Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/685

Rh the merits of the Leonardo da Vinci hat, or the grace and style communicated by the Norwegian waist-belt, with all sorts of turnip watches and other quaint odds and ends dangling from it? Do they know much about liquids and gases, or have they come to learn? Verily, I know not. The well-known lecture-table is covered with apparatus, and a huge bath-tub occupies a considerable space. Mr. Cottrell, the laboratory assistant, is very busy, till, punctual to the stroke of three, a tall, slender man, of undeniably Scottish aspect, steps to his place behind the lecture-table, and a murmur of applause proclaims the satisfaction of the audience at the arrival of the successor of Faraday. The lecture, interesting in itself, is rendered doubly so by numerous and beautiful experiments, which succeed with infallible certainty. Perhaps the listeners to Prof. Tyndall are accustomed to see his experiments "come off" in this way, but the traveler in search of science often sees experiments—chemical, physical, and others—break down with provoking perversity. No approach to any thing like failure occurs to-day, and the applause is great on the light-carrying power of water being demonstrated by an experiment of singular beauty. The prescribed hour appears unnaturally short when the clock strikes, the lecture is closed by a short sentence, and, amid a mighty rustling of silks, the audience prepares to depart. For a few minutes a talkative crowd blocks up the wide staircase and hall, and a sort of scramble takes place for the carriages of which Albemarle Street is full. Fashion takes its departure, and, having laid in science enough to last for a week, leaves the professor to enjoy himself in his admirably-appointed laboratory.

As I wend my way homeward, I reflect on the large amount of good solid work that has been done in the laboratories of the Royal Institution during the last seventy years, and on the effect produced by the dissemination of scientific knowledge among the upper classes. As a firm believer in the doctrine that all revolutions in taste must take their inception above and gradually percolate through the several strata of society, I keenly sympathize with the efforts of the Royal Institution toward inoculating a love for scientific investigation. Following the example of the sun—which first illumines the mountain-tops, and later in the day penetrates into the deeper valleys—knowledge, striking first on the upper social regions, gradually descends, until all sorts and conditions of men are irradiated by its peaceful light.

Like its younger sister in Albemarle Street, the Society of Arts is a notable instance of that drifting faculty which exercises so great an influence on all human institutions. Launched with widely-differing objects on the stream of events, these societies have in a certain measure displaced each other. The Royal Institution, now devoted to literature, and in a greater degree to pure science, was originally