deliver
popular lectures on science. Finally, there was to be a scientific
library.

All these aims were put into effect almost from the beginning. The
necessary funds were supplied solely by popular subscription and by the
sale of lecture tickets (as all funds of the institution have been ever
since), and before the close of the year 1800 Rumford's dream had become
an actuality--as this practical man's dreams nearly always did. The new
machine did not move altogether without friction, of course, but on the
whole all went well for the first few years. The institution had found
a local habitation in a large building in Albemarle Street, the same
building which it still occupies, and for a time Rumford lived there and
gave the enterprise his undivided attention. He appointed the brilliant
young Humphry Davy to the professorship of chemistry, and the even
more wonderful Thomas Young to that of natural philosophy. He saw the
workshops and kitchens and model-rooms in running order--the entire
enterprise fully launched. Then other affairs, particularly an
attachment for a French lady, the widow of the famous chemist Lavoisier
(whom he subsequently married, to his sorrow), called him away from
England never to return. And the first chapter in the history of the
Royal Institution was finished.

METHOD AND RESULT

Rumford, the humanitarian, gone, a curious change came over the spirit
of the enterprise he had founded. The aristocrats who at first were
merely ballast for the enterprise now made their influence felt. With
true British reserve, they announced their belief that the education of
the masses involved a dangerous political tendency. Hence the mechanics'
school was suspended and the workshops and kitchens abolished; in
a word, the chief ends for which the institution was founded were
annulled. The library and the lectures remained, to be sure, but they
were for the amusement of the rich, not for the betterment of the poor.
It was the West End that made a fad of the institution and a society
function of the lectures of Sydney Smith and of the charming youth Davy.
Thus the institution came to justify its aristocratic title and its
regal patronage; and the poor seemed quite forgotten.

But indeed the institution itself was poor enough in these days, after
the first flush of enthusiasm died away, and it is but fair to remember
that without the support of its popular lectures its very existence
would have been threatene