chemistry is in its infancy, and that till it has been more matured
    each analysis will take up a considerable portion of time; they
    trust, however, that it will not be long before Mr. Davy himself,
    or some one named by him and acting under his superintendence,
    will undertake the business of analysing soils and manures for
    individuals at a moderate fixed price for each substance that shall
    be brought to them.

    The Royal Institution wish to have Mr. Davy’s lectures repeated
    at their house, and have desired me to ask whether the Board of
    Agriculture have any objection to a measure which appears to them
    likely to extend still further.

    Having been requested to suggest what I think a proper recompense
    to Mr. Davy on account of his six lectures delivered at the Board,
    and also a plan for securing his services in future to the Board
    of Agriculture, I beg leave to propose that sixty guineas be given
    by the Board to Mr. Davy as a remuneration for his six lectures,
    being at the rate of ten guineas for each lecture, and that the
    office of Professor of Chemical Agriculture to the Board, with a
    salary of 100_l._ a year, be offered to his acceptance; the duty
    of his professorship to consist of reading lectures in the spring
    at such time as shall be fixed by the Board, on the application
    of chemistry to the improvement of the art of agriculture, and in
    making an analysis of such substances as shall be put into his
    hands by the Committee, in case he is of opinion that the result of
    such analysis is likely to throw light on the theory and practice
    of that most useful art.

This Committee of Science also, as early as July 18, proposed that in
the ensuing session Mr. Dalton should be engaged to lecture.

The form which the Institution was at this time about to take is well
seen in the joint report of the committees of science and accounts
on the plan of the lectures and experiments and other proposed
arrangements for the ensuing year. This was made on November 28, 1803;
the reporters were Sir Joseph Banks, Henry Cavendish, Sir J. Hippesley,
Mr. Bernard, Mr. Sullivan.

They said:

    With regard to the lectures on Natural Philosophy, it is presumed
    that the subjects may be advantageously arranged in the three
    distinct courses. The first should be a complete course of
    experimental philosophy; the second should relate to practical
    mechanics; and the third should be on optics and astronomy.

    Abstruseness should in all cases be avoided, the processes of the
    arts should be particularly described, and the operations should
    be on such a scale as to instruct by their applications and to
    interest and amuse by the distinctness and brilliancy of their
    appearance.

    The lectures on Chemistry, it is supposed, may be included in two
    courses. The first would relate to the chemistry of natural history
    and the chemical economy of nature, and the second to theoretical
    and practical chemistry. From the progression of this branch of
    knowledge it will be easy to develope in both these courses many
    new objects, and it is supposed that they may at once be rendered
    useful and made to excite attention and gratify curiosity.

    It would be very advantageous to institute a particular and
    distinct series of public experimental operations, showing such new
    facts in elementary and natural philosophy as are connected with
    splendid and curious phenomena or highly useful applications.

    During the season it was proposed that there should be one hundred
    lectures and twenty public experiments--about four lectures weekly.

    For affording more practical and minute information concerning the
    objects of science, first, in relation to mechanical sciences and
    arts, the models of useful inventions should be increased and made
    more available; second, in relation to chemistry, the examination
    of the private experimental processes performed in the laboratory
    might be given as private instruction, for which those who thought
    proper to attend should make some annual contribution for defraying
    the extra expense, as it would be impossible to admit all the
    proprietors and subscribers.

    With the reduction of expenses and the strict economy that has
    taken place in the establishment, it is submitted to the managers
    that it will not be necessary to increase at present the annual
    subscription.

    The Committee concludes the report with observations on the
    progress which has been recently made and is now making in the
    Institution. After mentioning the lectures and the apparatus for
    the lectures, it is said the laboratory for experimental processes
    has been enlarged by the addition of the former workroom, and has
    been improved by many new arrangements, and provision has been
    made in it for preparing the different reagents and tests employed
    in philosophical chemistry and for carrying on various new and
    interesting researches.

    The foundation of a mineralogical collection has been laid by the
    exertions of Mr. Professor Davy. For the purpose of extending it
    one proprietor has offered 100_l._, and others promised to give
    minerals. A collection of fossils was also made.

    The reading library is now completed. The room for the collection
    of reference, fitted up for 10,000 volumes, some part of which are
    already purchased. It was proposed to open it to the proprietors
    and subscribers early in the ensuing season. The funds subscribed
    amounted to 4,368_l._ 15_s._ As this would not be sufficient to
    purchase the whole of the desired collection, it was hoped that
    other proprietors and subscribers ‘would enjoy the pleasure of
    adding their contributions.’

On November 24 Mr. Dalton wrote to Mr. Savage, the clerk:

    RESPECTED FRIEND,--As it will not be convenient to me to be in town
    before the 17th or 18th of next month, I should be glad to know
    previously whether my accommodation as to board and lodging would
    be in the Institution; if not, whether you know of any place in
    the vicinity where the same would probably be procured. It will
    be necessary for me to spend a considerable portion of time to
    make myself acquainted with the structure and use of some of the
    apparatus, and therefore I am the more solicitous on the above
    heads. Pray, what is the usual duration of a lecture--one or two
    hours? An immediate reply to these inquiries will much oblige,

                                                    Yours respectfully,
                                                             J. DALTON.

Apartments were ordered by the managers to be prepared in the house for
Mr. Dalton before December 17.

On Monday, December 22, at two, he gave the introduction to a course
of four lectures on Mechanics and Physics. In this lecture he dwelt on
the objects of natural philosophy, division of the science, utility of
the study, plan of the lectures. The second lecture was on Monday, 26,
at eight P.M., on the Properties of Matter; extension, impenetrability,
divisibility, inertia, various species of attraction and repulsion,
_motion_, _forces_, composition of forces, _collision_, _pendulums_.
The third lecture was on Wednesday, 28, at two. _Projectiles_;
resistance of the air, _mechanic powers_, strength of timber. The
fourth on Thursday, at two. Pneumatics; nature of electric fluids,
the atmosphere, air-pump, spring and weight of the air proved by
experiments, barometer. The last lecture was given on Saturday, 31, at
eight. This was followed by other courses, making altogether twenty
lectures.

After his return to Manchester Dalton wrote to his brother, February 1,
1804:

    DEAR BROTHER,--I have the satisfaction to inform thee that I
    returned safe from my London journey last seventh day, having been
    absent six weeks. It has on many accounts been an interesting
    _vocation_ to me, though a very laborious one. I went in a great
    measure unprepared, not knowing the nature and manner of the
    lectures at the Institution nor the apparatus. My first was on
    Thursday, December 22, which was introductory, being entirely
    written, giving an account of what was intended to be done; and on
    natural philosophy in general. All lectures were to be one hour
    each, or as nearly as might be. The number attending were from one
    to three hundred of both sexes, usually more than half men. I was
    agreeably disappointed to find so _learned_ and _attentive_ an
    audience, though many of them of rank. It required great labour
    on my part to get acquainted with the apparatus and to draw up
    the order of experiments and repeat them in the intervals between
    the lectures, though I had one pretty expert to assist me. We
    had the good fortune, however, never to fail in any experiment,
    though I was once so ill prepared as to beg the indulgence of the
    audience as to part of the lecture, which they most handsomely and
    immediately granted me by a general plaudit. The scientific part of
    the audience was wonderfully taken with some of my original notions
    relative to heat, the gases &c., some of which had not before been
    published. Had my hearers been generally of the description I had
    apprehended, the most interesting lectures I had to give would have
    been the least relished; but, as it happened, the expectation
    formed had drawn several gentlemen of first-rate talents together,
    and my eighteenth, on Heat and the Laws of Expansion, &c., was
    received with the greatest applause; with very few experiments.
    The one that followed was on _Mixed Elastic Fluids_, in which
    I had an opportunity of developing my ideas, that have already
    been published on the subject, more fully. The doctrine has, as
    I apprehended it would, excited the attention of philosophers
    throughout Europe. Two journals in the German language came into
    the Royal Institution whilst I was there from Saxony, both of which
    were about half filled with translations from the papers I have
    written on this subject and comments upon them.

    Dr. Ainslie was occasionally one of my audience, and his sons
    constantly. He came up at the concluding lecture, expressed his
    high satisfaction, and he believed it was the same sentiment with
    all or most of the audience.

    I saw my successor, William Allen, fairly launched. He gave his
    first lecture on Tuesday, preceding my conclusion. I was an
    _auditor_ in this case--the first time--and had an opportunity
    of surveying the audience. Amongst others of distinction the
    Bishop of Durham was present. In lecturing on optics I got six
    ribbands--blue, pink, lilac, red, green, and brown--which matched
    very well, and told the various audience so. I do not know whether
    they generally believed me to be serious, but one gentlemen came up
    immediately after and told me he perfectly agreed with me. He had
    not remarked the difference by candle light.

Throughout the year 1803 scarcely a trace of Count Rumford’s name can
be found in the records of the Institution. On January 24, when writing
from Munich to the clerk, Mr. Savage, about his house in Brompton Row,
he only begs his compliments to Dr. Young and to Mr. Davy, and on
November 11, the clerk having asked him about an account relating to
the Institution, he wrote from Paris:

    I assure you that I have not the smallest recollection of having
    received from Mr. Hunter, the solicitor of the Institution, the
    account you mention in your letter of the 7th ult.; and had I in
    fact received it, I should most undoubtedly have laid it before
    the managers of the Institution. I can imagine no reason which
    could have induced me to keep it back; and, as all the affairs of
    the Institution in my hands were kept with the utmost care and
    regularity, as you can testify, it is not likely that I should have
    mislaid and forgotten it. This is all I can say on the subject, and
    I hope and trust that this declaration will be satisfactory to the
    managers of the Royal Institution and to Mr. Hunter.

    I expect to be in England in the course of the winter.

Gradually the ‘usefulness of science to the poorer classes and to
the common purposes of life’ ceased to be the prime object of the
Institution. The school for mechanics, the workshops, and the models,
the kitchens and the Journals, died away; and the laboratory, the
lectures, and the library became the life of the new Institution, and
its object became ‘the diffusion of knowledge and the application of
science to the improvement of arts and manufactures.’

The most memorable scientific incident in the history of the Rumford
Institution was its relationship with Dr. Thomas Young. His lectures
on physics must even now be held to rank as the greatest work in the
literature of the Institution. As Professor and Superintendent of the
House he had no great success; and he had no great influence on its
fortunes; but by his genius he anticipated the progress of science,
and his reputation has risen until it now ranks with that of Davy and
Faraday.

A short sketch of his life will bring this period of the history of the
Institution to a close.

Thomas Young was born in Somersetshire on June 13, 1773. Both his
parents were Quakers, and to their tenets he was accustomed to
attribute his resolution to effect any object on which he was engaged.
This determination he brought to bear on all he did, and by this
he educated himself almost from infancy ‘with little comparative
assistance or direction from others.’

His earliest years were passed with a grandfather, a merchant at
Minehead, who had some classical taste. He encouraged his precocious
grandchild and often repeated to him that--

    A little learning is a dangerous thing;
    Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.

From 1780 to 1787 (7 to 14) he was chiefly at school. He gives an
account of his acquirements in an autobiography written in Latin at
this time--writing, arithmetic, Latin, Greek, mathematics, natural
philosophy, introduction to the Newtonian philosophy, turning,
telescope making, bookbinding, colour making, drawing, Hebrew, botany,
fluctions, Priestly on Air, Italian, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan. He was
a prodigy at fourteen.

His father had a neighbour, a man of great ingenuity, by profession a
land-surveyor, in whose office during the holidays the boy was given
the use of mathematical and philosophical instruments and the perusal
of three volumes of a dictionary of arts and science. He got some
practical knowledge of land-surveying. This led him to botany; and to
examine his plants he made a microscope. This required a knowledge of
optics, and thence he went to mathematics and fluctions.

From 1787 to 1792 (14 to 19) his studies and his position were equally
extraordinary. He became classical tutor to a boy a year and a half
his junior. Mr. Barclay, of Youngsbury, took him as companion to his
grandson, Hudson Gurney, who had a tutor. Young taught the tutor Greek,
and taught his companion Latin and Greek, whilst he taught himself
Latin, French, Italian, mathematics, natural philosophy, botany, and
entomology.

When 16 (1789) he was threatened with consumption. His uncle, Dr.
Brocklesby, the friend of Burke, attended him, and through him Burke
and Porson and others became interested in the great classical
knowledge of the youth, and encouraged him in his translations of
Shakespear into Greek iambics.

It was at this period that his character was most strongly formed:

    He was never known to relax in any object which he had once
    undertaken. During the whole term of these five years he was never
    seen by anyone on any occasion to be ruffled in temper. Whatever he
    determined on he did. He had little faith in any peculiar aptitude
    being implanted by nature for any given pursuits. His favourite
    maxim was, that whatever one man had done another might do; that
    the original difference between human intellects was much less than
    it was generally supposed to be; that strenuous and persevering
    attention would accomplish almost anything; and at this season, in
    the confidence of youth and consciousness of his own powers, he
    considered nothing that had been compassed by others beyond his
    reach to achieve; nor was there anything which he thought worthy to
    be attempted which he was not resolved to master.

In 1792 he entered the medical profession, learning anatomy from Hunter
in London.

In 1793 he became a pupil at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and on May
30 he had a paper read to the Royal Society on the ‘Structure of the
Crystalline Lens,’ which he thought to be muscular. Hunter claimed
the discovery as his, and was only prevented by death from giving the
Croonian lecture at the Royal Society in proof of his right. Sir E.
Home, in the Croonian lecture the following year, stated that neither
Young nor Hunter was right.

In 1794 (æt. 21) he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

About this time the Duke of Richmond, at Bath, thus wrote to Dr.
Brocklesby:

                                                     Bath, May 5, 1794.

    I need not write much about myself, as your nephew, who dined with
    us yesterday, will give you a good account of my health. I have,
    however, still returns of head-ache, and my legs continue very
    weak. But I must tell you how much pleased we all are with Mr.
    Young. I really never saw a young man more pleasing and engaging.
    He seems to have already acquired much knowledge in most branches
    and to be studious of obtaining more; it comes out without
    affectation on all subjects he talks upon. He is very cheerful and
    easy without assuming anything, and even on the peculiarity of his
    dress and Quakerism he talked so reasonably that one cannot wish
    him to alter himself in any one particular. In short, I end as I
    began, by assuring you that the Duchess and I are quite charmed
    with him, and shall be happy to renew our acquaintance with him
    when we return to London.

Later in the autumn the Duke, who was Master-General of the Ordnance,
offered to make him his private secretary.

In a letter to his mother Young says:

    I have very lately refused the pressing offer of a situation which
    would have been the most favourable and flattering introduction to
    political life that a young man in my circumstances could desire.
    I might have lived at a duke’s table, with a salary of 200_l._
    a year, as his secretary, and with hopes of a more lucrative
    appointment in a short time. I should have been in an agreeable
    family, have had time enough for study, a library, a laboratory,
    and philosophical apparatus at my service; and I was not ashamed to
    allege my regard for our society as a principal reason for my not
    accepting the proposal.

In the winter of 1794-5 he went to Edinburgh to study medicine. He
learnt Spanish, German, music in theory and by playing the flute,
dancing; and he went as much as he could into society and to the play.

Soon after he left Edinburgh in June he wrote to his friend and
fellow-student Dr. Bostock:

    I have seen Mrs. Siddons in ‘Douglas,’ the ‘Grecian Daughter,’ the
    ‘Mourning Bride,’ the ‘Provoked Husband,’ the ‘Fatal Marriage,’
    ‘Macbeth,’ and ‘Venice Preserved.’ She was neither below nor much
    above my expectation. I can form an idea of something more perfect.
    My friend Cruikshanks, when I went to take my leave of him, took
    me aside and, after much preamble, told me he heard I had been
    at the play, and hoped that I should be able to contradict it. I
    told him ‘I had been several times, and thought it right to go,’
    &c. &c., as civilly as I could. ‘I know you are determined to
    discourage my dancing and singing, and I am determined to pay no
    regard whatever to what you say. You think I shall never be able to
    play the flute well, and I am pretty sure that I may if I choose;
    as to dancing, the die is cast.’

At this time he gave up the dress and all the other peculiarities of
the Quakers.

On June 5 he started on a journey through the Highlands ‘in se totus
teres atque rotundus,’ as a friend described him.

    I was mounted on a stout, well-made black horse, fourteen hands
    high, young and spirited, which I had purchased from my friend
    Cathcart. I had before me my oiled linens, the spencer with a
    separate camlet cover; under me a pair of saddle-bags, well filled
    with three or four changes of linen, a waistcoat, and breeches;
    materials for writing and for drawing; paper, pens, ink, pencils,
    and colours; packing-paper and twine for minerals; soap, brushes,
    and a razor; a small edition of Thomson’s ‘Seasons,’ a third
    flute in a bag; some music, principally Scotch, bound with some
    blank music-paper; wafers; a box for botanising; a thermometer;
    two little bottles with spirits for preserving insects; a bag
    for picking up stones; two maps of Scotland--Ainslie’s small one
    and Sayer’s; letters of recommendation. The bags had pockets at
    the end, one containing a pair of shoes, the other boards with
    straps and paper for drying plants. I found my bags at first an
    encumbrance, but became afterwards more reconciled to them. They
    are to a saddle what pockets are to a coat; and who objects to
    wearing pockets? But they were wetted the first day and stained
    their contents. This will make me more careful in future.

Some of his notes at Gordon and Inverary Castles are cabinet pictures.

    It was Lady Georgina’s birthday (afterwards Duchess of Bedford);
    the flag was hoisted. Lord Alexander’s regiment of little boys was
    paraded, and employed in racing and dancing on the green, and in
    the evening a ball was given to the servants; all the family went
    downstairs and amused themselves with observing the agility of the
    lads and lasses. Every person employed about the house, except
    one man, is married, and most of them are descended from those
    who have served the family before them. The Duchess proposed, in
    honour of the day, that Sir George Abercrombie and I should dance
    a reel with the two younger ladies; for they danced nothing but
    reels. Afterwards the Duke danced with one of the upper servants.
    Some time after our party joined again in the amusement at the same
    time with two others; when it was late, and Sir George was tired,
    we took a girl in his place and resumed the sport. Lady Madeline
    (Sinclair) sat by, and made the music play till the other sets
    quitted the field, and left us victorious to reel through the whole
    room. I have now written as much of dancing in my tour as Johnson
    has in his, and as much more as a young man may be expected to
    write of it than an old one.

    At Inverary [he writes] after breakfast the party were to ride, and
    the Doctor gravely submitted to my determination whether I would go
    at a slow pace with him and the Duke to view the country leisurely
    on the way, or ride with the ladies and be galloped over. I told
    him that of all things I liked to be galloped over, and therefore
    should be of the youthful party....

    After dinner the Duke rode again, and the younger men of the party
    took a walk. I left them about nine, and joined the ladies at
    tea. I was showing Lady Charlotte some of my sketches; she begged
    to see my notes, and I showed the greatest part of them. All the
    family are musical; the ladies sing admirably. Cards and a fine
    piano occupied the evening. After supper, besides other songs, I
    heard a most beautiful canzonet by Jackson, beginning ‘Love in thy
    eyes.’ It was twelve o’clock when we retired. After breakfast I
    took my leave, not without regretting that I had so little time to
    observe the beauties of Inverary. Lady Charlotte is handsomer than
    Lady Augusta: she sings better, but she has less good sense and
    less sweetness. An innocent girlishness sometimes gives her the
    appearance of a little affectation. She is to Lady Augusta what
    Venus is to Minerva. I suppose she wishes for no more. Both are
    goddesses.

On October 7 he left London to graduate at Göttingen; he went by
Hamburg.

On December 14 he wrote to Dr. Bostock:

    You will be pleased, as a lover of the fine arts, to hear that I am
    taking lessons in drawing. You will not be surprised that I receive
    in this study, as well as in music and dancing, full approbation
    from my masters for application and accuracy. At the same time they
    honestly tell me that ease is wanting, and you will also readily
    believe that I have the assurance not to be discouraged with this
    character, while they all assert that I may confidently expect
    sufficient advancement in due time....

    I have not exhibited myself at a public dance. My master, who is a
    very sensible fellow, advising me against it, as he observed that a
    person seldom loses the character which he obtains from the first
    impressions; but we have agreed that I may venture at the next
    _pique nique_.

    On the alternate Sundays we have a dance: either a tea dance or
    a supper dance; one from four to eight, and the other from five
    to one. This is called a _pique nique_, and in its constitution
    resembles a Scotch oyster dance.

Soon after, to his uncle, he says:

    Blumenbach has shown me many civilities, but I am most at home
    at Arnemann’s, under whose roof I live, and who has been long in
    Britain, and brought an English wife home with him. You need not be
    afraid of my following his example and marrying a German lady. I am
    not likely to lose my heart here, though there are some tolerably
    agreeable girls with whom I wish to be more acquainted for the sake
    of exercise in the language; for conversation with women gives both
    a fluency of expression and a delicacy of manners which are never
    to be learned from men.

On April 30 he passed his examination before the Medical Faculty.

    I made [says he] no preparatory study, as is usual here, and
    also at Edinburgh not uncommon, under the name of grinding. The
    examination lasted between four and five hours. The four examiners
    were seated round a table, well furnished with cakes, sweetmeats,
    and wine, which helped to pass the time agreeably. The questions
    were well calculated to sound the depth of a student’s knowledge
    in practical physics, surgery, anatomy, chemistry, materia medica,
    and physiology; but the professors were not very severe in exacting
    accurate answers. Most of them were pleased to express their
    approbation of my replies. We were all previously obliged to give a
    summary account of the manner in which our lives had been spent.

He wrote to his uncle towards the close of his residence in Göttingen
thus:

    I have this morning been upon the back of the Springer. To mount
    this terrestrial Pegasus is considered here something like
    _Summos in re equestri honores_, and is seldom attained without
    long practice. I finish my lessons this week and look back with
    satisfaction on the health and amusement which have repaid
    my time and money. It might, perhaps, be more useful to me to
    take some instruction how to sit in a doctor’s chariot; but it
    is impossible to possess any qualification which one may not
    want, and capabilities are but light burdens. We have another
    fashionable exercise, which I think adequately corresponds to the
    athletic schools of the ancients--vaulting on a wooden horse in
    various positions--and I am much more known among the students for
    excelling in this than for writing Greek, of which they have little
    knowledge and not much more respect.

After being nine months at Göttingen he returned by Brunswick, Gotha,
Weimar, Jena, Dresden, and Berlin to England in February 1797. At
Brunswick he had a favourable opportunity of exhibiting his personal
agility at a court masquerade, where he made his appearance with great
success in the character of Harlequin.

From Berlin he wrote, December 12, to his uncle: ‘You say my Thesis
(for his medical degree, on the conservative forces of the human body)
is caviare to the general; but do not you think people have a greater
respect for anything out of the common way? It seems a fatality that
almost everything I do, or produce, should be termed stiff; in this
case it may arise from my having been obliged to treat the subject in a
short compass.’

Finding, when he came back from Germany, that the College of Physicians
of London required two years’ continuous attendance at one university
for a licence to practise, and shut out from the Fellowship all who
were not graduates at Cambridge or Oxford, he went as fellow-commoner
to Emmanuel College, Cambridge; and the account given by one who was
afterwards tutor of the college brings the Professor of the Royal
Institution most clearly into view.

    When the Master [says the writer] introduced Young to his tutors,
    he jocularly said, ‘I have brought you a pupil qualified to read
    lectures to his tutors.’ This, however, as might be concluded,
    he did not attempt; and the forbearance was mutual: he was never
    required to attend the common duties of the College.

    He had a high character for classical learning before he came to
    Cambridge; but I believe he did not pursue his classical studies
    in the latter part of his life--he seldom spoke of them, but I
    remember his meeting Dr. Parr in the College Combination Room;
    and when the Doctor had made, as was not unusual with him, some
    dogmatical observation on a point of scholarship, Young said
    firmly, ‘Bently, sir, was of a different opinion,’ immediately
    quoting his authority and showing his intimate knowledge of the
    subject. Parr said nothing, but when Dr. Young retired asked who he
    was, and, though he did not seem to have heard his name before, he
    said, ‘A smart young man that.’

    He had a great talent for Greek verse, and on one occasion I
    remember a young lady had written on the walls of the summer-house
    in the garden the following lines:--

        Where are these hours on airy pinions borne,
        That brought to every guiltless wish success,
        When pleasure gladdened each succeeding morn,
        And every evening closed with dreams of peace?

    On the next morning appeared a translation in Greek elegiacs,
    written under them in Young’s beautiful characters.

    It may be here mentioned that when his mode of writing Greek was
    laid before Porson, he said that if he had seen it before he would
    have adopted it.

    The views, objects, character, and arguments of our mathematicians
    were very different then to what they are now, and Young, who was
    certainly beforehand with the world, perceived their defects.
    Certain it is that he looked down upon the science, and would not
    cultivate the acquaintance of any of our philosophers. Wood’s books
    I have heard him speak of with approbation, but Vince he treated
    with contempt, and Vince afterwards returned the compliment.

    He never obtruded his various learning in conversation, but if
    appealed to on the most difficult subject he answered in a quick,
    flippant, derisive way, as if he was speaking of the most easy;
    and in this mode of talking he differed from all the clever men
    that I ever saw. His reply never seemed to cost him an effort,
    and he did not appear to think there was any credit in being able
    to make it. He did not assert any superiority, or seem to suppose
    that he possessed it, but spoke as if he took it for granted that
    we all understood the matter as well as he did. He never spoke in
    praise of any of the writers of the day, even in his own particular
    department, and could not be persuaded to discuss their merits. He
    was never personal; he would speak of knowledge in itself of what
    was known or what might be known, but never of himself or any other
    as having deserved anything, or as likely to do so.

    His language was correct, his utterance rapid, and his sentences,
    though without any affectation, never left unfinished; but his
    words were not those in familiar use, and the arrangement of
    his ideas seldom the same as those he conversed with. He was,
    therefore, worse calculated than any man I ever knew for the
    communication of knowledge.

    I remember his taking me with him to the Royal Institution to hear
    him lecture to a number of silly women and dilettante philosophers.
    But nothing could show less judgment than the method he adopted;
    for he presumed, like many other lecturers and preachers, on the
    knowledge, and not on the ignorance, of his hearers.

    In his manners he had something of the stiffness of the Quaker
    remaining, and, though he never said or did a rude thing, he never
    made use of any of the forms of politeness. Not that he avoided
    them through affectation; his behaviour was natural, without
    timidity, and easy without boldness. He rarely associated with
    the young men of the College, who called him, with a mixture of
    derision and respect, ‘Phenomenon Young,’ but he lived on familiar
    terms with the Fellows in the Common Room. He had few friends of
    his own age or pursuits in the University, and not having been
    introduced to many of those who were distinguished either by their
    situation or talent, he did not seek their society, nor did they
    seek him; they did not like to admit the superiority of anyone in
    _statu pupillari_, and he would not converse with anyone but as an
    equal.

    It is difficult to say how he employed himself; he read little, and
    though he had access to the College and University libraries he was
    seldom seen in them. There were no books piled on his floor, no
    papers scattered on his table, and his room had all the appearance
    of belonging to an idle man.

    I once found him blowing smoke through long tubes, and I afterwards
    saw a representation of the effect in the ‘Transactions of the
    Royal Society,’ to illustrate one of his papers upon sound; but
    he was not in the habit of making experiments. He walked little
    and rode less; but, having learnt to ride the great horse abroad,
    he used to _pace_ round Parker’s Piece on a hackney: he once made
    an attempt to follow the hounds, but a severe fall prevented any
    future exhibition.

    He seldom gave an opinion, and never volunteered one. He never laid
    down the law like other learned doctors, or uttered apophthegms
    or sayings to be remembered. Indeed, like most mathematicians
    (though we hear of abstract mathematics), he never seemed to think
    abstractedly. A philosophical fact, a difficult calculation,
    an ingenious instrument, or a new invention, would engage his
    attention; but he never spoke of morals, of metaphysics, or of
    religion. Of the last I never heard him say a word, nothing in
    favour of any sect, or in opposition to any doctrine; at the same
    time, no sceptical doubt, no loose assertion, no idle scoff, ever
    escaped him.

On July 8, 1799, he sent from Emmanuel College a paper to the Royal
Society, entitled ‘Outlines of Experiments and Inquiries respecting
Sound and Light.’ In it he established the great principle of the
interference of sounds, and he wrote one section on the analogy of
sound and light. In 1800 he referred, in the ‘British Magazine,’ to a
young gentleman of Edinburgh ‘who certainly promises, in the course of
time, to add considerably to our knowledge of the works of nature, but
who had a paper in the “Philosophical Transactions” for 1798, in which
what was new was not true, and what was true was not new.’ Dr. Robison,
in his article on Music in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ criticised
Young’s papers. In Nicholson’s ‘Philosophical Journal’ for 1801
Young answered Robison, and published an extension of the principles
of interferences from sound to light. This was the preliminary
announcement of his views regarding the undulatory theory of light.

His first paper on the ‘Theory of Light and Colours’ was read to the
Royal Society, November 12, 1801. His second paper on this subject was
read July 1, 1802, and his third November 24, 1803. His ‘Syllabus of
Lectures at the Royal Institution,’ dated January 19, 1802, p. 116,
gives the first printed account of his views. He says, ‘Speaking
of Newton’s views, it will be sufficient for our present purpose to
enumerate the respective explanations of the principal phenomena
of light as they are furnished by the Newtonian system, and by the
theory lately submitted to the Royal Society’; and (p. 117) he says,
‘The colours of thin and of thick plates, and the fringes produced by
inflection, are referred by Newton to the very complicated effects
of an undulating medium on the corpuscles of light, but without any
attempt to accommodate the explanations to the measures obtained from
his own accurate and elegant experiments; those of striated surfaces
he has not noticed. But the general law by which all these appearances
are governed may be very easily deduced from the interference of two
coincident undulations which either co-operate or destroy each other in
the same manner as two musical notes produce an alternate intermission
and remission in the beating of an imperfect unison.’

‘The young gentleman of Edinburgh,’ afterwards known as Lord Brougham,
in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ January 1803, criticised the Royal Society
papers.

    It is difficult [he said] to argue with an author whose mind is
    filled with a medium of so fickle and vibratory a nature. Were we
    to take the trouble to refute him, he might tell us, _My opinion
    is changed_, and _I have abandoned that hypothesis, but here is
    another for you_. We demand if the world of science which Newton
    once illuminated is to be as changeable in its modes as the world
    of taste, which is directed by the nod of a silly woman or a
    pampered fop? Has the Royal Society degraded its publications into
    bulletins of new and fashionable theories for the ladies who attend
    the Royal Institution? _Proh pudor!_ Let the Professor continue
    to amuse his audience with an endless variety of such harmless
    trifles, but, in the name of science, let them not find admittance
    into that venerable repository which contains the works of Newton,
    and Boyle, and Cavendish, and Maskelyne, and Herschel.

Young’s most famous experiment of stopping the rays which passed on one
side of a thin card exposed to a sunbeam in a dark chamber Brougham
threw aside, with the assertion that the experiment was inaccurately
made. Dr. Young replied:

    The reviewer has here afforded me an opportunity for a triumph, as
    gratifying as any triumph can be where an enemy is so contemptible.
    Conscious of inability to explain the experiment, too ungenerous to
    confess that inability, and too idle to repeat the experiment, he
    is compelled to advance the supposition that it was incorrect. ‘Let
    him make the experiment, and then deny the result if he can.’

He took no special means to make his answer known, and only one copy
of his reply was sold. The poison sank deep into the public mind, and
Dr. Young’s researches remained comparatively unnoticed until Arago, in
1815, when reporting upon the optical discoveries of Fresnel, showed
that a greater discoverer than Newton had anticipated the researches of
the French philosopher.

Dr. Young gives the following account of his discovery of the general
law of the interference of light:

    It was in May 1801 that I discovered, by reflecting on the
    beautiful experiments of Newton, a law which appears to me to
    account for a greater variety of interesting phenomena, than any
    other optical principle that has yet been made known. I shall
    endeavour to explain this law by a comparison:--Suppose a number of
    equal waves of water to move upon the surface of a stagnant lake,
    with a certain constant velocity, and to enter a narrow channel
    leading out of the lake; suppose, then, another similar cause to
    have existed, another equal series of waves will arrive at the
    same channel with the same velocity, and at the same time with
    the first. Neither series of waves will destroy the other, but
    their effects will be combined. If they enter the channel in such
    a manner that the elevations of one series coincide with those of
    the other, they must together produce a series of greater joint
    elevations; but if the elevations of one series are so situated as
    to correspond to the depressions of the other, they must exactly
    fill up those depressions, and the surface of the water must remain
    smooth; at least I can discover no alternative either from theory
    or from experiment.

    Now I maintain that similar effects take place whenever two
    portions of light are thus mixed, and this I call the general law
    of the interference of light.

Within three months he became Professor at the Royal Institution.

In 1801, on the 6th of July, Count Rumford reported to the managers
that, ‘at the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, he had had a
conversation with Dr. Young respecting his engaging as Professor of
Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution and Editor of the Journals,
together with a general superintendency of the house, and it appearing
from the report of Count Rumford that Dr. Young is a man of abilities
equal to these undertakings, it was resolved that Count Rumford be
authorised to engage Dr. Young in the aforesaid capacities at a salary
of 300_l._ per annum.’[23]

On August 3, at the managers’ meeting (Count Rumford in the chair;
present, Henry Cavendish, R. J. Sullivan; secretary J. P. Auriol),
Count Rumford reported that, agreeably to the authority granted him by
the managers, he had engaged Dr. Thomas Young. A copy of his letter to
Dr. Young, expressing the conditions of his engagement, was at the same
time laid before the committee.

The first number of the Journal had been published by Rumford on April
5, 1800. Dr. Young alone edited the fourth number in the autumn of
1801, the fifth number in December 1801, and, after editing two more
numbers alone, he joined with Davy in the editorship till the Journal
stopped in 1803.

On January 19 Dr. Young printed, at the press of the Royal Institution,
a syllabus of his first course of lectures.

The first part was on Natural Philosophy; the second part on
Hydrodynamics; the third part on Physics; and the fourth part on
Mathematical Elements.

Each had a Greek or Latin motto prefixed, and the following
advertisement to the first part was printed:

    In order to adapt the delivery of these lectures as much as
    possible to the convenience of different persons who may be
    disposed to attend them, they will be divided into three parts
    of nearly equal magnitude, and in great measure independent of
    each other. Two parts will be delivered in succession on Mondays
    and Wednesdays, at two o’clock, and the third on Friday evenings
    at eight. And in future winters, each part will be taken in turn
    for the evening lecture, so that the whole course may be heard at
    either hour. The fourth part contains all the preliminary knowledge
    that is necessary for those who may wish to enter mathematically
    on the various subjects of the lectures; it will save considerable
    pains in consulting other authors, and the most experienced may
    often find it convenient for occasional reference. It was the
    more desirable that something of this kind should be inserted, as
    mathematical arguments will be avoided as much as possible in the
    lectures; and for this reason the demonstrations which occur in the
    syllabus are distinguished from the principal text by a smaller
    type, and a separate place in the page. In a future edition a fifth
    part will probably be added, containing a catalogue of the best
    authors, with references to their works upon each subject. One
    acknowledgment must, however, be inserted here for the extensive
    use that has been made of the valuable articles contributed by
    Professor Robison to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’

 Royal Institution, Albemarle Street,
       January 19, 1802.

The volume forms an octavo of upwards of 250 pages; and it is quite
evidence enough that the matter, no less than the manner of the
lectures of Dr. Young, were more fitted for Cambridge than for the
Royal Institution.

Dr. Paris thus contrasts Davy’s manner with that of Young:

    To judge fairly of the influence of a popular style we should
    acquaint ourselves with the effects of an opposite method, and, if
    an appeal be made to experience, I may very safely abide the issue.
    Dr. Young, whose profound knowledge of the subjects he taught no
    one will venture to question, lectured in the same theatre, and to
    an audience similarly constituted to that which was attracted by
    Davy, but he found the number of his attendants diminish daily, and
    for no other reason than that he adopted too severe and didactic a
    style.

The first afternoon lecture was given by Dr. Young, on Wednesday,
January 20, 1802, and the first evening lecture on Friday, January 22.

At the commencement he gave an introductory view of the nature and
objects of the Royal Institution and of the particular plan of the
lectures. Afterwards he proceeded to the subject of mechanics with the
doctrine of motion.

In the introductory lecture, when dwelling on the objects of the Royal
Institution and the dissemination of elementary knowledge, he said:

    Those who possess the genuine spirit of scientific investigation,
    and who have tasted the pure satisfaction arising from an
    advancement in intellectual acquirements, are content to proceed
    in their researches without inquiring at every step what they gain
    by their newly-discovered lights, and to what practical purposes
    they are applicable; they receive a sufficient gratification from
    the enlargement of their views of the constitution of the universe,
    and experience in the immediate pursuit of knowledge that pleasure
    which others wish to obtain more circuitously by its means. And it
    is one of the principal advantages of a liberal education that it
    creates a susceptibility of an enjoyment so elegant and so rational.

On the subject of the education of females at the Royal Institution he
said:

    The many leisure hours which are at the command of females in the
    superior orders of society may surely be appropriated with greater
    satisfaction to the improvement of the mind, and to the acquisition
    of knowledge, than to such amusements as are only designed for
    facilitating the insipid consumption of superfluous time.

    The Royal Institution may in some degree supply the place of a
    subordinate university to those whose sex or situation in life
    has denied them the advantage of an academical education in the
    national seminaries of learning.

With regard to the special objects of the Institution, the theory of
practical mechanics and of manufactures, he said:

    We must be more practical than academies of science and more
    theoretical than societies for the improvement of arts; while we
    endeavour at the same time to give stability to our proceedings
    by an annual recurrence to the elementary knowledge which is
    subservient to the purposes of both and, as far as we are able,
    apply to practice the newest lights which may from time to time be
    thrown on particular branches of mechanical science. It is thus
    that we may most effectually perform what the idolised sophists of
    antiquity but verbally professed--to bring down philosophy from the
    heavens and to make her an inhabitant of the earth.

    We may venture to affirm that out of every hundred of fancied
    improvements in arts or in machines ninety at least, if not
    ninety-nine, are either old or useless; the object of our
    researches is to enable ourselves to distinguish and to adopt the
    hundredth. But, while we prune the luxuriant shoots of youthful
    invention, we must remember to perform our task with leniency,
    and to show that we wish only to give additional vigour to the
    healthful branches, and not to extirpate the parent plant.

He spoke of the repository of models as being a supplementary room for
apparatus exhibited and described in the lectures, and ‘where a few
other articles may perhaps deserve admission.’ He mentioned the library
and the Journals as free from commercial shackles, but made no mention
of the workshops nor of the education of artisans.

    When all the advantages which may reasonably be expected from this
    Institution shall be fully understood and impartially considered,
    it is to be hoped that few persons of liberal minds will be
    indifferent to its success or unwilling to contribute to it and to
    participate in it.

    To that regulation which forbids the introduction of any
    discussions connected with the learned professions I shall always
    most willingly submit and most punctually attend. It requires the
    study of a considerable portion of a man’s life to qualify him
    to be of use to mankind in any of them, and nothing can be more
    pernicious to individuals or to society than the attempting to
    proceed practically upon an imperfect conception of a few first
    principles only. In physic the wisest can do but little, and the
    ignorant can only do worse than nothing; and anxiously as we are
    disposed to seek whatever relief the learned and experienced may be
    able to afford us, so cautiously ought we to avoid the mischievous
    interference of the half-studied empiric. In politics and in
    religion we need but to look back on the history of kingdoms and
    republics, in order to be aware of the mischiefs which ensue when
    fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

With regard to his prospectus and lectures he said:

    For the sake of those who are not disposed to undertake the labour
    of following with mathematical accuracy all the steps of the
    demonstrations on which the doctrines of the mechanical sciences
    are founded, I shall endeavour to avoid in the whole of this
    course of lectures every intricacy which might be perplexing to
    a beginner, and every argument which is fitter for the closet
    than for a public theatre. Here I propose to support the same
    propositions by experimental proofs, not that I consider such
    proofs as the most conclusive, or as more interesting to a truly
    philosophic mind, than a deduction from general principles, but
    because there is a satisfaction in discovering the coincidence
    of theories with visible effects, and because objects of sense
    are of advantage in assisting the imagination to comprehend,
    and the memory to retain, what in a more abstracted form might
    fail to excite sufficient attention. With regard to the mode of
    delivering these lectures, I shall in general entreat my audience
    to pardon the formality of a written discourse in favour of the
    advantage of a superior degree of order and perspicuity. It would
    unquestionably be desirable that every syllable advanced should
    be rendered perfectly easy and comprehensible even to the most
    uninformed, that the most inattentive might find sufficient variety
    and entertainment in what is submitted to them to excite their
    curiosity, and that in all cases the pleasing, and sometimes even
    the surprising, should be united with the instructive and the
    important. But, whenever there appears to be a real impossibility
    of reconciling these various objects, I shall esteem it better to
    seek for substantial utility than temporary amusement; for if we
    fail of being useful, for want of being sufficiently popular, we
    remain at least respectable; but if we are unsuccessful in our
    attempts to amuse, we immediately appear trifling and contemptible.
    It shall, however, at all times be my endeavour to avoid each
    extreme, and I trust that I shall then only be condemned when I am
    found abstruse from ostentation or uninteresting from supineness.
    The most difficult thing for a teacher is to recollect how much
    it cost himself to learn, and to accommodate his instruction
    to the apprehension of the uninformed. By bearing in mind this
    observation I hope to be able to render my lectures more and more
    intelligible and familiar, not by passing over difficulties, but
    by endeavouring to facilitate the task of overcoming them; and if
    at any time I appear to have failed in this attempt, I shall think
    myself honoured by any subsequent inquiries that my audience may be
    disposed to make.

    The division of the whole course of lectures into three parts
    was originally suggested by the periodical succession in which
    the appointed hours recur, but it appears to be more convenient
    than any other for the regular classification of the subjects. The
    general doctrines of motion and their application to all purposes,
    variable at pleasure, supply the materials of the first two parts,
    of which the one treats of the motions of solid bodies and the
    other of those of fluids, including the theory of light. The
    third part relates to the particular history of the phenomena of
    nature, and of the affections of bodies actually existing in the
    universe independently of the art of man, comprehending astronomy,
    geography, and the doctrine of the properties of matter, and of the
    most general and powerful agents that influence it.

    The synthetical order of proceeding from simple and general
    principles to their more intimate combinations in particular cases,
    is by far the most compendious for conveying information with
    regard to sciences that are at all referable to certain fundamental
    laws. For these laws being once established, each fact, as soon as
    it is known, assumes its place in the system, and is retained in
    the memory by its relation to the rest as a connecting link. In the
    analytical mode, on the contrary, which is absolutely necessary
    for the first investigation of truth, we are obliged to begin by
    collecting a number of insulated circumstances, which lead us back
    by degrees to the knowledge of original principles, but which,
    until we arrive at these principles, are merely a burden to the
    memory. For the phenomena of nature resemble the scattered leaves
    of the Sibylline prophecies; a word only, or a single syllable, is
    written on each leaf, which, when separately considered, conveys
    no instruction to the mind, but when, by the labour of patient
    investigation, every fragment is replaced in its appropriate
    connexion, the whole begins at once to speak a perspicuous and a
    harmonious language.

On July 5 he requested leave of the managers to be absent during the
months of August and September, taking care in the meantime to provide
sufficient matter for the publication of the Journals. He went with
the late Duke of Richmond and his brother to France. At Paris he was
introduced to the First Consul at the Institute.

This year he was appointed foreign secretary of the Royal Society,
and he held this office for the remainder of his life. He refused the
appointment of secretary in 1812, because he thought it would interfere
with his medical reputation.

In 1803, on January 26, the lectures at the Institution recommenced.
Young and Davy each gave weekly two day lectures and one evening
lecture. On Tuesday and Friday the lectures were in the evening.

On February 21 Young proposed his preface[24] to the second volume of
the Journal of the Institution.

This year, in March, he took his first Cambridge medical degree; he did
not receive his degree as Doctor of Medicine until 1808.

On July 4 the engagement of Dr. Young with the Royal Institution
terminated.[25]

On October 3 he was elected a subscriber for life for his services to
the Institution.

On November 6 he wrote to the managers:

                                                     40 Welbeck Street.

    I beg to return you my sincere thanks for the privileges of a life
    subscriber to the Royal Institution, which you have conferred
    upon me. I consider this honour both as a flattering mark of your
    approbation of the unremitting attention which it was my endeavour
    to pay to the objects of the Institution while I was employed in
    its service, and as a substantial advantage in giving me access to
    a collection of books so valuable as that which is now forming in
    it. For this privilege I cannot show my gratitude better than by
    endeavouring to make such use of it as to render the publication
    of my lectures, which I am preparing, more and more worthy of
    the Institution in which they were delivered, and fitted to
    co-operate in its exertions for the advancement and dissemination
    of mechanical knowledge.

After this time Dr. Young took no part in the progress of the Royal
Institution. A very short sketch of the remainder of his life,
therefore, will be given.

When between thirty-one and forty-one years of age he used his utmost
endeavours to succeed in practice in Welbeck Street. In 1804 he
married, and he built a house at Worthing, where he practised in the
autumn for sixteen years. In 1807 he tried to become physician to
the Middlesex Hospital. In this he failed, but he lectured there on
Chemistry, Physiology, Nosology, Practice of Medicine, and Materia
Medica. Many of the lectures formed afterwards part of his work on
‘Medical Literature.’

This year he published his ‘Course of Lectures at the Royal Institution’
in two quarto volumes. The long delay was occasioned partly from the
increase of matter and partly from the difficulty of the engravings.
Through the bankruptcy of his publisher, Johnson, he lost the
1,000_l._ he was to receive for his work. The Dean of Ely says of
these volumes: ‘They form altogether the most comprehensive system of
natural philosophy and of what the French call physics that has ever
been published in this country; equally remarkable for precision and
accuracy in the enunciation of the vast multitude of propositions and
facts which they contain, for the boldness with which they enter upon
the discussion of the most abstruse and difficult subjects, and for
the addition or suggestion of new matter or new views in almost every
department of philosophy.’

In the autumn of 1810 he wrote to Sir Joseph Banks an account of ‘an
agricultural micrometer for measuring the fineness of wool.’ See
Appendix II.

On January 24, 1811, he was elected one of the physicians of St.
George’s Hospital. The contest, he says, was almost unparalleled.
‘The Cabbells were very naturally confident of triumphant success;
parliamentary influence and the natural wish to serve a man who is
likely to be Lord Chancellor made Sir S. Romilly’s nephew, Dr. Roget,
very formidable.’ ‘Mrs. Young has emerged from death to life by the
event of this contest.’ Before and after this time he wrote frequently
for the ‘Quarterly Review,’ to which he contributed eighteen articles.
Perhaps the most celebrated was on the ‘Herculanean Manuscripts,’ of
which eighteen hundred were discovered. ‘It is a consolation to know,’
said a friend, ‘that Brougham, who took advantage of the growing
circulation of the ‘Edinburgh Review’ to desseminate his vile abuse of
you, and Jeffery, who permitted him to do so, should be condemned to
hear your praises on all sides, and to feel that the publication in
which they are engaged is suffering, and is likely to suffer, by your
means.’

In 1814 he was asked to contribute to the new supplement of the
‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ but he declined, because ‘it was necessary
to abstain as much as possible from appearing before the public as an
author in any department of science not immediately medical.’

During the next ten years of Dr. Young’s life the failure of his
efforts to succeed as a physician led him to the highest literary
success that could be attained.

In 1814 he began his ‘Hieroglyphical Researches,’ and throughout the
summer and autumn he worked at the Rosetta Stone.

At the end of the year he wrote to Mr. Hudson Gurney, who had got him
Champollion’s book--‘Egypt under the Pharaohs:’ ‘I have only spent
literally five minutes in looking over Champollion, turning by means of
the index to the parts where he has quoted the inscription of Rosetta.
He follows Akerblad (a Swedish attaché at Paris, a good classical and
first-rate Coptic scholar, who had written a letter on this stone to
Silvestre de Sacy) blindly, with scarcely any acknowledgment. But he
has certainly picked out the sense of a few passages in the inscription
by means of Akerblad’s investigations, although in four or five Coptic
words which he pretends to have found in it he is wrong in all but
one, and that is a very short and a very obvious one. My translation
is printed; it is anonymous, and must for some time remain so, but
everybody whose approbation is worth having will know the author.’ In
the summer of this year Arago and Gay-Lussac visited him at Worthing.
Young then learned what Fresnel was doing on the diffraction of light,
and they saw what Young had published in his lectures in 1807.

In 1816 he proposed to the editor of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’
to write for him. He says: ‘I would also suggest (in addition to
sound) alphabet, annuities, attraction, capillary action, cohesion,
colour, dew, Egypt, eye, forms, friction, halo, hieroglyphics,
hydraulics, motion, resistance, ship, strength, tides, and waves.
Anything of a medical nature which you might think desirable would
of course be doubly so to me. Nor should I be difficult with respect
to any other subject that might occur to you. L’alti non temo, e
l’umili non sdegno.’ He contributed sixty-three articles; forty-six
were biographical. This year he published his ‘Translation of the
Hieroglyphics’ with a correspondence with De Sacy and Akerblad.

In 1818 he wrote the article ‘Egypt’ for the Encyclopædia. ‘It was
pronounced to be the greatest effort of scholarship and ingenuity of
which modern literature could boast; yet it was only a popular and
superficial sketch of the vast mass of materials which his diligence
had collected and his genius had interpreted.’

He was this year appointed superintendent of the ‘Nautical Almanac’
and secretary of the Board of Longitude, which was established to
relieve the Astronomer Royal from all scientific questions regarding
the interests of navigation. He immediately set himself to correct all
the errors of the Almanac that endangered the safety of ships, but,
considering it as intended for nautical and not astronomical use, he
resisted the changes which practical astronomers strongly urged on him
and on the Government.

In 1822 he wrote to Mr. Gurney from Paris:

    In my own pursuits I have found abundance of novelty to interest
    me, both the scientific and literary departments of the Institute
    happening at this moment to be particularly engaged with my
    investigations, and a Frenchman having in each of them been engaged
    in going over my own ground without being fully acquainted with
    what I had done, and having had to exclaim, ‘Pereant qui ante nos
    nostra dixerunt.’ Fresnel, a young mathematician of the civil
    engineers, has really been doing some good things in the extension
    and application of my theory of light, and Champollion, the author
    of the book you brought over, has been working still harder upon
    the Egyptian characters. He devotes his whole time to the pursuit,
    and he has been wonderfully successful in some of the documents
    which he has obtained.

    How far he will acknowledge everything which he has either borrowed
    or might have borrowed from me, I am not quite confident, but the
    world will be sure to remark que c’est le premier pas qui coûte,
    though the proverb is less true in this case than in most others,
    for here every step is laborious.

The best comparative estimate of the value of the work of Young and
Fresnel on light was given by Sir John Herschel, in 1827, at the end
of his view of the undulating theory of light in the ‘Encyclopædia
Metropolitana’:

    Such is the beautiful theory of Fresnel and Young, for we must not,
    in our regard for one great name, forget the justice which is
    due to the other; and to separate them, and to assign to each his
    share, would be as impracticable as invidious, so intimately are
    they blended together throughout every part of this system--early,
    acute, and pregnant suggestion characterising the one, and maturity
    of thought, fulness of systematic development, and decisive
    experimental illustration equally distinguishing the other.

During the last five years of Dr. Young’s life, when he was between
fifty-one and fifty-six years old, he ceased to be a practising
physician, and occupied himself with science and literature only.

In 1827, at the anniversary of the Royal Society, after the resignation
of the presidency by Sir Humphry Davy, the claims of Dr. Young were too
strong to be altogether neglected.

Writing to his sister he says:

    I find there has been pretty general conversation about making
    me President of the Royal Society, and I really think if I were
    foolish enough to wish for the office, I am at this _moment_
    popular enough to obtain it; but you well know that nothing is
    further from my wishes.

Davies Gilbert was chosen. ‘I told him,’ says Young, ‘that he had not
quite enough of the devil in him, that Sir Joseph Banks should have
left his _eyebrows_ to go with his cocked hat, if he had left the
Society nothing else.’

In the summer of 1828 he visited Paris for the last time on his way to
Geneva. He was then one of the eight foreign associates of the Academy.
To Mr. Gurney he wrote:

    My principal object was Champollion, and with him I have been
    completely successful as far as I wanted his _assistance_, for, to
    say the truth, our conferences have not been very gratifying to my
    _vanity_. He has done so much more and so much better than I had
    any reason to believe he would or could have done, and, as he feels
    his own importance more, he feels less occasion to be tenacious of
    any trifling claims which may justly be denied him, and in this
    spirit he has borne my criticisms with perfect good humour, though
    Arago has charged me with some degree of undue severity, and wanted
    to pass the matter over as not having been published as mine; but
    to this I could not consent: and, supposing that Champollion might
    have been unacquainted with the remarks, I thought it a matter of
    conscience to carry them to him this morning, before I allowed him
    to continue his profuse liberality in furnishing me with more than
    I want.

From Geneva Young sent Arago, at his request, a statement of his
claims. He gave full justice to Champollion. But when Arago, a few
years later, read his éloge of Young, he still said that Young’s
principle of phonetisation of the hieroglyphics was mixed with error,
chiefly by making symbols stand for words and syllables, instead of for
letters only. He also denied Young’s knowledge of two or more signs for
the same letter.

His health up to this time, with the exception before mentioned, had
been perfect. During this summer excursion he was most easily fatigued,
and appeared to age rapidly.

In a letter written soon after his return he says:

    As for myself, I am perfectly content with the life I lead--walking
    on business of routine every day from eleven to two, the rest
    of the day sitting over my hieroglyphics, or my mathematics,
    and conversing in my library with people beyond the Alps or the
    Mediterranean. I have lost all ambition for a more bustling life,
    or more active scenes, and I believe I am as happy as a person so
    old in _soul_ is capable of being. In mental faculties I am not
    yet old, and I amuse myself almost daily with some petty bonnes
    fortunes among some of the nine sisters. I hear nothing whatever
    from the Admiralty, and so much the better, except receiving
    300_l._ a year instead of four. As for Croker, I never believe
    a word of his going out, and he may remain in for aught I care,
    and be Lord Melville’s master if he chooses; for the stronger of
    two heads will generally direct the weaker in the long run. I am
    deep in the value of life, and I really begin to think that people
    do live longer than was formerly supposed, though not in the
    extravagant degree that was asserted.

In 1828, at the Royal Society, when the President, Davies Gilbert,
announced Wollaston’s donation of 2,000_l._ for the promotion of
scientific research and his own gift of 1,000_l._, Young, as senior
officer, returned thanks for the Society. He tells Mr. Gurney, ‘I
summoned up courage to take the first opportunity of muttering out,
“Mr. President, a gentleman on my right says he never heard me make a
speech.”’

In January 1829 he wrote:

    Our new Committee of Longitude is settled, at least for the
    present, though the radical abuse of the ‘Nautical Almanac’ is
    likely to continue; but, fortunately for my security, they have
    put the Admiralty and the ‘Nautical Almanac’ together; so they may
    do their worst. Croker has appointed Sabine and Faraday and me to
    constitute a scientific committee to advise the Admiralty, which
    was all that the Board of Longitude would do, and it is better that
    things should be called by their right names.

Immediately a memorial was sent to the Prime Minister, the Duke of
Wellington, against the ‘Nautical Almanac.’ A report on this paper was
made by Dr. Young in February.

    Though his health was at this time rapidly declining, his
    observations were written with his usual precision and ability,
    giving way in one instance only to feelings of personal resentment,
    if a stronger term may not be used, which had been provoked by
    attacks of unusual violence and bitterness. It is hardly necessary
    to add that he adhered substantially to the views which he had
    previously maintained. His death, which took place on May 10, put
    an end to the contest.

The life of Dr. Young began, continued, and ended strangely. Throughout
he was a phenomenon. His course was very different from what might have
been expected and quite opposed to that which would have been most
suited to him.

He was the great physicist of his time, and yet ‘at no period of his
life was he fond of repeating experiments or even of originating new
ones. He considered that, however necessary to the advancement of
science, they demanded a great sacrifice of time; and that, when a fact
was once established, that time was better employed in considering the
purposes to which it might be applied or the principles which it might
tend to elucidate.’ He was kind by nature and a Quaker by education,
and yet he was always at war for his discoveries. He never was free
from a scientific or literary controversy. As a professor at the Royal
Institution, as a hospital physician at St. George’s, and still more
as a practitioner of medicine in London and Worthing, his powers were
entirely misdirected. With a culture like that of Newton what noble
fruit might not Young have brought forth! The work he did for science
was undervalued during his life; nevertheless he was content; and
nothing shows that he foresaw or wished for that great reputation which
has gradually gathered round his name. Two years before his death,
writing to his sister-in-law regarding the praise which Herschel had
given him in his ‘Treatise on Light,’ he said:

    I think he has divided the prize very fairly, and I dare say poor
    Fresnel, if he had lived, would have preferred his share of the
    honour as much as I do mine. It was _before I knew you_ that mine
    was earned, and acute suggestion was then--and indeed always--more
    in the line of my ambition than experimental illustration. But
    surely one that is conscious that such things may be said with
    some truth (or who imagines it) has no further temptation to be
    President of the Royal Society even if he could.

His character was drawn by Sir Humphry Davy thus: ‘A man of universal
erudition and almost universal accomplishments. Had he limited himself
to any one department of knowledge he must have been first in that
department. But as a mathematician, a scholar, and hieroglyphist he
was eminent; and he knew so much that it is difficult to say what he
did not know. He was a most amiable and good-tempered man; too fond,
perhaps, of the society of persons of rank for a true philosopher.’

Mr. Davies Gilbert, the President of the Royal Society, in his speech
from the chair on the death of Young, said:

    He came into the world with a confidence in his own talents,
    growing out of an expectation of excellence entertained in common
    by all his friends, which expectation was more than realised in
    the progress of his future life. The multiplied objects which he
    pursued were carried to such an extent, that each might have been
    supposed to have exclusively occupied the full powers of his mind;
    knowledge in the abstract, the most enlarged generalisations, and
    the most minute and intricate details were equally effected by
    him; but he had most pleasure in that which appeared to be most
    difficult of investigation. The example is only to be followed by
    those of equal perseverance.

CHAPTER V.

THE PROGRESS OF THE INSTITUTION TO THE TIME OF FARADAY.

1804 to 1814.

In 1804 the change in the original management and objects of the Royal
Institution was completed. The place which Rumford, with the help of
Sir Joseph Banks, had held was taken by Mr. Bernard, who was supported
by Sir John Hippesley. He knew nothing of science but much of the
world, and his aim for the Institution can be given in his own words.
‘The object has been great and important, not less than that of giving
fashion to science.’

In the spring the report of the visitors reflected the picture of Mr.
Bernard’s management, but the shadow of future greatness was there.
Mention was made of the intention to carry on original inquiries upon
new objects of science.

The visitors said:

    There is every reason to suppose that a general interest in favour
    of the establishment has been created among the inhabitants of the
    metropolis.

    The laboratory has been enlarged by the old workshop; some of the
    space has been filled up with seats as a theatre for those who
    attend the experiments of research; an arched opening is being
    made in the wall in front of the table of the laboratory. This
    part of the establishment is now found to answer very completely
    the end of enabling the Professor of Chemistry and his assistants
    to prepare materials for the chemical lectures, and to carry on
    original inquiries upon new objects of science. A collection of
    minerals has been formed of more than 3,000 specimens, principally
    from presents. Great progress has been made in the library in the
    old lecture room; the library of the late Thomas Astle, Esq.,
    has been purchased for 1,000 guineas. It contains a variety of
    scarce and valuable books in ancient British history, topography,
    and antiquities. It will soon be opened. The model room has been
    rearranged, and the number of models slightly increased, but the
    adequate supply of useful models still continues a desideratum
    in our establishment, and seems to call for every exertion, as
    forming so interesting a part of the original prospectus of the
    Institution. The printing press has been removed; its utility has
    not been found adequate to its expense. At the same time it has
    occupied a space in the upper story which may hereafter be employed
    to greater advantage.

    The number and variety of the public lectures have been
    advantageous.

    The great improvements made during the year offer every reasonable
    prospect of increased advantage and extended utility.

In January Mr. Bernard was full of energy for the lectures. To the
managers he said he had reason to flatter himself that Mr. Fletcher,
of Cecil Street, would lecture on Natural Philosophy (but Mr. Fletcher
could not find room for his course, as Mr. Allen was engaged on the
same subject). Mr. Crowe would lecture on History; Dr. Stanger on
Physiology, and give another course on Medicine; Dr. James Smith on
Botany; John Opie on Painting; Astley Cooper on Comparative Anatomy
(but he did not give the lectures). All these courses were not to
cost 150_l._, if in two or three instances the privileges of a life
subscriber were granted. Davy was asked to report on the means of
escape in case of fire; on lighting the theatre; and whether a plan
could be formed for the regular publication of the Journal.

In February the printing office was discontinued and the Journals were
given up. Mr. Savage bought the printing press and type and removed
them in May, and became printer to the Royal Institution on his own
account.

In April all Sir Guy Carleton’s manuscripts on the American War,
including a copy of the treaty of peace between England and America,
signed by Benjamin Franklin, were given to the library. The bye-laws
regarding the library of reference were made less strict. In May Mr.
Bernard announced his arrangements for the autumn and spring lectures.

Davy agreed to give three courses; the Rev. Sydney Smith two courses
of ten lectures each on Moral Philosophy, one from November 10 to
January 30 and the other from February 20 to May 20, for 50_l._ and the
compliment of a life admission to him and Mrs. Smith. Mr. Fletcher was
to give twenty-four lectures on Natural Philosophy; Mr. Landseer, three
lectures on Engraving at eight o’clock on Monday evenings; Dr. Crotch,
six lectures on Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Two letters written at this time by Sir Joseph Banks to Count Rumford
at Paris give some insight into the divisions among the managers,
the causes of disagreement, and the different motives that had
been working in the Institution almost from its commencement. It is
clear that Count Rumford and Sir Joseph Banks especially desired the
promotion of scientific knowledge among the poor and the rich, and that
Mr. Bernard and Sir John Hippesley believed that the success of the
Institution depended upon fashionable popularity. For the first three
years the advancement of scientific knowledge was the chief object of
the Institution; in the fourth and fifth years this object gave way to
that of fashionable popularity, which was sought for until the original
investigations of Davy again made science, in the noble function of new
discovery, the life of the Royal Institution.

                  SIR JOSEPH BANKS TO COUNT RUMFORD.

                                                            April 1804.

    I am very glad to find by your letter that you are well and happy
    where you now are. In truth, you seem so much so that your friends
    here begin to suppose you will take root in the soil where you
    now grow. I cannot, however, disguise that your not appearing in
    England last year, as I had reason to expect you would have done,
    has been a material disappointment to me and a great detriment to
    the Royal Institution.

    It is now entirely in the hands of the profane. I have declared
    my dissatisfaction at the mode in which it is carried on and my
    resolution not to attend in future. Had my health and spirits not
    failed me, I could have kept matters in their proper level, but,
    sick, alone, and unsupported, I have given up what cannot now
    easily be recovered.

    The Royal Society, however, goes on extremely well; our members are
    industrious, especially Mr. Hatchett, whose chemical discoveries
    do him every day more and more credit. We shall not now, I trust,
    go astray, as I think we have not one attending member who is at
    all addicted to politics.

    All our subordinate societies also seem to prosper, and labour
    diligently in their respective departments; we have newly formed
    one for the improvement of horticulture, which promises to become
    very numerous. I send you a book on the subject of heat, &c.
    (Leslie), which certainly contains many interesting experiments and
    much bad reasoning. Upon the whole, however, it appears to me that
    he will not be an unlikely candidate for your medal of the next
    year. Pray let me have your opinion of the subject; and, if you
    disapprove of him, who do you think a more successful promoter of
    the science you wish to encourage?

    I send your medals by Mr. ----. This is the first opportunity I
    have had, or you would sooner have received them. [These were the
    first Rumford medals, awarded to Rumford himself.]

                  SIR JOSEPH BANKS TO COUNT RUMFORD.

                                             Soho Square, June 6, 1804.

    As it does not prove convenient to Mr. Livingstone to take with
    him the Society’s transactions or the observations of the Royal
    Observatory, which I wished to have sent, I am obliged to confine
    myself to the sending the enclosed books--‘Leslie on Heat’ for your
    acceptance, the ‘Nautical Almanac’ for M. Delambre--and the medals
    which the Royal Society decreed to you a year and a half ago.

    On the subject of the first I much wish for your opinion whether
    the author may be considered a proper person to receive your medal
    next year; and, if not, who you think a more deserving candidate?

    Be so good as to deliver the ‘Nautical Almanac’ to M. Delambre
    with my best regards, and to assure the Institute that I shall
    never forget the various favours I have in my literary character
    received from them or those which literary people, my friends, have
    received from them on my account. I honour and respect them both
    as a body and as individuals more than ever, and look forward with
    earnest wishes for the time when I may again communicate with them
    freely, as I once had the happiness of doing. I have received their
    medallic diplomas for Mr. Cavendish, Dr. Maskelyne, Dr. Herschel,
    and myself, and will distribute them without delay. Pray remind
    them, however, that Mr. James Forbes, F.R.S., is still a prisoner
    among them; though an old man, possibly he does not wish to return
    home, as his daughter has married into a French family. Possibly
    other insurmountable obstacles have prevented his release, as the
    Institute have so nobly and handsomely proved their wish that the
    Fellows of the Royal Society should be restored to their pursuits
    of science.

    From the tone of your letter it appears to me that you are likely
    to take root in the soil in which you now grow. I am sorry that you
    did not return to England, as you gave me every reason to expect
    you would, last year. Your house at Brompton is an inadequate
    pledge of your future residence here, as experience has confirmed
    me in believing.

    In the meantime the Institution has irrevocably fallen into the
    hands of the enemy, and is now perverted to a hundred uses for
    which you and I never intended it. I could have successfully
    resisted their innovations had you been here, but, alone,
    unsupported, and this year confined to my house for three months
    by disease (gout), my spirit was too much broken to admit of
    my engaging singly with the host of H.’s and B.’s[26] who had
    possession of the fortress. Adieu, then, Institution! I have long
    ago declared my intention of attending no more.

    You desire that Davy may have your papers for insertion in the
    Journals. Alas! the Journals have ceased for more than a year, and
    the printing office is removed from the house of the Institution.
    Your papers, however, shall be communicated to him, as they have
    already been to Sir Charles Blagden.

During this year a series of lectures was begun at the Institution by
the Rev. Sydney Smith, which for fashionable attraction surpassed any
courses that have ever been delivered there.

Mr. Horner thus wrote to Mr. J. A. Murray:

                                         The Temple, November 15, 1804.

    I suppose you know that Smith begins to lecture on Moral Philosophy
    next Saturday at the Royal Institution? You would be amused to hear
    the account he gives of his own qualifications for the task and
    his mode of manufacturing philosophy; he will do the thing very
    cleverly, I have little doubt, as to general manner, and he is
    sufficiently aware of all the forbearances to be observed. Profound
    lectures on metaphysics would be unsuitable to the place; he may
    do some good if he makes the subject amusing. He will contribute,
    like his other associates of the Institution, to make the real
    blue-stockings a little more disagreeable than ever and sensible
    women a little more sensible. It seems to me, for the interest
    of general conversation, that these subjects should not be quite
    so unknown to them as to be thought unintelligible pedantry if
    mentioned in their company; and the impertinence of those who
    set up as adepts is the price we must pay for this important
    acquisition. Your chemists and metaphysicians in petticoats are
    altogether out of nature--that is, when they make a trade or
    distinction of such pursuits--but when they take a little general
    learning as an accomplishment they keep it in very tolerable order.
    Tell me if I take this rightly. I know it is not well settled, and
    men of letters usually lean too much on one side. Good afternoon.

Mr. Horner wrote another letter to Mr. Thomas Thompson:

                                         The Temple, November 21, 1804.

    Our friend Sydney gave his first lecture on Saturday. I was not
    there, but all the accounts I have collected from different sorts
    of people agree in its favour, and that it took extremely well.

During the second course Mr. Horner wrote to Lady Mackintosh at Bombay:

                                            The Temple, April 18, 1805.

    We have all this winter had but two topics of conversation--Young
    Roscius and the lectures of the Right Reverend our Bishop of
    Mickleham.[27] His Lordship’s success has been beyond all possible
    conjecture--from six to eight hundred hearers; not a seat to be
    found, even if you go half-an-hour before the time. Nobody else,
    to be sure, could have executed such an undertaking with the least
    chance of this sort of success; for who else could make such a
    mixture of odd paradox, quaint fun, manly sense, liberal opinion,
    striking language? You must have had more than enough of the other
    great delight of the public--the Roscius. As it is the propensity
    of all superior minds to admire, I am sorry that this occasion has
    added another to my own proofs that I must place myself on a very
    low form; there never was such a rage except that for Sydney.

In the ‘Life of Sydney Smith’ Lady Holland mentions that Mr. Bernard
obtained these lectures for the Institution. She says:

    He obtained considerable increase of reputation by a course of
    lectures on Moral Philosophy, which Sir Thomas Bernard, who
    interested himself much about the Royal Institution, proposed to
    him to give. He continued to lecture for three successive years.

On May 17, 1804, a new proposal was made for the advancement of science
at the Royal Institution. A special meeting of the managers and
visitors was held, and an address to the proprietors and subscribers
was read and approved, and ordered to be circulated, respecting the
formation of a mineralogical collection and an assay office on a large
scale for the improvement of mineralogy and metallurgy.

The Hon. G. F. Greville, Sir J. St. Aubyn, Sir A. Hume, proposed to
raise a fund of 4,000_l._ to arrange a collection in a manner which
should exhibit all the interesting series of mineralogical facts; and
they proposed to establish an assay office, to be exclusively employed
for the advancement of mineralogy and metallurgy. They thought that the
whole time of a mineralogist of considerable talent would be employed;
and that the continued attention of a chemist of approved abilities
would be required.

It was proposed that a mineralogical institution like the library
institution should be united to the Royal Institution.

The address relating to the formation of this economic museum ended
thus: ‘The proprietors and subscribers may be assured that the managers
and visitors will never consider their labours as finished, while there
remains any effort to be made for the diffusion and useful application
of _practical science_ in this country. They would indeed have deemed
themselves extremely culpable if there had been any delay or neglect
on their part in submitting to the consideration of their members,
and of the public, a plan which promises essentially to promote the
prosperity of the Royal Institution, and at the same time to contribute
to the extension of useful science and to the increase of our national
resources.’

A plan was drawn up. There were to be hereditary patrons, paying
100_l._ and upwards, and patrons for life, paying 50_l._, and
subscribers of smaller sums might unite when they had subscribed sixty
guineas and select one of themselves as patron. The patrons were to
elect a chairman, a deputy-chairman, a treasurer and a secretary,
committees and sub-committees.

In 1804 Lord Dartmouth gave 200_l._ worth of minerals, and Mr. Hatchett
gave the cases for them.

In 1805 Davy gave his own collection of minerals, valued at 100 guineas.

The committee rooms were made into the mineral room, and 250_l._ was
spent in fitting it up. Davy went to Wales and Ireland to collect
minerals, and the following year he again went to the west and north
of Ireland, and took with him William Payne, the boy belonging to the
laboratory.

At the end of 1805 the rooms for the mineralogical collection were
ready, and the arrangement of the mineralogical and geological
specimens was made under the directions of Mr. Davy. The minerals
and fossils were removed from the model room, where they had been
deposited, and in consequence the models were arranged to more
advantage.

On June 9, 1806, a report was made by Mr. Bernard on the total failure
of the subscriptions to the mineralogical collection. Thereupon the
managers resolved that the three original proposers should receive back
their subscriptions, and that thanks should be given to them ‘for the
benefits which they had conferred upon the Institution by suggesting
the idea of a mineralogical collection, and by showing that it will
be practicable to establish and to support it out of the funds of the
Institution.’

In their answer the proposers said:

    We concur in your opinion that the space allotted for minerals and
    the plan pursued by the managers, according to the funds which the
    Institution can supply, will be found equal to the illustration of
    very interesting courses of mineralogy and geology, and it is bare
    justice to Mr. Davy to state that his activity and intelligence in
    bringing to notice the important facts of the natural history of
    Great Britain and Ireland, with the aid of the managers to make his
    assays keep pace with his discoveries, will ensure much credit to
    the Royal Institution and great benefit to the public.

    We are still of opinion that, when the importance of a general
    collection and of a laboratory of assay in constant activity is
    felt as it ought to be, the influence of the Royal Institution
    will not be exerted in vain. The plan, which the managers have
    limited to the present scale of their building and to the funds of
    their Institution, has obtained general approbation. Its success
    will give a bias to public opinion favourable to the progress of
    mineralogy and chemistry, and enable the managers at a future
    time to extend their buildings, establishments, and plan to the
    scale which unsuccessfully we ventured to suggest to be better
    proportioned to their importance.

The original proposal was too scientific and not sufficiently
fashionable to agree with the management of Mr. Bernard at this time.

During this year another proposal was made for the good of science at
the Institution. This is to be seen in a letter from Mr. Davy to Mr.
Bernard, written on June 2:

    DEAR SIR,--I have reflected on our conversation at Brighthelmstone
    with regard to the utility of some new arrangements that may be
    made in the chemical department of the Royal Institution, and I
    still entertain the same opinions on the subject.

    In all universities and places of public scientific instruction it
    is, I believe, usual for the professors or teachers to admit into
    their laboratories a certain number of private or operating pupils,
    who give their aid in the processes that are carried on, and at
    the same time gain practical information and are of use to the
    experimenter. I have several times been applied to by subscribers
    to the Royal Institution who wished to assist in the experiments
    carried on in the laboratory; but, as I have had no instructions
    on this point from the managers, I have been unable to give them
    permission. I do not think any inconvenience could arise from the
    admission of private pupils in the chemical department of the
    Institution. Such a plan would gratify many persons, would tend
    to facilitate the execution of such operations as are carried on,
    and would coincide with the ends of the establishment without
    burthening it with any new expense. If you should think that the
    idea would not be disagreeable to the managers, perhaps you will
    have the goodness to mention it on Monday.

    I enclose a sketch of some regulations for Mr. Sadler and for
    myself; perhaps similar ones or better ones might be framed for the
    other persons in the service of the Institution.

    I have been thinking upon the lectures of which you furnished the
    title, and I shall be very glad to give them at the end of the next
    season.

    I am, dear Sir, with the warmest respect, your obliged and grateful

                                                               H. DAVY.

It was resolved by the managers ‘that Mr. Davy have permission to admit
six subscribers as private pupils in the laboratory in the manner
proposed in his letter.’ The regulations drawn up by Mr. Davy were
read, as well as a draft of the duties of the Professor of Chemistry
and the experimental operator at the Institution.

In 1805 the endeavour of Mr. Bernard to make the Royal Institution
fashionable was persevered in with zeal and success. Early in the
spring he announced eighteen courses of lectures for the following
autumn and spring. The visitors reported that ‘the success of the
Royal Institution was a matter of public notoriety,’ that ‘all the
debts which were owing from the Institution have been paid, and there
is every prospect of future surplus. The investments directed by the
bye-laws have been continued; these amount to 1,334_l._ 4_s._ The
engagement of lecturers of talent and reputation has given increased
interest and effect to the Institution, and with little additional
expense. Even if otherwise, no contraction of scale ought to be
admitted in this most interesting part of the Institution, which
furnishes not only an abundant source of amusement, but also the solid
materials of instruction and improvement.’

‘Though the mineral collection has not proceeded with the same
rapidity of success as the library of reference, yet a considerable
advance has been made. The subscriptions and the minerals presented
already amount to the value of about 1,500_l._ The managers have
laudably given up their board and committee rooms in order to prepare
suitable apartments for the collection, and have resolved to hold
their committees in the library on the days when it is not open to
subscribers in general. Notice has been given that the laboratory of
assay is ready for that useful and essential part of the plan the
analysis of ores and mineral substances.’

The report said that, ‘with a view to the permanent success of the
Institution, as the popularity of the lectures was so much increased,
the terms of subscription were altered and a supplementary list was
made of ladies subscribing three guineas and gentlemen six guineas.’
The ordinary subscription being two guineas and four guineas, the
ladies and unmarried daughters of proprietors were required to
subscribe only one guinea, ‘as, by relinquishing the transferable
right of one of their tickets, they had contributed to the success of
the plans which the managers had formed for the improvement of the
Institution.’

The visitors ended thus: ‘The great degree of improvement and
advancement under the auspices of the present managers is shown by
this report relating to the accommodation and convenience of those who
attend the Institution, instead of dwelling upon the means by which the
members might be increased.’

The number of proprietors at this time was four hundred, and the
qualification was raised to one hundred and fifty guineas.

A committee of proprietors, managers, and visitors was appointed to
revise the bye-laws.

The Rev. Sydney Smith began his second course of lectures on March 23.

He thus wrote in April to Francis Jefferey, Esq.:

                                            Doughty Street, April 1805.

    My lectures are just now at such an absurd pitch of celebrity that
    I must lose a good deal of reputation before the public settles
    into a just equilibrium respecting them. I am most heartily ashamed
    of my own fame, because I am conscious I do not deserve it, and
    that the moment men of sense are provoked by the clamour to look
    into my claims it will be at an end.

Mr. Landseer gave three lectures on Engraving. From some personal
allusions the managers resolved ‘that it is their earnest wish that no
allusion of a personal nature be ever offered on any account at the
lectures of the Institution.’ The next year Mr. Landseer was engaged
to give six lectures on Engraving, including the substance of those
already given, on the same terms as those of the preceding year. In
the announcement of the engagement it was said, ‘He will endeavour to
add a few lectures of a more general nature on the Philosophy of Art.’
The lectures were given early in 1806, and on March 17, after the
fourth lecture, the minutes of the managers state that Mr. Landseer
was called in and informed that the managers understood that his two
last lectures, particularly the last, were exceptionable from the
personal allusions they contained, and, he having admitted that they
were intended as personal allusions, although introduced with a view to
vindicate and support the art, and it appearing that Mr. Landseer had
before introduced personal allusions in his lectures, notwithstanding
notice last season from the managers, it was resolved ‘that Mr.
Landseer be informed that it is with great regret that the managers
feel themselves obliged to direct that his lectures be discontinued.’
The steward was ordered to pay Mr. Landseer 30_l._, the sum he was to
receive for his course of lectures.

On March 25 Mr. Bernard reported to the managers ‘that Mr. Davy will
give three courses of lectures in the ensuing season--the first in
November, December, and January, upon that part of Practical Chemistry
that relates to the Experimental History of Water, the Atmospheric
Heat, and Electricity; the second in February and March next, upon the
Chemical History of Water and the Atmosphere; and the third in April
and May, upon the Modern History of Science.’

On April 1 the clock in the gallery was ordered.

Mr. Dibden agreed to give ten or twelve lectures on the Use and
Progress of English Literature.

At the first meeting in May the following professors were proposed for
election at the meeting of managers: Professor of Chemistry, Mr. Davy;
Natural Philosophy, Mr. Allen; Poetry, Rev. W. Crowe; Belles Lettres,
Rev. John Hewlett; and Moral Philosophy, the Rev. Sydney Smith.

The proprietorship was raised to 150 guineas, and at the end of the
year to 200 guineas. The mineralogical room was fitted up for the
minerals. The laboratory was opened for analyses for persons paying
10_l._ at most. Ventilators were placed in the roof and under the
gallery of the theatre. It was impossible to keep out the wet because
of the settlement in the foundations, so the roof was new-leaded; and
Mr. Soane, the architect, advised that the roof should be examined
twice yearly.

On May 29 Mr. Bernard reported to the managers ‘that he had been
requested by Sir Francis Baring to inform them that a plan similar to
that of the Royal Institution was intended to be adopted in London,
with a view to the same laudable and beneficial effects as have been
produced with such extraordinary success in Westminster under the
auspices of the managers of the Royal Institution; that the gentlemen
who had taken the active part in the proposed establishment had no
other object in view but that of promoting, concurrently with the
Royal Institution, the prevalence of science and literature in the
metropolis, and in this they have flattered themselves that they shall
receive the approbation and assistance of the managers of the Royal
Institution.’ It was resolved unanimously ‘that Sir Francis Baring be
informed that the managers view with great satisfaction the exertions
of him and the other gentlemen to extend the beneficial effects of
science and literature in the metropolis, and that the managers will be
ready to give them any aid and assistance which they can with propriety
in the execution of their plan, conceiving as they do that the two
institutions will not interfere with each other, but will rather
increase the public interest in favour of their objects and promote the
success of both by the mutual assistance and beneficial co-operation
which they may be enabled to render to each other.’

In October Sir Francis Baring invited Sir Joseph Banks to become a
vice-president. This he declined by a letter written on October 14. He,
however, expressed his wish to purchase a share in the Institution. He
said:

    I confess, however, I do not at present foresee the period at which
    the utility of your new Institution is likely to commence. The
    Royal Society was set on foot by a number of persons well versed
    in those matters which its constitution was intended to promote.
    The Royal Institution was at first wholly under the direction of
    persons entirely addicted to science, and has not improved since
    the management of it has passed into other hands. The Athenæum at
    Liverpool has been formed, I may say, wholly under the immediate
    superintendence of Mr. Roscow and Dr. Currie. All this I can
    understand, but how the very worthy and most respectable men you at
    present look up to as managers of your new Institution will be able
    to guide it into the paths of science and literature is not to me
    quite so evident as I sincerely wish it to be.

In 1806 Sir James Mackintosh, writing from India to his friend Mr.
Sharp, also shows how fashion, rather than science, had become the
characteristic of the Royal Institution.

    Your account of the London Institution has delighted and tantalised
    me. I wish I were a professor! But the printed paper is too general
    to admit of any discussion. You do not say how many and who are
    to be professors. It may surely be a little more solid than the
    fashionable nerves of Albemarle Street could endure without ceasing
    to be popular.

In 1806 ‘the attempt to make the Institution fashionable’ by means of
the number and quality of the lectures seemed to attain the success
that Mr. Bernard desired. There was an increase of nearly 3,000_l._ in
proprietors’ shares and in subscriptions. The debt of 2,000_l._ formed
in 1802 was paid off, and the sum in the funds amounted to nearly
4,000_l._ The library was completed by a separate subscription; this
amounted to nearly 7,000_l._, of which about 5,000_l._ was spent in
books.

With the exception of the Professor of Moral Philosophy the same
professors were this year re-elected.

In the report of the visitors in 1807 the following statement of the
lectures and of the general result of the management in 1805-6 and in
1806-7 is made:

 +------------------+--------------------------------+---------+------+
 |                  |                                |Number of|      |
 |    Lecturers     |            Subjects            |Lectures.|Season|
 |                  |                                | Season  |1806-7|
 |                  |                                | 1805-6  |      |
 +------------------+--------------------------------+---------+------+
 |Mr. Davy          | Geology and Chemistry          |   22    |  28  |
 |Mr. Allen         | Natural Philosophy             |   25    |  32  |
 |Rev. W. Crowe     | Poetry and Dramatic Poetry     |   21    |  24  |
 |Rev. T. F. Dibden | English Literature             |   10    |  12  |
 |Rev. J. Hewlett   | Belles Lettres                 |    8    |   8  |
 |Dr. Crotch        | Music                          |   13    |  25  |
 |Rev. E. Foster    | History of Commerce            |   --    |   8  |
 |Mr. Douglas Guest | State of the Fine Arts in Spain|   --    |   4  |
 |Mr. Wood          | Perspective                    |   --    |   9  |
 |Dr. Shaw          | Zoology                        |   12    |  12  |
 |Dr. Smith         |                                |         |      |
 | (afterwards      |                                |         |      |
 |  Sir James)      | Botany                         |   14    |  14  |
 |Mr. Craig         | Drawing in Water Colours       |    8    |   8  |
 |Rev. Sydney Smith | Moral Philosophy               |   14    |      |
 |Mr. Opie          | Painting                       |    6    |      |
 |Mr. Landseer      | Engraving                      |    4    |      |
 +------------------+--------------------------------+---------+------+

‘Nothing,’ the visitors said, ‘seems necessary for substantiating and
promoting the interests of the Institution but that the managers should
proceed in the track which they have hitherto pursued, and should
continue to receive that approbation which has so fully rewarded their
former labours.’

On May 26, 1806, Mr. Bernard reported to the managers that Mr. Davy
would in November next begin a course of twenty lectures in the higher
departments of experimental chemistry, on Vegetable and Animal Analysis
and on the Experimental History of Heat, Light, and Electricity; and
that in the spring he would begin another course of twenty lectures
on the Chemistry of Nature, containing elucidations of the design,
order, and harmony of the chemical arrangements in the globe. In the
first course he proposed to give two lectures a week, on Wednesdays and
Saturdays, and in the second course one lecture a week, on Wednesdays;
the hour of the lecture to be two o’clock. The ventilation of the
lecture room was considered this day.

Mr. Bernard later reported that Mr. Coleridge would give two courses of
eight lectures on the Principles Common to the Fine Arts for 120_l._;
to commence in November, every Thursday at two.

Mr. Lawrence, the surgeon, proposed to give a course of lectures on the
Animal Economy. These were not accepted. The Rev. Sydney Smith proposed
to give a fifth course of eight lectures in the ensuing spring for a
compliment of 90_l._; ‘and, in case it should be in his power, he would
give some additional lectures, not exceeding six, for a compliment of
10_l._ a lecture.’ These lectures circumstances obliged him to give up.
He was paid 120_l._ for his third and fourth courses, which he gave in
1806. His lectures were not printed until after his death.

But it was not by the success of the lectures that this year deserves
to be remembered in the history of the Institution. Lectures, indeed,
are the support of the Institution, but discovery constitutes its
great success; and this year is famous for the first of those great
discoveries on which the credit of the Institution depends. The union
of chemistry and electricity was established by Davy.

Volta sent the first account of his discovery of the voltaic pile
to Sir Joseph Banks. His paper was printed in the ‘Philosophical
Transactions’ for 1800--on the ‘Electricity Excited by the mere
Contact of Conducting Substances of Different Kinds.’ Davy, on October
20, 1800, wrote, ‘Galvanism I have found, by numerous experiments,
to be a process purely chemical,’ and on June 18, 1801, the first
paper Davy sent to the Royal Society was on a galvanic combination
of a single metallic plate and two fluids. In May 1802 he says, ‘A
battery of immense size has been made for the Institution, and I am
now examining the agencies of it upon certain substances that have not
been decomposed.’ His lectures on Agriculture, Mineralogy, and Geology
so occupied his time that very little remained for original research,
and it was not until this year that a close examination of the
decomposition of water by electricity led him to investigate the action
of the voltaic battery, and to establish the union of electricity and
chemistry. For this and his former work the name of Davy ought for ever
to be inseparably united with the discovery of chemical electricity.
But the honour at that time paid to Davy was not for establishing the
production of electricity by chemistry, but for endeavouring to prove
that all chemical action was caused by electricity. He received no
praise as the founder of chemical electricity, but he was looked on
as the discoverer of electro-chemistry--that is, of the theory that
the electrical condition or polarity of each element determined its
chemical action.

The following year (1807) is still more memorable in the annals of the
Institution on account of the originality of the discoveries made in
the laboratory. No year in the life of the Institution has equalled
this in the magic novelty of the results that were obtained. Davy (æt.
28) proved that the bases of the alkalies were solid metals. He called
them potassium and sodium, and he showed that they made potash and soda
when united with oxygen.

The year 1831 was a noble year for the Royal Institution. In it Faraday
(æt. 40) discovered that the magnet produced electricity and founded
magneto-electricity.

Great discoveries in different sciences made at different periods do
not admit of any accurate comparison. It may, however, be said that in
unimagined novelty the results of Davy far surpassed the results of
Faraday; for the discovery of magneto-electricity had been foreshadowed
by the discovery of electro-magnetism; but in its telegraphic and other
applications the discovery of magneto-electricity will keep the name of
Faraday for ever in the remembrance of the world.

How much the prosperity of the Institution depended upon Davy was made
very evident by his illness, which occurred soon after his discoveries
were made. In the early part of the year the managers had not
recognised the fact that original discovery belonged to him, and that
their committees were useless for investigation. They did give Davy
early in the year a new assistant;[28] but on March 9 they resolved
that, in consequence of the completion of the chemical laboratory,
which was furnished with the necessary utensils and materials for
carrying on operations and experiments, ‘the chemical professor,
besides his regular annual courses of lectures delivered in the
lecture room, shall make, direct, superintend, and explain as far as
may be necessary all chemical experiments, or courses of experiments,
which the managers from time to time shall direct to be made in the
laboratory, and give his assistance in all committees appointed by the
managers for the purpose of scientific investigation which may require
his aid or stand in need of the use of the laboratory for prosecuting
their experiments or researches.’

In May the visitors said ‘the Institution continued to afford every
prospect of realising in their fullest extent those results which its
original promoters had in view.’

On July 13 the lectures of Mr. Davy were announced to the managers. In
the autumnal session, which was to begin the first week of December,
he intended to give twenty-six lectures on the General Elements of
Chemistry, and in the spring sixteen lectures on Chemistry in its
Connexion with Physiology and the Phenomena of Animated Nature. The
same day Mr. Davy informed the managers that he proposed going into
Cornwall for five weeks, with a view to collect specimens for the
collection of minerals, and that he wished William Payne, the attendant
on the laboratory, to accompany him. It was resolved that William
Payne’s expenses in the journey, and those incurred by Mr. Davy in
collecting the specimens, should be defrayed by the managers.

In October Davy made his great discoveries,[29] and the last week of
November he was laid low with fever, caught whilst disinfecting Newgate
Prison.

On December 7 the following notice was ordered to be sent round to the
proprietors and subscribers: ‘Mr. Davy having been confined to his bed
this last fortnight by a severe illness, the managers are under the
painful necessity of giving notice that the lectures will not commence
until the first week of January next.’

The lectures began on January 13, but Davy did not lecture until March
12.

This interruption of the lectures stopped the income of the Institution
in the autumn. The difficulties regarding the finances became urgent.
From the time when Davy’s support was temporarily removed until the
reign of Faraday was far advanced the Institution remained in a state
of great poverty.

In 1808 the visitors made the following report on the state of the
Institution:

‘Since 1803 the bills of each preceding year have been paid out of the
subscriptions received in the beginning of the succeeding year. The
amount has varied in different years, and is now about 2,000_l._ This
was not attended with inconvenience until this year, when, by some
disappointment as to lectures and by the postponement of the autumnal
course in consequence of the lamented illness of their excellent
Professor of Chemistry, the subscriptions have been diminished and
their payment postponed.

‘The expenses have increased. The library required 520_l._ There was
some extra expense--about 166_l._--in the laboratory, so honourable to
the Royal Institution and so beneficial to the interests of science in
every part of the world. The fitting up and forming the mineralogical
collection has cost 404_l._

‘It is proposed that 1,461_l._, to be paid by the representatives of
Mr. Edward Gray for renewing his lease of one of the adjoining houses,
should be spent, and that the cost of the proprietors’ shares should be
reduced.

‘Mr. Soane, the architect of the corporation, and Mr. Harris, the
librarian, have made a valuation of the Institution property.

 House and buildings, with the two adjoining houses,
   subject to the existing under-leases and to the
   proposed lease                                            £13,000
 Books and manuscripts                                         7,000
 Mineralogical collection                                      1,000
 Laboratory and apparatus                                        450
 Mechanical apparatus and models                               1,000
 Furniture of the house                                          900
 Consols 3½, 1,375 at 64                                         880
    "    4½, 2,684 "  83                                       2,297

‘With such a property, exempt from any mortgage or encumbrance, and
with views directed to the great and important advantages which
science, literature, and morality are deriving and may derive from
this royal and public establishment, the anticipation of a part of the
next year’s income will not be deemed of much importance.

‘When it is considered that in the last five years the library of
reference and the mineralogical collection have been formed and newly
completed, the laboratory very greatly enlarged and improved, and money
invested, we trust there will be no one disposed to think unfavourably
of the progress of the Institution.

‘An anticipation of a part of the next year’s income under circumstances
from which a more considerable deficiency might have been expected
will not make the friends of science and literature doubt of the Royal
Institution being now established on a solid and permanent basis.’

The income was stated to be 1,929_l._, and the expenditure 1,917_l._

The draft of this report was read by Mr. Bernard to the managers, and
they referred it to a sub-committee, who approved it. The Committee of
Visitors was then introduced, consisting of Lord Berkeley, Dr. Glasse,
Mr. Hammersley, who considered and approved it.

Mr. Dibden was requested to read his opening lecture on Literature on
January 13. He began with a short statement of Davy’s great discovery
and of his illness. Probably Davy was at this time ill in bed; for the
managers did not buy him a sofa, for which they paid three guineas,
until January 25.

On February 22 Mr. Davy attended the meeting of managers at their
request, and said he would commence his course of lectures on
Electro-Chemical Science on Saturday, March 12, at two, and those on
Geology on Wednesday evening, March 16, at eight.

At the end of the previous year Mr. Bernard had reported that Mr.
Coleridge would give in the ensuing session five courses of five
lectures each on the Distinguished English Poets, in illustration of
the general principles of poetry arranged under the following heads:
1. Shakespear. 2. Spencer and Allegorical Poetry. 3. Milton. 4. Dryden
and Pope, and the fifth course Modern Poetry. These lectures were to
begin immediately, one or two weekly, as might be convenient, for a
compliment of 140_l._, of which 60_l._ was proposed to be paid in
advance.

In February Mr. Bernard paid Mr. Coleridge 40_l._ in advance. The
lectures were still delayed.

At the end of April Mr. Bernard reported that Mr. Coleridge had
offered gratuitously to give a lecture on Education on Tuesday, May 3,
proposing it to be twice the length of his other lectures.[30]

On June 13 the steward, Mr. Savage, laid before the managers the
following letter from Mr. Coleridge:

    DEAR SIR,--Painful as it is to me, almost to anguish, yet I find my
    health in such a state as to make it almost death to me to give any
    further lectures. I beg that you would acquaint the managers that,
    instead of expecting any remuneration, I shall as soon as I can
    repay the sum I have received. I am, indeed, more likely to repay
    it by my executors than myself. If I could quit my bedroom, I would
    have hazarded everything rather than not have come, but I have
    such violent fits of sickness and diarrhœa that it is literally
    impossible.

                                                       S. T. COLERIDGE.

‘Ordered,--That Mr. Coleridge’s lectures be discontinued, and that Mr.
Savage make out an account of the number of lectures that Mr. Coleridge
has given, in order that a proportional payment may be made.’

On June 20, 2,000_l._ being wanted for the payment of the tradesmen’s
bills and salaries, the managers and visitors subscribed it as a loan
without interest. The tradesmen were paid to December 1806.

The terms of subscription to the Institution were altered thus: Annual,
four guineas; and life subscription, forty guineas; the qualification
for proprietors was reduced to a hundred guineas.

The position of the Royal Institution is well seen in the following
report, which the Committee of Managers made to the Committee of
Visitors, on the deficiency of the income of the Institution, &c., on
March 20, 1809.

They begin by stating ‘that the 700 transferable tickets of the
proprietors stopped the annual income from subscribers. In January
1803 the corporation were 3,000_l._ in debt. A subscription was made;
transferable rights were reduced one-half, so as to allow of a greater
number of annual subscribers.

‘The effects of the measures were soon felt. The income was more than
doubled and public interest attracted to a very great degree. The
debts were discharged and near 3,000_l._ invested.

‘The additions that have been made to the Institution by the library of
reference, the mineralogical collection (which, by the assistance and
exertions of the Professor of Chemistry, has been made at an expense
which bears no comparison to its use and value), the laboratory, the
seat of his interesting and extraordinary discoveries, the increased
variety of the lectures far exceeding anything in contemplation on the
forming of the Institution, have frustrated every attempt to keep the
scale of expenditure within the average amount of income.

‘The annual expenditure, including 1,055_l._ for professors and
lectures, is 3,295_l._ To meet this there is 133_l._ dividends, and
life and annual subscriptions of not more than 2,000_l._ It is for
the interest of the proprietors that some early and decisive measures
should be taken for the preservation of their hereditary property,
either by new modelling the constitution, so as to make their life and
annual subscriptions more productive, or by reducing the expenditure,
or by the proprietors and life members paying some annual sum. The
proprietors now enjoy much greater advantages than they originally had
from the libraries, collections, lectures, and laboratory, and from
that in which all Englishmen, and particularly the proprietors of the
Royal Institution, must glory, that in our laboratory those discoveries
have been made, and are now making, which excite the surprise and
admiration of the scientific in every part of the civilised world.

‘For the present support of the Institution, and for the discharge of
their bills up to January 1808, some of the managers and visitors have
advanced on loan without interest 2,300_l._ The sale of the stock and
the fine for the sublease will pay the debts of the corporation. The
proprietors must decide what it will be prudent and practical to adopt
for the support of the Institution.

‘If the support of scientific men is to be obtained, something must be
done to give the Institution more the form of a public establishment
than of private and hereditary property. The managers have no doubt
that the friends of science will come forward when the Institution
interests the country at large, and they believe the body of
proprietors will make any sacrifice of personal interest and advantage
to erect a public, national, and permanent establishment devoted to
the cultivation of science and to the promotion of every improvement
in agriculture, manufactures, and the useful arts of life that may be
conducive to the happiness and prosperity of the British Empire. The
important researches which have distinguished the laboratory of the
Royal Institution, are not only honourable to the proprietors but to
the kingdom at large.

‘The managers trust that an active co-operation of the proprietors in
increasing the number of life and annual subscribers, and a moderate
annual subscription for the transferable ticket of each proprietor,
will be adequate to secure the stability and prosperity of the
Institution, and to continue and extend its influence by the promotion
of science and literature, and by the supply of innocent and useful
sources of intellectual pleasure.’

The visitors made their report to the proprietors, April 18, thus:

‘The circumstances attending our present situation seem to call for
much consideration and reflection, and it would become our duty to
state what reasonable expectation could be entertained of more income
or less expenditure. But the managers have done this, and therefore we
forward their report.

‘Upon inspection there seems no deficiency of anything which could
contribute to the success or general utility of the Institution,
and our financial state alone leads us to concur in the necessity
of resorting to new measures for the support of so valuable an
establishment.

‘The visitors heartily concur with the managers in their
recommendations.’

In May a committee of the proprietors, with the managers and visitors,
was appointed to consider the general state of the affairs of the
Institution. The first step was to request Mr. Davy to prepare a plan
for the future management of the Institution, and every member of the
committee was asked to lay before the committee in writing his ideas
or plan. One proposal was to put an annual tax on the transferable
tickets; another to get a new charter; another to get an Act of
Parliament; and another to shut the Institution at six o’clock daily.
By the end of the year the joint committee had formed a plan which was
in the following year proposed to Parliament.

The whole of the stock possessed by the Institution, amounting to
4,058_l._, was sold; the managers and visitors were paid their loan of
100_l._ each without interest, and the bills of 1807 and 1808 were paid.

A communication was made to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty
and other public boards, suggesting the employment of the Royal
Institution laboratory for analyses and reports.

In November the managers decided to publish a statement regarding the
Royal Institution. This was probably written by Davy.

The objects of the Royal Institution in it were said to be ‘the
advancement and diffusion of useful knowledge and the application of
experimental science to the purposes of life.’

Regarding the laboratory it said: ‘In the laboratory, which is
under the direction of the Professor of Chemistry, and which is
open to any scientific persons who may propose important chemical
investigations, series of experiments are continually carried on.
Minerals and substances likely to be useful in agriculture, arts, and
manufactures are analysed and researches tending to the progress of
useful discovery prosecuted. Of the results of these many have been
already published, particularly researches upon tanning; the principles
of electrical decomposition; and the nature of the alkalies, earths,
inflammable bodies, and acids. In this laboratory there is constructed,