lix 



1 804, remained there eight years, and during the chief part of the time bound 

 books. Now it was in those books in the hours after work that I found 

 the beginning of my philosophy. There were two that especially helped 

 me, the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' from which I gained my first notions of 

 electricity, and Mrs. Marcet's ' Conversations on Chemistry,' which gave 

 me my foundation in that science. 



" Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a 

 precocious person. I was a very lively, imaginative person, and could 

 believe in the Arabian Nights as easily as in the Encyclopaedia ; but 

 facts were important to me and saved me. I could trust a fact, and always 

 cross-examined an assertion. So when I questioned Mrs. Marcet's book by 

 such little experiments as I could find means to perform, and found it true 

 to the facts as I could understand them, I felt that I had got hold of an 

 anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast to it. Thence my deep 

 veneration for Mrs. Marcet : first, as one who had conferred great per- 

 sonal good and pleasure on me, and then as one able to convey the truth 

 and principle of those boundless fields of knowledge which concern natural 

 things to the young, untaught, and inquiring mind. 



" You may imagine my delight when I came to know Mrs. Marcet 

 personally ; how often I cast my thoughts backwards, delighting to con- 

 nect the past and the present ; how often, when sending a paper to her 

 as a thank -offering, I thought of my first instructress ; and such like thoughts 

 will remain with me. 



" I have some such thoughts even as regards your own father, who was, 

 I may say, the first who personally, at Geneva, and afterwards by corre- 

 spondence, encouraged, and by that sustained me." 



He made twelve reports to the Trinity House. The most important was 

 on the electric light at the South Foreland. He went there, with a Com- 

 mittee of the Trinity House, to see it from sea and land. The light was 

 in the centre of the Fresnel apparatus, in the upper light, as a fixed light, 

 and so comparable with the lower fixed light, which consisted of oil- 

 lamps in reflectors. They went to the Varne light-ship. The upper was 

 generally inferior to the lower light. Next morning they went to the light- 

 house, and examined it by day and also at night. 



He was made Corresponding Member of the Hungarian Academy of 

 Sciences, Pesth. 



Mt. 67 (1859). 



He gave two Friday discourses on Schonbein'sOzone and Antozone; and on 

 Phosphorescence, Fluorescence, &c. He sent eleven reports to the Trinity 

 House, and one to the Board of Trade. On the 28th of March, the mag- 

 neto-electric light was again exhibited at the South Foreland. On the 20th 

 of April he went to sea to examine it. " The upper light," he says, " is far 

 superior to the lower light ; the electric light very fine." He visited the 

 lighthouse ; he found new lamps by Duboscq, and silvered reflectors be- 

 hind. He writes :— " As a light unexceptionable ; as electric light won- 



