“I stood a moment with my companion at the entrance of the great dining room, and watched the groups and individual arrivals, as they assorted themselves into companies or engaged in some short interchange of greetings.  It was a very beautiful scene.  The faces of all were wonderfully clear and strong, and in the commingling of forms, the bold, intellectual features of some, the more rare, delicate outlines of other faces, the flowing of the graceful tunics and robes, the pleasant, musical confusion of voices, with the quick, glancing movements of attendants, the heaped up chalices and baskets, vases and broad spreading plates of fruit, the many carelessly arranged and profuse bunches of radiant flowers in tall receptacles of glass or alabaster, in all this, with the strong, simple architectural features of the Hall, the eye and mind and senses seemed equally stimulated and satisfied.

“Amongst the glorious throng my companion pointed out to me many of those great men and women whom I seemed to know by their writings and portraits when on the earth.  At one table sat Mary Somerville, Leverrier, Adams, La Place, Gauss and Helmholz; at another Dalton, Schonbeim, Davy, Tyndall, Berthollet, Berzelius, Priestly, Lavoisier, and Liebig; here were groups of physicists—­Faraday, Volta, Galvani, Ampere, Fahrenheit, Henry, Draper, Biot, Chladini, Black, Melloni, Senarmont, Regnault, Daniells, Fresnel, Fizeau, Mariotte, Deville, Troost, Gay-Lussac, Foucault, Wheatstone, and many, many more.  At a small table immediately beneath a dome of glass, through whose softly opaline texture an aureole of light seemed to embrace them, sat Franklin, Galileo and Newton.  It would be impossible to describe to you my amazement at the astonishing picture.

“It almost seemed as if the air vibrated with the excitement of its impact and use, as these giant minds conversed together.  Endowed again with youth, scintillating, brilliant, the flush of a semi-immortality impressed upon their faces, which again bespoke the eminence of their intellects, in picturesque and effective, almost pictorial groupings, this wondrous gathering filled me with new rapture.  My comrade led me to other branching halls similarly occupied.  Chemists were here conspicuous—­Chevreuil, Talbot, Wedgewood, Daguerre, Cooke, Fresenius, Schmidt, Avogadro, Liebig, Davy, Berthollet, and many, many more.

“It formed an equally striking scene.  I turned to my companion and asked him how it was that the mathematicians, chemists, physicists, astronomers, were so crowded together.  He said, ’The Patenta covers, with all its buildings, a space about one mile square, and here in laboratories and in the great observatories these men have flocked because of a sympathy in their tastes and talents.  Although astronomy is the great profession, and, as I will show you, the marvels of the Universe are being more and more fully known, yet the study of the elements and the laws of matter is popular and also followed