would be easy to point out numerous instances in which great improvements and beneficial results connected with the comforts, the happiness, and even life of our fellow creatures have been the results of scientific combinations; but I cannot do this without constituting myself a judge of the works of philosophers who are still alive, whose researches are known, whose labours are respected, and who will receive from posterity praises that their contemporaries hardly dare to bestow upon them.

Eub.—­We will allow that you have shown in many cases the utility of scientific investigation as connected with the progress of the useful arts.  But, in general, both the principles of chemistry are followed, and series of experiments performed without any view to utility; and a great noise is made if a new metal or a new substance is discovered, or if some abstracted law is made known relating to the phenomena of nature; yet, amongst the variety of new substances, few have been applied to any trifling use even, and the greater number have had no application at all.  And with respect to the general views of the science, it would be difficult to show that any real good had resulted from the discovery or extension of them.  It does not add much to the dignity of a pursuit that those persons who have followed it for profit have really been most useful, and that the mere artisan or chemical manufacturer has done more for society than the chemical philosopher.  Besides, it has always appeared to me that it is in the nature of this science to encourage mediocrity and to attach importance to insignificant things; very slight chemical labours seem to give persons a claim to the title of philosopher—­to have dissolved a few grains of chalk in an acid, to have shown that a very useless stone contains certain known ingredients, or that the colouring matter of a flower is soluble in acid and not in alkali, is thought by some a foundation for chemical celebrity.  I once began to attend a course of chemical lectures and to read the journals containing the ephemeral productions of this science; I was dissatisfied with the nature of the evidence which the professor adopted in his demonstrations, and disgusted with the series of observations and experiments which were brought forward one month to be overturned the next.  In November there was a Zingeberic acid, which in January was shown to have no existence; one year there was a vegetable acid, which the next was shown to be the same as an acid known thirty years ago; to-day a man was celebrated for having discovered a new metal or a new alkali, and they flourished like the scenes in a new pantomime only to disappear.  Then, the great object of the hundred triflers in the science appeared to be to destroy the reputation of the three or four great men whose labours were really useful, and had in them something of dignity.  And, there not being enough of trifling results or false experiments to fill up the pages of the monthly journals, the deficiency was supplied by some crude theories or speculations of unknown persons, or by some ill-judged censure or partial praise of the editor.