Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/680

660 Secondly, the robe of a doctor of civil law was known to be objectionable on account of its color—scarlet one forbidden to Quakers. Luckily, it was recollected that Dalton was afflicted with the peculiar color-blindness which bears his name, and that, as the cherries and the leaves of a cherry-tree were to him of the same color, the scarlet gown would present to him no extraordinary appearance. So perfect, indeed, was the color-blindness, that this most modest and simple of men, whose only pleasures were a pipe and a game of bowls, after having received the doctor's gown at Oxford, actually wore it for several days in happy unconsciousness of the effect he produced in the streets. The inventor of the calculating-machine, having offered to present his Quaker friend, was evidently in a state of fussy excitement about the result of the experiment. Poor Dalton was compelled to rehearse thoroughly the ceremony of presentation by the inexorable calculator, who—having found the chances in favor of a faux-pas to preponderate—was in a dreadful "taking" on the eventful day. The calculator was completely wrong. The king-addressed a few remarks to Dalton, who replied in fitting terms, and the tribulation of Babbage was over.

While the claims of science were amply supplied by the genius of Dalton, Young, and Davy, literature and moral philosophy were intrusted to no ordinary hands. During the years 1804-'6, the town-talk of London was divided between young Roscius, the youthful tragedian, and the lectures on moral philosophy delivered by the Rev. Sydney Smith, who, forty years after, said, "I did not know a word about moral philosophy, but wanted two hundred pounds to furnish my house. My success was prodigious." The "loudest wit I e'er was deafened with" probably exaggerated his ignorance of his subject, as he had passed five years at Edinburgh, and had opportunities of hearing Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown; but in any case the lectures were a certain success in the hands of the eloquent preacher, who, if himself knowing little about moral philosophy, addressed an audience which knew nothing at all. Of very different calibre were the lectures on poetry delivered by Coleridge. It will be recollected that it was in these famous discourses that the author of "Christabel" promulgated those views which have since spread far and wide, and will probably hold their ground when the ephemeral opponents of Shakespeare, and worshipers of a second-rate poet like Schiller, have for long ages been consigned to oblivion.

On the retirement of Davy, in 1813, William Thomas Brand, a distinguished chemist and Copley medalist, was nominated to the chair, which he so admirably filled for forty years. Meanwhile, a young man w r hose achievements were destined to invest the Royal Institution with peculiar glory had, in a manner of speaking, received the mantle of Davy. Michael Faraday was born at Newington Butts, of poor parents. His father was a farrier, of whom—to the great