Ixi 



He resumed the office of Elder in his Church in the autumn, and in little 

 more than three years and a half he finally resigned it. 



JEt. 69 (1861). 



He gave Friday discourses on Platinum, and on Warren De La Rue's 

 Photographic Eclipse results. 



He gave ten reports to the Trinity House. The most important work 

 was a visit on 31st of October to Dungeness, to see the new magneto-electric 

 lamps, the machines, and the steam-engines. He drew up forms of observa- 

 tions to be made at Dungeness, at other lighthouses, and by the pilot 

 cutters. 



To Prof. Schb'nbein he writes : — " You really startle me with your inde- 

 pendent antozone. . . . Surely you must hold it in your hand like a little 

 struggler ; for, if I understand you rightly, it must be a far more abundant 

 body than caesium. For the hold you have already obtained over it I con- 

 gratulate you, as I would do if you had obtained a crown, and more than 

 for a new metal. But surely these wonderful conditions of existence cannot 

 be confined to oxygen alone. I am waiting to hear that you have disco- 

 vered like parallel states with iodine, or bromine, or hydrogen, and nitro- 

 gen — what of nitrogen? is not its apparent quiet simplicity of action all 

 a sham ? not a sham, indeed ; but still not the only state in which it can 

 exist. If the compounds which a body can form show something of the 

 state and powers it may have when isolated, then what should nitrogen be 

 in its separate state ? You see I do not work ; I cannot ; but I fancy, 

 and stuff my letters with such fancies (not a fit return) to you." 



In another letter he says, " I am still dull, stupefied, and forgetful. I 

 wish a discovery would turn up with me, that I might answer you in a 

 decent, respectable way ; but it will not." 



Still later he says : — " I look forward to your new results with great 

 interest ; but I am becoming more and more timid when I strive to collate 

 hypotheses relating to the chemical constitution of matter. I cannot help 

 thinking sometimes whether there is not some state or condition of which our 

 present notions give us very little idea, and which yet would reveal to us a 

 flood, a world of real knowledge, — a world of facts available both by prac- 

 tical application and their illustrations of first principles ; and yet I cannot 

 shape the idea into a definite form, or reach it by any trial facts that I can 

 devise ; and that being the case, I drop the attempt and imagine that all 

 the preceding thought has just been a dreaminess and no more ; and so 

 there is an end of it." 



In October he wrote to the Managers of the Institution : — " It is with 

 the deepest feeling that I address you. I entered the Royal Institu- 

 tion in March 1813, nearly forty -nine years ago, and, with exception of 

 a comparatively short period, during which I was abroad on the continent 

 with Sir H. Davy, have been with you ever since. During that time I 

 have been most happy in your kindness, and in the fostering care which 



