Page:Hamilton Men I Have Painted 091.jpg



OHN TYNDALL was one of that remarkable group of scientists who dragged Truth from her hiding-place and exposed her, shrinking, to the astonished gaze of gaping multitudes. Falsehood, like all vicious, brazen things, shrieked her shrill protest: Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall, standing shoulder to shoulder, stoutly defended the new-found Truth from the vicious attacks of the vixen and her votaries.

John Tyndall was the freest, frankest, and most open-minded man I have ever met. Épanouissement, the act of opening out, expresses his nature better than any English word I can think of. He met you and greeted you like the fresh, pine-scented breeze that blows over his beloved hills of Hindhead.

Tyndall built himself two nests—one on Hindhead, overlooking the Devil's Punch Bowl, the other far up on the high Alps. It was in the latter place that he made the experiments which determined that life is not due to spontaneous generation, that where no life is, no life can be derived; and there for many years he passed the summers, climbing the peaks that rose from the snows and glaciers of the Matterhorn. He built the house which became his permanent home among the heather and pines of that high range of hills that receive the last breath of the sea winds as they pass northward from the English Channel over the downs that overlook the Isle of Wight.