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 JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 (From a photograph by Walery.) 
 
1m. vt i S' £.2 6 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK 
 
 OF 
 
 John Tyndall, 
 
 F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 WITH PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY ERIENDS, AND 
 NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 WESTMINSTER GAZETTE “ POPULAR” No. 6. 
 
 All Rights Reserved.] DECEMBER, 1893. [Price Sixpence. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 4 
 
 CHAPTER 1. Tyndall’s Early Years 5 
 
 „ 2. Apprenticeship 6 
 
 „ 3. Professorship Illustration of 
 
 the Leciure Theatre , Royal Insti- 
 tution ) 7 
 
 „ 4. The Belfast Manifesto 9 
 
 „ 5. Tyndall and the Glaciers ... 11 
 
 „ 6. Tyndall as a Mountaineer. 
 
 By Mr. W. M. Conway (with 
 Illustrations of the Accident on the 
 Morteratsch , and Tyndalls Alpine 
 Chalet ) 13 
 
 „ 7. Life on the Lusgen Alp (with 
 
 Illustrations of the Bel A If, Brieg, 
 and the Aietsch Glacier ) 16 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER 8. Tyndall and Carlyle 19 
 
 „ 9. Notes on Tyndall’s Character 
 
 and Work : a Chat with 
 Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S... 20 
 
 „ 10. Personal Reminiscences. By 
 
 Dr. Edward Frankland, 
 D.C.L., F.R.S 22 
 
 „ 11. An Incident in Tyndall’s Life. 
 
 By Madame de Novikoff ... 25 
 
 „ 12. Retirement at Hindhead (with 
 
 Illustrations of Tyndalls House 
 and “ Screen a Cartoon by 
 F. C. Gould \ and a Facsimile 
 Autograph Letter ) 26 
 
 „ 13. Death and Inquest (with Sketches 
 
 at the Funeral ) 3Q 
 
4 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 f | a HE death of Professor Tyndall — whose 
 memorable work and interesting life, closed 
 by so tragic a death, it is the object of the 
 following pages to record — extinguishes one 
 more of the greater lights of the Victorian era. To some 
 extent he had outlived his fame, and a strict reckoning 
 of his claims to scientific remembrance would in these 
 days approximate, we imagine, to the levelling imparti- 
 ality of posterity. As a man of science in the strictest 
 sense of the term Tyndall would now be r ank ed below 
 several of his contemporaries. Thirty years ago, how- 
 ever, his fame stood very high, and the names of Darwin, 
 Huxley, and Tyndall were bracketed in men’s mouths^ 
 The explanation of Professor Tyndall’s vogite is simple. 
 In the art of lucid exposition he was surpassed by no 
 one, unless it were his friend Professor Huxley ; and, if 
 Professor Huxley be the better writer of the two, 
 Tyndall was more of the rhetorician. In the course of his 
 famous Belfast address Professor Tyndall combated with 
 energy the statement that Science divorces itself from 
 Literature. He himself was an embodied contradiction of 
 it. Science requires for its full efficiency as a leavening and 
 informing agent the services of popular interpreters, and 
 even of militant apostles. Professor Tyndall’s own 
 researches were considerable ; but jit is as the popular 
 lecturer, the fascinating experimenter, and the fearless 
 preacher of new truths that he achieved his chief fame. 
 
 To be able to say of such a man that he has outlived 
 his reputation is, if one comes to think of it, the highest 
 of compliments. By doing his appointed work com- 
 pletely he destroys the memory of it. The paradoxes 
 of one generation are the commonplaces of the next ; 
 but if so, the credit is due to those who have forced the 
 paradoxes on unwilling, and often unappreciative, ears. 
 Thus the more effectively such a man does his work, the 
 more speedily does he extinguish the traces of it. So 
 in large measure it has been with Professor Tyndall. His 
 chief message to the world was contained, we may suppose, 
 inhisfamous address to the British Institution at Belfast in 
 1874. Its popular presentment of certain aspects of Dar- 
 winism created an immense flutter. It caused innumerable 
 strictures and accusations — some of them, as Tyndall 
 himself said, “exceeding fierce.” Upon a re-reading 
 of the discourse to-day, one would be at some difficulty 
 to understand what the excitement was all about. We 
 may, however, remark in passing that those who are 
 Liberals both in religion and in politics should be the 
 better able to understand, since Professor Tyndall 
 turned and rent the Liberal Party in politics, the wrath 
 which he once caused in religious circles. Nowadays 
 that wrath seems out of date, and thoughtless persons 
 may be inclined to wonder “ whether after all there was 
 anything much in Tyndall.” Such reflections are, as we 
 say, a high tribute to his success. Developments in 
 human thought must needs come ; but all honour 
 
 to those fearless pioneers through whom they come 
 the more quickly, and who, in times of intellectual 
 sloth or cowardice, force us to accept “ com- 
 motion before stagnation, the leap of the torrent 
 before the stillness of the swamp.” We have spoken of 
 Professor Tyndall as a pioneer ; and here we may inter- 
 polate a passing tribute to his work as a pioneer among 
 the Alps. He was one of the first and the greatest of 
 the Early English School of Alpinists. Here also-Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall had lived on into a new generation. 
 There is scientific exploration still being done in the 
 Alps ; but the work has passed in these days into other 
 -than English hands. The modern school of Alpinists 
 makes “records,” it is true, but they are athletic 
 rather than geological, and to them the Alps are 
 “ greased poles ” rather than centres of poetic inspira- 
 tion and scientific mystery. In this respect Professor 
 Tyndall, intrepid and successful mountaineer though he 
 also was, must be classed among the “ old guard.” 
 
 “ Where Tyndall stood 20 years ago, the Bishops 
 stand to-day.” So says the Times — of his thought, 
 not of his climbing. The saying is true ; and if Reli- 
 gion were wise and just, hers also would be among the 
 tributes which will be forthcoming from many quarters 
 to the memory of a many-sided man. For what, after 
 all, did Tyndall’s work in this respect amount to ? In 
 the great work of delimitation which is for ever going on 
 between the Known and the Unknown, Tyndall insisted 
 on such a rectification of frontiers as the known facts 
 and established theories of the time required. But to 
 push forward the frontiers of the Known is not 
 to contract at the further side those of the Un- 
 known. What is the record of twenty years’ pro- 
 gress in biology ? Professor Burdon Sanderson’s 
 address at Nottingham this year may supple- 
 ment Professor Tyndall’s at Belfast ; and what 
 do we find ? We find that the modern biolo- 
 gist, when he comes to the final mystery, has 
 retired baffled like all his predecessors, and in some 
 vague phrase, such as “ specific energy of cells,” leaves 
 the field of the Unknown hardly less wide, though 
 differently conditioned, than before. “ Fill thy heart 
 with it,” said Goethe of this great Mystery, “and then 
 name it as thou wilt.” Professor Tyndall himself 
 quoted the words. In his most militant passages he 
 never denied the province of Religion. He only com- 
 pelled Religion, by force of exposition, invective, and 
 satire, to re-name it, in accordance with the knowledge 
 of the day. Thus he enabled Religion to hold its own. 
 “ The advance of man’s understanding in the path of 
 knowledge is,” as he said, inexorable ; and therefore it 
 was no small service that he rendered to Religion in 
 forcing her to readjust to modern conditions her ministry 
 to “ the unquenchable claims of man’s moral and 
 emotional nature.” 
 
TYNDALL’S EARLY YEARS. 
 
 5 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TYNDALL’S EARLY YEARS. 
 
 Parentage — Tyndall's First Schoolmaster — An Appreciative Pupil — Work on the 
 Pleasures of a Pound a Week — A Case of “ Condescension ,” and a Lesson in 
 
 Ordnance Survey — The 
 Good Manners. 
 
 John Tyndall was an Irishman, bom of humble parents, 
 at Leighlinbridge, near Carlow, on August 21, 1820. 
 Comparatively lew details of his early years have been 
 preseTved. The village has changed much since Tyndall’s 
 time, but it is still singularly picturesque. Tyndall came 
 Q,f a Protestant stock ; it is said, indeed, that he claimed 
 descent Irom the first translator of the English Bible. His 
 lather was one ot the old Irish Revenue police, and he 
 also carried on a small retail trade as a leather merchant. 
 He was a strong Protestant, and in after years Tyndall 
 ascribed his love of theological controversy to his lather’s, 
 early training in this respect. Little is known of Tyndall’s 
 mother, except that she could lay claim to considerable 
 culture, and was eager that her son should ,be kept at 
 school as long as possible. 
 
 Although his parents were such staunch Protestants 
 his first schoolmaster was a Catholic, John Conwill. 
 In an interesting article on Tyndall’s early years 
 in the Dublin Evening Telegraph , we are told 
 that “ Conwill lived long after Tyndall’s boyhood teaching 
 successive generations of lads who were never allowed to 
 forget that they had the same opportunities at the start of 
 their march as ‘John, Professor Tyndall.’” Old Mr. 
 Conwill, we learn from the same source, was one of those 
 schoolmasters of whom Goldsmith’s was a type. “ He 
 was fond of quoting those famous lines from ‘The 
 Deserted Village,’ and his schoolboys all realised that if 
 Goldsmith’s schoolmaster had been only a dream 
 schoolmaster — as he was not — the dream would have 
 at last come true. Like all teachers with a genius, 
 Conwill had his own methods, and when after the 
 esablishment of the National schools he was caught 
 up into the ‘system,’ his independence of view was not 
 always sunk in the ideas of Tyrone House. Loyally his 
 boys scorned his critics, and oftentimes only his own 
 discipline checked them from teaching ‘the inspector’ 
 his place. Whatever his methods, his results were good, 
 as Tyndall always gratefully acknowledged. The ‘ Pro- 
 lessor’ brought away from his first school a sound 
 knowledge of all the elementary branches o ( mathe- 
 matics. It was, first of all, his equipment as a means of 
 livelihood, and then the basis on which he reared the 
 fabric of his extensive knowledge of natural science.” 
 
 It is pleasant to note that Tyndall never forgot what 
 he owed to his old schoolmaster. “ He always, in his 
 most famous days,” says the writer we have already 
 quoted from, “ maintained friendly relations and cor- 
 respondence with him. A presentation copy of his better 
 known books ‘To Mr. John Conwill from his oklpupil, John 
 Tyndall,’ always announced their appearance to his old 
 teacher. Even when the pupil wandered into realms which 
 the teacher had had no opportunity of entering, the former 
 
 often docilely received a lecture on his behaviour there 
 The famous^ Belfast address (of which we shall hear a 
 good deal later jpn) provoked a strong remonstrance ; but 
 the old man was relieved when he received a reply 
 repudiating the construction placed upon it. The letter 
 contained the germ thought of the later explanatory 
 Birmingham address. There were a few sentences 
 quoted lor j.he special benefit of. Tyndall’s successors in 
 the old teacher’s case, in order to prove to them that the 
 ‘ great exemplar ’ had not degenerated into the scandal- 
 giver. ‘ I am not that atheist that men make so light of 
 In that river that rolls by my window I recognise the 
 finger of the Great First Cause.’ ” 
 
 Tyndall remained at school till he was 19, his mother’s 
 hopes in this direction being amply fulfilled. When he 
 left he seems to have had some idea of becoming a civil 
 engineer, and he received an appointment as assistant in 
 the division of the Ordnance Survey at Carlow. There 
 he remained for some time at the princely remuneration 
 of a pound a week. On this he seems to have done 
 pretty well ; indeed, in an article he wrote to the Foruin 
 two years ago, he said he had often wondered since “ at 
 the amount ot genuine happiness which a young fellow 
 of regular habits, not caring for pipe or mug, may extract 
 from pay like this.” 
 
 Be ore we leave this part of his career, it may be inte- 
 resting to state, on the authority of the writer already 
 quoted, that “ when Tyndall had won fortune and renown 
 the gentry in his native district hurried to lionise the son 
 of the leather dealer. One descendant of a Cromwellian 
 trooper, who joined the crowd, could not condescend 
 without reminding Tyndall of the condescension. He 
 invited Tyndall to dinner. The first topic started for 
 conversation when the ladies had withdrawn was the 
 change in the times which made such a dinner-party 
 possible, and brought together on a plane of almost 
 equality the host and his guest. The Carlow landlord 
 had a lesson in good manners which he did not forget, 
 and Tyndall left him in real doubt as to whether the man 
 of science or the man of confiscated acres was the gentle- 
 man.” The same writer gives an interesting personal 
 and local reminiscence of the Professor : — “ On one 
 occasion when he saw Tyndall in his native village he 
 was engaged by the river-side with his coat off, helping a 
 peasant to drag a bullock out of a ditch into which it had 
 sunk. He was then a lecturer at the Royal Institution, 
 and one of the most famous lecturers the Institution ever 
 saw. There was nothing of the bookworm in the heave 
 the Professor gave the rope, however. The conqueror of 
 the Matterhorn was at work, and showed the physical 
 soundness of the stock from which he came.’ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY 
 
 Tt urbana champaign 
 
6 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 Migration to England — The Railway Mania — Haunted by the Stock Exchange — Tyndalls Fit's t “ Experiment " 
 — Master at Queenswood College — Meeting with Frankland — Study at Marburg University under 
 Bunsen — A Sixteen Hours' Day — Tyndall's First Scientific Essay — Influence of German Philosophy. 
 
 When Tyndall first came to England he was employed 
 by a Manchester firm in engineering work connected 
 with railways, and there he was able to turn to account 
 the knowledge he had gained upon the Ordnance Survey. 
 The railway mania was then at its height, and 
 in Staffordshire, Cheshire, Durham, and Lancashire, 
 more especially the last, he was in the thick of the fray. 
 It was for him a time of terrible toil. “ The day’s work 
 in the field,” he said afterwards, “usually began and 
 ended with the day’s light ; while frequently in the office, 
 and more especially as the awful 30th of November — the 
 latest date at which plans and sections of projected lines 
 could be deposited at the Board of Trade — drew near 
 there was little difference between day and night, every 
 hour of the twenty-four being absorbed in the work of 
 preparation.” He remembered well in after years the 
 refreshment he occasionally derived from five minutes’ 
 sleep on a deal table, with “ Babbage and Callet’s 
 Logarithms” under his head for a pillow. Tyndall did 
 not escape altogether the craze for money-making which 
 was then so rampant, and the account he gave many years 
 afterwards of his first and last Stock Exchange transac- 
 tion is worth quoting : — “ High and low, rich and poor, 
 joined in the reckless game. During my professional 
 connection with railways I endured three weeks’ misery. 
 It was not defeated ambition ; it was not a rejected suit ; 
 it was not the hardship endured in either office or field ; 
 but it was the possession of certain shares which I had 
 purchased in one of the lines then afloat. The share list 
 of the day proved the winding-sheet of my peace of mind. 
 
 I was haunted by the Stock Exchange. Then, as now, I 
 loved the blue span of heaven ; but when I found myself 
 regarding it morning after morning not with the fresh 
 joy which in the days of my innocence it had brought me, 
 but solely with reference to its possible effect upon the 
 share market, I became so savage with myself that 
 nothing remained but to go down to my broker’s and to 
 put away the shares as an accursed thing. Thus begun 
 and thus ended without either gain or loss my railway 
 gambling.” 
 
 It was early in the period of his railway services that 
 the scientific interest which lay dormant in Tyndall’s 
 mind was first stirred, for he tells us that the experiment 
 which brought this about was witnessed at the Preston 
 Mechanics’ Institute in 1842. The experiment was an 
 exceedingly simple one, demonstrating the well-known 
 fact that the air which comes from the lungs contains a 
 very appreciable amount of carbonic acid gas. The 
 effect of this experiment upon the mind of Tyndall was 
 remarkable. “ The delight,” he said many years after- 
 wards, “ with which I saw the conversion of the limpid 
 lime water into a turbid mixture of chalk and water 
 remains with me as-a-memory to this present time.” He 
 afterwards devoted what time he could spare in the 
 evenings to scientific study ; and when railway work 
 slackened, he accepted, in 1847, a post as master in 
 Queen wood College, Hampshire. 
 
 It was at Queenwood that he first met Dr. Frankland, 
 
 who had charge of the chemical laboratory there, and 
 whose recollections of his old friend we have the plea- 
 sure of giving in a later chapter. Queenwood College had 
 been the Harmony Hall of the Socialists, and under the 
 auspices of Robert Owen was built to inaugurate the 
 millennium. Tyndall does not seem to have gone there 
 to stay. He had saved a little money, and he intended 
 to spend it in study at a German University. He had 
 heard of German science ; and Carlyle’s references to 
 German philosophy and literature had also considerable 
 influence in causing him to arrive at that decision. 
 
 Accordingly after a year at Queenwood he proceeded, 
 along with Dr. Frankland, to the University of Marburg, 
 in Hesse-Cassel, to study under Bunsen. He was 
 charmed with the town and district, and seems to 
 have lived very simply, but comfortably. The con- 
 sequence was that he could work without weariness 
 for sixteen hours a day. 
 
 While at Marburg, Tyndall concentrated his chief 
 attention upon mathematics, physics, and chemistry. 
 The subject of his dissertation when he took his degree 
 was “ On a Screw Surface with Inclined Generatrix, and 
 on the Conditions of Equilibrium on such Surfaces.” It 
 was set him by Professor Stegmann, and Tyndall 
 resolved if he could not without the slightest aid accom- 
 plish the work it should not be accomplished at all, and 
 when his dissertation was handed to the Philosophical 
 Faculty it did not contain a thought that was not his own. 
 
 Leaving Marburg in 1850, Tyndall visited England, but 
 he returned to Germany the following year, going to Berlin; 
 this time he studied under Professor Magnus, and worked 
 in his laboratory. From Magnus as well as from Clausius, 
 Wiedmann, and Poggendorff he received every mark of 
 kindness, and formed with some of them enduring friend- 
 ships. With Humboldt he also had the honour of an 
 interview. Here are a few sentences which Tyndall 
 devotes in the Forum article already referred to, in praise 
 of the German scientists: — “The philosophers of 
 
 Germany were men of the loftiest moral tone It was 
 
 a sense of duty rather than love of glory that strengthened 
 these men and filled them with an invincible heroism. 
 We in England have always liked the ring of the word 
 duty. It was Nelson’s talisman at Trafalgar. It was the 
 guiding star of Wellington. When in his days of fresh- 
 ness and of freedom he wrote his immortal ode on the 
 death of the Duke of Wellington our Laureate poured 
 into the praise of Duty the full strength of his English 
 heart : — 
 
 Not once or twice in our rough island story 
 The path of duty was the path to glory.” 
 
 Tyndall himself was not destined to be long before 
 finding in his own life the truth of the poet’s assurance. 
 His apprenticeship —served, as we have seen, with un- 
 flinching strenuousness — was now over ; and a path was 
 about to open before him which led to wider oppor- 
 tunities for useful labour, and to the attainment of position 
 and fame. 
 
PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PROFESSORSHIP. 
 
 Tvndall s “ Call to the Royal Institution — Appointme7it as Professor — His Published Works — His Scientific 
 Researches — Friendship with Faraday — An Impression of Ty?idalPs Lectures by Thomas Carlyle 
 — Christmas Lectures to Children — The “ Fairy-land'*'* of Sciejice — TyndalFs Popular Arts — At 
 Criticism by Mr. Ruskhi — Government Appomtments — A Spar with “ My Lords ” — Split with the 
 Board of Trade — Lecturing Tour in America — Academical Honours. 
 
 The turning-point in Tyndall’s career occurred in 
 1853. “ The late Dr. Bence Jones,” says a writer in the 
 
 Times , “ heard of Tyndall in Berlin, and, always alert in 
 the promotion of science and in aiding those who pur- 
 sued it, had him invited, in 1853, to give a Friday evening 
 lecture at the Royal Institution. Soon afterwards, on the 
 proposal of Faraday, Tyndall was appointed Professor of 
 Physics in the Institution, with which he remained 
 connected in this capacity, and subsequently, on 
 the death of Faraday in 1867, as Resident Director, until 
 his retirement in 1887.” For 20 years Tyndall lived in 
 Albemarle-street ; at first alone, then, after 1876, when 
 he married, with his wife, who was eldest daughter 
 of Lord Claud Hamilton. Over 400 lectures must have 
 been delivered by him in the theatre there. 
 
 For a quarter of a century Tyndall was thus identified 
 with the great institution in Albemarle-street, and it was 
 as Professor and Lecturer there that his fame was estab- 
 lished and much of the best work of his life performed. Con- 
 siderable as are his contributions to original research, his 
 greatest service to science consists in the way in which 
 by voice and pen he spread its discoveries and points of 
 view through the great mass of the more intelligent 
 public. It may be well here to enumerate the principal 
 of his works (other than contributions to the proceedings 
 of learned societies). The most popular of all his books 
 is probably the series of detached essays, addresses, and 
 reviews, which he entitled “Fragments of Science,” 
 supplemented (in 1892) by “New Fragments.” His 
 books on the glaciers and on Alpine travel will be 
 referred to in another chapter. The rest of his 
 literary work was as follows : — “ Lectures on Sound,” 
 “Heat as a Mode of Motion,” “Lectures on Light,” 
 “ Essays on the Floating Matter of the Air in 
 Relation to Putrefaction and Infection,” “ Researches 
 on Diamagnetism and Magne - Crystallic Action,” 
 “Notes of a Course of Lectures on Light,” “ Notes of a 
 Course of Lectures on Electrical Phenomena and 
 Theories,” “ Lessons in Electricity,” and “ Faraday as a 
 Discoverer.” With few exceptions, the whole of this 
 literary output was the result of researches. carried on in 
 the laboratory of the Royal Institution, or of popular 
 lectures delivered there. Many of his researches — most 
 notably those on the relations of simple and compound 
 gases and of vapours to radiant heat, and on magne- 
 crystallic action — were epoch-making in the history of 
 scientific discovery. All his lectures must have been 
 epoch-making to those among - his audiences whose 
 minds were first introduced by him into discoveries 
 already achieved. 
 
 Faraday exercised a powerful influence on Tyndall, 
 who regarded him with great veneration, and caught, as 
 it were, his mantle. One of Tyndall’s earliest and most 
 celebrated lectures was on his illustrious predecessor, 
 and of this discourse Carlyle, whose association with 
 
 Tyndall will form the subject of a subsequent chapter, 
 has left us an “impression.” “Attended Tyndall’s 
 lecture (he writes) on Faraday, his genius and merits, 
 which Tyndall treated as quite heroic. A full and some- 
 what distinguished audience, respectful, noiseless, atten- 
 tive, but not fully sympathetic, I should say ; such, at 
 least, was my own case, feeling rather that the eulogy was 
 perhaps overdone. . . . Saw a good many people there 
 — Bishop Thirlwall, Sir Henry Holland, Dean Stanley 
 and his wife.” 
 
 This entry in Carlyle’s diary reminds us incidentally of 
 the distinguished persons who were in the habit of 
 attending Tyndall’s discourses. But he took equal pains 
 with his lectures to more youthful and more “ popular 
 audiences, and never did he shine to greater advantage 
 than in the Christmas lectures to children, which he was 
 one of the first to give. He was not, it has been well 
 said, “one of those popular writers on science who put a 
 grain of fact in a bushel of verbiage, or who, to avoid 
 trouble or from ignorance, represent the discoveries of 
 science so as to mislead the unwary. The more 
 ignorant or the more youthful his audience or his readers, 
 the more particular Tyndall was that nothing but 
 the rigid truth should be placed before them.” But the 
 stock phrase, “ the fairy-land of science,” was eminently 
 appropriate to Tyndall’s expositions, in which the poetic 
 and imaginative aspects of a subject were always mingled 
 with the rigidities of accurate information. He was a 
 great adept, too, at putting himself en rapport with an 
 audience, whether adult or juvenile, and his insinuating 
 manner in this respect sometimes exposed him to chaff 
 and criticism. Like Mr. Ruskin, Tyndall knew how to 
 invest his lectures with what the French call infinite, 
 with the personal note of familiar conversations. He 
 had the art of interpolating digressions — diverticula 
 amoena , in Livy's phrase- — into his popular lectures, and 
 of forcing the attention as it were by cajolery. It is said 
 that two of a trade never agree. Perhaps this is why 
 Professor Ruskin was once very sarcastic at Professor 
 Tyndall’s expense in this matter. The lectures on 
 “The Forms of Water” were an excellent example 
 of the method we are describing, and they seemed 
 “ to be written (said Mr. Ruskin) for a singular 
 order of young people, whom, if they were older 
 Pro essor Tyndall assures them, it would give him 
 pleasure to take up Mont Blanc ; but whom he can at 
 present invite to walk with him along the moraine from 
 the Jardin, where ‘perfect steadiness of foot is necessary 
 —a slip would be death,’ and to whom, with Mr. Hirsch, 
 he can ‘ confide confidently 5 the use of his surveying 
 chain. It is, at all events, written for entirely ignorant 
 people — and entirely idle ones, who cannot be got to read 
 without being coaxed and flattered into the unusual exer- 
 tion. ‘ Here, my friends,’ says the Professor, at the end 
 of his benevolently alluring pages, ‘our labours close ! It 
 
8 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALI 
 
 has been a true pleasure to me to have you at my side so 
 long. You have been steadfast and industrious through- 
 out. . . . Steadfast, prudent without terror, though not 
 
 at all times without awe, I have found you, on rock and 
 ice. Give me your hand — Good-bye.’ Does the Professor 
 count, then, upon no readers but those whom he can 
 gratify with polite expressions of this kind ? ” 
 But why should more serious readers thus chafe at 
 sugar-plums provided for the young ? A German critic, 
 quoted by Tyndall himself in the preface to a subsequent 
 edition, was more charitable : — “ The author’s passion for 
 the mountains,” he wrote, “tempts him frequently to 
 reveal more of his Alpine wanderings than is necessary 
 for his demonstrations. The reader, however, will not 
 find this a disagreeable interruption of the course of 
 thought : for the book thereby gains wonderfully in 
 vividness. This, 
 
 I would say, was 
 the express aim 
 of the breaks re- 
 ferred to. I de- 
 sired to keep my 
 companion fresh 
 as well as in- 
 structed, and 
 these interrup- 
 tions were so 
 many breathing- 
 places where the 
 intellectual ten- 
 sionwas purposely 
 relaxed, and the 
 mind of the pupil 
 braced to fresh 
 action.” 
 
 A point where 
 Tyndall’s work as 
 lecturer and as 
 researcher joined 
 hands was in the 
 experiments by 
 which his popular 
 lectures were il- 
 lustrated, and 
 which were always 
 of the most beauti- 
 ful and careful 
 character. Those who assisted him in this respect have, 
 we believe, all passed away, but many will remember the 
 friendly terms in which Tyndall was in the habit of 
 referring to his assistants as one of the pleasantest 
 features of his lectures. They were never set discourses, 
 scholastic and severe. Rather were they informal 
 colloquies among a party of friends. 
 
 Tyndall’s fame as a lecturer and writer, and the value 
 and variety of his scientific researches, had early brought 
 him under the notice of Government. “ Among other 
 public appointments held by Tyndall was,” says the 
 writer of an excellent Memoir in the Times , “ that of 
 Examiner under the Council for Military Educa- 
 tion, to which he was appointed in 1855. Then, as 
 ever, Tyndall had the highest conceptions of science and 
 of its utility to humanity. He conceived, most probably 
 
 with justice, that the particular department of which he 
 had charge did not receive fair play at the hands of the 
 Council. He was courageous enough to write to the 
 Times and say so, much to the indignation of ‘ My Lords.’ 
 A reprimand immediately followed, which was replied to 
 by Tyndall with the greatest respect, but complete inde- 
 pendence of spirit. Fortunately, ‘ My Lords,’ instead of 
 dismissing Tyndall, as he expected, took his letter in good 
 part* and sent him such a reply as left him at liberty to 
 retain his post and his self-respect at the same time.” 
 His long series of researches into the question of fog- 
 signalling led to his subsequent appointment as scientific 
 adviser to the Board of Trade and the Lighthouse 
 Authorities — a position which he resigned in 1885, owing 
 to differences of opinion with his officiai superiors. 
 
 Tyndall’s fame as a lecturer led him of course to 
 
 America; and 
 gave him the 
 means of a splen- 
 did benefaction. 
 In 1872 he went 
 on a lecturing tour 
 to America, where 
 he met with a 
 cordial reception. 
 From the Presi- 
 dent downwards, 
 everyone has- 
 tened to do him 
 honour. It is said 
 that he made 
 nearly £5,000 by 
 his lectures, and 
 after deducting 
 expenses, this sum 
 he devoted to 
 founding scien- 
 tific scholarships 
 at several United 
 States colleges in 
 aid of students 
 who devote them- 
 selves to original 
 research. 
 
 Learned socie- 
 ties and academi- 
 cal honours, as 
 well as the British Government and the great American 
 public, were not slow to recognise Tvndall’s worth. He was 
 a Fellow of the Royal Society for 40 years (1853), and was 
 also a Rumford Medallist. He was made LL.D. of 
 Cambridge in 1855, and LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1866. 
 He became D.C.L. of Oxford in 1873. 
 
 But Tyndall was a man of modest ambitions. He 
 might easily, had he chosen, have made a fortune by 
 turning his scientific researches to commercial account ; 
 but he was content with such modest emoluments as 
 came to him without seeking and with the proceeds of 
 his literary labours. His heart was set on the love of his 
 subjects for their own sake ; on the Alps and their glaciers ; 
 and not least, perhaps, on the pleasures of battle in the 
 cause of free thought and intellectual advancement. ( Of 
 this last we shall find an instance in our next chapter. 
 
 THE LECTURE THEATRE OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 
 
THE BELFAST MANIFESTO. 
 
 9 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BELFAST MANIFESTO. 
 
 President of the British Association — Address at Belfast — A Manifesto on the Aims aud Drift of Modern 
 Science — Summary of the Address — In Matter “ the Promise and Pote7tcy of all Terrestrial Life ” — 
 The Province of Religion — Anthropomorphic Conceptions of God — The “ Prayer Gauge ” Controversy — 
 
 , Dr. Heurtlefs Protest — Indignation at Belfast— 
 
 F 
 
 What may in some sort be regarded as the central 
 point, or perhaps the climax, in Tyndall’s life occurred in 
 the year 1874. He was already widely known — by 
 lectures, books, and magazine articles — as an eager 
 soldier in the Church Militant of Science. But in 1874 
 he was elected to the high and honourable post of Presi- 
 dent of the British Association ; and in his address at the 
 annual meeting, held, as chance had it, in Belfast, the 
 very citadel of Protestant orthodoxy, he took the oppor- 
 tunity to deliver what may fairly be called a scientific 
 manifesto. This famous Belfast address was charac- 
 teristic of the man and his work. There was nothing very 
 new in it. It was, so far as the matter of it went, nothing 
 more than a statement of the current scientific thought of 
 the day. But it may be taken, as a writer in the Times 
 says, and as indeed its author seems to have intended, for 
 “ the first clear and unmistakable public utterance as to 
 the aims of modern science, and as to the bearings of the 
 doctrine of evolution on the beliefs that have influenced 
 humanity from the beginning. But Tyndall had senti- 
 ment and aspiration enough to soften down the dogma- 
 tism in the body of the address, which grated on the 
 minds of many of his hearers and readers, by that tender 
 and hopeful conclusion, ending with the famous words, 
 
 ‘ Here, however, I must quit a theme too great for me to 
 handle, but which will be handled by the loftiest minds 
 ages after you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall 
 have melted into the infinite azure of the past.’ ” 
 
 ^ The address began with an analysis of early religious 
 ideas : — “ An impulse inherent in primeval man turned 
 his thoughts and questionings betimes towards the 
 sources of natural phenomena. The same impulse, 
 inherited and intensified, is the spur of scientific action 
 to-day. Determined by it, by a process of abstraction 
 from experience, we form physical theories which lie 
 beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the 
 desire of the mind to see every natural occurrence resting 
 upon a cause. In forming their notions of the origin of 
 things, our earliest historic (and doubtless, we might add, 
 our prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as far as their intelli- 
 gence permitted, the same course. They also fell back 
 upon experience, but with this difference — that the 
 particular experiences which furnished the weft and woof 
 of their theories were drawn, not from the study of nature, 
 but from what lay much closer to them, the observation 
 of men. Their theories accordingly took an anthropo- 
 morphic form. To supersensual beings, which, ‘how- 
 ever potent and invisible, were nothing but a species of 
 human creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind, 
 and retaining all human passions and appetites,’ were 
 handed over the rule and governance of natural phe- 
 nomena.” 
 
 The lecturer then passed in review the theories of the 
 philosophers who “ differentiated themselves from the 
 crowd, rejected those anthropomorphic notions, and 
 sought to connect natural phenomena with their physical 
 principles ’’—Democritus, who partially enunciated more 
 
 A Shower of Pamphlets — Tyndalls Reply. 
 
 than 2,000 years ago the doctrine of the survival of the 
 fittest ; Epicurus, who pictured Nature pursuing her course 
 in accordance with everlasting laws, the gods never inter- 
 fering ; and Lucretius, “ whose vaguely-grand conception 
 of the atoms falling eternally through space suggested 
 the nebular hypothesis to Kant, its first propounder.” 
 
 The lecturer then went on to describe the science 
 of Greece, and the curious fate by which “ the scientific 
 intellect was compelled, like an exhausted soil, to lie 
 fallow for nearly two millenniums before it could regather 
 the elements necessary to its fertility and strength.” 
 
 It was not till 1543 that the epoch-making work of 
 Copernicus on the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared, 
 and “the earth moves” became the watchword among in- 
 tellectual freemen. From Copernicus Tyndall proceeded to 
 trace the scientific advance through Giordano, Bruno, 
 Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, and Descartes to Gassendi, with 
 whom the atomic theory revived. The atomic doc- 
 trine, said the lecturer in concluding this portion of 
 his Address, still stands firm ; and “ it may be doubted 
 whether, wanting this fundamental conception, a theory 
 of the material universe is capable of scientific state- 
 ment.” 
 
 After a critical examination of Bishop Butler’s position, 
 Professor Tyndall proceeded to note the revolution in 
 thought caused by the science of geology. “The 
 rigidity of old conceptions was relaxed, the public mind 
 being rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for 
 6,000, nor for 60,000, nor for 6,000,000, but for aeons 
 embracing untold millions of years, this earth has been 
 the theatre of life and death.” The petrified forms in 
 which life was at one time active, were next classified, 
 and it soon became evident that none but the simplest 
 forms of life lie lowest down, and that as we climb higher 
 among the superimposed strata more perfect forms 
 appear. “ Biassed, however, by their previous education, 
 the great majority of naturalists invoked a special creative 
 act to account for the appearance of each new group of 
 organisms. Gradually, however, a more scientific view 
 of the matter gained ground, and in 1858 Mr. Darwin 
 and Mr. Wallace simultaneously but independently made 
 known their theory ot the origin of species by natural 
 selection, acting by the preservation and accumulation 
 of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the 
 preserved being.” 
 
 Pursuing his survey, Professor Tyndall enlarged on 
 the wide and deep significance of the doctrine of the 
 Conservation of Force, and summarised the psychological 
 system of Mr. Herbert Spencer. He then approached 
 the statement of the Materialistic theory, which caused so 
 many searchings of heart at the time. Diminishing 
 gradually the number of progenitors, Darwin had brought 
 us at length to one primordial form. How was this 
 introduced ? “ Let us reverently, but honestly,” said the 
 lecturer, “look the question in the face. Divorced from 
 matter, where is life to be found ? Whatever our faith 
 may say, our knowledge shows them to be indissolubly 
 
13 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 oined. . . . By an intellectual necessity I cross the 
 
 boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in 
 that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent 
 powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for 
 its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the 
 promise and potency of all terrestrial Li fed It was round 
 the words which we have italicised that the storm of 
 orthodox indignation subsequently broke ; but the 
 lecturer went on at the time greatly to soften down the 
 effect of his declaration. “ The whole process of evolu- 
 tion,” he said, “ is the manifestation of a Power 
 absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. As 
 little in our day as in the days of Job can man 
 by searching find this Power out. It is by the 
 operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth is 
 evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded Irom 
 their prepotent elements in the immeasurable past.” 
 “There is, you will observe,” he said, “no very rank 
 materialism here.” 
 
 Subsequent theology has of course readjusted its views 
 to meet the developments of modern science. To Religion 
 itself Professor Tyndall never denied an important place ; 
 indeed, as some of his hostile critics at the time put it, 
 he graciously “ patronised it” as “ capable of being guided 
 to noble issues in the region of emotion, which is its 
 proper and elevated sphere.” In his peroration, the 
 lecturer attempted to delimit the boundaries between 
 Science and Religion : — 
 
 The inexorable advance of man’s understanding in the path 
 of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims of his moral and 
 emotional nature which the understanding can never satisfy, 
 are here equally set forth. The world embraces not only a 
 Newton, but a Shakespeare — not only a Boyle, but a Raphael — 
 not only a Kant, but a Beethoven — not only a Darwin, but a 
 Carlyle. Not in each of these, but in all, is human nature 
 whole. They are not opposed, but supplementary, not mutu- 
 ally exclusive, but reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with them 
 all, the human mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for his 
 distant home, will turn to the Mystery from which it has 
 emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and 
 faith ; so long as this is done, not only without intolerance or 
 bigotry of any kind, but with the enlightened recognition that 
 ultimate fixity of conception is here unattainable, and that each 
 succeeding age must be held tree to fashion the Mystery in 
 accordance with its own needs — then, casting aside all the 
 restrictions of Materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for 
 the noblest exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing 
 faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man. “ Fill thy 
 heart with it,” said Goethe, “and then name it as thou wilt.” 
 Goethe himself did this in untranslatable language. Wordsworth 
 did it in words known to all Englishmen, and which may be 
 regarded as a forecast and religious vitalisation of the latest and 
 deepest scientific truth : — 
 
 For I have learned 
 To look on Nature ; not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 
 And rolls through all things. 
 
 The famous address, which we have thus cursorily 
 summarised would, if delivered to-day, excite little 
 alarm among any educated people, even of the orthdox 
 
 persuasion. The keynote of the Address was struck in 
 the mottoes which Prolessor Tyndall affixed when he 
 printed it in book-lorm. One was lrom Bacon : “ It 
 were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an 
 opinion as is unworthy of Him ; for the one is unbelief ; 
 the-other is contumely.” The other motto was a transla- 
 tion irom Xenophanes : — 
 
 There is a God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals, 
 Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature ; 
 
 But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten, 
 With human sensations and voice and corporeal members; 
 
 So, if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man’s lashion, 
 And trace out with chisel or brush their conception oi godhead, 
 Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, 
 Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing. 
 
 The spirit of Tyndall’s Address was fatal, no doubt, to 
 the anthropomorphic idea of God ; but many Christian 
 theologians of to-day have not shrunk from adopting 
 the results of scientific knowledge and thought. Twenty 
 years ago, however, it was very different ; and no sooner 
 was the Address printed than its author became the mark 
 for violent opposition and abuse. 
 
 He had already, it may here be recalled, made himself 
 obnoxious to the orthodox by taking part in a famous 
 “Prayer-Gauge” controversy. The bizarre suggestion 
 had been made to submit the efficacy of Prayer to scien- 
 tific test in a hospital — much in the same way that Mr. 
 Stead proposed the other day to test the efficacy of Count 
 Mattei s remedies for cancer. In one ward, the patients 
 were to take their chance in the ordinary course ; in 
 another, they were to be made the objects of special 
 prayer. The comparative results were then to be tabu- 
 lated. Tyndall had joined in the controversy, of which 
 this somewhat peurile suggestion was one out- 
 come, and for his participation therein he had 
 already incurred the hostility ot orthodox divines. Thus 
 in 1873, Dr. Heurtley, the venerable Canon of Christ 
 Church, protested in Convocation at Oxford against the 
 conferring on the Professor of the honorary degree ot 
 D.C.L. from the fact of his denial of the efficacy of 
 prayer. The storm gathered increasing fury in the 
 following year alter his utterances at Belfast. A series of 
 sermons, which was afterwards published in a volume 
 entitled “ The Efficacy of Prayer,” was preached by 
 Dr. Tillett, the late Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, in 
 the University pulpit, with the avowed object of refuting 
 Professor Tyndall’s doctrines. A resolution was passed 
 by the Presbytery of Belfast, in which Professor Tyndall 
 and Professor Huxley were spoken of “as ignoring the 
 existence of God and advocating pure and simple 
 materialism.” Professor Tyndall’s reply was much to the 
 point : — “Had the possess.ve pronoun ‘our’ preceded God, 
 and had the words what Gve consider’ preceded ‘pure’ this 
 statement would have been objectively true, but to make 
 it so this qualification is required.” The printing-press 
 was put into motion against him as well as the pulpit. 
 In the British Museum Library we may find at least a 
 dozen pamphlets dealing with the Belfast address alone, 
 which were published within a very short time after its 
 delivery. The most curious, perhaps, is one which asks 
 the question whether by the address Tyndall did not 
 “subject himself to the penalty of persons expressing 
 blasphemous views.” The Professor himself was never 
 averse from returning blow for blow ; but his views, as 
 we have already shown, were much misconceived, and on 
 a subsequent occasion at Birmingham he endeavoured to 
 soothe down the excitement by assuring the world that 
 the address had not at all the materialistic and Agnostic 
 bearings which on the surface it appeared to possess. 
 
TYNDALL AND THE GLACIERS. 
 
 11 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TYNDALL AND THE GLACIERS. 
 
 Theories o?i Glacier-Motio?i — Rendifs Hints — Agassiz's Investigations — Forestalled by Forbes — The Importance 
 oj Forbes's Discoveries — The Wrath of Agassiz — Did Forbes “ Jockey ” Him? — Tyndall s Observations 
 at Chamo7iix — His “ Glaciers of the Alps ” — Accused of Ignoring Forbes — Tyndalls Lectures on 
 “ Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers ” — Further Attack by the Partisans of 
 Forbes — Onslaught by Mr. Ruskin — Reflections on the Controversy — Tyndalls Theories of “ Re gelation” 
 and Glacier Excavation. 
 
 The storm aroused by the Belfast address, described 
 in the last chapter, was not the only controversy in which 
 Tyndall was at this time engaged. The publication of 
 his views on glacier motion led to another battle, no less 
 hotly contested and even more tenaciously continued. 
 
 Thecourseofscientificthought on this fascinating subject 
 may here, 1 or the benefit of unscientific readers, be roughly 
 described. Byron, it will be remembered, described how 
 
 The glacier’s cold and restless mass 
 
 Moves onward day by day. 
 
 But the first observer who seriously studied this move- 
 ment was Monseigneur Rendu, Bishop of Annecy, who 
 had much more than hinted at the possibility of a true 
 mechanical connection between the descent of a glacier 
 and that of a mountain torrent, or of a stream of lava. 
 Previous to 1842, when Forbes commenced his remark- 
 able series of observations on the Mer de Glace at 
 Chamonix, the principal theories on the subject were (1) 
 the gravitation theory of De Saussure and (2) the dila- 
 mtion theory of De Charpentier. The former theory, 
 which is now generally rejected, is thus described — with 
 a view to showing the weakness of it — by Mr. Ruskin : — 
 “When snow lies deep on a sloping roof, and is not sup- 
 ported below by any cornice or gutter, you know that when 
 it thaws, and the sun has warmed it to a certain extent, the 
 whole mass slides off into the street. This is the way 
 the scientific persons who hold the ‘ sliding theory’ sup- 
 pose glaciers to move. They assume, therefore, two 
 things more ; namely, first, that all mountains are as 
 smooth as house-roofs ; and, secondly, that a piece of ice 
 a mile long and three or four hundred feet deep will slide 
 gently, though a piece a foot deep and a yard long slides 
 fast.” (Deucalion, ch. x.) 
 
 The dilatation theory meets the difficulty of the want 
 of a sufficient moving power to drag or shove a glacier 
 over its bed by calling in the well-known force with 
 which water expands on its conversion into ice. The 
 glacier being traversed by innumerable capillary fissures, 
 and being in summer saturated with water in all parts, it 
 was natural to invoke the freezing action of the night to 
 convert this water into ice, and by the amount of its 
 expansion to urge the glacier onwards in the direction of 
 its greatest slope. But the facts are against this theory. 
 During the height of summer the portions of the glaciers 
 Avhich move fastest are never reduced below the freezing 
 point, and moreover the glacier-motion does not cease 
 ■even in the depths of winter. 
 
 What disposed of both these theories was the careful 
 study of the actual laws of glacier-motion. The history of 
 this method of study forms a very curious chapter in 
 scientific annals. We will tell the first part of 
 the story in the lively words of Mr. Ruskin. 
 Hitherto, it will be observed, the conception preva- 
 lent of a glacier was as of a solid substance. “ This was 
 the state of affairs in 1841. Professor Agassiz, of Neu- 
 chatel, had then been some eight or ten years at work on 
 
 the glaciers ; had built a cabin on one of them ; walked 
 a great many times over a great many of them ; de- 
 scribed a number of their phenomena quite correctly : pro- 
 posed, and in some cases performed, many ingenious 
 experiments upon them ; and, indeed, done almost 
 everything that was to be done lor them — except find out 
 the one thing that we wanted to know. As his malicious 
 fortune would have it, he invited in that year (1841) a man 
 of acute brains to see what he was about. The invitation 
 was accepted. The visitor was a mathematician ; and, 
 after examining the questions for discussion, of which 
 Agassiz was able to supply him with all the 
 data except those which were essential, resolved 
 to find out the essential ones himself, which 
 in the next year (1842) he quietly did ; and in 
 1843 solved the problem of glacier-motion for ever — 
 announcing, to everybody’s astonishment, and to the 
 extreme disgust and mortification of all glacier students, 
 that glaciers were not solid bodies at all, but semi- 
 liquid ones, and ran down in their beds like so much 
 treacle.” 
 
 Briefly and very generally stated, Forbes’s observations 
 established the following facts : — That the motion of the 
 ice is continuous and uniform, not by fits and starts ; 
 that the motion is quickest at the centre of a glacier, and 
 slowest at the sides ; and that it is greatest where the 
 inclination of the surface is greatest. These and other 
 results he formulated into the following theory : — “ A 
 glacier is an imperfect fluid or a viscous body, which is 
 urged down slopes ot a certain inclination by the mutual 
 pressure of its parts.” 
 
 “ Cela saute aux yeux, we all said,” continues Mr. 
 Ruskin . . . “ But fancy the feelings of poor Agassiz 
 in his Hotel des Neuchatelois ! To have had the 
 thing under his nose for ten years and missed it 1 There 
 is nothing in the annals of scientific mischance to match 
 it ; certainly it would be difficult for provocation to be 
 more bitter.” 
 
 The provocation was only too successful, and the wrath 
 of Agassiz was terrible. Forbes, on his side, was none 
 too tender to the natural susceptibilities of his precursor. 
 Agassiz said that Forbes had jockeyed him. Forbes, in 
 many people’s opinion, gave Agassiz less than his due. 
 From the principals, the feud extended to their several 
 champions ; and the controversy raged furiously. It is 
 now that Tyndall appears upon the scene. His first 
 first visit to the Alps was in 1849 ; his second, in 
 company with Professor Huxley, was two years later, 
 and from that date onward he visited them nearly 
 every year. In the winter of 1859 he visited Chamonix, 
 and took a series of measurements of the rate of motion 
 of the Mer de Glace. His earliest contributions to the 
 literature of the subject were in the form of papers read 
 to learned societies ; in 1861 he published his famous and 
 fascinating work, “ The Glaciers of the Alps.” To Tyn- 
 dall’s own theories on the subjects of glacier-motion and 
 glacier-action we shall return presently. What we are 
 
12 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 concerned with here is the controversy caused by Tyndall’s 
 alleged ignoring of Forbes’s work. Among the loremost 
 champions of Forbes was Dr. Whewell, who politely 
 summed up Tyndall’s own work on the glaciers with the 
 remark that he had “simply taken the guide Auguste 
 Balmat up to the summit of Mont Blanc and caused 
 him to be frost-bitten.” The feud burst out with 
 renewed fury on the publication of Tyndall’s book on the 
 glaciers. In this book Tyndall stated that Agassiz’s 
 work had been ignored in all the writings of Forbes. 
 The wrath and chagrin of Agassiz himself may be 
 judged from the following outburst : — “What eloquence 
 have I not wasted in order to cause you” — so he 
 apostrophised Forbes — “to accept such and such a 
 conclusion ; what lengthened excursions, extending over 
 days, have I not made to convince you of such and 
 such a fact ? And what advantage did I derive from 
 nearly a month of these labours ? This solely. On every 
 new subject of discussion you favoured me with the pro- 
 found reflections : — It is very curious ; it is very extra- 
 ordinary ; it is most remarkable ; it is capable of various 
 interpretations, various causes might have produced these 
 effects ! Never a word on the true basis of the question. 
 And notwithstanding this, I told you all, showed you all, 
 even things regarding which I had published nothing.” 
 
 Tyndall’s book, taking Agassiz’s side, was naturally 
 not allowed to pass unchallenged by the Forbesites. 
 Tyndall himself, however, did not retaliate ; because (as he 
 explained in a footnote to a subsequent work) “he thought 
 that within the limits of the case it is better to submit to 
 misconception than to make science the arena of a purely 
 personal controversy.” But in 1871 Tyndall gave a course 
 of lectures at the Royal Institution, which he published 
 the following year under the title, “ The Forms of Water 
 in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers.” Around these 
 lectures, in which he summarised the course of scientific 
 research on the subject of glacier motion, the controversy 
 broke out afresh. Forbes’s son (Professor George Forbes) 
 brought out a work on “ Rendu and his Editors,” in which, 
 in conjunction with Professor P. G. Tait, Prolessor 
 Ruskin, and Mr. Alfred Wills, the charges against 
 Tyndall were renewed. Mr. Ruskin’s contribution to the 
 controversy (reprinted from “ Fors Clavigera”) will perhaps 
 give the best idea of the amount of heat generated on the 
 subject. “ Only one great step,” he said (referring to 
 Forbes’s work), “in the knowledge of glaciers has been 
 made in forty years ; and it seems the principal object of 
 Professor Tyndall’s book to conceal it having been 
 taken, that he and his friends may get the credit, 
 some day, of having taken it themselves. . . . 
 
 The readers of ‘ Fors ’ may imagine they have 
 nothing to do with personal questions of this kind, 
 but they have no conception ot the degree in which 
 general science is corrupted and retarded by those 
 jealousies of the schools ; nor how important it is to the 
 cause of all true education that the criminal indulgence 
 of them should be chastised.” 
 
 To one who reads Professor Tyndall’s little book to- 
 day it will seem — with that judicious impartiality which 
 comes so easily to outsiders after the smoke of battle has 
 cleared away — that neither of the combatants was wholly 
 free from blame. Tyndall may perhaps have underrated 
 somewhat the crucial importance of Forbes’s work. But on 
 the other hand, Mr. Ruskin’s own defence of Forbes is far 
 from satisfactory. “ I am not prepared,” he says, 
 “altogether to justify Forbes in his method of proceeding, 
 except on the terms of battle which men of science have 
 laid down for themselves. Here is a man who has been 10 
 years at his diggings ; has trenched here and bored here, 
 and been over all the ground again and again, except 
 
 just where the nugget is. He asks one to dinner — and 
 one has an eye for the run ot a stream ; one does a little 
 or pickaxing in the afternoon on one’s own account, and 
 walks off with the nugget. It is hard. Still, in strictness, 
 it is perfectly fair.” Only so, it seems to us, on the condi- 
 tion that everything is lair in science, as in love and war 
 — a condition which is hardly compatible with what 
 Forbes’s champion lays down on the “criminality” of 
 “ the jealousies of the schools.” 
 
 To large extent, no doubt, the views of the disputants 
 on the conduct of Forbes were influenced by their views 
 on his theories. With Mr. Ruskin the infallibility of Forbes 
 is almost a dogma. But Tyndall did not accept Forbes’s 
 theories, and this brings us to Tyndall’s own theory of 
 glacier-motion, some statement of which is necessary in 
 order to round off our presentment of this subject. We 
 have seen above that before the time of Forbes two 
 theories were current on the subject : — (1) The Gravita- 
 tion, or sliding theory ; and (2) the Dilatation theory. 
 (3) Forbes’s may be called the Viscous theory. (4) 
 Tyndall held the Revelation theory. A concise explana- 
 tion of it is given in his “ Forms ot Water.” “ I will now 
 describe,” he says, “ an attempt that has been made of 
 late years to reconcile the brittleness of ice with its 
 motion in glaciers. It is founded on the observation, made 
 by Mr. Faraday in 1850, that when two pieces of thawing 
 ice are placed together they freeze at the place of contact. 
 The word Regelation was proposed by Dr. Hooker to 
 express this freezing, and the memoir in which the term 
 was first used was published by Mr. Huxley and Mr. 
 Tyndall in the Philosophical Transactions for 1857. 
 The gist of the Regelation Theory is that the ice of glaciers 
 changes its forms and preserves its continuity under 
 ftresswe which keeps its particles together. But when 
 subjected to tension , sooner than stretch it breaks, and 
 behaves no longer as a viscous body.” 
 
 Such, then, is the Regelation Theory. “ The scientific 
 persons who hold that theory,” says Mr. Ruskin in his 
 criticism of it, “suppose that a glacier advances by 
 breaking itself spontaneously into small pieces ; and then 
 spontaneously sticking the pieces together again ; that it 
 becomes continually larger by a repetition ot this opera- 
 tion, and that the enlargement can only take place 
 downwards.” 
 
 Subsequent contributions to the question of glacier- 
 motion have certainly shown strong reasons against Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall’s theory, though even yet the true causes 
 of the phenomena have hardly been conclusively ascer- 
 tained. On another subject, that of glacier-action, 
 Tyndall propounded very decided views. Professor 
 Ramsay had maintained that the valleys of the Alps were 
 excavated by glaciers. He published his theories in 
 1862. Tyndall went even further, and maintained that 
 the glaciers of the Alps were competent to scoop out also 
 the valleys of the Alps. This has not found much favour 
 with other observers of Alpine phenomena ; but to pursue 
 any further either this question or that of glacier-motion 
 would not be within the province of this little book, the 
 scope of which is biographical, not scientific. 
 
 Here, however, we may now close our resume of a battle 
 of the theories which, as described in this chapter, forms 
 a curious page in scientific annals, and was an interesting 
 episode in Tyndall’s Life and Work. Tyndall was bitterly 
 severe on the “ revilings which professing Christians do 
 not scruple to use towards each other.” But there is a 
 good deal of human nature, whether fallen or evolved, in 
 men of science also ; and the battles royal of the school 
 sometimes outdo even the proverbial odium of the 
 theologians. 
 
TYNDALL AS A MOUNTAINEER. 
 
 13 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TYNDALL AS A MOUNTAINEER. 
 
 By Mr. W. M. Conway. 
 
 The Problems and the Grandeur of the Alps — Tyndall's Love of Adventure — Scientific Experiments on Mont 
 Blanc — The First Ascent of the Weisshorn — Rediscovery of the “ Old Weiss thor ” — Attempts on the 
 Matterhorn — The First Traverse of it from Italy to Switzerland — An Alpine Pioneer. 
 
 An Adventure on Pic Morteratsch — Caught in an Avalanche — A Wonderful Watch. 
 
 In 1889 Professor Tyndall wrote, “Since the publica- 
 tion, seven years ago, of a little tract entitled ‘ Moun- 
 taineering in 1861,’ 1 have contributed hardly anything to 
 the literature of the Alps. I have gone to them every 
 year, and found among them refuge and recovery from 
 the work and the worry — which acts with far deadlier 
 corrosion on the brain than real work — of London. 
 Herein consisted the fascination of the Alps for me : 
 they appealed at once to thought and feeling, offering 
 their problems to one and their grandeurs to the other, 
 while conferring upon the body the soundness and the 
 purity necessary to the healthful exercise of both.” 
 Their problems and their grandeurs — these are the 
 elements that attract men to the mountains. In 
 Tyndall’s case it has always seemed to me that 
 if it was the problems that first brought him to the 
 Alps it was their grandeurs that made him return again 
 and yet again. Science, or at all events scientific 
 phraseology, keeps on turning up in his written accounts 
 of mountaineering expeditions, but it does so like a moral 
 on the lips of a parson, as a matter of form and duty. The 
 heart of the writer was in the adventure of scrambling and 
 the glory of the scenery. 
 
 The sporting element, that makes climbing so attrac- 
 tive to its votaries, appealed to Tyndall with particular 
 force ; under its influence he was capable of entering 
 upon undertakings that most men would describe as 
 reckless. Thus he was often tempted to climb alone. He 
 made the ascent of Monte Rosa in this manner. When 
 going with guides he would gladly lay aside the rope and 
 scramble independently, sometimes wandering away from 
 his companions, even over snowfields, and not infrequently 
 getting into difficulties which might have had a disastrous 
 outcome. 
 
 He began mountaineering in the early days, when most 
 of the great peaks were still unclimbed, and when, m fact, 
 the Alps were but partially explored. His first visit to 
 Switzerland was made in 1849. In “Glaciers of the Alps,” 
 published in 1860, he described his earlier experiences, 
 the object of the first part of that book being, as he 
 stated, “ to give some notion of the life of an Alpine 
 explorer, and of the means by w T hich his knowledge is 
 acquired.” When he first ascended Mont Blanc there 
 still hung about it the traditions of difficulty with which 
 old writers had invested it. Near the Calotte he expe- 
 rienced the effects of diminished atmospheric pressure in 
 an acute form, and it was with difficulty, and at a late 
 hour in the afternoon, that the summit was attained. Some 
 years later he repeated the ascent, and spent twenty hours 
 on the top, making scientific experiments. 
 
 He roamed over many Alpine regions, and his name 
 is associated with important expeditions in various 
 localities. The brilliant accounts that he wrote of them 
 did much to attract attention to the sport of mountaineer- 
 ing. On the Piz Morteratsch, in the Engadin, he was 
 carried off by an avalanche, from which he and his party 
 escaped with difficulty. In the Bernese Oberland he 
 made the first passage of the perilous Lauwinen Thor in 
 1860, having, “ in 1859, bidden the Alps larewell, pur- 
 posing in mture to confine his mountain work to 
 occasional excursions in the Scotch Highlands ” — how 
 many ot us have been through the like experience ! 
 A few weeks later he made an assault on the Matterhorn, 
 but was forced to retire discomfited. The following year 
 he made the finest of his first ascents — that of the peer- 
 less Weisshorn. They slept on the rocks near the foot 
 of the east arete , and next morning, be. ore sunrise, 
 climbed to the ridge, which nowadays it is customary to 
 follow to the summit. They only followed it lor two 
 hours, and then turned over on to the southern face. 
 Here 
 
 “ The mountain was scarred by long couloirs , filled 
 with clear hard ice. The cutting of steps across these 
 couloirs proved to be so tedious and fatiguing that I 
 urged Bennen to abandon them and try the ridge 
 once more. We regained it and worked along it as 
 before. . . . The ridge became gradually narrower, 
 
 and the precipices on each side more sheer. We reached 
 the end of one of its subdivisions, and found ourselves 
 separated from the next rocks by a gap about 29 yards 
 across. The ridge narrowed to a mere wall, which, 
 however, as rock, would present no serious difficulty. 
 But upon the wall of rock was placed a second 
 wall of snow, which dwindled to a pure knife-edge 
 at the top. . . . How to pass this snow catenary I knew 
 not, for I did not think a human foot could trust itself 
 upon so frail a support. Bennen . . . tried the snow 
 
 by squeezing it with his foot, and to my astonishment 
 began to cross it. Even after the pressure of his feet the 
 space he had to stand on did not exceed a hand-breadth. 
 
 I followed him . . . with toes turned outwards. 
 
 Right and left the precipices were appalling. . 
 Another eminence now fronted us, behind which, how 
 far we knew not, the summit lay. We scaled this height, 
 and above us, but clearly within reach, a silvery pyramid 
 projected itself against the blue sky. . . . We passed 
 
 along the edge, reached the point, and instantly swept 
 with our eyes the whole range of the horizon. We stood 
 upon the crown of the redoubtable Weisshorn.” 
 
 After the Weisshorn came an attempt to rediscover the 
 
14 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 Old Weissthor, a pass from the Zermatt to the Macugn- 
 aga Valley known to have bee 1 used in lormer days, 
 but which was said to have become impracticable. The 
 position of the pass was forgotten, and people only knew 
 that it lay somewhere between the Cima di Jazzi and 
 Monte Rosa. Tyndall succeeded in forcing a perilous 
 passage over 
 the ridge, and 
 afterwards 
 several other 
 more or less 
 difficult passes 
 were made in 
 the same neigh- 
 bourhood. Some 
 confusion re- 
 sulted. When 
 I was stopping 
 at Macugnaga, I 
 cross-examined 
 Lochmatter, the 
 hotel-keeper, on 
 the question, 
 and, in conse- 
 quence, wrote 
 to Tyndall on 
 the matter. He 
 replied in a 
 letter of which 
 the following is 
 an extract : — 
 
 “ The time to 
 which your note 
 refers is far 
 away, and it 
 required some 
 reflection on 
 my part and 
 some study of 
 your photo- 
 graph to revive 
 my memory of 
 it. The couloir 
 that I chose in 
 1861 was that 
 nearest to 
 Monte Rosa, 
 and it had never 
 previously been 
 chosen. Loch- 
 matter, there- 
 fore, must be 
 right. It is, I 
 think, certain 
 that the couloir 
 which Professor 
 Schulz de- 
 scribes as arousing little confidence, and which he 
 therefore wisely avoided, was the one chosen by 
 me. I clearly remember the ice-wall at the top of 
 it, vvhich we never expected to scale. We hoped 
 to get up the rocks to the right of it, and to these 
 we had to betake ourselves earlier than we antici- 
 pated. It renders me uncomfortable even now (1883) 
 to think of the roar of the descending stones, hemmed 
 in as we were in the ice-gully.” 
 
 In 1862 Tyndall made his second assault on the 
 Matterhorn from Breil, and succeeded in reaching the 
 point, since called Pic Tyndall, and the base of the final 
 pyramid, 600 leet below the summit. There the guides’ 
 courage failed, and they had to return. The highest 
 point vvas reached for the first time, three years later, 
 
 from Zermatt 
 by Mr. Whym- 
 per’s party. In 
 1868 Tyndall 
 returned to it. 
 This time he 
 climbed to the 
 top from Breil, 
 and descended 
 to Zermatt, 
 thus making 
 the first tra- 
 verse of the 
 peak from Italy 
 into Switzer- 
 land. 
 
 Amongst 
 other moun- 
 tains, of whose 
 ascents he pub- 
 lished graphic 
 descriptio n s, 
 are the Jung- 
 lrau, the Eiger, 
 and the Aletsch- 
 horn. TheOber- 
 land had an 
 especial attrac- 
 tion for him, 
 and there, on 
 the slopes of 
 the Bel Alp, he 
 built himself a 
 summer home. 
 
 T yndall’s 
 death snaps 
 one more link 
 connecting the 
 present genera- 
 tion of climbers 
 with the pio- 
 neers who in- 
 vented the 
 mountain craft 
 and conquered 
 the Alps. All 
 the younger men 
 had read Tyn- 
 dall’s books, and 
 most of them 
 knew him by 
 sight at least. Nothing seemed to give him greater pleasure 
 than to talk over his old adventures with active mountain- 
 eers. The rashest of climbers himself, he constantly im- 
 pressed caution upon others. He would dash off on a solitary 
 climb, but he criticised the temerity of men who ventured 
 to climb together without guides. This divorce between 
 theory and practice by no means diminished his popularity. 
 Mountaineers feel that in Tyndall they have lost one of the 
 most eminentand one of the most genuine of their number. 
 
 THE ACCIDENT ON THE MORTERATSCH. 
 
TYNDALL AS A MOUNTAINEER. 
 
 15 
 
 ^ O the foregoing 
 j account of 
 * Tyndall r.s a 
 mountaineer by 
 one who has 
 himself won so 
 many laurels in 
 the same field, 
 we may append 
 a description of 
 the famous 
 accident in 1864 
 on the Peak of 
 Morteratch, in 
 the Engadine, 
 when Tyndall 
 and his com- 
 TYNDALL'S CHALET AT / BEL ALP. panions nar- 
 rowly escaped 
 
 destruction from an avalanche. The party consisted, 
 besides Tyndall himself, of his “ friend H., our intrepid 
 mountaineer,” his friend L., and two guides, Jenni and 
 Walter. H., we believe, was the Rev. C. B. Hutchin- 
 son (now Examining Chaplain to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury), and L., Mr. Lee Warner. The party got 
 safely to the top, and all went well until they 
 reached a certain snow slope in the descent. The 
 rest is best told in Professor Tyndall’s own words 
 (from a letter to the Times) : — “Jenni, the guide, 
 said something about keeping carefully to the tracks, 
 adding that a false step might detach an avalanche. 
 The word was scarcely uttered when I heard the 
 sound of a fall behind me, then a rush, and in the 
 twinkling of an eye my two friends and their guide — all 
 apparently entangled together— whistled past me. I 
 suddenly planted myself to resist their shock, but in an 
 instant I was in their wake, for the impetus was irre- 
 sistible. A moment afterwards Jenni was whirled away, 
 and thus all of us found ourselves riding downwards with 
 uncontrollable speed on the back of an avalanche which 
 a single slip had originated. When thrown back by the 
 jerk of the rope, I turned promptly on my face and drove 
 my baton through the moving snow, seeking to anchor it 
 in the ice underneath. I held it firmly thus for a few 
 seconds when I came into collision with some obstacle 
 and was rudely tossed through the air, Jenni at the 
 same time being shot down upon me. Both of us 
 here lost our batons. We had, in fact, been carried over 
 
 / 
 
 a crevasse, had hit its lower edge, our great velocity 
 causing us to be pitched beyond it. I was quite bewil- 
 dered lor a moment, but immediately righted myself, and 
 could see those in lront of me half buried in the snow, 
 and jolted from side to side by the ruts, among which 
 they were passing. Suddenly I saw them tumbled 
 over by a lurch of the avalanche, and immediately after- 
 wards found myself imitating their motion. This was 
 caused by a second crevasse. Jenni knew of it, and plunged 
 right into it, a brave and manful act, but lor the time una- 
 vailing. He was over 13 stone in weight, and he thought 
 that by jumping into the chasm, a strain might 
 be put upon the rope sufficient to check the 
 motion. He was, however, violently jerked out 
 of the fissure, and almost squeezed to death by the 
 pressure of the rope. A long slope was before us, which 
 led directly downwards to a brow where the glacier sud- 
 denly fell into a declivity of ice. At the base of this 
 declivity the glacier was cut by a series of profound 
 chasms, and towards these we were now rapidly borne. 
 The three foremost men rode upon the forehead of the 
 avalanche, and were at times almost wholly immersed in 
 the snow, but the moving layer was thinner behind. 
 Jenni rose incessantly, and with desperate energy drove 
 his feet into the firmer substance underneath. . . . The 
 slope at one place became less steep, the speed visibly 
 slackened, and we thought we were coming to rest ; the 
 avalanche, however, crossed the brow, which terminated 
 this gentle slope, and regained its motion. Here H. drew 
 his arm round his friend, all hope being for the time extin- 
 guished, while I graspedmy belt, and struggled foraninstant 
 to detach myself. Finding this difficult I resumed the pull 
 upon the rope. My share in the work was, I fear, infini- 
 tesimal, but Jenni’s powerful strain made itself felt at last. 
 Aided probably by a slight change of inclination, he 
 brought the whole thing to rest within a short distance of 
 the chasm over which, had we preserved our speed, a few 
 seconds would have carried us.” 
 
 Beyond a few bruises and cuts no one was hurt, but 
 Professor Tyndall found his watch-chain broken and the 
 watch gone. He inferred, however, that the slight absor- 
 bent power of gold from the sun’s rays would prevent it 
 from sinking as a stone sinks under similar circumstances, 
 and sure enough, on making an expedition to the spot a 
 fortnight later, he found it absolutely uninjured. He 
 wound it up, and it showed instant signs of animation. 
 The name of the maker deserved to be recorded. 
 
16 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The “ Discovery ” of the ‘ Bel Alp — His “Nest” on Lusgen Alp — The “ Mountain Gloom ” and the “ Moun- 
 tain Glory”- — Poetry of the Alps — Wonders of {the Ice World — Tyndalls Mountain Library — A 
 Mysterious Halo — Tyndall as Burgher and Medicine Man — A Wreath of Alpine Rose. 
 
 Tyndall, it has been well said, had a passion for sum- 
 mits. He loved to climb the tops and to live there. In 
 England he built himself a house on Hind Head, and he 
 must sadly have envied Sir Edward Watkin his cottage 
 on the top of Snowdon. Like Browning’s “ Gram- 
 
 Valley which have since become so favourite a resort of 
 English tourists. In 1856 the Aeggischorn Hotel was 
 built. The success of this experiment provoked in the 
 neighbouring Commune aspiritof rivalry and imitation, and 
 accordingly upon abold bluff overlooking the great Aletsch 
 
 marian,” Tyndall was all “for the summits” and “the 
 morning.” 
 
 Here — here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, 
 Lightnings are loosened, 
 
 Stars come and go ! Let joy break with the storm, 
 
 Peace let the dew send. 
 
 Other mountain lovers, climbers as keen as he, were con- 
 tent to use the Alps as a playground. Tyndall must 
 needs have a home there. 
 
 It was thirty or forty years ago that he paid his first 
 visit to those charming Alpine heights above the Rhone 
 
 Glacier, was subsequently planted the Bel Alp Hote 
 Tyndall frequently stayed there, and liked the place so well 
 that the thought occurred to him of building a chalet of his 
 own there. “ Before doing so, however,” he says, “ I 
 imitated the birds — chose, and was chosen by, a mate, 
 who, like myself, loved the freedom of the mountains, and 
 we built our nest together.” To this nest — Lusgen Alp — 
 Tyndall paid annual pilgrimage. Leaving England in 
 July, and returning in October, he spent three months at 
 least of every year among the Swiss mountains. It was 
 from Lusgen Alp that many of his most characteristic 
 
 GENERAL VIEW OF BRIEG AND THE BEL ALP (TYNDALL’S ALPINE HOME). 
 
LIFE ON THE LUSGEN ALP. 
 
 17 
 
 letters were dated — letters which reflected now the peace, 
 and now the storm, of Alpine heights. 
 
 Tyndall’s chalet is built of course not of wood, but of 
 stone — able on occasion to bear the pressure of mighty 
 masses of snow. “ Within doors,” said the master oi the 
 house, in describing his “nest,” “we work on the ground 
 floor and sleep alolt. We have two bedrooms there and 
 a servants’ bedroom, all lined with smooth pine. The 
 house is covered with pine shingle, prettily cut. Slates, I 
 considered, would be a discord in the landscape, and the 
 right of any man to desecrate a scene of natural beauty 
 by such discord may be questioned.” This was a com- 
 punction which he did, as we shall see, not always feel. 
 
 Very pleasant is the impression of life at Lusgen Alp 
 which one gathers from scattered references in Tyndall’s 
 
 The poem, entitled 4 ' A Morning on Alp Lusgen,” goes on 
 to deal with those problems of life and destiny which 
 were never far distant from Tyndall’s thoughts. Here, 
 for instance, in one of his Alpine letters, are some 
 reflections suggested by an experience in common life : — 
 “ We have bought a donkey — a good-humoured, patient 
 little beast — to carry up our modicum of fuel from the 
 subjacent pine woods. To avoid torture it must be at 
 work betimes, closing its operations in the shades of 
 evening. In the heat of the day flies hang about the 
 quadrupeds in crowds— the larger ones measuring quite 
 an inch in length. We slew some score of them jdiis 
 morning. They seemed drunk with blood, and the 
 towel with which we squashed them was flecked with 
 gore. The donkey was unarmed, and bore ts agony 
 
 'THE MARJELEN ICE LAKE (See Tyndalls “Forms of Water in Ice and Glaciers.”) 
 
 papers and letters. In him the artistic observer mingled 
 with the scientific student, and his long sojourns on the Bel 
 Alp gave him unusual opportunities for entering into the 
 heart alike of the mountain gloom and of the mountain glory. 
 In one of his letters he draws a vivid picture of a 
 mountain storm. “ The Laureate,” he wrote, “ is a close 
 observer and a sound interpreter of nature. Instead of 
 being cribbed, cabined, and confined, as he now is, in a 
 miserable yacht, he ought to be here setting these 
 splendours to music.” Tyndall himself sometimes put 
 his impressions into verse ; as, for instance, in a poem 
 which began as follows : — 
 
 The sun has cleared the hills, quenching the flush 
 Of orient crimson with excess of light. 
 
 The long grass quivers in the morning air 
 Without a sound ; yet each particular blade 
 Hymns its own song, had we but ears to hear. 
 
 with passive meekness. And this is Nature ! This is 
 what the Deists of the eighteenth century proclaimed 
 to be perfect ! ” 
 
 During the long summer days one may picture the Pro- 
 fessor enjoying to the full the pleasures of out-door moun- 
 tain life, including, sometimes, a delicious bathe. “ The 
 streams about us,” he wrote in a letter, “ are very limpid 
 and beautiful ; not glacier streams with their turbidities, 
 but streams from mountain snow which has never scratched 
 its bed. They gleam over the pebbles, spring down 
 ledges, and boil at the bottom in irresistibly tempting 
 ‘ tubs.’” He was in full sight from his mountain “ nest” of 
 the glorious Aletsch glacier. Across this glacier, within an 
 easy walk for a mountaineer, lies the Eggishorn ; and on 
 one side, high up the glacier, is the wonderful Marjelen 
 See, the small lake on whose surface there float miniature 
 icebergs, and whose phenomena Tyndall o!ten described. 
 
18 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 For enjoyment in the long autumn evenings there were 
 well-filled shelves at Lusgen Alp. “ We have founded a 
 little library in our mountain home,” he wrote in another 
 letter, “ which is a great refuge in the evenings. On its 
 shelves Spinoza, Hume, Fichte, Spencer, Lecky, Lange, 
 Emerson, Calderwood, Caird, and Renan are fairly repre- 
 sented. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, and 
 Tennyson are also there, with gatherings from Schiller 
 and Goethe.” 
 
 Curious phenomena were o'ten observed and recorded 
 by Professor Tyndall during the evening time. “ During 
 the nightly fogs,” he wrote, “ a most curious phenomenon 
 was repeatedly observed. Placing a lamp in a passage 
 with a door opening into the night, on standing in the 
 
 burgher of the commune in which his chalet was situated 
 — a privilege which carried with it the right to pasturage 
 and fuel. In return Professor Tyndall used to act as 
 medicine-man to the peasants, and there are many of 
 them who have stories to tell of his kindness and atten- 
 tion. The Swiss greatly appreciate the compliment paid 
 to their country by any foreigner who makes his home 
 among them, and the Professor Tyndall's chalet 
 was soon promoted to the dignity of a “sight.” 
 Mr. Ruskin somewhere describes how, on driving over 
 the Simplon, he was at a certain turn of the road 
 informed, “A present, vous pouvez voir l’hotel sur le Bel 
 Alp, bati par Monsieur Tyndall.” The voice, he con- 
 tinues, was the voice of the driver of the supplementary 
 
 THE ALETSCH GLACIER: A VIEW FROM TYNDALL’S ALPINE CHALET. 
 
 doorway a dark shadow of the body was cast upon the 
 fog, and round the shadow, beyond the boundary of the 
 directly illuminated portion of the fog, was a luminous 
 circle of singular lightness and definition. Both shadow 
 and halo went before us as we walked forward through 
 the fog. Had we the consciousness of being in any 
 degree saintly, or had we any leanings towards the 
 mysteries of ‘ psychical research,’ we might have accepted 
 the phenomenon as a certificate of canonisation. As it is, 
 we are content to refer our aureola to the diffraction of 
 the rays of light.” 
 
 Like the late J. A. Symonds at Davos, Tyndall entered 
 into the civic life he found around him, and was elected a 
 
 pair of horses from Brieg, who had been for some 
 minutes considering how he could best recommend 
 himself to me for an extra franc. I not instantly ap- 
 pearing favourably stirred by this information, he went 
 on with increased emphasis, “ Monsieur le Professeur 
 Tyndall.” 
 
 Among the tributes to the Professor’s memory which 
 were sent to his English home when the news of his 
 death became known, was a wreath of branches of the 
 Alpine rose. It bore the inscription, “With deepest 
 sorrow, veneration, and unending gratitude from Alpine 
 neighbours and friends.” 
 
TYNDALL AND CARLYLE. 
 
 19 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TYNDALL AND CARLYLE. 
 
 “ Thrills of Electric Splendour ” in Carlyle's “ Past and Present”— Tyndall Escorts Carlyle to Edinburgh — 
 An “ Adorable Telegram ” — Mrs. Carlyle’s Death — Carlyle Torn Off by “ the Impetuous Tyndall” to 
 the Riviera — A Holiday in the New Forest — Last Visit to Carlyle — Speech at the Unveiling of the 
 Carlyle Monument. 
 
 One of the most interesting features of Professor 
 Tyndall’s career was his friendship with Carlyle. Tyndall 
 came first under the influence of the sage when quite a 
 young man. He read some extracts from “ Past and 
 Present ” which appeared in the Preston papers, and was 
 much struck by them. Later he procured a copy of the 
 book and found in it “ strokes of descriptive power ” 
 unequalled in his experience, and “ thrills of electric 
 splendour ” which carried him enthusiastically on. He 
 read the book three times, and then wrote out an 
 analytical summary of every chapter. This summary he 
 carefully preserved, and many years afterwards, when the 
 two had grown intimate friends, he showed the ragged 
 sheets upon which it was written to Carlyle, who was much 
 interested. “ What greater reward could I have,” said 
 Carlyle, in a voice touched with emotion, “ than to find an 
 ardent young soul, unknown to me, and to whom I was 
 personally unknown, thus influenced by my words ? ” 
 
 As the years passed by the two men became intimately 
 acquainted. When Carlyle was chosen Lord Rector of 
 Edinburgh, Tyndall, who was at the same time to 
 receive an honorary LL.D., undertook to see his 
 friend safe to the northern capital, and he has left 
 behind him a very interesting account of the journey, 
 and of Carlyle’s reception in Edinburgh. Huxley, who 
 was also to be “doctored” had joined Carlyle and 
 Tyndall, and they all met in the ante-room of the hall in 
 which Carlyle’s address was to be delivered : — 
 
 “I went up to Carlyle,” Tyndall said, “and earnestly 
 scanning his face, asked, ‘How do you feel?’ He re- 
 turned my gaze, curved his lip, shook his head, and 
 answered not a word. ‘ Now,’ I said, ‘ you have to 
 practise what you have been preaching all your life, and 
 prove yourself a hero.’ He again shook his head, but said 
 nothing.” Carlyle’s address on the occasion was delivered 
 extempore, and he held his audience spellbound for an hour. 
 To Mrs. Carlyle, who was excitedly awaiting news of the 
 address, Tyndall promptly despatched a telegram. It ran 
 thus : “ A perfect triumph ! ” “ Adorable telegram,” she 
 
 called it in a letter to her husband, adding, “ God bless 
 John Tyndall in this world and the next !” 
 
 Tyndall returned South alone, having a lecture to 
 deliver at the Royal Institution. Thither Mrs. Carlyle 
 repaired, to hear from Tyndall’s own lips every detail of 
 the great event. She describes the visit in a letter to 
 Carlyle, which incidentally gives a lively picture of the 
 stir and bustle of a “ Tyndall day” at Albemarle-street • — 
 
 I called at the Royal Institution yesterday (she writes), to ask 
 if Tyndall had returned. He was there ; and I sat some time 
 with him in his room, hearing the minutest details of your doings 
 and sufferings on the journey. It is the event of Tyndall’s life ! 
 Crossing the hall I noticed for the first time that officials were 
 hurrying about ; and I asked the one nearest me, “ Is there to be 
 lecturing here to-day ? ” The man gave me such a look, as if I 
 was deranged , and people going up the stairs turned and looked 
 at me as if I was deianged. Neuberg ran down to me and asked, 
 “Wouldn’t I hear the lecture?” And by simply going out 
 when everyone else was going in, I made myself an object of 
 general interest. As I looked back from the carriage-window I 
 saw all heads in the hall and on the stairs turned towards me. 
 
 Soon afterwards Tyndall left London for a holiday in 
 the Isle of Wight. 
 
 On the way to town again he picked up a paper, 
 and was much shocked to see the announcement of Mrs. 
 Carlyle’s death. Winter was approaching, and it was 
 deemed advisable to get Carlyle away for a change. Lady 
 Ashburton pressed him to accept of her hospitality at Men- 
 tone, and thither he went, the faithful Tyndall once more 
 accompanying him. In a letter from Mentone to 
 Mr. Ruskin, Carlyle describes how “the impetuous 
 Tyndall tore me out from the sleety mud abysses of 
 London, as if by the hair of the head, and dropped 
 me here.” Carlyle remained at Mentone till the 
 spring, Tyndall’s duties having called him back long 
 before. 
 
 The friends enjoyed several holidays together in the 
 following months, one of the most notable being at 
 Melchet, the seat of Lady Ashburton in the New Forest. 
 One day they had been out walking and were overtaken 
 by a storm, and the following account by Tyndall of a 
 chat they had in a “clearing of the forest” is almost 
 eerie in its character : — 
 
 It was a solemn spot, perfectly calm, while round the wood 
 sounded the storm. Dry, dead fern abounded. Of this I formed 
 a cushion, and placing it on one of the tree stumps set him down 
 upon it. I filled his pipe and lighted it, and while he puffed 
 conversation went on. Early in the day, as we roamed over 
 the pastures, he had been complaining of the collapse of 
 religious feeling in England, and I said to him, “As re- 
 gards the most earnest and the most capable of the men of 
 a generation younger than your own, if one writer more 
 than another has been influential in loosing them from their 
 theological moorings, thou art the man !” Our talk was resumed 
 and continued as he sat upon the stump and smoked his placid pipe 
 within the hearing of the storm. I said to him, “ Desjrtte all 
 the losses you deplore, there is one great gain. We have 
 extinguished the horrible spectre which darkened with its 
 death-wings so many brave and pious lives. It is something 
 to have abolished hell fire ! ” “Yes,” he replied, “that is a 
 distinct and an enormous gain. My own father was a brave 
 man, and, though poor, unaccustomed to cower before the face 
 of man ; but the Almighty God was a different matter. I could 
 notice that for three years before he died, this rugged, honest 
 soul trembled to its depths at even the possible prospect of 
 the hell fire. It is surely a great gain to have abolished this 
 Terror.” 
 
 When the statue of Carlyle was unveiled on the 
 Embankment in 1882, Tyndall was one of the speakers, 
 and referred to the “ misjudgment and misapprehension 
 manifold ” regarding Carlyle and his which had 
 prevailed since his death. “ In Switzerland,” he 
 finely said, “ I live in the immediate presence of a 
 mountain, noble alike in form and mass. A bucket 
 or two of water whipped into a cloud can obscure, if not 
 efface, that lordly peak. You would almost say that no 
 peak could be there. But the cloud passes away, and the 
 mountain in its solid grandeur remains. Thus, when all 
 temporary dust is laid, will stand out erect and clear the 
 massive figure of Carlyle.” An eloquent and touching 
 tribute. 
 
20 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 NOTES ON TYNDALL’S CHARACTER AND WORK. 
 
 A Chat with Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S. 
 
 Some Notable Lectures — -Tyndall s Mountain Daring — His Sciejitific Researches — A “ Prince of Expounders ” — 
 Tyndalls Attitude towards Revealed Religion — His Belfast Address — Scientific Men and 
 Christianity . 
 
 Among Professor Tyndall’s colleagues at the Royal 
 Institution was Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S., who occu- 
 pied the Chair of Chemistry during a part of the time 
 that Tyndall was Professor of Natural Philosophy. 
 Although holding widely different views on some sub- 
 jects, they were on terms of friendship for many years ; 
 and in a chat with a representative of The Westminster 
 Gazette Dr. Gladstone kindly gave some reminiscences 
 •f and particulars regarding the late Pro f essor and his 
 work. 
 
 Tyndall’s first lecture at the Royal Institution was upon 
 “Matter and Force,” the second on “ Bunsen’s Theory 
 of the Geysers,” he having studied under Bunsen in Ger- 
 many. The lecture was characterised by great ela7i and 
 a fine display of experimental power, and seemed to 
 take the audience by storm. This was in 1853, and the 
 following month he was appointed Pro r essor of Natural 
 Philosophy at the institution. Then began his series of 
 lectures on dia-magnetism and other branches ot physics, 
 on Friday evenings, and in the afternoons. In 1856 he 
 gave one lecture which may be well remembered, espe- 
 cially as the research led up to his investigation of 
 glaciers. It was on the cleavage of crystals and slate 
 rocks, and was thought by some to be one of his most 
 original efforts. He showed that slaty cleavage was 
 always at a right angle to the line of pressure. This is 
 seen in many things besides slate rgcks, and Tyndall 
 proved that it existed even in puff paste. It was a fact 
 new to many at the time, and it showed an incursion by 
 Tyndall into the field of geology or mineralogy which he 
 did not often make. In fact, it was sometimes remarked 
 in connection with his investigations in the Alps that he 
 directed his experiments not to finding out what the 
 mountains were made of, but to what was the character 
 of the ice which covered them. 
 
 The glaciers were one of Professor Tyndall’s favourite 
 subjects. It was somewhere about 1857 that he began 
 his observations on their origin, motion, and structure ; 
 and he worked on the subject pretty well during the re- 
 mainder of his life. He was constantly making experi- 
 ments. He proved, for instance, that the movement of 
 glaciers was not confined to the summer season, when 
 they are in process of melting, but that they actually 
 moved orward in the winter time. When experimenting 
 at the Alps he did some very bold, not to say foolhardy, 
 things, and Dr. Gladstone gave an instance in point : — 
 
 “ I remember in one of his books,” he said, “Tyndall 
 described going up the Monte Rosa alone without his 
 coat, and with a few sandwiches and a bottle of tea. 
 When at the top he lost his ice-axe, but fortunately it was 
 caught on a projection a few yards away, and he was able 
 to secure it. He said he would not have dared to make 
 the descent of the mountain without it, and that if he had 
 
 remained at the summit he would certainly have been 
 frozen to death.” 
 
 Among Tyndall’s other subjects was the absorption 
 and radiation of heat by gases. He showed that there 
 was a correlation between the two — a good radiator 
 being a good absorber, and vice versa. His discovery 
 that the aqueous vapour in the atmosphere absorbs much 
 heat has an important bearing on meteorology. He also 
 expounded the theory of heat as a mode of motion. This 
 >was not a new discovery, but in his lectures and in some 
 of his books he familiarised the public with it, and con- 
 vinced them ot its truth. With regard to sound, he also 
 made a number of interesting experiments. He showed, 
 tor instance, that sound was not stopped by fog, but by a 
 mixed atmosphere. Where the atmosphere is perfectly 
 still and uniform throughout, it does not really matter, so 
 far as the conveyance of sound is concerned, whether it 
 is clear or not. Professor Tyndall worked upon log- 
 signals in connection with the Trinity House, to which 
 he was the scientific adviser. He also devoted 
 considerable study to questions of light and colour. 
 Many of our readers will remember the attention 
 that was directed some years ago to the spontaneous 
 generation theory. Tyndall took considerable interest in 
 the discussion that was then carried on. He worked a 
 great deal at trying to extend the experiments of Pasteur 
 in connection with fermentation and putrefaction and the 
 formation of bacteria, but the general opinion seems to 
 be that the result was little more than a corroboration of 
 Pasteur’s work. He was not, of course, a physiologist at 
 all, but approached the subject irom the standpoint of the 
 physicist. 
 
 Protessor Tyndall was a prince of expounders. His 
 Friday evening lectures at the Royal Institution were 
 richly illustrated by experiments. Some ot them are 
 probably unsurpassed for lucidity of exposition and 
 beauty of language, and they assisted greatly the advance- 
 ment of science. It was not so much as a pioneer in 
 research that Professor Tyndall was noted ; but when any 
 subject was brought forward and other men were groping 
 about for a cause, he would step in, and by'his knowledge, 
 ingenuity, and power of devising crucial experiments, 
 explain the phenomena presented. He had great mental 
 power, rather than originality. When, however, a theory 
 was once started, he would take it up and investigate it 
 thoroughly, and veiy soon ascertain its real worth. In 
 this way his scientific papers were very valuable. Although 
 materialistic in his views he had a great deal of imagina- 
 tion and poetic feeling, and it was this characteristic 
 which made his books so attractive. They show as a 
 rule great command of language, and put the different 
 points of the subjects of which they treat with wonderful 
 clearness.^He wrote a Life of Faraday which is a model 
 
NOTES ON TINDALL’S CHARACTER AND WORK. 
 
 21 
 
 in its way. Tyndall had an intense admiration lor 
 Faraday, who was always very kind to him, and the 
 Life is a charming little book. Persons who knew 
 Tyndall mainly through his letters of later years 
 will probably be inclined to judge him somewtiat 
 unfairly. He had no doubt certain weaknesses, which 
 were well marked, and lorcible language, especially when 
 on the subject of politics, was one of them. This, however, 
 was probably due to the fact that he overworked himself 
 in his early years, and that he suffered much from brain 
 irritation. 
 
 Professor Tyndall’s attitude towards revealed religion 
 has oiten been the subject of comment. Some or his 
 intimate friends at different periods of his life were of an 
 entirely different way of thinking — Faraday notably — but 
 this fact never raised a cloud between them. Religion 
 was not a subject which Tyndall avoided. On the con- 
 trary. Often when dining with iriends of an opposite 
 opinion, either at the Athenaeum Club or elsewhere, he 
 would commence a di c cussion on the subject, and would 
 thoroughly enjoy it. On this point Dr. Gladstone’s state- 
 ment is interesting : — 
 
 “Professor Tyndall was(Dr. Gladstone said) brought up 
 in a narrow school of Christian thought, and when he 
 went to Germany, and- came under the influence of the 
 universities there, he found things so very different that 
 his belief in the Bible was entirely upset, and it was never 
 restored. He had, however, the religious sentiment deep 
 down in his mind. I remember him once telling me that 
 at times he felt as it he stood in the presence of God, and 
 that at other times he did not believe that there was a God 
 at all. His Belfast address, which caused so much stir, 
 really contained nothing new. It was simply an able 
 review of materialistic philosophy with reference to the 
 prominent topic of the day. It offended not only religious 
 people, but people all round. Those who did not care for 
 revealed religion thought he had gone out of his way to 
 attack it ; and those who did care for religion of 
 course condemned his address. The tact is the develop- 
 ment theory was not received then as it is now, and the 
 public were not prepared for Professor Tyndall’s views. 
 
 He might have dealt with the theory from the religious 
 standpoint just as well as from the other. Amongst the 
 earliest expounders of Darwin’s theory in this country 
 and in America were some intensely Christian men. 
 Tyndall took the other side strongly, and assumed that 
 the theory was opposed to revealed religion. Many 
 people now, of course, do not believe that evolution is 
 opposed to revealed religion at all.” 
 
 Professor Tyndall attended the meeting of the 
 British Association the year lollowing the Belfast address, 
 to resign his presidency, but it is a curious fact that he 
 never went to any of the meetings in after years. This, 
 however, may have been owing to his devoting so much 
 time and atte ntion to his investigations in the t Alps. It 
 is also remarkable that he attempted subsequently to tone 
 down the effect of his Belfast address, and that in the 
 latest published edition of it in book form several 
 passages are omitted. The reference to Professor 
 Tyndall’s views on religion naturally leads to a mention 
 of the popular belief that most of the leading scientific 
 men of the day are opposed to Christianity. Our readers 
 will be interested in hearing Dr. Gladstone’s opinion on 
 this point : — 
 
 “ The belief that most of our leading scientific men are 
 hostile or indifferent to Christianity is (said Dr. Glad- 
 stone) entirely without foundation. It is no doubt preva- 
 lent, because, alter it had been proclaimed by Atheists, it 
 was taken up by the occupants of the pulpits, and assumed 
 by them to be true. There may be something in the study 
 of science that tends to materialism — no doubt the 
 advance of science has upset, legitimately, many of our 
 theological notions — and I do not think it at all wonder- 
 ful that young scientific men and readers of scientific 
 books should be affected that way. But certainly the 
 majority of the leading scientific men of the present day 
 in this country are Christians ; and so far as leaders in 
 my own particular branch of science are concerned, this 
 is much the case in France also. It is, I believe, as a 
 general rule, true that, as Bacon puts it, ‘a little philosophy 
 inclineth man’s mind to Atheism, but depth in philosophy 
 bringeth men’s minds back to relig on.’ ” 
 
22 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 
 
 By Edward Frankland, M.D., D.C.L., F.R.S. 
 
 Life at Queemvocd College — “ C. of ML ( Commencement of the Millennium ) — Rambles in the New Forest — 
 TyndalVs Physical Strength — Work at Marburg — Recollections of his Lectures — “ A Pair of B lice EyesL 
 
 As one who enjoyed the intimate friendship of the late 
 Professor Tyndall for nearly half a century, 1 think your 
 readers may be interested to learn the following reminis- 
 cences of the earlier years of his remarkable career. 
 
 My recollections of Tyndall date from 1847, a time 
 when he gave up the lucrative profession of civil engineer- 
 ing to work at chemistry in my laboratory, and at the 
 same time teach mathematics and surveying to the 
 students of Queen wood College, Hants. We were both 
 attracted thither by the Principal — George Edmondson, 
 
 the wall, still remained ; and Robert Owen himself was 
 occasionally known to pay us a visit, though it was 
 thought undesirable that the fact should reach the 
 ears of parents, he being considered a “ dangerous 
 character.” 
 
 Besides formal instruction in mathematics, Tyndall 
 gave lessons to the students on the use of the theodolite 
 and practical surveying in the country round about Queen- 
 wood, my assistant, now the distinguished engineer, Mr. 
 James Mansergh, and the late Henry Fawcett afterwards 
 
 QUEENWOOD COLLEGE, HAMPSHIRE. 
 
 a Quaker, who was the first to introduce the practical, or 
 laboratory, teaching of science in a school in England. 
 He had already made a beginning, under my 
 direction, at Tulketh Hall, near Preston, in 1846, 
 and next year he migrated to Queenwood, the then 
 famous “ Harmony Hall,” when the Socialist scheme 
 under Robert Owen had finally collapsed. The bene- 
 volent promoters induced Edmondson to reopen the Hall 
 as a scholastic institution. The letters C. of M. (com- 
 mencement of the millennium), inserted in flint stones in 
 
 Postmaster-General, being his favourite pupils. He also 
 lectured on various subjects — the uses of surveying instru- 
 ments, land surveying, mathematics, and occasionally 
 social and philosophical subjects, “The Importance of 
 Independent Thought,” &c. 
 
 He was at this time already a great student and 
 admirer of Carlyle (he gave me a copy of “ Heroes and 
 Hero-Worship”), of Emerson, and through Carlyle’s 
 works of Goethe and Fichte, whom he then knew only 
 through translations. Under the nom-de-plume of Wat 
 
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 
 
 23 
 
 Ripton he was writing magazine articles on literary 
 subjects. 
 
 It is remarkable that, although he was a good mathe- 
 matician at the age of 27, his mind was still almost a 
 complete blank so far as chemistry or physical science in 
 any form was concerned. He soon, however, became in- 
 tensely interested in these sciences, and anxious to obtain 
 a thorough acquaintance with chemistry ; indeed, he told 
 me this was his chief object in coming to Queenwood. 
 Our duties were heavy, our work of various kinds for the 
 college, as I see from my diary, demanding seven, 
 eight, and oftener ten hours a day. We at onee 
 arranged together, therefore, for the utilisation of what 
 spare time remained to us. We gave ourselves six 
 hours in our bedrooms (10 to 4), then rose, lit a 
 fire in the laboratory and made coffee ; he worked at 
 
 of this gas, jumped up from his chair, seized Tyndall by 
 the arm, threw him over his back, and ran about the 
 room with him in this position, Tyndall being utterly 
 unable to control him. At this time, the extraordinary 
 skill in manipulation, for which he afterwards became so 
 celebrated, had not yet developed itself ; I remember on 
 one occasion when, for medical purposes, we were apply- 
 ing electric shocks to a colleague, he pulled over the 
 Bunsen battery on to the floor and spoiled the carpet. 
 
 We remained only fifteen months at Queenwood, having 
 decided to study chemistry in Bunsen’s laboratory at 
 Marburg, in Hesse Cassel. In Marburg, he was, as 
 a student at the age of 29, a very conspicuous figure ; 
 the most juvenile of the undergraduates in his leisure 
 moments, but at the same time extremely industrious, 
 genial, good tempered, and unconventional. At 5 a.m. 
 
 THE YEW-TREE AVENUE, QUEENWOOD. 
 
 chemistry under my tuition ; and, in return, gave me 
 lessons in mathematics ; he attended my lectures, and I 
 his. He was bright, sociable, original, and greatly in 
 earnest, with a fund of enthusiasm and humour. On 
 Sundays we took frequent rambles into the New Forest ; 
 on one, a type of many others, we walked 26 miles in 
 search of the so-called “Rufus Stone” in the Forest, slept 
 for an hour on dried leaves till disturbed by the grunting 
 of some pigs in close proximity ; then, in returning, we 
 passed a little country church where service was begin- 
 ningjStepped in, and found the congregation “aristocratic” 
 and the sermon “ tame.” 
 
 Tyndall, though thin and wiry, was exceedingly strong, 
 and on this account was told off to control the move- 
 ments of the boys to whom I administered laughing gas 
 in one of my lectures. A boy of 14, under the influence 
 
 he would be working at mathematics in dressing gown- 
 and slippers, at 8 to 10 attending lectures on chemistry 
 and physics, 10 to 12.30 (dinner hour) working in 
 Bunsen’s laboratory ; afternoon, mathematics again, and 
 later (in summer) hanging by his legs from the branch of 
 a tree for the amusement of a picnic party. He took his 
 degree at the end of 1849, submitting himself to examina- 
 tion in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, after the 
 acceptance by the Faculty of his mathematical dissertation 
 on “ The Properties of the Screw-Surface.” Tyndall after- 
 wards worked at original research in the physical labora- 
 tories of Knoblauch in Halle and Magnus in Berlin, and 
 returned to England about the end of 1851. He took up 
 his residence again at Queenwood College, not as a 
 teacher, but simply to wait there until he could obtain 
 some suitable appointment as Professor of Physics. It 
 
24 
 
 THE LITE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 will scarcely be believed that he had to wait until 1853. 
 Chairs of experimental physics scarcely existed in England 
 at that time ; but, in the interval, there was one created 
 in Toronto, for which he was an unsuccessful candidate. 
 On February 11, 1853, he delivered, at the Royal Institu- 
 tion, his famous “ Lecture on the Influence of Material 
 Aggregation upon the Manifestations of Force.” This 
 lecture, though on such an abstruse subject, took his 
 audience, most popular as it was, by storm ; and he 
 received at its close quite an ovation. His wonderful 
 powers oi exposition were at once recognised by Faraday 
 and Bence Jones, and he was appointed Professor of 
 Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution on the 4th of 
 July following. 
 
 As a colloquial lecturer, he was unsurpassed even by 
 Faraday. The enthusiastic interest and pleasure he took 
 in his subject, and its illustration, enchained his audience 
 and compelled their attention. He had considerable 
 faith in memoria technica , and often made use of quaint 
 and baroque illustrations to fix an important scientific fact 
 in the minds of his audience. Thus, in a lecture I heard 
 him deliver at the London Institution, when he was 
 explaining that the blueness of the sea and of blue milk 
 depended mainly on fine, colourless particles of solid 
 matter in suspension, he suddenly exclaimed, “ And thus 
 the blue eyes so much admired amongst the ladies of my 
 audience owe their charm essentially to muddiness ! 
 Why do I give you such instances ? If I told you merely 
 the] dry scientific explanation, you would go away and 
 
 straightway forget ; but these illustrations stick in your 
 minds, and you cannot forget them.”* 
 
 This is not the place to speak of Tyndall’s scientific 
 work ; but I may be permitted to say that his splendid 
 researches on Magne-crystallic action, and those on the 
 relation of gases and vapours to radiant heat, will take a 
 high place amongst the classical and epoch-making 
 physical work of the century. 
 
 * This same lecture, it may be interesting to add, attracted 
 the admiration of Mr. Ruskin. “A lecture by Professor 
 Tyndall has been put into my hands,” he says, in the Preface to 
 “The Queen of the Air,” “ which completes in two important 
 particulars the evidence of an instinctive truth in ancient sym- 
 bolism ; showing, first, that the Greek conception of an ethereal 
 element pervading space is justified by the closest reasoning of 
 modern physicists ; and, secondly, that the blue of the sky, hitherto 
 thought to be caused by watery vapour, is, indeed, reflected 
 from the divided air itself ; so that the bright blue of the 
 eyes of Athena, and the deep blue of her aegis, prove to be 
 accurate mythic expressions of natural phenomena which it is the 
 uttermost triumph of recent science to have revealed.” “In 
 thanking Professor Tyndall for the true wonder of this piece of 
 work,” Mr. Ruskin went on to “ask his pardon, and that of all 
 masters in physical science, for any words of mine that may 
 ever seem to fail in the respect due to their great powers of 
 thought.” Mr. Ruskin, as we have seen, drew pretty freely 
 upon this prospective apology in the course of the glacier con- 
 troversy. 
 
AN INCIDENT IN TYNDALL’S LIFE. 
 
 2S 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AN INCIDENT IN TYNDALL’S LIFE. 
 
 By Madame de Novikoff. 
 
 A December Morning in the Park — Kinglake and the Churches — A Call from Tyndall— Professor 
 Frohschammer* s Work — TyndalPs Generous Offer of Help. 
 
 It was a lovely December day ; no wind, no smoke, no 
 fog. There could be no better day for a long healthy 
 stroll in one of the beautiful parks, of which every 
 Londoner may be proud, and great was my satisfaction 
 when Kinglake’s visit was announced to me. I asked 
 him to come at once with me towards the shores of the 
 picturesque Serpentine. 
 
 But it was not enough to “ eat the fresh air,” nor admire 
 the tree s, nor discuss the weather. I wanted particularly 
 to know Kinglake’s views upon Tyndall’s beautiful Belfast 
 address, which fascinated me greatly, though it certainly 
 expressed anything but my religious creed. Still, I must 
 confess, I was struck with its courageous outspokenness 
 and artistic brilliancy. 
 
 Here Kinglake interrupted me, “ Pray, remember I am 
 a heathen. I dislike churches, and had I my way,” 
 added he, with a twinkle in his eye, “ I would write on 
 every chapel, church, and cathedral only one line — 
 
 ‘ Important, if true.’ As for philosophy, with all its 
 objective and subjective theories, with all its ‘categorical 
 imperatives,’ I patronise it still less ” — this time smiling 
 outright. “ I admit categorical imperatives only from a 
 woman I like. But, look ! here is the very man you will 
 be pleased to know, I am sure. Here is Tyndall 
 himself, and he will explain everything you want to hear.” 
 With these words he took the new-comer by the hand, 
 and the acquaintance was made — an acquaintance which 
 will never be forgotten. 
 
 At that time, I generally was “ at home ” after dinner, 
 from nine to twelve, according to our Russian fashion, by 
 which, without specifying any day, people are allowed to 
 drop in when it pleases them. With me, however, only 
 the elect were thus invited, and Tyndall naturally 
 belonged to that category. Each time he came was a 
 new pleasure to me, but especially when he was in a 
 poetical mood and recited by heart, which, with his 
 strikingly melodious voice and remarkable memory, he 
 did to perfection. 
 
 One evening he came and found me alone, or rather only 
 in company of seyeral books, just received from a great 
 Munich friend of mine — Professor Frohschammer. 
 
 To my surprise, Tyndall knew nothing either of the books 
 or of the life of that remarkable scholar ; he asked me to give 
 him a general idea of both — not an easy task, to be sure. 
 But I marked several passages in the work on “ The 
 Right of Independent Conviction” (“Das Recht der 
 eigenen Ueberzeugung ”), “Das Christentum Christi, und 
 das Christentum des Papstes,” and several others, which 
 were considered by the author as the foundation of the 
 Old Catholic movement. 
 
 Tyndall patiently listened ; then, putting aside, one by 
 one, all the volumes, promised to read them carefully. 
 “Tell me his biography,” he exclaimed; “how did he come 
 to hold these views? Did you not tell me that he took Holy 
 Orders?” “So he did,” I explained in reply. “ His life 
 has been a very hard one, full of struggle and privations. 
 An orphan, depending entirely on a remote relative, who 
 
 was an old fanatical priest, the boy had no choice. 
 He craved for books and learning, and begged to be sent 
 to school. This was granted, on condition that he should 
 devote his life to the Roman Church. The child 
 naturally consented, and studied theology with such 
 brilliant success that he soon obtained appointment as a 
 Universitat sprediger and Professor of Philosophy. 
 
 “But the more he matured in study and meditation, the 
 more he felt that Truth was not religiously adhered to 
 by the Holy See. Silence under such circumstances 
 became intolerable, and he began publishing pamphlets, 
 which not only made a stir in Rome, but were severely 
 criticised and all put under the Index. 
 
 “ Frohschammer, naturally, was thus ordered to give up 
 his parish. This deprived him of his living and of his 
 uncle’s support, but not of his craving for truth. He 
 continued to work on. But once, as he was finishing one 
 of his straightforward rebukes to Rome, he was struck 
 with a kind of paralysis, which rendered him half blind. 
 
 “ The Holy See then prohibited all Roman Catholic 
 undergraduates to attend his lectures on Philosophy, but 
 as there were hardly any students of any other persuasion 
 at Munich University, this meant ruin to Frohscham- 
 mer’s career as a professor. Nevertheless he still worked 
 on for conscience sake, as if ignoring all the terrible con- 
 ditions of a blind man’s solitude.” 
 
 Tyndall seemed interested in this very incomplete and 
 fragmentary sketch of mine, and left me rather suddenly, 
 carrying away with him all Frohschammer’s books, ancl 
 promising again to study them carefully. 
 
 Next day the post brought me a letter from Tyndall 
 and a cheque of one hundred pounds sterling, with a few 
 lines only: — “What I heard from you about your poor 
 Miinich friend, and all I found in his works, has so deeply 
 impressed me, that I beg you to forward him this cheque 
 as a little help and as a token of my sympathy.” 
 
 I was naturally much touched by such spontaneous 
 generosity, but knowing so well Frohschammer’s inde- 
 pendent character, I returned the cheque, asking Tyndall 
 to do something more to his liking. “ Let your English 
 readers know him and his works through your kind 
 introduction,” said I. “ Now that everybody is reading 
 your Belfast address, and that you are printing its sixth 
 edition, could you not add a few lines about him ?” 
 
 Kind Tyndall promised, and did it at once in his clever, 
 delicate, and charming way. 
 
 This happened a little before my departure for Russia. 
 My direct route lay via Berlin, but having some mis- 
 givings about the part I had played in this transaction, I 
 resolved to return home via Munich, in order to see 
 Frohschammer, which I did. 
 
 I told him all about the £100 cheque, and the liberty I 
 took in depriving him of so large a sum. 
 
 No sooner had I finished my story, than he exclaimed, 
 “ Thank you heartily for having anticipated my feelings. 
 Yes, Tyndall has done me the greatest kindness I could 
 have desired, which I will always remember.” 
 
26 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHiN TYNDALL. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 RETIREMENT AT HINDHEAD. 
 
 Retirement from the Royal Institution — The “ Tyndall Dinner ” at Willis's Rooms — Tyndalls House on 
 Hindhead — His 11 Screens” — Home Life — Friendship with Tennyson — -Tyndall's Attacks on Mr. Gladsiotie 
 — A Magnanimous Letter . 
 
 In 1887 Professor Tyndall resigned his r post at the 
 Royal Institution, and the last six years of his life were 
 spent in comparative retirement. His retirement was the 
 occasion lor a remarkable tribute alike to his services as a 
 scientist and to the affection he had inspired in troops of 
 friends and admirers. A public dinner was given to him 
 at Willis’s Rooms, which in the character of the hosts and 
 the attendant circumstances was unique. The affectionate 
 and admiring enthusiasm towards the guest was beyond 
 all bounds. “ Many notable gatherings have taken place 
 in Willis’s Rooms,” 
 wrote Nature on 
 the occasion, “but 
 we question if 
 English science has 
 ever been more 
 completely repre- 
 sented than at the 
 ‘Tyndall dinner.’ 
 
 The President of 
 the Royal Society 
 was in the chair. 
 
 The seven vice- 
 chairmen were pre- 
 sidents of the most 
 important scien- 
 tific societies. 
 
 The tables were 
 crowded with men 
 whose names are 
 known wherever 
 nature is studied.” 
 
 Released from 
 the pressure of 
 official work, Tyn- 
 dall and his wife 
 took up their abode 
 on Hindhead. “ I 
 came here,” he 
 wrote to a corre- 
 spondent who has 
 published some 
 interesting remini- 
 scences in the 
 Surrey Times , “ to 
 finish in perfect 
 seclusion the work 
 of my life — a work 
 to which quiet 
 thought is abso- 
 lutely necessary.” 
 
 “For nearly three 
 years during the 
 erection of the 
 house the Professor 
 
 and his wife occupied a one-storeyed corrugated iron 
 building in the grounds. They lived, ate, and slept 
 in one room, without any servant, while Mrs. Tyndall 
 kept the place clean and cooked all the meals. The de- 
 parted scientist in the autumn of 1891 showed me over 
 the place. ‘ Ah,’ he said, as he opened the door reveal- 
 ing the simplicity of the dwelling, ‘ Mrs. Tyndall and I 
 
 were never happier than when we passed our days and 
 nights in this humble shanty.’ ” 
 
 “ The house and grounds,” continues the same writer, 
 “ stand on one of the loftiest points of Hindhead, com- 
 manding lovely views of Sussex as far as the South 
 Downs. Much care and forethought were bestowed on 
 the building. Special bricks and tiles which would 
 rapidly tone with sun and weather were obtained in order 
 to prevent a hideous, glaringly red structure. In its 
 interior the house was comfortably but artistically 
 
 MY STUDY WINDOW « 
 Professor Tyndall’s Study at Hindhead.) j 
 
 arranged. The Professor’s study was under the roof, 
 looking almost due south, and had been adapted for work 
 rather than effect. You recognised at once, as the scientist 
 showed you over his residence, that he felt proud of his sur- 
 roundings. ‘Determined,’ as he once informed me, ‘to the 
 best of my ability to protect Hindhead from the speculative 
 builder, and to preserve it in its primitive beauty, at an 
 
RETIREMENT AT HINDHEAD. 
 
 27 
 
 expense of £2,000 I bought 37 acres of the heathland. 
 These, when other pieces are added to them, make up 
 the nearly 60 acres of heather of which I am the pos- 
 sessor. In regard to this land, I allow the working 
 
 inhabitants of this region all the liberty they enjoyed 
 when it was “no man’s land.” They can cross it at 
 pleasure. At the proper season, labourers with their 
 
 bottles, or other debris behind them. There is not along 
 my fences a single yard of that execrable barbed wire 
 which is creeping like a pestilence over the country parts 
 of England — among others, over Hindhead.’ In making 
 this long laudatory statement, it is only fair to say that 
 the Professor was acting on the defensive in regard to 
 his screens.” These unsightly erections, designed to 
 secure his seclusion, were the subject, it will be re- 
 membered, of much hostile criticism in the Press. 
 
 “ There was a great charm.” continues the correspon- 
 dent whom we have been quoting, “ in the home life of 
 the Prolessor. He then appeared at his best. His 
 powers in conversation were extremely good, while his 
 knowledge of men and things was almost uniquely wide 
 and varied. . . . Talking about Tennyson, he re- 
 marked he visited the Laureate at Farringford House, in 
 the Isle of Wight, in 1879, when the latter read to him 
 ‘ Locksley Hall.’ ‘ This was given,’ he said, ‘ in the poet’s 
 fine voice and with much fire and spirit.’ With the late Lord 
 Tennyson and his family Professor Tyndall was indeed 
 on very friendly terms, and in token of his regard had a 
 window constructed so that he could obtain a glijmpse of 
 Aldworth House on the opposite hill. . . . The Professor 
 rarely forgot his antipathies, and though he changed his 
 political views much at the same time as Mr. Chamber- 
 lain, he could not forget the treatment he received from 
 the Board of Trade in the matter of the lighthouses. On 
 some matters, too, he was strangely Democratic, in others 
 strongly Conservative. He believed in the opening of 
 museums on Sunday for the working men, but would 
 refuse them an eight hour day because he felt sure it 
 would prove Dead Sea fruit to them.” 
 
 THE VIEW FROM PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S WINDOW. 
 
 wives and children may scour the land ior “ hurts,” 
 which they carry away by the cartload and sell at re- 
 munerative prices. Every privilege, in short, open to 
 myself, is also open to my neighbours. And not to my 
 neighbours only. Parties visiting this place are perfectly 
 welcome to picnic on the land, on condition that they 
 shall break no fence and leave no newspapers, gingerbeer 
 
 Tyndall’s incursion into politics in the shape of a series 
 of very strongly-worded letters on Mr. Gladstone was 
 almost the only public incident that broke the retirement 
 of his later years. Early in 1887 Tyndall wrote to the 
 Times announcing definitely that he had thrown in his 
 lot with that “ of my friend Huxley,” and meant to “ fight 
 to the death” against the Irish policy of Mr. Gladstone.. 
 
28 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 In that communicat.on he showered a volume of abusive 
 epithets on the G.O.M. “Gladstone,” he wrote, “is a 
 desperate gamester miscalled a statesman,” and his policy 
 is “ wicked and cowardly.” In August of the same year 
 he sent a long letter to the Glasgow papers, dated 
 from Switzerland, regarding the candidature of Sir 
 George Trevelyan for the Bridgeton Division, in the 
 course of which he said: — “Something is certainly 
 gained for the cause of purity in political action when a 
 gentleman whose presence has been hitherto so much dry 
 rot in the ranks of Unionism has at length taken his 
 proper place under his proper master.” Again, in 
 January, 1889, in a letter to Mr. Patchett Martin, author 
 of the newly published “Australia and the Empire,” 
 Tyndall remarked : — “ I am glad you have freely spoken 
 your mind regarding the Gladstonian Press and 
 party. I feel deeply the truth of your concluding 
 
 sense, courage, and truth. This raising of the most 
 fallible of statesmen into the position of a Pope is really 
 the serious feature of the case. May your book con- 
 tribute to the breaking of the spell ! To account lor the 
 permanence of the delusion described in graphic force in 
 one of his poems, the Irish poet Moore wrote a couplet 
 which seems strongly applicable to the present : — 
 
 Faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast 
 To some dear false mind, hugs it to the last.” . 
 
 Professor Tyndall did not often take to the political 
 platform, but he did once or twice. On one occasion he 
 appeared with Sir Richard Webster at Guildford, and his 
 speech was largely devoted to politicians of the day. Of 
 Mr. Gladstone he said : — 
 
 In former days it was my privilege to enjoy the acquaintance 
 — it would be too much to sa the friendship — of Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S HOUSE AT HINDHEAD. 
 
 Showing the Famous Screen. 
 
 paragraph that the reckless conduct of Mr. Gladstone 
 has increased enormously the difficulty of your 
 social and political problems in the Colonies. What the 
 end of his evil-doing will be to Ireland no man can tell.” 
 In a letter to the compiler of “ The Irish Green Book” (a 
 collection of somewhat violent caricatures), the irascible 
 Professor wrote :■ — “ The shafts of ridicule may pierce 
 where weightier arguments might rebound. It is not 
 what Mr. Gladstone has done, and which you within your 
 limits have so well illustrated, that astonishes and distresses 
 honest men. His individual escapades would hardly affect 
 us more than the running amok by the wild Malay 
 whose performances were chronicled a few days ago. 
 It is that he should be able to draw after him so many 
 members of a nation hitherto characterised by common- 
 
 I have heard the music of his voice and felt the fascination of his 
 presence. His power of attraction is, I should say, almost with- 
 out a parallel. I remember one speech in which he spoke with 
 affection of Sir Robert Peel, of his strength, his courage, his 
 truth. Who will speak of Mr. Gladstone’s truthfulness when he 
 is gone ? On the occasion to which I refer, however, he ap- 
 peared to me a man of unswerving truth. I thought that 
 while others shook and wavered, he at least would present a 
 rigid front to the shifting storms of political life. There is just 
 now a bitter irony in these words ; for where is the man, in 
 Britain or out of it, who has shown more of the qualities of a 
 weathercock, more pliancy to the winds of political doctrine 
 than Mr. Gladstone? Mr. Gladstone has taught us freedqm of 
 speech, and I simply follow his example when I say that his 
 recent career, instead of being one of unbending rectitude, 
 seems only too truly typified by that of the gambling City clerk, 
 
RETIREMENT AT HINDHEAD. 
 
 29 
 
 •who, having faiLed in speculating with money not his own, tries 
 to retrieve his fortunes by enterprises more desperate still. His 
 country must suffer for his sin. 
 
 It is interesting to add to these specimens of the 
 
 thetic inquiry. Tyndall highly appreciated the compli- 
 ment. “Yes,” he said to a friend who put some question 
 on the matter, “ I love the man. He sent me a delight- 
 ful letter, full of sympathy in my illness, and full of good 
 
 A LETTER ON THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS. 
 
 “impetuous Tyndall’s” political style that in 1891, when wishes for my recovery.” One recalls Lord Tennyson’s 
 
 the Professor was seriously ill, Mr. Gladstone, with concise judgment of mingled affection and hostility 
 
 characteristic magnanimity, sent a special letter of sympa- “ I love the man, but hate his politics.” 
 
30 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 DEATH. 
 
 Ill-health in TyndalPs Later Years — Sudden Death — -The Inquest — “ Poisoned by Misadventure ” — 
 
 The Funeral. 
 
 Admirers of Mr. Gladstone, no less than ol Professor 
 Tyndall, may console themselves lor the attacks of the 
 latter on the former by several considerations. Tyndall’s 
 father, as we have seen, was a Protestant yeoman of 
 Carlow, and in that county even still the feeling of ani- 
 mosity towards the Catholic population is exceptionally 
 bitter. The Professor himselt had married into the ducal 
 lamily of Abercorn, from whom for generations the 
 Orange Party have selected their leaders. His father-in- 
 law, the late Lord Claud Hamilton, was a brother of the late 
 and an uncleot thepre- 
 sent Duke of Abercorn, 
 andOrange member lor 
 Tyrone. These facts 
 can hardly have been 
 without their influence. 
 
 And with regard to the 
 violence and vehem- 
 ence of the Professor’s 
 language, it should be 
 remembered that for 
 the last few years he 
 had been in very 
 poor health. He was 
 a Victim of insomnia, 
 and some of his ill- 
 nesses were accom- 
 panied by cerebral 
 troubles. During last 
 autumn, however, he 
 had been as usual to 
 Switzerland, and 
 seemed on his return 
 to have recovered his 
 usual health. 
 
 Suddenly on Mon- 
 day, the 4th of De- 
 cember, it was an- 
 nounced that he was 
 dead. 
 
 The rest of the story 
 was told at the inquest, 
 which was held three 
 days later. The fol- 
 lowing is the full 
 report of the pro- 
 ceedings : — 
 
 On Thursday, De- 
 cember 7, Mr. Rou- 
 mieu, coroner for West 
 Surrey, opened the inquest on the body of Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall, at his residence, Plindhead House. No 
 post-mortem examination had been made. The body, 
 on being viewed, presented a very calm and peace ul 
 appearance. 
 
 Mrs. Louisa Charlotte Tyndall, the widow, was the 
 first witness called. She stated that the deceased 
 was 73 years old as far as they knew. He had been in 
 delicate health, and for about three years had been 
 
 wrestling with death. He was in the habit of taking 
 doses of chloral at night, and every other day in the 
 week doses of magnesia. “ I was in the habit of giving 
 it to him,” she went on to say. “ As a rule, there 
 were two bottles near the bed, one of magnesia and 
 the other syrup of chloral. I was in the habit of 
 reading the labels on the bottles and putting on one side 
 the chloral ; then I took the other bottle. I did so on 
 Monday. I measured a tablespoonful of magnesia, as I 
 thought, and added water. He took this at a gulp, then* 
 
 according to custom, a 
 gulp of ginger. All he 
 said was, ‘ There is a 
 curious sweet taste.’ I 
 tasted the drop left, 
 and saw there were 
 two bottles on the 
 table, and found that 
 what I had taken came 
 from the full bottle of 
 chloral standing near,, 
 which had recently 
 come from the 
 chemist.” 
 
 The Coroner : You 
 took the bottle, sup- 
 posing it was mag- 
 nesia. — Yes. 
 
 You then saw your 
 mistake ? — Yes. I 
 said, “John, I have 
 given you chloral,” and 
 he said, “Yes, my 
 poor darling, you have 
 killed your John.” He 
 got out of bed and he 
 said, “ Let us do all 
 we can. Tickle my 
 throat. Get a stomach- 
 pump.” I sent the trap 
 and wrote hurriedly in 
 pencil telling Dr. Win- 
 stanley what had hap- 
 pened. I looked for 
 an emetic in “Whit- 
 taker’s Medicine” and 
 gave a dose of mustard 
 as recommended. He 
 was able to take it and 
 vomited. Warm water 
 was also administered. We put him in bed and got 
 hot water bottles all round him. He was able to take 
 hot coffee also. Dr. Winstanley brought all the devices 
 he could think of. After working some time conscious- 
 ness returned, and I said to him, “ Do you know Drs. 
 Winstanley and Hutchinson?” and he said “Yes. I 
 know you are all trying to rouse me.” We worked all 
 day. It was about 8.30 in the morning I gave the chloral, 
 and about half-past six it was all over. 
 
 a 
 
 HASLEMERE CHURCHYARD. 
 
DEATH 
 
 31 
 
 The Coroner: You are per.ectly satisfied that every 
 thing was done that should have been done? — Yes. 
 
 Dr. William Winstanley was the next witness. He 
 said ; _i W as called to see deceased on Monday morning 
 last. I was told what was the matter. He was insensible 
 when I arrived, and breathing heavily. I applied the 
 usual remedies. First we used the stomach-pump, and 
 drew a small quantity of fluid. 1 then iound his pulse 
 rather low, and I injected ether into the arm, and he 
 rallied considerably, but the breathing was still very 
 bad. I next injected strychnia, and he began to revive 
 shortly afterwards, but still remained perfectly insensible. 
 For nearly two hours, I should think, we persevered in 
 our efforts to rouse him, and he gradually regained a 
 certain amount of consciousness, so as to be able to 
 recognise ms and speak indistinctly. Then I managed to 
 get him out of bed, and meanwhile sent lor my partner, 
 who arrived with an electric battery, with which we pro- 
 ceeded to carry on the rousing process. He alter- 
 wards relapsed again, and when I left him about 
 one o’clock he was partly 
 
 conscious. I went off \ , 
 
 immediately and tele- 
 graphed lor Dr. Buszard, 
 and left my partner in 
 charge of him, doing all 
 he could lor the patient. 
 
 & A little before four o’clock 
 I had a message from my 
 partner, saying that de- 
 ceased was again failing 
 rapidly, and the breathing 
 was getting very bad. He 
 had been doing all he 
 could. I met Dr. Buszard 
 at the station. He came 
 down by the first possible 
 train, and we went straight 
 up to the house. When 
 we arrived we found Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall coma.ose, 
 insensible, and evidently 
 moribund, and he grad- 
 ually passed away. 
 
 By the Coroner : When 
 you first arrived there 
 certain remedies and an- 
 tidotes had been adminis- 
 tered ? — Yes. 
 
 As far as you could see 
 had everything been done 
 that possibly could be 
 •done ? — Yes. 
 
 Witness continued that he had not been attending 
 Professor Tyndall in a regular way, but had seen him at 
 times. 
 
 The Coroner : I believe he had been very delicate 
 lately ? — He had. 
 
 Particularly about the lungs ? — Certainly. 
 
 I presume that that would not assist very much ?— On 
 the contrary, it would make it much more difficult to 
 recover. 
 
 Witness, continuing, stated that he was told deceased 
 had taken something like two tablespoonfuls. Witness 
 produced the bottle, and said he was led to believe that 
 before the dose was administered the bottle was full, and 
 about two tablespoonfuls, or an ounce, had been taken 
 out. The syrup of chloral contained ten grains of 
 chloral to a dram— roughly, ten grains to a teaspoonful. 
 There would be about 40 grains in each tablespoonful, 
 
 and Mrs. Tyndall told him that deceased had taken not 
 more than seven teaspoonfuls. 
 
 The Coroner : Between 70 and 80 grains ? — Yes. A 
 man had been known to recover alter having taken as 
 much as 180 grains. 
 
 The Coroner : I think as much as 190 or 220 ? — Of 
 course ; it depends. 
 
 The Coroner : I believe Professor Tyndall was in the 
 habit of taking chloral? — Yes. 
 
 Consequently, a larger dose would not have had so 
 much efiect upon him as upon a person who had not 
 been accustomed to it? — That I won’t say, he having 
 taken other things. I think this might have had a greater 
 effect upon him considering the state of his health, and 
 more particularly the state of his lungs. One point 
 which it is important to remember is that with the 
 dose he took, in the case of an ordinary man of sound 
 lungs he would probably have recovered, but with 
 disabled lungs he was very much more easily overcome 
 by it. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Buszard, 
 Fellow’ of the Royal Col- 
 lege of Physicians, of 74, 
 Grosvenor-street, Lon- 
 don, deposed: I have 
 been a personal friend 
 and medical attendant of 
 Professor Tyndall for 
 about four years. The 
 last time I saw him prior 
 to Monday was on 
 November 16. He was 
 then in bed, suffering from 
 rheumatic swelling of the 
 wrist joint of the right 
 arm, and from insomnia, 
 which I should say had 
 upset him for many years 
 past — long before I knew 
 him. He had been in the 
 habit of taking chloral, 
 or some other sleeping 
 agent, for many years. I 
 understood the quantity 
 he took was from a tea- 
 spoonful to one and a 
 half spoonful of syrup of 
 chloral every night. I was 
 summoned to see him on 
 Monday, and I arrived a 
 little before five. I found 
 him profoundly uncon- 
 scious, in a state of coma, and evidently in a hopeless con- 
 dition. Two years ago he very nearly died irom inflamma- 
 tion of both lungs, and he has had repeated attacks since. 
 If he had been tolerably strong he would have in all 
 probability recovered alter they had once got him out of 
 the unconscious state. The relationship existing between 
 Professor and Mrs. Tyndall was one of remarkable 
 affection and devotion. I think in the course of a very 
 long expei ience I have never seen the devotion w’hich 
 Mrs. Tyndall showed to her husband surpassed — I do 
 not think equalled. 
 
 The Coroner : Are you perfectly satisfied yourself, hav- 
 ing regard to all the surroundings, that this was purely 
 an accident ? — I am perfectly satisfied. 
 
 The Coroner : There was no desire on the part of Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall or Mrs. Tyndall to shorten his life ? — None 
 whatever. On the contrary, he was a man who fought 
 against death with an extraordinary amount of resolu- 
 
32 
 
 THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN T 
 
 3 011 
 
 098697482 
 
 tion, and he was keenly anxious to live. Mrs. Tyndall 
 was absolutely devoted to her husband. 
 
 The coroner then summed up, and was sure the 
 jury would wish to 
 join with him in 
 conveying their 
 deepest sympathy 
 to Mrs. Tyndall 
 and the family 
 generally, and their 
 deep sense of the 
 great loss which 
 she and the country 
 had sustained. 
 o* The jury re- 
 turned a unani- 
 mous verdict to 
 the effect that Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall died 
 from an overdose 
 of chloral admini- 
 stered accidentally 
 for a dose of 
 sulphate of mag- 
 nesia, and endor- 
 sed the coroner’s ex- 
 pressions of regret. 
 
 The funeral took 
 place on Saturday, 
 
 December 9, in 
 the parish church 
 of Haslemere. At 
 the lych-gate (says 
 the Daily Tele- 
 graph) the cortege 
 was met by the 
 Rev. S. Etheridge 
 and his curate, the 
 Rev. A. Harrison. 
 
 Mrs. Tyndall was 
 present, accom- 
 panied by Captain 
 Hamilton, her 
 brother ; other 
 mourners and 
 friends who attend- 
 ed being Lady 
 Claud Hamilton, 
 
 Miss Emma Ham- 
 ilton, Lord and 
 Lady Tollemache 
 (all relatives), Pro- 
 fessor and Mrs. 
 
 Huxley, Dr. 
 
 Foster, secretary 
 of the Royal Society, Dr. Rucker, Royal College 
 of Science, Sir J. Crichton Browne and Lord 
 Rayleigh (representing the Royal Institution), Sir 
 
 Joseph and Lady Hooker, Professor and Mrs. William- 
 son, Lady and Miss Pollock, Sir John Lubbock, 
 Judge El Medini (an Indian friend), the Hon. Rollo 
 
 Russell, Professor 
 Morris, Dr. Atkin- 
 son (formerly of 
 Sandhurst), Mr. 
 Mark Judge (secre- 
 tary of the Sunday 
 Society), Drs. Bus- 
 zard, Winstanley, 
 and Hutchinson 
 (medical atten- 
 dants), Mr. A. 
 Siemens (on behalf 
 of Messrs. Sie- 
 mens Brothers), 
 Mr. S. Hodgson, 
 Mr. J. Simmons, 
 Mr. Rayner Storr, 
 Mr. J. Mowatt, 
 and Mrs. W. K. 
 Clifford. 
 
 Members of 
 Court Pride of 
 Hindhead, Ancient 
 Order of Foresters, 
 acted as bearers, 
 the deceased hav- 
 ing been for some 
 years an honorary 
 member of the 
 society. The coffin, 
 of English oak with 
 brass mountings, 
 bore the follow- 
 ing inscription : — 
 “John Tyndall, 
 died December 4, 
 1893, aged seventy 
 three year s.” 
 Amongst the 
 numerous wreaths 
 was one from the 
 vudow of the Poet 
 Laureate, bearing 
 the words, “ With 
 most affectionate 
 rem em b ranees, 
 from Emily Lady 
 Tennyson ” ; an- 
 other from Lord 
 and Lady Tenny- 
 son was borne in 
 front of the coffin. 
 When the church- 
 yard was empty, Mrs. Tyndall returned, and 
 stood for a short time by the grave of her beloved 1 
 husband. 
 
 AT THE GRAVE-SIDE (MRS. TYNDALL AND CAPTAIN HAMILTON).