of the masses involved a dangerous political 

 tendency. Hence the mechanics' school was suspended 

 and the workshops and kitchens abolished ; in a word, 

 the chief ends for which the institution was founded 

 were annulled. The library and the lectures remained, 

 to be sure, but they were for the amusement of the rich, 

 not for the betterment of the poor. It was the West 

 End that made a fad of the institution and a society 

 function of the lectures of Sydney Smith and of the 

 charming youth Davy. Thus the institution came to 

 justify its aristocratic title and its regal patronage; 

 and the poor seemed quite forgotten. 



But indeed the institution itself was poor enough in 

 these days, after the first flush of enthusiasm died 

 away, and it is but fair to remember that without the 

 support of its popular lectures its very existence would 

 have been threatened. Nor in any event are regrets 

 much in order over the possible might-have-beens of 

 an institution whose laboratories were the seat of the 

 physical investigations of Thomas Young, through 

 which the wave theory of light first gained a footing, 

 and of the brilliant chemical researches of Davy, which 

 practically founded the science of electro-chemistry 

 and gave the chemical world first knowledge of a 

 galaxy of hitherto unknown elements. Through the 

 labors of these men, and through the popular lecture- 

 courses delivered at ' the institution by such other 

 notables of science as Wollaston, Dalton, and Rum- 

 ford, the enterprise had become world-famous before 

 the close of the first decade of its existence. 



34 



