XX 



' The Dial,' afterwards incorporated with { The Morning Star,' now 

 dead, but in its time a Liberal daily paper of some importance. 

 While thus engaged, he conceived the idea of issuing, at a price 

 which should bring it within the reach of all, a monthly journal 

 devoted to recording current progress in literature and science- — 

 subjects which were ever twin sisters in his mind. The connexions 

 he had as a journalist made among w T riters and scientists on the one 

 hand, and country booksellers on the other, put the production and 

 issue of such a, work within his power ; and that there was likely to 

 be a demand for such information as he sought to give he felt con- ; 

 vinced from his own youthful needs and experiences. His purpose was 

 that the periodical should be issued in London under his own name, 

 and simultaneously in various provincial towns, in each case as the 

 journal of any local bookseller who should subscribe for a certain 

 number of copies. Accordingly, the first number of ' Weldon's 

 Register of Facts and Occurrences in Literature, Science, and Art 1 

 was published in London on the 1st August, 1860, at the price- 

 moderate, even when compared with the cost of such periodicals at 

 the present time — of 6d. Its proprietor spared no effort to render the 

 work valuable and attractive to those who sought its pages, and 

 secured for it contributions from many men then or since dis- 

 tinguished in science, letters, or art. But those were not the days 

 of an earnest popular desire for such information as ' Weldon's 

 Register' sought to impart, and, without such a demand, at so low a 

 price, it had no chance of success. Consequently, after an existence 

 of some three years, it was abandoned by its projector^ who now 

 turned his attention to another and strangely different object. 



The practical failure of an ardently cherished scheme, the abandon- 

 ment of work for which he rightly considered himself specially fitted, 

 was no doubt a severe blow. But Mr. Weldon knew not failure in 

 the ordinary sense. To come short of success in one way was, with 

 him, but an incentive to seek it with redoubled vigour in another. 

 No one could know him well and observe him closely without recog- 

 nising not only the great scope of his talents, but also the marvellous 

 avidity and thoroughness with which he grasped any subject upon 

 which he brought his mind to bear. In him, moreover, a strong and 

 active mind was allied with constitutional power and a capacity and 

 love for work which it is the good fortune of but few to possess. 

 This is the simple and only explanation of the astonishing fact that, 

 without any education in science, without any technical training, 

 without the advantage to be gained by attending lectures or watching 

 the performance of experiments — with nothing to help him through 

 but his genius and the knowledge he could acquire by sheer hard 

 reading at the British Museum — Mr. Weldon now attacked the 

 problems and difficulties of industrial chemistry. Why he turned 



