From the Quarterly Review. He is everywhere perfectly candid in his esti1. Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Research-mate of persons and things, where points of And further, his es of John Dalton, Hon. D.C.L. Oxford, LL. controversy are concerned. D. Edinburgh, F.R.S., Foreign Associate of volume is very agreeably written, and will the Academy of Sciences, Paris, etc. By please all those who, with some knowledge of William Charles Henry, M.D., F.R.S. 8vo. natural science, can find interest in the simple memorial of an earnest investigator of its truths.

London, 1854.

2. An Introduction to the Atomic Theory. By Charles Daubeny, M.D., F.R.S. etc., Professor of Chemistry and of Botany in the University of Oxford. Second Edition. Oxford, 1851.

Apart indeed from his scientific career, it would be difficult to conceive a life more calm and uneventful than that of Dalton. What Cuvier said of Cavendish is equally true of him-" Il n'y a dans son histoire d'autres inciWE place these volumes in conjunction-the dens que des découvertes." Born in a humble first a biography, the second an essay on one position, from which he only slowly emerged of the highest topics of natural science-be-living successively in two provincial towns, cause the fame of Dalton mainly rests on the where few at that time could understand or discoveries by which he defined and illustrated appreciate his labors-working always alone, that theory which forms the subject of Dr. with no other excitement than the love of Daubeny's work. A dedication of this second physical truth-wanting little, and undisturbedition to the memory of Dalton-then re-ed by the passions or even by the more comcently deceased-justly and very eloquently mon emotions of social existence-his course describes those researches in atomic chemistry, was one of patient study, unbroken by any of which, while wonderfully enlarging the do- the sterner incidents of life. He was a Quamains of the science, and giving exactitude to ker by birth, and maintained to the end the all its conclusions, have led to new and more dress and many of the usages of the sect. But profound views of the great laws by which his character and habits depended much less matter is governed in the mutual actions and on this than on his individual temperament, combinations of its ultimate component parts. and those intellectual peculiarities of which Here, on this wide field of atomical theory, we shall have afterwards to speak. the bold speculations of ancient philosophy John Dalton was born at Eaglesfield, a had anticipated, as we shall presently see, village near Cockermouth, in 1766. The Dalsome of the results, now better fixed by actual tons were of the class of small proprietors, experiment and the consummate refinements formerly called statesmen,-a name that still of modern analysis. Dalton had no knowledge lingers, we believe, in the northern parts of of these elder hypotheses, nor even a full an- England. The father of John appears to have ticipation of all that his doctrine was to bring forth in the future. But it was he who in effect sowed the seeds for this great harvest; and though others had recently trodden on the same ground, and to the very brink of the discovery, it, was he who first fully indicated the principle and method of research, and the true import and value of the facts derived

from it.

been a weaver, as well as yeoman; but of slender means in both capacities. He had two sons and a daughter. John, the second son, was placed at the village schools at Eaglesfield and in the neighborhood; but derived much more aid from the talents with which he was born, than from any help which schools could give. He speedily nurtured his own faculties into activity; and the slight memoThe name of Dalton must therefore enter rials of his youth are the miniature of the man into every history of the atomical theory; and in later life. This miniature becomes more we may be excused for dwelling upon some par- exact as we follow him forward to his early ticulars of the life of this remarkable person, positions in the world; first, as a schoolmaster as afforded us in a volume of Dr. Henry, himself at Eaglesfield, when only twelve years aided by our own personal recollections.-old-next, as assistant and principal succesDr. Henry was peculiarly fitted for his task. sively, at a boarding school at Kendal. Simple He inherited from his father a strong personal as were, and still are, the functions of a village attachment to Dalton, whose reciprocal regard schoolmaster, it is extraordinary that a boy of was shown by his bequest to Dr. Henry of his papers and all his philosophical apparatus. Thoroughly versed in modern chemistry himself, and especially familiar, from study in the German laboratories, with those researches which have so greatly enlarged, while in some parts modifying, the original discovery of Dalton, he comes well prepared to narrate the progress and present state of this great inquiry.

twelve years should be able to fulfil them; and that, after a year of intermediate labor in husbandry, he should be called, when yet but fifteen, to the larger duties of the Kendal school. That inborn faculty of silent selflabor, and patient study, which remained with him through life, can alone explain this.

Some of the moral peculiarities of Dalton's character come out curiously in this part of

his career, as delineated by the recollections

of one or two persons yet living, who were the evening of that day. Perchance from this very cause the phenomenon of the aurora his scholars at Kendal. Apart indeed from (even now imperfectly explained) continued such information, we could readily have con- ever after to be a favorite topic with him. He jectured that he must have made a very in- made in the beginning his own barometer and different schoolmaster. His own early self-ac- thermometer; and used as an hygrometer some quired knowledge did not give him the power six yards of whipcord, suspended from a nail of instilling the same into others of his age. At and stretched by a weight, with a scale attachno period had he any command of language or ed to it. This rudeness of his instruments was facility of explanation. Equally was he un- not limited to early life. Even in the exfitted to comprehend those mental diversities periments which led to his great discoveries, of temper as well as intellect, which show his apparatus was grievously deficient in all themselves in the very dawn of life. Whether those refinements which chemistry now rethat uniformity of plan, which is in some sort quires and has obtained; and his laboratory, inevitable in the gathering together of youth which we once visited, might well, in its in schools and colleges, be not on the whole slovenly arrangements, provoke a smile from better in result than the teaching upon vague the modern adept in analysis. There was a views of individual character, is a question we sort of obstinacy in Dalton's mind on this subcannot here discuss. It is enough to say that ject; derived in part from the independence Dalton, as a schoolmaster, could have had but of his own early labors-in part also from an one method, and that founded on his own original pertinacity of his nature. But some peculiar temperament and habits. compensation was found for this defect in his At the Kendal school, where there were clear perception of the object sought for, and some sixty boys and girls, educated at from in that patient repetition of experiments and half-a-guinea to fifteen shillings a quarter, he observations which reconciles discordant rewas associated, while master, with his brother sults, and gives certainty to the conclusions Jonathan; a hard and severe man by nature. obtained. The Method of Averages, even The surviving pupils describe John as of where not recognized as such, involves a pringentler temper; but nevertheless cold, ab-ciple prolific of truth; and Dalton largely stracted, and uncouth in his ways. The school, availed himself of it in his scientific labors. at best, seems never to have been very popular under the management of these young

brothers.

In May 1792 he first visited London, of which he says in a letter to his brother, "It is a most surprising place, and well worth one's while to While residing at Kendal John Dalton en- see once; but the most disagreeable place on gaged himself in frequent contributions to the earth for one of a contemplative turn to reGentlemen's and Ladies' Diaries;" two pe- side in constantly." A longer knowledge might, riodical works which, at that time of scanty perhaps, have told him that a man may be literature in the country parts of England, alone in a multitude; and that the greatest earned repute and circulation by their prize works of contemplation as well as of practical questions in mathematics and general philoso- activity have emerged from amidst the din and phy. When Westmoreland was some days' bustle of this great metropolis. It is a characjourney from London, instead of the eight teristic trait of him, that he occupied himself hours of pleasant travel, such periodicals, with while going to the Friends' Meeting House in a weekly newspaper circulated among neigh- counting the number of carriages he met on bors, were probably treasured more than the the road. "This," he says, "I executed with cumbrous superfluity of publications now tolerable precision, and the number was 104." spread throughout every corner of the king- Dalton lived, in truth, in an atmosphere of dom. In 1787, we find that Dalton, being numbers; and all his thoughts and observathen twenty-one, correctly solved thirteen out tions took their coloring from this strong proof fifteen mathematical questions in these pensity of this nature. Diaries, and in 1790 gained the highest prize for his "masterly solution of the prize question." He meddled a little also with the moral queries propounded in these works; and his answers, though somewhat formal and vapid, are at least as good as the questions de-a memorable instance of what the intellect

serve.

Dalton began his career of physical research while at Kendal, directing it chiefly to Meteorology-a subject which engaged much of his attention through life. The first entry in his Meteorological Journal is of March 24, 1787, and records a remarkable Aurora Borealis on

In 1793 he first published his Meteorological Observations and Essays, in which he records his obligations to Mr. John Gough of Kendal; that singular man, who, becoming totally blind from small-pox when two years old, furnished

can attain, unaided by this one great sense.Profoundly versed in mathematics, he became familiar also with every branch of natural philosophy; and had so cultivated his remaining senses, that he could tell by touch, smell, or taste, almost every plant within twenty miles of his native place. Dalton's friendship for