70 Literacy and Philosophical Society. 



was acknowledged to be, a teacher of the nation on sanitary 

 subjects, whilst at least one of the medical men whose 

 treatises or remarks are contained in the volume of Trans- 

 actions and proposals was active in mind when the Com- 

 mission came in 1843 with Mr, Edwin Chadwick and Dr. 

 Lyon Playfair, although he had retired from practice. We 

 find a short paper by him on the employment of children 

 especially during the night, and the want of attention in 

 cotton-mills to ventilation and cleanliness. This was Dr. 

 Bardsley, a very prominent figure in Manchester as he had 

 been in 1796, a man with manners refined and elegant, having 

 a memory of the earlier times, and reflecting favourably but 

 without vigour its principles, habits and speech. 



At both these periods Dr. Samuel Argent Bardsley 

 was put on committees of inquiry. He must be remem- 

 bered by not a few persons besides those who knew him in 

 private, as a frequenter of very agreeable meetings, lectures, 

 and discussions which used to take place in the Royal 

 Institution. In 1843 science had begun to be more widely 

 spread than it had been, and the men interested in it 

 could meet more easily than now, partly because there were 

 not so many living out of reach, and chiefly because dinners 

 of an expensive kind did not attract so many. These latter 

 amusements have done much harm in destroying the calm 

 reading evenings of scientific men in England and else- 

 where, since people frequently feel obliged or inclined to 

 give up or hurry their work for their pleasure, and some- 

 times, like the famous broomseller, incline to steal it ready 

 made. Dr. Bardsley showed his connection with the past 

 in his appearance ; he was, so far as the writer knows, the 

 last of those here who powdered their hair. He had but 

 little to powder, and the white dust flowed over his shoul- 



