136 ACTON SQUARE. 



former tutor, Mr. Tappenden. He is Corresponding 

 Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Turin, to 

 which he was elected in 1848. Since April 9, 1849, he has 

 been established in Xo. 1, Acton Square, Salford, where 

 he resides with his wife (and where, on May the 18th, 1850, 

 his son Benjamin Arthur was born). He is to be elected 

 Fellow of the Royal Society in June, 1850, — Sir William 

 Thomson receiving the like honour in 185 1, and Rankine in 

 1852. As Secretary of the Society since 1846 he has 

 already an acknowledged and important position as a 

 citizen of Manchester, which insures him contact with all 

 those who take interest in literature and science and 

 friendly intercourse with the eminent men on the Council. 



By his final determination of the mechanical equivalent 

 of heat, in 1849, he finds himself released from the constraint 

 in which his own instinctive perseverance has held him, 

 causing him to pursue to the end the clue which arose from 

 his boyish attempt, in 1838, to improve Sturgeon's electro- 

 magnetic engine. He has the assurance of his own 

 philosophical insight that his discoveries reveal funda- 

 mental truths of the greatest importance, not only in 

 philosophy, but to the future material well-being of 

 mankind. And he finds that the clouds which have so far 

 enveloped his work are lifting, and that the sunshine of 

 the highest scientific as well as friendly sympathy and 

 recognition has already begun to break in upon him. Just 

 as his solitary task of exploring and paving the way, which 

 by its exigences in engrossing his attention has prevented 

 him from feeling, though not from perceiving, how solitary 

 he has been, is completed, and his mind is free, he finds 

 friends already using the main road, acknowledging its 

 importance and constructing branches. 



