Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/266

258 globe by his side, a paper in his hand, and thought in his face, which the keen eye of Maskelyne is watching. Then comes the benevolent face of Jenner; more than benevolent—beneficent, for benevolence is a very easy virtue. Sir Joseph Banks is looking over his shoulder—a starred and belted baronet, genial and pleasant, showing all outward reasons why he was popular at the court of Queen Oberea,—an enterprising man, making voyages to hard and wintry lands, in the pursuit of nature, though rich enough to live at home in quiet, and this, too, in days when ships were veritable “prisons, with a chance”—and more than a chance—“of being drowned,” and not the sea-palaces of our modern yachts, in which our modern lords make voyages to Greenland and elsewhere, albeit with none of the ancient valour of our race decreased—as daring as ever—but with the scurvy vanquished by pleasanter food than “saur kraut,” and many other confections than the “rob of oranges and lemons.” Brave old Sir Joseph, he was indeed Nature’s wild huntsman on untrodden ground, and no carpet knight, cynical Peter Pindar and George the Third notwithstanding.

Seated on a low chair, a volume of large size poised edgewise on his knee, and with his hand resting on it, and his fine abstract face bent down in thought, is Cavendish, the descendant of a long line of nobility, yet so earnest in his chemic art as to be unconscious of any class distinction. Heeding not money or power, or any worldly reward, he was the man who would have pursued his experiment with the last remaining drop of water while the rest of the world was ablaze,—a special agent of Providence to unfold the secrets of nature in furtherance of the process that substitutes the sweat of heated water for the sweat of man’s heated muscles.

With spectacles on nose sits Dalton, the man who reduced the world to “atoms,” the philosopher of quantities and proportions, but whom rich, and wealthy, and ambitious Manchester—to which he emigrated from Cumberland—left to penury, because his theory could not build up a patent for the better production or dyeing of cotton cloth, or some other visible or tangible article of sale. They are firm brows above his spectacles, but withal the face is stamped with a “Dominie” expression, the result of too early work as teacher in a school ere his mental muscles had acquired distinctive form. It is not good for man to live too much with inferiors or subordinates. Dionysius in his kingdom or his school was equally a precision. But precision is a needful quality of the Quantitative Philosopher dealing in balances of materials, yet needing a balance of another kind when dealing with humanity. The indomitable bearing of the man who lives hard and works hard, seeking no patronage in the process of rising from Weaverdom to a Masterdom in chemistry, is a goodly contemplation. But is there no process by which a man can make sure of being rewarded for a lifelong work till he attains to sixty-seven years, and then of obtaining something better than 150l. per annum?

Behind Dalton is Sir Humphry Davy, the great Cornish man, and greater chemist, with the advantage that his pursuit was not abstract, but capable of material demonstration, such as people could understand by vision. The face is small and gentle, but not strong. It may be that he was too early dandled, too early popular, or it may be too material (which is one source of popularity), though his book on “Salmon Fishing” shows a strong love of natural science. The material philosopher must ever be more popular with the crowd than the abstract or moral philosopher—for the more palpable a thing, the greater is the number of the recipients: this may be the reason why Cuvier held his art and science inferior to his title, and why Davy thought a knighthood at the hands of George, Prince Regent, a greater thing than the unfolding of nature’s mysteries.

Close to Davy stand Hatchett and Wollaston, the latter famous for his resolving small things into great—a tea-tray into a laboratory; a genial man withal, a philosopher as well as a chemist, and a man of business also, making 30,000l. (a huge sum in those days) by teaching how platinum might be forged into bars, though it could not be cast into ingots.

The father of Hatchett was a coach-maker royal, who built vehicles for George the Third. He was a man of shrewdness and of some inventive faculties, but rather curious than useful. He was the first inventor of a suspension wheel, a very different affair from what are now called suspension wheels. The spokes were subtracted, and their place supplied with leathern straps stretching diagonally between the nave and the periphery. These straps were intended to serve as springs. The result was, as might have been expected, a very erratic movement of the peripheries, followed by a break-down.

Mr. Hatchett had also a perception that the lower the centre of gravity in a carriage, the less likely it was to overset. This was a mechanical truth, and he acted on it. The result was a vehicle which obtained the name of a “Spider” from its general configuration. A small body, something like a sedan chair, was hung between four large wheels, the floor being within a foot of the ground. Permission was granted for the inventor to exhibit it to his Majesty George the Third, at Windsor; so down he went thither behind four post-horses. But in those days ruts were very deep and mud was very plentiful, and by the time he arrived at Windsor, the “Spider” was stained and covered with the variation of each soil ’twixt that and Long Acre. The busy king, punctual as ever to an appointment, was there in waiting, and ere Hatchett could get the mop to work, just as he emerged from his muddy cage, there was the well-known repetitive voice, immortalised by Peter Pindar, at work.

“What, Hatchett, Hatchett! all mud, all mud, Hatchett!”

And so the “Spider” was never repeated, though the joke was, as often as the king and the coachmaker met. The “Spider” was stowed away in a corner for its namesakes to build upon.

But Mr. Hatchett throve notwithstanding. He was a tradesman of the time and for the time. He lived over his shop, guiltless of a suburban villa,