40 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



embryo philosophers. Having attended a course of lectures on 

 chemistry in the School of Arts, to his intense delight, he was in 

 some slight measure prepared to enter on the systematic study 

 of this favourite science with eyes that had power to see, as 

 Carlyle says. In his ( Life of Edward Forbes/ after depicting 

 the great change wrought by the passing of the Anatomy Bill 

 in 1832, giving greatly increased facilities to the study of that 

 science, he goes on thus to speak of chemistry and its profes- 

 sors at that time : " Chemistry, not less than anatomy, though 

 for other reasons, was also during Edward Forbes's novitiate in 

 the throes of a great change. A corner of the mantle of Joseph 

 Black had fallen, late in the preceding century, on Charles 

 Hope, a lesser but still a considerable prophet. In his hands 

 the Edinburgh Chair of Chemistry had become the most famous 

 in Great Britain ; and, except in Paris, it had been unsurpassed 

 in one particular for a quarter of a century in Europe. It owed 

 this pre-eminence to the grace and skill with which the Pro- 

 fessor illustrated his daily winter lectures by an ample exhibi- 

 tion of happily- devised and dexterously- executed experiments. 

 Dr. Hope had nothing of the fascinative eloquence or genius of 

 Davy, or of the inventive manipulative skill of Wollaston, or of 

 the penetrating insight of Dalton. His elocution was slow and 

 pompous ; his manner cold and ungenial ; but he was an admir- 

 able expositor, and a most successful public experimenter. Had 

 his love of science or his ambition been greater, he had capacity 

 sufficient to have made himself distinguished as a discoverer. 

 But he was satisfied with the reputation and the wealth which 

 his University lectures brought him, and he fairly earned and 

 deserved both. Experimental illustration of public prelections 

 was not a novelty of his introducing. But no one before him, 

 in this country at least, had ventured to give a series of strictly 

 scientific lectures, extending for five days weekly over nearly 

 six months, and each illustrated to the full by experiments. To 

 his honour be it said, he simplified and legitimately popularized 

 chemistry without vulgarizing it. There were no needless blaz- 

 ings of phosphorus, or showy exhibitions of blue lights. A 

 conjuror might have envied his dexterity of hand, but he would 

 have despised the total absence of theatrical display, and have 



