The Right Honourable
SIR HENRY ENFIELD ROSCOE
P.C., D.C.L., F.R.S.

Henry E. Roscoe

Photo. E.H. Mills.

Walter L. Colls. Sc.

The Right Honourable
Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe
P.C., D.C.L., F.R.S.

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BY
SIR EDWARD THORPE, C.B., F.R.S.

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1916

[All rights reserved]

ADVERTISEMENT

This sketch of the life and activities of Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe is based, to a large extent, upon an obituary notice prepared at the request of the Councils of the Royal and Chemical Societies, of which its subject was a distinguished member, with a view to publication in their respective Proceedings and Transactions. In its present more extended form it is offered to a wider public as the record of “a life in civic action worn,” and as a slight tribute from a grateful pupil, an attached co-worker, and a lifelong friend to the memory of a strenuous high-minded man, of large aims and generous impulses, who spent his abilities and energies unstintingly in promoting the welfare of science and the good of his kind.

CONTENTS

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR HENRY ENFIELD ROSCOE

CHAPTER I
WILLIAM ROSCOE—HENRY ROSCOE

The subject of this memoir had no particular pride of ancestry. Stemmata quid faciunt? Although with no convictions on the subject, he was willing to believe that his line stretched at least as far back as Adam and Eve, and he doubted whether any man could with certainty claim—pace Darwin—a more ancient lineage.[1]

As he has told us in his Autobiography, his family was one of the many that could not trace its origin for more than three or four generations back. All he knew was that he came of a North-country stock, members of which—village Hampdens and mute inglorious Miltons—had been settled in the County Palatine and in the vicinity of Liverpool for many years. He had a distinguished grandfather, a man of mark and public weight in his native town, and who bears an honoured name in our literature. Of him it is related that when a certain Garter Principal King-at-Arms desired to trace his pedigree (which had hitherto baffled his researches), he replied that he was a good patriarch, and the proper person to begin a family, as he had a quiverful of sons. “Accordingly the whole descent is registered, and the Roscoes may now go on in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.”

Mr. William Roscoe—Grandfather Roscoe as he was called in the family circle—was justly claimed by his grandson to be the first man of distinction that Liverpool had produced. Although more than one hundred and fifty years have passed since his birth his name still remains one of the most prominent in its history. His story is one of the Romances of Literature.

Born in 1753, he was the son of a market gardener who kept a bowling-green, attached to a tavern, in what was then a rural district of Liverpool known as Mount Pleasant. He learned to read and write, and that was practically all the schooling he received, for at the age of twelve he was required to help his father in the cultivation of his garden, and to carry cabbages and potatoes on his head to market. But he had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and such leisure as he could secure he gave to reading and study. His love of literature led him to take service in a bookseller’s shop, but finding that his duties were those of a drudge, leaving him little opportunity for gratifying his passion, he articled himself when fifteen years old to an attorney. He worked hard at his profession, but still found time to cultivate the Muses, and, with the assistance of a gifted friend of his own age who taught languages in a school, he read the Classics and began the study of the literature of Italy. He early tried his hand at poetry—imitations of Goldsmith and Shenstone, or translations from the Italian. When he was twenty-four he published a long poem—“Mount Pleasant”—a characteristically stilted eighteenth-century production of no great merit and now forgotten, but which on its appearance was praised by Sir Joshua Reynolds, less, perhaps, for its poetry than for its passionate protest against the iniquities of “that execrable sum of all villainies commonly called the African slave trade”—at that time one of the sources of the commercial prosperity of Liverpool. The courage of the struggling young lawyer in thus inveighing against this vicious traffic roused the anger of some of the wealthiest and most influential of his fellow-citizens. He followed up his attack by another poem on the “Wrongs of Africa,” and he had a fierce controversy with an apostate Roman Catholic priest who had published a sermon on the “Licitness of the Slave Trade” as proved from the Bible, for which he had been formally thanked by the Liverpool Corporation.

The coming of the French Revolution was received with enthusiasm by all eager lovers of civil and political liberty in England. Roscoe, who welcomed its advent with inspiriting songs and odes, championed its cause in pamphlets, one of them directed against Burke, who had bitterly attacked the Jacobins. The ardent young Liberal was now identified with the Whig party in Liverpool, and was in frequent communication with its Parliamentary chiefs.

But he was not at heart a politician, and had but little liking for the turmoil and violence of party strife. “Party,” he had declared with Pope, “is the madness of many for the gain of a few.” His strongest inclinations were intellectual, and as his means increased and he was able to procure books he became more and more drawn to the study of Italian literature and history. The story of the rise of the Medici family, and especially the character and achievements of one of its ablest members, Lorenzo, surnamed the Magnificent, strongly interested and eventually fascinated him. These studies bore fruit in his well-known “Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici,” published in 1796. The work was received with a chorus of approval. The critics declared there had been nothing like it since Gibbon. Horace Walpole was delighted with it. Men of taste like Lord Lansdowne and Lord Bristol were equally charmed. It even became fashionable, and new editions were speedily called for. The book has been frequently reprinted, and was translated into French, German, and Italian. In Italy it was received with especial favour as a noble tribute to the national genius.

Its literary quality has gained for it an assured place in our literature. As a permanent contribution to Italian history it has less merit. It must be admitted it lacks features demanded by modern and more scientific methods of historical treatment. Roscoe, we may assume, made the best possible use of the material that was available to him. His business prevented him from visiting Italy, but his friend William Clarke, who had access to Florentine libraries, supplied him with such information as he asked for or could obtain. It is obvious from the work that what mainly interested him was the literary and artistic side of Lorenzo’s career, and in particular his influence on Italian art and learning. He had apparently less sympathy with, because he had less knowledge of, his social and political activities. He was imperfectly acquainted with the influences which affected him, or which at times he sought to control. He was sometimes uncritical in his use of authorities, and his judgment was occasionally at fault. But whatever may be its value as a serious contribution to history, there is no doubt of its merit as a piece of literary craftsmanship. It was written under the influence of an enthusiastic sympathy with and admiration for its subject, to which no reader could be wholly insensible, and there is much in Roscoe’s subsequent career, both in his pursuits and in his civic activities, to show that he was largely inspired by the example of his hero.

In 1798 appeared his translation of Tansillo’s “Nurse,” with a dedication to his wife; and in 1805 his “Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth”—the son of Lorenzo, and the Pope who saw the rise of the Reformation. Although this latter book brought its author more money, it was less favourably received than his “Life of Lorenzo,” mainly on account of his treatment of the Reformation. But apart from this it is less satisfactory as a historical work. His knowledge of the contemporary state of intellectual Europe was too limited to enable him to deal adequately with a subject of so wide a scope. Nevertheless the book had a large sale, in spite of, or possibly in consequence of, the fact that the Italian translation was placed in the “Index.”

Shortly after the publication of his first great work Roscoe renounced his practice as an attorney. Having a competent fortune, he purchased Allerton Hall, a fine old Jacobean house in a beautiful situation on the banks of the Mersey. He now turned his attention to agriculture, set up a model farm near his estate, cultivated the friendship of Coke of Holkham, read papers on agricultural subjects to local societies, and worked at the reclamation of Chat Moss. He also set in order the affairs of a banking house in which his friend Clarke, who lived in Italy, was a partner, and he thereby became involved in its direction and management. But he had still leisure for literary pursuits. He had one of the largest and most valuable private libraries in the district, especially rich in Italian history and literature. He interested himself in typography and induced John M’Creery—a well-known printer of his day—to settle in Liverpool, where his works were printed. He was a generous lover of the fine arts, and has the credit of discovering the genius of John Gibson, the sculptor, originally an apprentice to a marble mason in Liverpool, whom he sent to Rome. Gibson executed for Roscoe a basso-rilievo in terra-cotta, now in the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, the patron in his turn making his protégé free of the treasures of his library at Allerton Hall. It was in this way that Gibson first became acquainted with the designs of the great Italian masters. The acquaintance thus formed with the Roscoe family was continued in the case of Mrs. Sandbach, a granddaughter of the Italian historian, who possessed many of Gibson’s works, and was in frequent correspondence with him. Indeed most of the details of Gibson’s life were only to be gleaned from his letters to Mrs. Sandbach, who was a very accomplished woman of considerable literary ability.

Mr. William Roscoe was fond of horticulture, and interested in botanical pursuits generally. In the words of the late Professor Asa Gray, he was one of the Patres conscripti of the botany of his time, as the author of a monograph on the monandrian plants, and of other contributions on botanical subjects to the Transactions of the Linnean Society. Roscoe’s influence on the intellectual life of his native town may be seen in the various educational and artistic institutions which he created or with which he was concerned in founding. In 1773, when only twenty years of age, he was one of the projectors of a Society for the Encouragement of the Arts of Painting and Design, the first public artistic society in Liverpool. It had only a short existence, but was revived ten years later, and ultimately developed into the Liverpool Academy, of which Roscoe became President. He designed and etched the admission card to its exhibitions, contributed drawings and read papers to its members. It was the first organization of its kind in the provinces. It not only encouraged local talent, but served to familiarize Liverpool with the work of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and other notable painters of the period. He was a founder and President of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society; an active member of the Liverpool Library, afterwards known as the Lyceum, and the first public collection of books in the town. He was the means of establishing the Liverpool Atheneum, an institution more especially concerned with the interests of learning and scholarship. His love of horticulture led him to take an active part in the creation of a public Botanic Garden; he drew up the plan of its administration, and at its opening in 1802 gave a thoughtful address on the obligation which rests upon a commercial community to encourage the study of abstract science.

But perhaps Roscoe’s greatest service to Liverpool was his share in the foundation of its Royal Institution. He was chairman of the Committee which drew up the scheme of its establishment, and wrote the Report for publication concerning its objects; and at its opening in 1817 gave an address on the part it was calculated to play in fostering the connection which ought to exist between the intellectual and the business life of a city devoted to trade. “It is to the union,” he declared, “of the pursuits of literature with the affairs of the world that we are to look for the improvement of both; for the stability and foundation of the one, and the grace and ornament of the other.” He was no less mindful of the claims of science: “imperfect indeed would be the civilization of that people who, devoted to the accumulation of wealth by industry, should, from an apprehension of expending their means on useless objects, refuse to encourage scientific inquiries.” He pointed out that all improvements in the mechanical arts and in manufactures were to be attributed to the labours and discoveries of those who had applied themselves to the enlargement of the boundaries of science. Even at that time he was able to show that many occupations hitherto pursued empirically were being practised under a growing recognition that they were based on scientific principles, and that it was only by a wider appreciation of that fact, combined with increased facilities for the acquisition and diffusion of scientific knowledge, that the improvement and expansion of such industries could be secured.

More than sixty years afterwards it fell to his grandson’s lot to dilate upon the same theme in the same place, and to indicate how the intervening time of scientific and industrial progress had served to confirm the wisdom and accuracy of his grandfather’s insight.

Mr. William Roscoe, however eminent he might be in civic virtue, was precluded from taking any part in the municipal affairs of the town, as he was not a freeman of the borough. Nor, for the same reason, was he able to exercise the Parliamentary franchise. But whilst he himself had no vote, there was nothing to prevent the voters from sending him to the House of Commons as their representative if he and they were so minded. In 1806 a swing of the political pendulum brought the Whigs into general favour, and the burgesses of Liverpool returned him at the head of the poll. By speech and vote he threw all his influence on the side of Clarkson and Wilberforce in their successful efforts to abolish England’s participation in the slave trade. Although those who sent him to the Legislature must have known his views on this subject, his constituents were highly incensed at his action in thus seeking to destroy, as they imagined, one of the chief sources of the prosperity of the town. Moreover, he had added to the enormity of his offence by speaking and voting in favour of Catholic Emancipation. Accordingly, a mixed and muddled mob of ardent Protestants and drunken sailors, crews of slave-ships, were gathered together in order to assail him on his return from Westminster at the close of the session. A riot broke out, but his friends had taken timely precautions, and he escaped without injury. But the House of Commons had few attractions for him. He resigned his seat, and nothing would induce him to seek re-election. He still maintained his interest in the political movements of the time, and became a busy pamphleteer, wrote in favour of the abolition of slavery as a logical consequence of the abolition of the slave trade; on Parliamentary reform; penal jurisprudence and the treatment of criminals; and on national education.

In 1816 Roscoe, whose prosperity had been hitherto unbroken, was overtaken by sudden disaster. The downfall of Napoleon and the termination of the Continental wars were followed by much financial unrest, and a sudden panic seized the bank in which he was interested. Although perfectly solvent—its assets exceeded its liabilities by more than £60,000—it was impossible to realize these assets without grievous loss; the bank’s credit had been severely shaken, and it was compelled to stop payment. Roscoe called the bank’s creditors together, explained its condition, and convinced the majority that with time its position might be restored. After four years of anxious efforts to rehabilitate the bank he was forced to give up the struggle owing to the persistent action of a small number, who insisted on preferential treatment, and he allowed himself to be made bankrupt. Allerton, with its beautiful gardens and ample woods, with all its refinements and delights as a home—the home which had welcomed guests like Aikin and his daughter Mrs. Barbauld, Dr. Parr the scholar, Fuseli the painter, Coke of Holkham, Henry Brougham, and many others eminent in politics, learning, and scholarship—had to be given up, together with all its artistic and literary treasures. Thanks to the care he spent in cataloguing these works for sale they realized good prices. Friends vied with each other in preventing the dispersal of the more valuable books and pictures. Many of the former were secured for the Atheneum, on condition that he should be allowed their use, and they still remain on its shelves. His collection of early Italian paintings was presented to the Royal Institution, and is now in the Walker Art Gallery.

Roscoe received an honourable discharge. He was now sixty-seven years of age. With such relics from the wreck of his fortune as could be saved he set himself heroically to retrieve the disaster which had befallen him. Literature, which had been the delight of his leisure, now became his sole remaining prop. Eleven years were still left to him. He rearranged the fine library of his friend Coke, edited an issue of Pope’s works, completed the folio monograph on the monandrian plants, and executed a number of other compilations. His old age was spent in a serene dignity which secured for him the friendship of a devoted circle and the universal respect of his townsmen. He had a paralytic attack a year or so before his death which partially incapacitated him. The end came peacefully on June 30, 1831.

A sitting statue of him by Chantrey, as one of Liverpool’s most distinguished citizens, is in the St. George’s Hall, and his name is associated with the chair of Modern History in the University of Liverpool.

Washington Irving, in the “Sketch-book,” thus spoke of him:

Those who live only for the world and in the world may be cast down by the frowns of adversity; but a man like Roscoe is not to be overcome by the reverses of fortune. They do but drive him in upon the resources of his own mind.… He lives with antiquity and posterity; with antiquity in the sweet communion of studious retirement, and with posterity in the generous aspirings after future renown.… The man of letters who speaks of Liverpool, speaks of it as the residence of Roscoe. The intelligent traveller who visits it inquires where Roscoe is to be seen. He is the literary landmark of the place, indicating its existence to the distant scholar. He is like Pompey’s column at Alexandria, towering alone in classic dignity.

Henry Roscoe, the father of the subject of this biography, was the seventh and youngest son of Mr. William Roscoe. He was born at Allerton Hall on April 17, 1799. In physical and mental characteristics he more nearly resembled his father than did any other member of the family. He was educated almost entirely at home, and in constant companionship with his father, from whom he acquired a love for rare and curious books and a taste for literature and art.

At the time of the panic of 1816, in which his father was so deeply involved, Henry Roscoe was serving as a clerk in the bank. After its collapse he entered a lawyer’s office, became a member of the Inner Temple, and in 1826 was called to the Bar. He had already turned his attention to literature, and was supporting himself by his pen. In 1825 he gained a considerable success in legal circles by the publication of an elaborate treatise on “The Law of Actions relating to Real Property,” and by three small volumes entitled “Westminster Hall,” by his “Law and Lawyers,” and other works.

In 1828 appeared the first edition of his “Digest of the Law of Evidence in the Trials of Actions at the Nisi Prius Law,” which in the next ten years ran through five editions. During 1829 and 1830 he produced a “Digest of the Law of Bills of Exchange,” which also passed through many editions, and he contributed to Lardner’s Encyclopædia a volume of “Lives of Eminent British Lawyers.” For some years he was engaged in the preparation of Parliamentary Bills, and under the direction of Mr. Gregson drew up the original draft of the Reform Bills of 1831-1832.

Two years after the death of his father, he produced the “Life of William Roscoe.” This work, undertaken at the request of the family, was no light task, on account of the mass of correspondence, pamphlets, etc., which had to be dealt with. It was completed during three or four months of the legal vacation, when rest and change were much needed. He was already suffering from overwork, confinement, and lack of exercise, and this additional tax upon his strength and nervous energy seriously affected his health.

Between 1830 and 1835 he produced other legal works, among them, “The Digest of the Law of Evidence in Criminal Cases,” and a “General Digest of Law from 1835-6,” and he contributed to many magazines and journals. In January 1836 he published his last work, a pamphlet “On Pleading the General Issue.” During the previous summer the serious state of his health compelled him to abandon the idea of continuing to live in town. He therefore gave up his house in London and went to reside at Gateacre, near Liverpool, in the hope that country air and rural life might improve his condition. He had been appointed in 1834 Judge of the Court of Passage, Liverpool, by Lord Brougham, then Lord Chancellor, and from that year until 1836 he omitted no weekly sitting.

Unfortunately persistent ill-health, aggravated by years of overwork and constant strain, had taxed to the uttermost a delicate constitution, and in March 1837, after a few weeks of suffering, he died at the age of thirty-six.

But for his early death he would certainly have risen to high distinction in his profession. His talents and learning, combined with his moral worth and charming personality, endeared him to his family and to a large circle of friends.

An appreciation by Henry Chorley speaks of him as the most gifted of the sons of the Italian historian—of quick sympathy and solid judgment, and with such instant justice and strength of decision as belongs to a truthful, acute, and strong man.

Certain of his legal books were standard works long after his death. Somebody once asked Sir Henry Roscoe if “Roscoe on Evidence” was any connection of his. “No nearer than that of father,” was the reply.

In 1831 he married Maria Fletcher, second daughter of a respected Liverpool merchant, and chairman of the West Indian Committee,

An honest man …

Broadcloth without and a warm heart within,

who also was ruined by the failure of a Liverpool bank. Her maternal grandfather, Dr. William Enfield, author of a “History of Liverpool” and of the well-known “Speaker,” a man distinguished for elegance of taste and sound literary judgment, was the last rector of the famous Warrington Academy, where he had as colleagues at one time or another, Joseph Priestley, the chemist; Taylor of Norwich; Aikin, the father of Mrs. Barbauld; John Reinhold Forster, the naturalist to one of Cook’s expeditions; and Gilbert Wakefield, the editor of “Lucretius.”

CHAPTER II
HENRY ENFIELD ROSCOE—BIRTH AND EDUCATION

Henry Roscoe brought his young wife to 10 Powis Place, Great Ormond Street, London, and here on January 7, 1833, his only son, Henry Enfield Roscoe, first saw the light. A daughter, Harriet, was born in 1836.

The young judge had little opportunity of making provision for his family, and on his death they were left with very straitened means. His widow moved with her children into a small cottage at Gateacre, and as she had considerable artistic gifts sought to add to her slender income by teaching water-colour painting at a girls’ school in the vicinity. She also possessed some of the literary power of her distinguished grandfather, and in 1868 published a “Life of Vittoria Colonna,” with admirable translations of the sonnets. She was a strong, vigorous character, devotedly attached to her son and proud of his success in life. Her Manchester friends used playfully to refer to her as “the Mother of Owens College,” and the allusion to her association with its fortunes gave her pleasure. She was always deeply interested in its progress and rejoiced in its success. She died at the age of eighty-seven, falling “like autumn fruit that mellowed long.”

Young Roscoe went for a few years to a preparatory school in the neighbourhood of his home. In 1842 his mother moved her small charges to Liverpool, when he was sent to the High School of the Liverpool Institute, among the earliest of the so-called “modern” schools. He remained here seven years, taking the usual English subjects—mathematics, French, a little Latin and less Greek, and some elementary physical science. The school was furnished with a chemical laboratory—a very unusual provision in those days—and in it he obtained his first lessons in chemical manipulation from William H. Balmain, the discoverer of “luminous paint” and of boron nitride. Balmain, who was one of the early contributors to the then newly founded Chemical Society, in his published account of the latter substance apologizes for his inability to state its exact composition, as he was unable to obtain a better balance than such as he could construct himself “of wood and paper”—a circumstance which throws some light upon the means of instruction in the laboratory which introduced Roscoe to the study of practical chemistry. He always had a grateful recollection of his first instructor, whom he described as a genial fellow, and a stimulating and original teacher. The boy also came under the influence of Hugo Reid—a noteworthy man, and of some reputation at the time as a writer and teacher of natural philosophy—and of W. B. Hodgson, an excellent teacher of English, who afterwards became Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh.

Years afterwards, when the “old boy” had become a person of some consequence in the world, he was invited to distribute the prizes at his school, and told his auditors, in the course of a short address, that he had come across one of his school reports, addressed to his mother, in which it was stated: “Roscoe is a nice boy, but he looks about him too much, and does not know his irregular verbs.” He added that he thought this early habit of looking about him, which had persistently clung to him through life, had possibly done more for him than the irregular verbs.

Roscoe’s mother encouraged his inclination towards chemical pursuits by providing him with a room at home in which he could make his experiments, and such spare cash as he had was devoted to the purchase of chemicals and apparatus. In this manner he early obtained familiarity with the simpler operations of practical chemistry and laid the foundations of that dexterity in manipulation which contributed so greatly to his success as a lecturer.

Roscoe’s forbears on both sides were of Presbyterian or Unitarian stock, and the household naturally moved mainly in Nonconformist circles. These comprised some of the most respected and cultured families in the district—the Booths, Yateses, Martineaus, Taylors, Sandbachs: all well-known names in Lancashire—with some of whom his people were connected by marriage.

In 1848 he was entered at University College, London, at that time the only seat of higher learning and research in England open to men who were refused admittance to the older Universities on denominational grounds. Among the teachers in Gower Street at this period were De Morgan, Francis Newman, Malden, Sharpey, Graham, Lindley, Williamson, Jenner, and Liston. No more remarkable group was to be found in any institution for higher education in England. Among Roscoe’s contemporaries as students were Lister, Langton-Sandford, Farrer-Herschell, Bageot, Jessel, Richard Hutton (who married as first and second wives two of his cousins), Osler, Henry Thompson, and Edward Fry—all names afterwards distinguished in law, literature, and medicine.

Of his teachers at this time, the one who had most influence in shaping his career was undoubtedly Thomas Graham, the chemist. Graham had been elected in 1837, largely through the action of Lord Brougham, as successor to Edward Turner in what was then known as the University of London, founded some nine years previously. Although nervous and hesitating in manner, and with little fluency of speech, Graham was a sound and suggestive teacher, whose lectures were characterized by a philosophic method of exposition, and by accuracy and breadth of knowledge. These were always carefully prepared and well illustrated by experiments. The greater number in the class were, of course, medical students, for in those days there were few followers of pure science, and science faculties and degrees in science were unknown.

Roscoe, in entering Graham’s class-room, found himself, as he says, in a new world. One indication of the eagerness with which he exploited it may be gleaned from the circumstance that the enthusiastic young tyro at the end of the session came out the head of the class and gained the silver medal. His mother and sister soon followed him to town, and the family lived first in Torrington Square and next in Camden Town, where his cousin, Stanley Jevons, the economist, and afterwards one of his colleagues at Owens College, came to reside with them. One of his uncles was Mr. Justice Crompton, who had married into the Fletcher family, and was a great friend of his father. The judge always took a strong paternal interest in his nephew, and would have sent him to Cambridge had he been disposed to go there. The Crompton cousins were, he says, like brothers and sisters to him. It was in their drawing-room in Hyde Park Square that he first met Miss Lucy Potter, his future wife, then a girl of seventeen.

Roscoe now elected to follow chemistry as a career, somewhat to the dismay of his relatives, who, he tells us, imagined he intended “to open a shop with red and blue glass bottles in the window,” such being the external indications of the calling of a chemist in this country. And no wonder they were perturbed, for any one not being registered as a “pharmaceutical chemist,” or as a “chemist and druggist,” who should presume to style himself a chemist was punishable with a fine. Liebig was not altogether well informed of the facts when he wrote to Berzelius that the English chemists were ashamed to call themselves such because the apothecaries had appropriated the name. It was not so much that they were ashamed as they were actually prohibited by law. Although nearly two generations have passed since those days, it may be doubted whether even now the public mind has quite grasped the distinction between a chemist properly so-called and an apothecary.

Having settled upon his life’s work, Roscoe entered the Birkbeck Laboratory at University College, then under the direction of Williamson, whom Graham had just brought over from Paris, where he had been working with Laurent and Gerhardt. Roscoe had the highest appreciation of the genius and power of Williamson, and pays grateful homage to his memory in the following extract from his Autobiography:

At the time I entered the laboratory Williamson was engaged in the researches which have made his name a household word to chemists all the world over. His was a mind of great originality, and his personality was a most attractive one. And, despite his physical disabilities—for he lost an eye and the proper use of his left arm in early childhood—he was a diligent and accurate worker. Ardently devoted to his science, he infected all who worked under him with the same feeling. And his pupils willingly own that much of the success that they may have met with in after years was due to his teaching and example. I well remember the feelings of interest he aroused as he each day came down to the laboratory brimful of new ideas. First it was his explanation of the theory of etherification, of which he proved the truth by preparing the mixed ethers, thereby ascertaining the general constitution of alcohols and ethers, and laying one of the foundation-stones of modern chemistry. Next it was his well-known paper on the constitution of salts, in which he enunciated principles which have since been generally adopted. Then came his views on atomic motion and interchange, the first definite statement of a series of chemical phenomena which in the hands of Van ’t Hoff and others have become of the highest import.… He clearly foresaw the principles upon which the modern development of the steam-engine depends, and though he failed for want of constructive skill, he pointed the way which engineers have since followed with conspicuous success.

In his second year in the Birkbeck Laboratory Roscoe became Williamson’s private assistant, and took part in his researches, and when Graham accepted the Mastership of the Mint, and Williamson succeeded to the chair at University College, Roscoe was made lecture assistant. Williamson had the idea at that time of publishing an abridged translation of Gerhardt’s Chimie Organique, for the benefit of English students, which Roscoe was to prepare, but nothing came of the project.

Graham, who had been commissioned to send out an assayer to the Sydney Mint, offered Roscoe the position. The salary was very tempting, but as his mother and sister had no desire to go to Australia, the offer was declined, and his cousin Stanley Jevons, who had passed through the Birkbeck Laboratory, was sent in his stead.

It was in recognition of Roscoe’s association with Williamson that nearly forty years afterwards he was deputed, on behalf of the subscribers, to present the portrait of his master which now hangs in University College.

Roscoe took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in the University of London, with Honours in chemistry, in 1853, and as he was now more than ever determined to follow a career of science, he decided to enlarge his experience by a course of study in a continental laboratory, as was then the usual custom. Of the great leaders of British chemical science in the first half of the nineteenth century—Dalton, Thomson, Davy, Faraday, Graham—only Thomson and Graham, and to a limited extent Dalton, were in a position to exert any influence as teachers, and even in their case there was little provision of instruction in practical chemistry.

The older English universities had practically nothing of the kind; their disciplines offered no encouragement to the study of chemical science. The university which prides itself on having afforded a home to Boyle extended no opportunity to a man to make any research unless he found his own laboratory and apparatus. Dr. Liveing started the first laboratory for students in Cambridge at his own expense in 1852, hiring a cottage in the town for the purpose. On the other hand, at that time, thanks to the influence of the French school of chemists; of Berzelius in Sweden; Liebig, Wöhler, Mitscherlich, and the two Roses in Germany, systematic instruction in chemistry was being actively pursued on the Continent, and nearly every leading University abroad could show a more or less well-equipped laboratory, and a body more or less large of eager and enthusiastic investigators. Accordingly, at this period, aspirants for chemical fame in this country naturally turned to one or other of the chemical schools in France or Germany to seek there what they were unable to find at home.

Roscoe elected to go to Bunsen, who had recently been called from Breslau to Heidelberg in succession to Leopold Gmelin, the author of the well-known “Handbuch.” Bunsen had already won for himself a European reputation by his masterly investigation of the cacodyl compounds, by the improvements he had effected in gasometric methods, by his investigations on the chemistry of the blast-furnace, his invention of the carbon-zinc battery and photometer, and his inquiries into the chemical aspects of the volcanic and pseudo-volcanic phenomena of Iceland.

It is perhaps idle to speculate why Roscoe should have left Williamson at the most fruitful period of his career, and when, under his stimulus, organic chemistry was apparently about to enter upon a great development in this country. But the probability is that then, as afterwards, the problems of organic chemistry and the purely speculative aspects of the science had few attractions for him, and that he saw in the many-sided nature of Bunsen’s work, in its eminently practical character, and the precision of its quantitative methods, much that appealed to his inclination towards the operative, and especially the determinative side of chemistry, for Bunsen was pre-eminently a master of manipulation, as every one who aspired to a professional career in chemistry and who hoped to direct a chemical laboratory fully recognized.

Roscoe, with his mother and sister, who elected to keep house for him, reached Heidelberg in the autumn of 1853 with an introduction to von Mohl, the Professor of International Law, with whose family they became well acquainted. One of the daughters, Anna von Mohl, was the second wife of Helmholtz. By von Mohl he was made known to Bunsen.

I shall never forget (says Roscoe in his Autobiography) my first sight of him—the man who afterwards became one of my dearest friends, and to whom I owe more than I can tell.… He was then at the height of his mental and physical powers. He stood fully six feet high, his manner was simple yet dignified, and his expression one of rare intelligence and great kindness. This first impression of his bearing and character only became stronger as my knowledge of him increased, and the feelings of respect and affection with which I regarded him were those of all with whom he came in contact. His singular amiability was not a sign of weakness, but of strength of character. His modesty was natural and in no degree assumed. In his lectures, when giving an account of some discovery he had made, or some new apparatus or method of work which he had investigated, I never heard him mention himself. It was always “man hat dies gefunden,” or “es hat sich so herausgestellt.”

In the cloisters of the old monastery which then did duty as the Heidelberg laboratory, Roscoe was first indoctrinated into the art and mystery of quantitative chemical analysis, and he there acquired the familiarity with Bunsen’s methods and with his system of laboratory instruction that he was to turn to such signal account in the establishment and direction of the Manchester school of chemistry. Among his fellow-workers were Lothar Meyer, Pauli, Beilstein, Pebal, Schischkoff (a Russian officer who investigated with Bunsen the course of decomposition of fired gunpowder), Quincke, Bahr, Landolt, Baeyer, Lourenço, and, amongst Englishmen, Russell, Atkinson, and Matthiessen—a group of well-known names constituting a striking testimony to the influence and power of attraction of the great German chemist.

One of Roscoe’s earliest quantitative exercises was in silicate analysis, and his first published paper, which appeared in Liebig’s Annalen for 1854, was a joint production with Schönfeld on the composition of certain samples of gneiss.

At the close of his second session he passed his doctor’s examination summa cum laude, and then embarked upon the well-known inquiry in association with Bunsen on the measurement of the chemical action of light, which occupied much of his time and energy during the next eight years.

In the obituary notices he wrote for Nature of August 31, 1899, and for the Proceedings of the Royal Society, and more especially in the admirable Memorial Lecture which he gave to the Chemical Society, Roscoe has done full justice to the memory of Bunsen as a great chemist, pre-eminent as a discoverer and teacher, and lovable as a true and noble-hearted man. The Memorial Lecture was reprinted in America by the Smithsonian Institute, and translated into German to be prefixed to the collection of Bunsen’s works published by the Society—the Bunsen-Gesellschaft—founded in his honour. In course of their long and uninterrupted friendship he received many letters from his illustrious master. These, 126 in number, were suitably bound and presented by him to the Bunsen Society.

Roscoe took advantage of the opportunity afforded by his residence in Germany to study its university system, and to make himself familiar with the general character of its working, and in his vacations he sought the acquaintance of its leading men of science, with some of whom he contracted lasting friendships. In his Autobiography, written in 1906, he gives expression to the sentiments of respect and esteem with which he regarded the Germany and his German friends of half a century ago:

My knowledge of the Germans and Germany has led me to love the Fatherland, and, I venture to think, to understand as well as to respect and admire the nation. As to any feelings antagonistic to England and the English existing in the minds of the many Germans with whom I became intimate, I never found a trace, for Treitschke I did not know. All with whom I ever came in contact expressed a feeling that England was the old home of freedom, that she had led the van in securing that freedom by gradual and peaceable measures, and, in short, that the path in which the Englishman trod was that in which they wished to follow. “We cannot,” my friends said to me, “express our opinion on political matters with the freedom to which you in England are accustomed. How indeed can this be otherwise, when we are governed by an autocratic power which believes in the divine right of kings, and have to submit to a condition of things in which summary punishment for ‘Majestätsbeleidigung’ is possible?”

In the autumn of 1856 Roscoe returned to London, and with the help of friends set up a private laboratory in Bedford Place, Russell Square, with Wilhelm Dittmar to assist him in research work. He also obtained employment as a science lecturer at an army school at Eltham, and did some analytical work on ventilation for a Departmental Committee, the results of which were published in a Blue-book, and also in the Journal of the Chemical Society.[2]

The London venture was very short-lived, for in the following year Frankland, the first Professor of Chemistry in the recently founded Owens College, Manchester, resigned his appointment, and Roscoe, who was able to produce satisfactory testimonials from Bunsen, Liebig, Graham, Williamson, and others, offered himself as a candidate for the vacant chair and was appointed.

CHAPTER III
OWENS COLLEGE, MANCHESTER

Owens College had its origin in a bequest of John Owens, a merchant of Manchester, who left the bulk of his fortune to trustees to found a collegiate institution in Manchester, open to persons of every variety of creed and free from every religious test. He was born in 1790, the son of Owen Owens, a Flintshire man, who settled in Manchester in early life and established a small business as a hat-lining cutter and furrier. Some time after 1815 Owen Owens took his son into partnership, when the firm extended the scope of their business and became general merchants, shipping calicoes and coarse woollens to China, India, South America, and New York, and importing hides, wheat, and other produce in return.

John Owens was described as possessing a good deal of hard-headedness and practical common sense, a keen buyer and a good payer, very methodical in his habits and operations, and who acted up to his favourite motto, Honestas optima politia. He was a staunch Dissenter and a “stalwart” Radical, a shy, silent man, known only to a few intimates, a misogamist, if not actually a misogynist, of no great intellectual ability, and with few cultured tastes, nor, so far as can be gathered, particularly friendly to learning. There is reason to believe that his first intention was to leave the greater part of his fortune to his lifelong friend and former schoolfellow, George Faulkner, a well-known and prosperous Manchester merchant, who in declining it appears to have suggested the idea of founding a college in Manchester. The suggestion took root. In developing it Owens seems to have been mainly moved by a feeling of bitterness against a system which imposed subscription to articles and creeds on a young man before he could be admitted to the ancient Universities.

He was determined to break down this injustice so far as he was able; he therefore made the trust subject to “the fundamental and immutable rule and condition … that the students, professors, teachers, and other officers and persons connected with the said institution shall not be required to make any declaration as to, or submit to any test whatsoever of, their religious opinions, and that nothing shall be introduced in the matter or mode of education or instruction in reference to any religious or theological subject which shall be reasonably offensive to the conscience of any student, or of his relations, guardians, or friends, under whose immediate care he shall be.”[3]

John Owens died, unmarried, in July 1846, at the age of fifty-five. Mr. George Faulkner, who had been named as one of the executors, proceeded to carry out the provisions of the will. The estate took some years to realize, and the accounts were not finally closed until 1857, when the total sum received for the purposes of the college amounted to £96,942—not a very large amount considered as endowment, but still sufficient, viewed from the standpoint of the middle of last century, to enable a modest start to be made, with prudent management on the part of the trustees, and a reasonable amount of sympathy and goodwill on the part of the community that was to be benefited.

The executors, without waiting for the complete realization of the estate, proceeded to execute the provisions of the bequest as regards the projected college. In the selection of the trustees appointed to carry out his intentions John Owens acted with sound judgment and a wise liberality. It is evident from the terms of the will that he had given considerable thought to the character of the institution he wished to found. But in spite of all his care and of the legal skill with which his wishes were expressed, the theological difficulty managed to creep in, and ingenious casuists raised doubts and differences of opinion concerning the interpretation of the testator’s will in regard to religious instruction. This occasioned delay, and a certain amount of sectarian jealousy and unfriendly feeling was stirred up which acted prejudicially against the new institution for some years after its establishment.

The College was formally opened in March 1851. Its first Principal was Mr. A. J. Scott, who was Professor of English Literature in University College when Roscoe studied there. In addition to being Principal he was appointed Professor of Logic, Mental and Moral Philosophy, and English Language and Literature. The circumstance that he undertook, with the consent of the trustees, to give courses of lectures on “The Influence of Religion in Relation to the Life of the Scholar,” was one cause of the hubbub which was raised in the town and which brought the Church party to the support of the trustees who had sanctioned these courses. Other teachers were Mr. J. G. Greenwood, Professor of the Language and Literature of Greece and Rome; Mr. Archibald Sandeman, Professor of Mathematics; Dr. Edward Frankland, Professor of Chemistry; Mr. W. C. Williamson, Professor of Natural History, Botany, and Geology; Mr. T. Theodores, teacher of German, Hebrew, and Oriental languages; and M. Podevin, teacher of French.

The College was located in what had been a private house, formerly the residence of Richard Cobden, and situated in a dreary and somewhat disreputable neighbourhood in the vicinity of Deansgate, one of the main thoroughfares of the poorer quarters of the city. This building was purchased from Mr. Cobden by Mr. George Faulkner, the chairman of the trustees, and was subsequently conveyed by him to the other trustees as an absolute donation for the benefit of the College. As it was unsuited for the provision of a chemical laboratory, the trustees determined to erect at the rear of the house a building specially designed for the purpose; but as they were precluded from using any of the corpus of the estate for building, they raised a sum of nearly £10,000 for the installation of a chemical laboratory and lecture theatre, the formation of a library and for general purposes. The chemical laboratory, which was planned under the direction of Dr. Frankland, could accommodate about fifty workers; it was conveniently arranged, and was indeed one of the best of its kind at the period of its erection.

The College made a fairly auspicious start as regards numbers, but for various reasons such popularity as it had rapidly declined, and each succeeding session saw a diminished entry. At the time Roscoe joined the students numbered only thirty-five, of whom fifteen were working in the chemical department.

We gather from the reports of the professors to the trustees that many causes contributed to retard the progress of the institution. Curiously enough, one of the chief of these was what was subsequently considered the chief glory of the foundation, namely, its unsectarian character. But another and more practical reason was that the generally unsatisfactory character of the school work of the students prevented them from obtaining full advantage of the College courses. In fact, the training afforded by the College was beyond the desires of the people. Higher education was not considered by Manchester as requisite for the accumulation of wealth. In those days lack of education had little or no effect on the social position of its moneyed men. They were inclined to think that a highly educated youth was unfitted for the routine work of a counting-house and was of little use as a salesman on the floor of the Exchange.

But there were doubtless other causes of a different nature. It was unfortunate for the College that the days of its infancy should be cast in the troubled times of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny—events which dislocated trade and affected the prosperity of the district.

It was significant of what the town thought of the financial outlook of the College that the new professor should be refused the tenancy of a house when the landlord learned that he was one of its staff.

Its ill-success was the subject of leading articles in the local press. The Manchester Guardian of July 9, 1858, wrote: “Explain it as we may, the fact is certain that this College, which eight years ago it was hoped would form the nucleus of a Manchester university, is a mortifying failure.” And Professor Roscoe was blamed for not awarding the Dalton scholarship because he had the hardihood to say that none of the laboratory students was sufficiently qualified to be worthy of it. The Manchester Examiner was somewhat more appreciative of the efforts of the little band who were gallantly striving to raise the very low standard of middle-class education in Manchester at that time.

We are compelled (it said) to look for the causes of non-success elsewhere than in the collegiate machinery. If an objection can be raised against the College at all, it is that such an institution is either in advance of our felt wants, or altogether unsuited to the economical conditions of Manchester life. Still, this is the fault of the community, not of the College. The worst that can be said of it is that it is too good for us.

This might certainly be said, in a certain sense, of the first Principal of the College. Excellent in many respects as a man, and inspiring as a teacher, he was altogether unfitted to direct the development of the young and struggling institution in such a community and at such a time.

Principal Scott, whom Mrs. Oliphant described as “a man whose powerful, wilful, and fastidious mind has produced upon all other capable minds an impression of force and ability which no practical result has yet adequately carried out,” had little constructive or directive power. Earnest, upright, and conscientious, he was essentially an idealist—almost a visionary—a man of words—forceful and even eloquent at times—but with no capacity for action. As a thinker he lived a strenuous and exhaustive life. Although only forty-six at the date of his appointment, his constitution, never very robust, was already undermined and his nervous energy impaired. He was frequently ill, and his repeated absences from the College necessarily interfered with his administrative work. After struggling for six years with the duties and responsibilities of a position for which circumstances and the times in nowise fitted him, he tendered his resignation as Principal a few months before Roscoe was appointed to the chair of Chemistry and was succeeded by Professor Greenwood.

The public criticism to which the College was subjected was not altogether without a salutary effect on its policy. It must be remembered that it was the first attempt of the kind to bring the higher training, and something of the spirit of collegiate life, directly within the reach of the middle-class youth of a great business community, and it was necessary to have some regard to the conditions of the district and its special requirements and, it may be added, even its peculiar prejudices.

Roscoe’s antecedents, his associations with Lancashire, and his knowledge of and sympathy with what is strongest and best in the Lancashire character, made him quick to realize the factors upon which the ultimate success of the institution depended. It was no use for it to set itself athwart the economical conditions of the community. Young as he was—he was then twenty-four—he was perhaps more alive to the practical necessities of the position than the majority of his colleagues.

He quickly revealed himself as the man of the hour. His accession to the College at this crisis was the turning-point in its career. He brought new vigour and a fresh spirit into its policy, and from that time forward its fortunes began steadily to mend.

As regards his own department, it was his ambition to establish at Owens College a school of chemistry which should worthily serve the interests of the great manufacturing district of South Lancashire—the largest and most important seat of chemical industry in the kingdom. Associated with him in this effort, he had as assistants Frederick Guthrie, who, on his appointment to the chair of Chemistry at the Royal College in Mauritius, was succeeded by Dittmar, and afterwards by Schorlemmer—all men of originality and admirable teachers. Schorlemmer spent the greater part of his life in Manchester, and died in the service of the College, latterly as Professor of Organic Chemistry—the first to be so designated in the kingdom. His connection with the institution is commemorated by the association of his name with one of the chemical laboratories of the Victoria University. His co-operation with Roscoe in the production of the well-known treatise which bears their joint names will be referred to later.

Roscoe from the outset threw himself heartily into the educational and scientific activities of the community in which he was to make his home for the next thirty years. He joined the Philosophical Society of Manchester—so honourably associated with the name and fame of Dalton. Founded in 1781, the Society has played a worthy part in the intellectual life of Manchester. In the second year of its existence one of its members—the Rev. Dr. Barnes—drew up “proposals for establishing in Manchester a plan of liberal education for young men designed for civil and active life, whether in trade or in any of the professions,” which may be said to have anticipated the foundation of Owens College. The management was to be free from sectarian exclusiveness. “A plan formed for public utility should be generous and enlarged, so as to extend itself as widely as possible for the common interest. Science and arts are of no political or religious party.” These liberal sentiments commended themselves to the Society, who ordered that the paper should “be printed and offered to the consideration of the public.” The seed fell on stony ground at the time and made only a feeble attempt to germinate; two generations had to come and go before it definitely took root.

Roscoe quickly acquired an influential position in the Philosophical Society. He served for many years as its secretary, and ultimately became its president. He was the first recipient of its Dalton medal, awarded to him in recognition of his efforts to throw light upon the reasoning which led Dalton to the formulation of his great generalization, by the publication in association with his friend and former pupil, Dr. Harden, of “A New View of the Origin of Dalton’s Atomic Theory” (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.), based upon Dalton’s manuscripts and laboratory note-books in the possession of the Society. The book will be referred to at greater length when considering Roscoe’s contributions in general to the literature of chemistry.

In the Society at the time Roscoe joined it were several men of scientific eminence, or who played notable parts in the industrial life of the district—among them Joule, Schunck, Fairbairn, W. C. Williamson, Angus Smith, and Crace Calvert. Joule, a pupil of Dalton, a shy, retiring man, was several times President of the Society, and Roscoe, who greatly admired his character and powers as an original thinker, became one of his most intimate friends. In the later years of his life Joule, who was a member of a brewing firm at Stone in Staffordshire, suffered great reverses of fortune, and was only saved from actual poverty by the grant of a Civil List pension, which Roscoe, with the help of Tyndall, Huxley, and other friends of science, was instrumental in obtaining. A letter which Roscoe wrote to the Times resulted in the creation of the Joule Memorial Fund, administered by the Royal Society. It takes the form of an international studentship or grant to assist research in those branches of physical science more immediately connected with Joule’s work. With the assistance of Lord Kelvin, he secured the placing of a tablet to Joule’s memory in Westminster Abbey.

In the vestibule of the Manchester Town Hall a life-size marble statue by Gilbert of the discoverer of the Law of the Conservation of Energy stands opposite to a statue of the author of the Atomic Theory. It was unveiled in 1893 by Joule’s most intimate scientific friend, Lord Kelvin. Concerning this unveiling, Roscoe could occasionally be induced to tell a story. In proposing a vote of thanks to Lord Kelvin, he stated that one inducement that drew him to Manchester was that he might sit at the feet of Joule, whose name was as well known on the Continent as that of Newton, but he found that all that the Manchester of that day knew of Joule was his Stone Ales. One of his lady auditors, in complimenting him upon his little speech, observed: “Of course I quite understood your remark about sitting at Dr. Joule’s feet, but why make allusion to his toe-nails!”

The visit of the British Association to Manchester in 1861, when Roscoe served as one of the local secretaries, afforded him an excellent opportunity of showing his organizing powers and business aptitudes.

These were still further demonstrated in the winter of 1862, during the memorable cotton famine in Lancashire, when he acted as one of the secretaries to a committee created to provide some form of intellectual occupation for the thousands of operatives thrown out of employment by the stoppage of the staple industry of the district. He gave lectures, illustrated by experiments, on subjects likely to attract a working-class audience. These were highly popular, and undoubtedly awakened a general interest in scientific matters in quarters which knew nothing of science. Their success encouraged him to institute the series of Science Lectures for the People, which he began in 1866, and carried on for eleven consecutive winters. In this movement he secured the co-operation, amongst others, of Huxley, Carpenter, Tyndall, Huggins, Lord Avebury, Abel, Stanley Jevons, Clifford, and Spottiswoode. The lectures were given in some of the largest public halls in the city, and were attended by thousands. They were published week by week as delivered, and were sold for a penny all over the world.

In 1874 the writer, then recently appointed to the newly founded Yorkshire College at Leeds, had the privilege of taking part in these courses, when he undertook to give some account of the life and work of Joseph Priestley, the chemist, who, as already stated, was a colleague of Dr. Enfield at the Warrington Academy.

Mrs. Roscoe, the mother of the subject of this memoir, then an old lady of seventy-six, who had shown the writer many kindnesses during his student-days at Owens College, was pleased to interest herself in this lecture and, unsolicited, to write the following characteristic and charming little sketch of Priestley and his wife as a contribution to the subject.

10 York Place, Oxford Road,
November 12 [1874].

My Dear Professor,

I have a few particulars at your service for your lecture on Priestley if you intend to sketch his character, which was a fine example for working-men. I should be glad to send you the papers if you will return them. You of course have Huxley’s enlarged notice in the Contemporary, which is very good and full.

His poverty, energy, and extreme industry raised him from the humblest condition. His first place of Christian ministry for three years was at a small chapel at Needham, and his stipend only £30 a year, to which he added a small school. Here he bought a pair of globes (made by John Senex, F.R.S.). When he removed to Nantwich, where he was minister for three years, he took the globes with him, and also kept a small school. There he bought a small air-pump and an electrical machine and a few books, going on with preaching, teaching schools, and learning himself. He says: “I was barely able, with the greatest economy, to keep out of debt—but this I always made a point of.” (The globes and the first electrical machine belong to friends of mine.—M. R.)

In 1761 he removed to Warrington, where he remained six years, connected with the Academy there. Here he married his wife—a most admirable woman—who excelled so greatly in ruling the home that “it allowed him to give his whole time to the prosecution of his studies and other duties.” Her behaviour during the Persecution and Emigration to America was above all praise. She said of herself: “There is something inherent in me which always makes me swim to the top of affliction, so that I am ready to pop out to the first friendly hand that offers assistance—otherwise I am surprised at myself that I have borne it so well, and greatly rejoiced that Dr. Priestley has kept up under all the malignity that attended the riots. Our property may be said to be entirely destroyed, the few remains that have been picked up so demolished as to be of little value.” The loss of books, MSS., and instruments was valued at £10,000.

There is an interesting chapter on visiting Priestley’s grave in Harriet Martineau’s “Retrospect of Western Travel,” vol. i. pp. 175-90. Also a poetical account of the uses of oxygen by George Dawson of Birmingham, which I cut out for you. The list of all Priestley’s works and portraits, medallions and engravings, as well as remains of other kinds, is given by Rev. James Yates, and appended to the Life of Priestley by Hutt.

Priestley was driven from England in 1794, and Lavoisier was guillotined in the same year at Paris after confiscation of all his property; and it was in 1874 that Birmingham was “made to eat humble-pie” by erecting a statue to Priestley’s memory on the centenary of his great discovery.

I hope you have made a good beginning at Leeds and will nevertheless not be too busy to read this note and to excuse my troubling you.

Very truly yours,

Maria Roscoe.

Of the stimulating influence of these Penny Lectures Roscoe received abundant testimony: in after-life he frequently met persons, some occupying a high and responsible position in commerce and industry, who informed him that they were indebted to them for their first interest in science. One such person was the late Mr. Thomas Parker, a self-made man, and founder of the well-known electrical firm of Elwell-Parker.

Services such as these, combined with Roscoe’s growing popularity and influence, necessarily reacted favourably upon the fortunes of the College, and it steadily grew in favour. The chemical department especially increased in numbers, and the laboratory soon became inadequate to accommodate the students, who came to it from all parts of England, attracted by its fame as a chemical school.

The prospects of the College were now so well assured that in 1865 the governing body and the professors began to consider the desirability of extending its scheme of studies, and, what at the moment was even more urgent, providing new and greatly increased accommodation. Owing to the adverse state of trade at the time, no immediate steps were possible; but in 1867 a town’s meeting resolved “That the time had come for the public of the district to unite for the purpose of developing the College on a more comprehensive scale, and in appropriate and convenient buildings.” An executive committee, on which Roscoe was placed, was appointed to carry out this and certain consequential resolutions. He was also required to serve on various sub-committees, dealing with the new site, buildings, extension and rearrangement of courses of study. It says much for the influence and weight he had now acquired in the counsels of the College, and for the confidence reposed in his judgment and business capacity, that no other member of the staff was called upon to take so large and so responsible a share in the extension movement.

The new Constitution as settled by the extension committee, to the extent that it modified or enlarged the original scheme of the founder, necessitated an application for a Bill in Parliament. The action of the Governing Body in enlarging the scope of the College was generally approved and was warmly supported, amongst others by Mr. Freeman the historian. He considered that the members of the two ancient Universities ought to feel, and he was sure that they largely did feel, a special sympathy in the planting of an institution like Owens College in such a city as Manchester.

It was called a college, but it had really much more of the character of a university; and it was as a new university in Manchester that he was ready and delighted to welcome it. It was a great and noble work which had been begun in their city.… He looked then upon Owens College as a university rising in a great city; neither did he look on a great city as an unfitting place for a great university. As a rule, the ancient universities of Europe had arisen in great cities. Owens College, unlike most modern institutions, did not begin with a building. Here was a college which had been at work for a good many years, and the common academical buildings were only now being planned. This was just as it should be; at any rate it was just in the spirit of the old founders. They got their men first, and let the buildings come afterwards. If Owens College had hitherto to do with makeshift buildings, it was just what the old colleges of Oxford did for a while, and in both cases for the same reason, because the college itself, the living members of the college, came first in the ideas of the founders, and the material house existed for their sake only.

The draft of the new Constitution was prepared, under the direction of a sub-committee, by Mr. James Bryce, now Lord Bryce, then Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, and formerly Professor of Jurisprudence and Law at Owens College. A Bill was next drafted to enable the College to procure modifications of certain features of John Owens’s foundation, and Roscoe was requested to sign as one of the promoters of the petition for the Owens College, Manchester, Bill, 1870. This Bill met with a certain amount of parliamentary opposition, mainly in the House of Lords, where it was first introduced. It was alleged that it was a Bill for incorporating a non-existent charity, enabling it to annex the property of another charity and to set aside to a great extent the expressed intention of the founder. Objections also were raised in Manchester itself by the executor of the late chairman of trustees, on the ground that it was proposed to include females as students of the College. The promoters met both the parliamentary and local opposition with skill and judgment. The Lords passed the second reading by a majority of nearly six to one, and as no petitions were lodged against it after lying on the table for forty days, it was read a third time and passed. In the Commons the Bill was read a first and second time without opposition. A difficulty was threatened in Committee in regard to the inclusion of the words, “A college wherein young persons, including if and when the proper authorities of the College so direct, persons of the female sex, may receive instruction.” This was stayed by the promoters agreeing to accept in lieu the words “such young persons as the proper authorities of the College may from time to time direct”—a sapient amendment which made little or no essential difference when the inclusion of women came to be dealt with as a practical question. The Owens College Extension Act received the royal assent in July 1870.

The foundation-stone of the first block of the new buildings was laid by the Duke of Devonshire, the first President of the Owens College, on September 23, 1870. The design of the chemical laboratories was wholly inspired by Roscoe, after a careful examination of every continental example that might furnish suggestions concerning internal arrangements and fittings, the details being admirably carried out by the late Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, R.A. It is not too much to say that these laboratories have served as models for practically every chemical laboratory which has been subsequently built in this country or abroad.

Roscoe’s interest in the new buildings was not by any means exclusively confined to his own department. As a member of the building committee he took an active and leading part in its work generally. The position he thus acquired may be illustrated by the following story. When Principal Greenwood was asked how many master-keys would be needed by the staff, he replied: “Three: one for me because I’m Principal; one for Ward as Pro-Principal, and one for Roscoe because he is Roscoe.”

The actual incorporation of John Owens’s trust within the scheme of the extended College could only be effected with the sanction of the Charity Commissioners. There was no difficulty in the trustees of the original College and the governors of the enlarged institution coming to an agreement. The difficulty was raised by the Charitable Trusts Commissioners, and it again arose on the question of the “eternal feminine,” the inclusion of women being held to be a departure from the expressed objects of Owens’s foundation. After a lengthy correspondence this and certain other points raised by the Commissioners were adjusted, when a Confirming Bill was introduced into Parliament; it passed through both Houses and received the royal assent in July 1871.

The Owens College was now free to develop towards that consummation to which all friends of education desired it should proceed.

It had gradually enlarged the scheme of its studies so as to include nearly every department of learning, other than theology, professed at the older universities. It was inevitable therefore that sooner or later it should seek for university powers. That this was to be its goal was clearly foreseen by all who were actively engaged in its extension. The main difference of opinion was as to whether the time was opportune. Many distinguished friends of the College, who had watched its development, were of opinion in the late ’seventies that it had already attained a university position, and that steps should then be taken to make it the university of Manchester.

The idea of a Manchester university was not by any means new. It was as old, indeed, as 1640, when Henry Fairfax, Rector of Ashton-under-Lyne, moved his brother, the second Lord Fairfax, to petition the Long Parliament

“for an university to be erected at Manchester, as the want of an university in the northern parts of this kingdom, both in this and former ages, hath been apprehended a great prejudice to the kingdom in general, but a greater misery and unhappiness to these countries in particular, many ripe and hopeful wits being utterly lost for want of education, some being unable, others unwilling, to commit their children of tender and unsettled age so far from their own eyes, to the sole care and tuition of strangers.”

Lord Fairfax replied that this could not be done except by a Bill in Parliament, “which will be a charge of one hundred marks at least [£66 13s. 4d.], too much to be hazarded on so great an uncertainty.”

The successive stages in the growth of this conception are given in Mr. Joseph Thompson’s “History of Owens College.” These can only be shortly indicated here.

The establishment of a university at Manchester was boldly advocated in 1829 by Mr. W. R. Whatton, who contemplated the alteration and extension of the plan of the existing Royal Institution for the purpose, and drew up a scheme of higher education on a wide and liberal basis. Mr. Whatton combated the objections which were raised with considerable skill, but the “religious difficulty” got mixed up with the controversy: it proved insurmountable and nothing came of the project. In 1836, Mr. H. L. Jones read a paper before the Manchester Statistical Society on a plan of a university for the town of Manchester, which was subsequently published in pamphlet form at the expense of the late Mr. James Heywood, F.R.S., a well-known Manchester worthy. Mr. Jones, who was a member of the University of Cambridge, was a strong advocate of university reform and of the principle of introducing university culture into the larger industrial centres, in a form suited to the intellectual needs of modern life. An attempt was made to put the scheme into effect, but it died of inanition in a few months. It is, however, interesting to note that many details of Mr. Jones’s plan foreshadowed what were subsequently adopted in the arrangements of John Owens’s foundation. Naturally the idea eventually centred itself in this institution. The language of the local newspaper Press in the early days of the College, even when its fortunes were at their lowest ebb, clearly indicates what was the hope and aspiration of the more public-spirited and thoughtful of the community. As the College grew and prospered, their hope was strengthened and their aspiration encouraged by friends of education from the older universities like Freeman the historian, by men of science like Lord Kelvin, Huxley, and Brodie, and by public men like Lord Bryce and the late Lord Avebury.

With the provision of new buildings, spacious class-rooms and admirable laboratories, designed by an artist who has left the impress of his genius upon some of the most noteworthy architectural features of the city, Manchester now realized that it possessed a temple of learning of which it might well be proud. And there can be little doubt that this fact quickened the local feeling in favour of the realization of that hope which, however faint at times, had persisted, in spite of many disappointments, for more than two hundred years. A few months after the College had been installed in its new premises, Roscoe and his colleagues, Professor Ward—now Sir A. W. Ward, the Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge—who was then Professor of History in Manchester, Principal Greenwood, and Professor Morgan, took the first effective steps towards this consummation. The historian of Owens College thus testifies to their action:

It is to the zeal and untiring devotion of these four gentlemen (wrote Mr. Joseph Thompson) that Manchester owes its university; others cordially supported the movement, but they, through five weary years, placed their case before the public, removed prejudices, advanced good arguments, and lived down opposition.

Roscoe has himself told the story of how he attempted to move Lancashire through the local Press, and strove to create a public opinion in favour of the project, for, as he clearly recognized, without public support nothing could be accomplished. He sought to show how the establishment of a new university in the North would benefit the great middle classes of the community in which it was placed, and what its influence might be expected to be upon the great hives of industry in the most densely populated districts of the kingdom. It was, he said, to be “The University of the Busy,” as distinguished from the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge—“The Universities of the Wealthy.” He pointed to the existence of the Scottish universities, and explained what their influence had been for generations back on the middle and poorer classes of their country. Was not Lancashire, with its many populous manufacturing towns, as fully entitled to the advantages of a university as the cities over the Border? The time had passed for imagining that Oxford and Cambridge, rich and powerful though they were, could do all that England legitimately required in the way of the highest academic culture. Where was the evidence that the establishment of provincial universities would lower the tone of higher education, or that the creation of new avenues to degrees would injuriously affect the reputation of those symbols of culture? That “many ripe and hopeful wits” among the youth of Manchester were well qualified for and desirous of receiving university training, but who, for a variety of reasons, could not go to the older universities, was no less true now than in Cromwell’s time. Moreover, it must be admitted, there is a great deal in the genius loci. That spirit had succeeded in developing John Owens’s foundation into a splendid institution suited to the local life and requirements. They in Manchester knew what the busy North wanted, but they were not quite so sure that the Dons of Oxford and Cambridge knew it as well as they themselves did. They asked to be allowed to work out their own salvation in their own way. They were already to all intents and purposes a university; their students were university students in age and education, and their courses of instruction were fully up to university standard, and their yearly entry would compare not unfavourably with that of many universities in our own and other countries.

Other arguments were adduced, possible objections were anticipated and met, and a strong case was established. The senate, however, moved cautiously. They proceeded to collect and circulate opinions on the propriety of seeking a university charter, and eventually the matter was brought before the court of governors, who appointed a special committee, on which Roscoe was placed, to consider and report upon the whole subject. A considerable number of persons, heads of colleges, university teachers, and others eminent in the educational world, or who had identified themselves with educational movements, were consulted, and with the consent of the writers their replies were collected and distributed to the leading newspapers and journals with a view to elicit public opinion. An analysis of the general feeling so far as it could be ascertained from newspaper and other criticism was made by Roscoe in concert with Principal Greenwood and Professor Ward, and laid before the special committee. The Liverpool Daily Post was adverse to the project, for reasons which will appear subsequently. The late Lord Sherbrooke, who, as the Rt. Hon. Robert Lowe, at that time represented the University of London, was equally condemnatory in the pages of the Fortnightly Review. But the preponderating opinion was undoubtedly favourable.

The committee reported, some six months after its appointment, to a special meeting of the governors, when it was resolved, with practical unanimity, that it was expedient to take such steps as might be calculated to promote the success of the proposal to seek for the Owens College a charter as a university granting degrees. A memorial was presented to the Privy Council through the Lord President of the Council (the Duke of Richmond and Gordon), praying for the grant of a charter to the College conferring upon it the rank of a university, to be called the University of Manchester, with power to grant degrees in arts, science, medicine, and law. The memorial was influentially supported by eminent men, who recapitulated the arguments which had led the governors to their decision; it was further supported by memorials from the corporations of the chief towns of Lancashire (Liverpool excepted), and from a number of public bodies and educational institutions in the county.

The very success of Owens College as an educational agency in the town and district in which it was situated was, for the moment, the cause of opposition to its attempt to obtain for itself university powers. Other towns, conscious of the benefit of such institutions, were seeking to establish colleges of the type of Owens College, and which it was hoped might ultimately develop into universities. Leeds had founded the Yorkshire College in 1874. Originally started as a science college, and with special reference to the educational requirements of the industries of the district, its scope had been rapidly enlarged so as to include arts and languages. It had already established relations with the local medical school, and its development as a college was not very dissimilar from that of Owens prior to the extension movement. At that time it had upwards of four hundred students—registered occasional, medical, and evening—with some eighteen professors, instructors, and assistants, and an income from fees of about £1,500. The governing body of the Yorkshire College, and others interested in its progress, therefore viewed with some apprehension the establishment of a degree-granting body so close to its own area. The majority were not opposed to the creation of another university in the north of England, provided that the interests of their own college were safe-guarded. They desired that the charter of the contemplated university might be so modified as to admit of the inclusion of other institutions of collegiate rank which might be able to fulfil the conditions of incorporation as constituent colleges with a definite share in its government. This, indeed, was actually contemplated by the promoters of the Manchester University, but the terms of incorporation were, in the opinion of Yorkshire, not sufficiently well defined, and there were other conditions which failed to satisfy local aspirations. The friends of the young College were keen and active; the Leeds Press took up their cause, and public opinion in the district set strongly in their favour.

As the action of the neighbouring county was successful in effecting certain fundamental modifications in the Constitution of the proposed new University, it may be desirable to give some account of the origin and growth of the Yorkshire College up to the period with which we are now concerned, and to point out the reasons which seemed to its friends to justify their efforts to safeguard its position in the interests of the higher education of an industrial community hardly less populous than that of Manchester and its immediate vicinity.

CHAPTER IV
THE YORKSHIRE COLLEGE

The Yorkshire College of Science, as it was first styled, had its origin in the general movement towards a fuller recognition of the duty of the community in regard to national education, of which the Education Act of 1870, the Technical Instruction Act of 1889, and the more comprehensive Education Act of 1902 were at once the signs and the practical outcome. The immediate cause of the creation of the College may, however, be said to have been found in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867. One of the reporters of that exhibition was a well-known Leeds merchant, the late Mr. Thomas Nussey. In a report in vol. iii of the General Reports, Mr. Nussey drew attention to the great advance that had been made since the London Exhibition of 1862 in the quality, style, and cheapness of production of the foreign exhibits. Whilst he was of opinion that Great Britain might still be said to maintain its pre-eminent position in the woollen industry, Leeds and the West Riding generally had failed in many classes to make the best use of their opportunities. He proceeded to point out to what in his judgment the great advance in the character of the continental production was due. He says:

There can be no doubt that the French, Belgian, and Prussian manufacturers are greatly indebted for their progress in this and many other industries to the very superior technical education which their manufacturers and workmen obtain by means of the schools instituted for special instruction, not only in design, but in everything which has any relation to each particular manufacture. Without education we cannot expect to have skilled workmen of the highest class, and to a fair general education must be added a special training under good masters in every branch of trade. The adoption of similar schools in Britain will before long become a necessity, and the sooner they are established the better.

Prompt effect to these opinions was given by two other members of the same family in a pamphlet, published in Leeds, entitled: “A Technical Institution for Leeds and District, proposed by George Henry Nussey and Arthur Nussey. Leeds: Edward Baines and Sons, 1867.” This institution was avowedly designed to serve the interests of the staple industries of the West Riding. Its projectors formulated a scheme of technical education which should in the first place combine the existing School of Art with a School of Weaving and Design, and should afford instruction in mechanical engineering; in the manufacture and dyeing of woollen and worsted goods; in weaving and designing; in the manufacture of linens, and of leather; in mining, metallurgy, and building construction. Two years later they sought to give a practical development of their ideas by establishing “The Leeds Art and Science Institute” in connection with the Science and Art Department, South Kensington. Six teachers and assistants were engaged and the classes were held in the evenings.

Other agencies, however, were at work tending to the same end. There is a small social organization in Leeds which has existed since 1849, known as the Conversation Club, and which, with less ambitious aims, has played much the same part in the intellectual life of the town that the famous Lunar Society did in that of Birmingham. In this club the idea of an Educational Council for Leeds took its rise, and out of this grew the Yorkshire Board of Education, of which Lord Frederick Cavendish, M.P., was President, and Sir Andrew Fairbairn, and Dr. J. D. Heaton, an active member of the Conversation Club and of the Educational Council, were Vice-Presidents.

The work of the Board up to the period of which we write had been mainly concerned with the provision of science classes and science teachers, in connection with mechanics’ institutions working in conjunction with the Science and Art Department.

In 1869 a meeting of the General Council of the Yorkshire Board of Education was held at the Town Hall, Leeds, with Lord Frederick Cavendish in the chair. It was attended by representatives of the more important industries in Yorkshire, as well as by persons interested in higher education. A resolution was carried “That in the opinion of this Council it is desirable that a College of Science should be established in Yorkshire”; and a committee was appointed “to investigate, consider, and propose the best means of carrying out the proposal.” Members of this committee naturally visited, in the first place, the neighbouring Owens College, and gained valuable information concerning its rise and progress and the nature of its operations, much of which was embodied in their report; others visited King’s College, London, in order to inspect its Department of Applied Science and Engineering Workshops. Correspondence was also entered into with the Endowed Schools Commissioners, who held out prospects of assistance for Exhibitions in Physical Science and in the Secondary Education of Girls.

The Committee presented their report in 1872. Their suggestions were limited by the probabilities of realizing them. Too ambitious a scheme would overreach itself: public support would probably be deterred by the very magnitude of the effort needed to give effect to it. On the other hand, no attempt would be worth making unless it afforded reasonable assurance of practical benefit. After full consideration the Committee recommended the establishment of the following professorships: (1) Mathematics and Engineering; (2) Chemistry; (3) Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology; (4) Experimental Philosophy; and they came to the conclusion that the minimum sum required for a beginning was £60,000, which they apportioned as follows: site and buildings, £25,000; endowment, in addition to students’ fees, £25,000; establishment expenses, £10,000.

The Council accepted the report, and at once appealed for subscriptions. Sir Andrew Fairbairn headed the list with £1,000, followed by like amounts from the Duke of Devonshire, Sir Titus Salt, Bart., Messrs. Beckett & Co., the Lowmoor Iron Company, and Messrs. Hargreave and Nusseys, members of which firm had started “The Leeds Art and Science Institute.” The project, however, made but slow progress: pecuniary support was difficult to secure, and the Committee were forced to realize that if a start was to be made something less than the £60,000 would have to suffice. It was therefore resolved to postpone all building operations and, when a sum of £20,000 had been raised, to make a beginning in temporary premises.

In April 1874 it was reported that the subscription list amounted to £25,000, and on the 30th of that month a meeting of the subscribers and donors was held in Leeds for the purpose of defining the Constitution of the proposed College and electing a Board of Governors. Lord Frederick Cavendish presided, and Dr. Heaton made a statement explaining the progress of the movement, and the steps it was proposed to take in order formally to constitute the College. In addition to the amount subscribed, the promoters were able to announce offers of help in money, as well as in science exhibitions, from the Endowed Schools Commissioners. The Clothworkers’ Company of London promised £500 a year to found a Chair of Textile Fabrics. But Dr. Heaton went on to remark:

The work is far from being completed; it may be said to be only commencing. The governing body have an arduous task before them, both in organizing the College and in still prosecuting the canvass for subscriptions. £20,000 neither represents the amount to be expected from the large and wealthy West Riding of Yorkshire, nor does it approach to the amount necessary to give permanency and full efficiency to the institution which we desire to establish. Although it is proposed to commence operations in a rented building, both because our present means would not permit of the purchase of a site and erection of buildings thereon, and because of the long delay which would be occasioned by waiting for the completion of a building yet to be erected, it is most desirable, indeed essential, that the College should ultimately possess its own buildings, appropriately constructed and arranged for carrying on its work with the greatest efficiency and convenience. We have often been asked if Government should not assist the work we have in hand. Continental Governments do provide for scientific teaching as applied to industry, and it might be well if our own Government did more to promote this great national work. In this country we have always been left to do more for ourselves by individual action and by voluntary benevolence; and our national self-reliance and powers of organization and practical benevolence are no doubt strengthened and developed by our people being left to their own resources. But inasmuch as all are interested directly or indirectly in the commercial prosperity of the nation, this does seem to be an object towards which (when it is once commenced by private exertions) some assistance and encouragement by the Government would be peculiarly appropriate.

In the early autumn of 1874 the Council proceeded to appoint the first professors of the College. The committee which drew up the scheme of instruction had recommended the inclusion of the subject of Engineering, with which should be associated the teaching of Mathematics by the same professor. However desirable it might be to make provision for instruction in the principles of Engineering—especially in Mechanical Engineering, in view of its bearing upon one of the most important industries of the town and district—the Council, for various reasons, were unable to give immediate effect to this particular recommendation. The subject of Mechanical Engineering, to be properly taught, requires the provision of workshops, laboratories, and an installation of costly plant. Even if the limited resources of the College had been sufficient at the time to make the most modest of beginnings, the temporary premises which had been leased would have been unsuitable for the purpose. Accordingly the authorities, with that characteristic Yorkshire caution which takes nothing on trust, goes no further than it can plainly see—nor, in the common phrase, puts out its hand further than it can draw it back again—decided to limit their appointments, to begin with, to Professorships of (1) Experimental Physics (with which they associated Mathematics); (2) Geology and Mining; (3) Chemistry. To the first Chair they elected the late Mr. A. W. Rücker, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and a Demonstrator in the Clarendon Laboratory—afterwards Sir Arthur Rücker, Sec. R.S., Professor of Physics in the Royal College of Science, London, and subsequently Principal of the reorganized University of London. To the second they appointed the late Mr. A. H. Green, formerly Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a distinguished member of the Geological Survey, who subsequently became Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford. For the third appointment the Council selected the present writer, who had been a pupil, assistant, and demonstrator under the subject of this memoir at Owens College, and who, prior to his selection, had held the Chair of Chemistry in Anderson’s College, Glasgow, now merged into the splendidly endowed and equipped Royal Technical College.

The premises in which the College was first housed consisted of a disused Bankruptcy Court situated in Cookridge Street, one of the main thoroughfares leading out of the town. After a somewhat chequered career the building had been partially used as a school of cookery, with the unfortunate result that it had been largely consumed by a fire just prior to being taken over by the College authorities. Although not so spacious as Richard Cobden’s old house in Quay Street, Manchester, in which Owens College first started, the Leeds building, in some respects, was not ill-adapted to the purposes of the limited professoriate with which the Yorkshire College of Science began its operations. At all events, it accommodated without the slightest difficulty all the students who sought admission to its classes on its opening day.

The College began its work of teaching on October 26, 1874—somewhat later than the normal time of opening a session—owing to delays in completing the necessary structural rearrangements. But as there was no yearning anxiety on the part of anybody to learn, no special inconvenience or disappointment resulted. There was no preliminary flourish of trumpets; hardly so much as an opening speech. The initial ceremony was as simple as the appointments of the College were modest. Each of the three professors in turn gave an introductory lecture to an audience consisting of the members of the Council and such of the friends of the embryo institution as cared to attend. Some encouraging remarks were made by the Chairman, and so the College was launched. But for a time the students were few and their advent as far between as the visits of angels.

Still, as the session progressed and the existence of the place became gradually known the numbers slowly crept up, and by the end of the summer term they had reached twenty-four and the students’ fees had amounted to about £150. The authorities now determined to open the next session with an Inauguration Ceremony. October 6, 1875, is a red-letter day in the history of the College, for on that date one of the most notable and helpful gatherings ever held in honour of the College took place. The proceedings began at noon, when the College buildings were inspected by a specially invited company; thereafter there was the inevitable public luncheon and in the evening a general meeting in the Town Hall. On each occasion the Duke of Devonshire was in the chair. At the College meeting Lord Frederick Cavendish, its President, gave a short account of its origin and aims. They were there, he said, to take care that they did not through ignorance waste the natural wealth of the county, or stay the further development of the natural qualities of its people. Wealth, however, was not much in itself but only as a means. Were they quite certain that in the great wealthy industrial North they had made the same progress in intellectual culture and refinement as they had in wealth? He pointed to the example of Owens College: inspired by that College, they would try in Yorkshire if they could not do something of the same sort.

At the luncheon similar sentiments were uttered by the Dean of Durham, the Marquess of Ripon, Canon Robinson, Sir Edward Baines, and Mr. W. E. Forster. It was, however, at the evening meeting that the real success of the day was achieved. The Victoria Hall was filled with a typical Yorkshire crowd—alert, receptive, keenly interested, alternately critical and tolerant, yet ready to be swayed by those who knew how to reach their intelligence and rouse their enthusiasm. The Duke of Devonshire opened the proceedings with a dignified and impressive address, worthy of his high position as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and as President of the College in the neighbouring city of Manchester. He gave a broad and comprehensive account of the general state of educational activity in the country and indicated the directions in which it was tending. He pointed to the creation of institutions for secondary and higher education in our large centres of industry as a sign that the country was awakening to the fact that all our great branches of industry were founded on a scientific basis. Although the education—however indispensable it might be—of the eye and the hand could only be acquired by actual practice, it could be nothing short of prejudice to deny that the education of the intellect was also a matter of primary importance. The Duke affected no flights of eloquence. His diction was simple and unaffected, and a vein of strong, practical common sense ran through the whole of his remarks. His presence was not unfamiliar to a Leeds audience, but they never heard him to greater effect, or, it may be added, at greater length. His speech was said to be the longest he had ever made.

The late Lord Playfair, who as Dr. Lyon Playfair then represented a Leeds constituency, followed on the same theme. He recalled the fact that more than a generation had passed since standing on a Leeds platform he had acted as interpreter to his friend Liebig in warning his audience not to pride itself too much upon its industrial achievements, explaining how impossible it was for England permanently to preserve her manufacturing supremacy among nations, unless she bestowed more attention upon the sciences which formed the groundwork of her industries. Then, in one of those hortatory discourses with which he occasionally astonished and delighted an ill-informed House of Commons, he poured forth a wealth of facts in illustration of the movement in the industrial world which had rendered these modern colleges an imperative necessity.

Foreign nations had seen that their only chance of compensating themselves for our advantages in the materials of power and strength was to excel us in the intelligence and intellect applied to their use in production. They saw clearly that as new forces and their application were brought to aid industrial production, human labour was relieved from much of its drudgery, and that the conceptions of the brain became more important than the sweat of the brow. Look to Switzerland, as an example in point. She has no coal, and no seaboard by which she can introduce it. Separated from other countries by ice-clad mountains, and hemmed in by hostile tariffs, she still becomes an industrial nation. What has led to her great industrial industry? Not her water-power, for that she is only beginning to use effectively, but simply the educated intelligence of her whole population. Valleys in which a few years ago you only heard the tinkling of the bells of cattle as they strayed through the pastures are now busy with turkey-red works and calico print works. Our manufacturers shake their heads sagaciously, and say, “This is because the air and water of Switzerland are so well adapted for colours.” But the true explanation is contained in the answer of Opie, the celebrated painter, who being asked by an ambitious youth how he mixed his colours, replied “I mix them with my brains, sir.”

Every part of public education in Switzerland is well co-ordinated and organized. At Zurich, in addition to a university for general culture, there is a technical college larger than Buckingham Palace. And so Switzerland laughs at countries which look to raw materials as the source of their wealth, and imports cotton from the United States, tobacco from Havana, silk from Italy, and sends back to these very markets her finished products. Again, look at Holland, which is a reclaimed swamp, containing no mineral materials for industry, except in a small patch at Limburg. She also compensates for their absence by increasing the intellectual factor in labour. Every town of 10,000 inhabitants has its technical school, supported by the municipalities. Look at Germany, which, though it does possess valuable raw materials, cultivates with assiduity the intellectual factor of production. In war and in peace her population is able to be used to the greatest advantage. Europe has scarcely yet recovered from its amazement at the sudden development of that empire, though it had been laying the foundation for its prosperity in the educational organization which she gave herself when the wars of Napoleon taught her the sources of her weakness. Now, surely we should not close our eyes, in insular pride, to the means taken by other countries to increase their productive resources. France fully admits that her recent calamities were largely due to a want of enlightenment of her people. She is still far ahead of us in technical institutions, but her general and university education are very deficient. If you desire an example of a country which cannot progress because of the ignorance of her people, look at Spain. When the Duke St. Simon, once French Minister there, said, “Science in Spain is a crime and ignorance a virtue,” he explained in one sentence the cause of her misfortunes. A fertile country, washed by two great oceans, abounding in coal, iron, copper, and quicksilver, is unable to thrive because her people are ignorant.

The speaker then turned to the case of the institution whose formal inauguration had been the occasion of his address, and he proceeded, as a practical educationist, to give it and its projectors some advice.

Such colleges are likely to receive little support until the middle-class schools understand their duty to Society by making Science part of the effective instruction of youth. A port constructed for the reception of ships, before the ships themselves are built, has a dreary time to wait for their arrival, and so the managers of the new College must not be discouraged because it does not grow quickly.

Nor did he think it would be wise, at least in its infancy, to give to the College too much of a technical character.

Teach science well to the scholars, and they will make the applications for themselves. Good food becomes assimilated to its several purposes by digestion. Epictetus used to say that though you feed sheep on grass, it is not grass, but wool which grows upon their backs. What the College should aim at is to increase the science and intelligence of the community, and not to teach industries which they know a great deal better than the professors. The new College is only the local expression of a general movement for higher education. That movement has no doubt received its primary impulse from the conviction that our industrial population ought to be educated in the principles which underlie their occupations. But the object is higher than this. There is a desire to spread culture throughout the country, and not to concentrate it in one or two favoured localities. The older Universities are beginning to recognize this fact. Cambridge had made the bold experiment of trying whether, if the youth of the provinces would not go to her, they would receive educational missionaries sent to them. The older Universities could do much from their wealth and educational resources. They could easily spread enlightenment over England if they were earnest in the work.

No doubt our manufacturing and commercial classes require to be mellowed by culture, but our Universities must adapt that culture to the wants and spare time of busy communities. They cannot get hold of our great industrial centres in any permanent way unless they raise them in self-respect and dignity by giving them an intellectual understanding of their vocations, and upon that understanding they may engraft as much polite literature as they can. A college of science, such as we are inaugurating to-day, is admirable in itself, but it is not complete. Perhaps it even focuses the light too strongly on a particular spot, and for this reason it intensifies the darkness around. Its directors are too enlightened men not to see this, and I am sure they will aid in the co-ordination of your other educational resources. The ultimate effect of this may be that you may evolve a wider and more comprehensive college for higher education. I look to that time with hope, for differentiation of our colleges will be the best thing for learning and for vigour of intellect. Each great provincial town should have a college as a centre of intelligence, each a sun capable of warming and illuminating a region around it, not merely a moon to cast pale and cold beams as a reflection from a distant luminary.

Subsequent speakers, in so far as they went over the same ground, merely ploughed with Dr. Playfair’s heifer. The Marquess of Ripon was not discouraged by the small beginnings of the undertaking. All the experiences of the past showed that those institutions which had taken the deepest root, and which had flourished the longest and wielded ultimately the most extensive influence, had sprung from small beginnings. Our ancient universities had mainly sprung from individual effort, and from private endowment. We were not less wealthy than our ancestors who founded them. Surely we could do now what they did before us. He trusted that there was not to be any doubt as to the future of this institution. We were told that its managers had acted to a great extent upon faith; that they had been doing their work partly out of capital in the confidence that that capital would be repaid them by the good sense and generosity of their countrymen.

Of all those who followed, and who pleaded the cause of the College, none was received with greater heartiness and enthusiasm than Mr. W. E. Forster, and there was none whose speech had a deeper or more genuine note of sympathy and encouragement. There were perhaps special reasons for the warmth of the welcome with which he was greeted. The political circumstances of the time were peculiar, and Mr. Forster was known to be the undeserved victim of them. The Liberal party was then in opposition, and Mr. Gladstone earlier in the year had suddenly thrown up his position as its leader. Public opinion had designated Mr. Forster as one of the two or three politicians of eminence who might fitly be regarded as his successor. But a considerable section of the Nonconformist Radicals never forgave Mr. Forster for his action—or what they supposed to be his sole action—respecting the religious question in the Education Act of 1870. Led by the Birmingham League, they were determined to make his selection as the party leader impossible. The League party in his own constituency of Bradford passed a resolution hostile to his claims. Eventually, rather than divide the Liberal party, Mr. Forster withdrew from the contest, and Lord Hartington, whom all sections were willing to follow, was chosen. These circumstances were well known to everybody in that large audience, and most moderate-minded men in it had the fullest sympathy with what Mr. Gladstone called “the thoroughly genuine and independent character” whose natural ambition as a statesman had been so rudely checked by the sectarian rancour of political allies. This was his reward for the wise and statesmanlike measure of 1870—one of the finest achievements to the credit of the Liberal party.

As he stepped to the front of the platform to make his contribution to the cause of the College he was received with round after round of applause, and for some minutes he was unable to proceed. Men instinctively recognized that the effort for which he pleaded was but another link in the educational chain which he had done so much to forge—the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 and the great Education Act of 1870. His was but a short speech, but each strong, vigorous utterance went home. The College was to be as its name implied—a county institution—not merely of the town in which it happened to be situated. They might as well at once acknowledge that the call which had been made by civilization upon civilized people had not been so much responded to by England as it had been in some other countries. But they had awoke to the fact that a call was made upon them. They had a habit of being late, but not too late.

This demonstration had an immediate effect upon the fortunes of the College. One practical result was a considerable increase in financial support. Some of those who had already given, gave largely again; and many additional subscribers came forward. The existence of the College was made known throughout the length and breadth of the county. The Inaugural Ceremony met with a splendid “press.” One of the most gratifying features was the “uplifting” tone of the speeches: speaker after speaker pointed out what should be the true character of the institution: it was not to be a mere Trade School—not simply a Technical College but a centre of liberal culture and of higher education, containing within it the potentiality of a University discipline.

To those who had ears to hear, and an imagination to conceive, the future of the College was plainly indicated within the first twelve months of its existence. It was this aspect of its destiny that appealed so strongly to that eminent journalist and man of letters, the late Sir Wemyss Reid, at that time editing the Leeds Mercury, and to which he gave emphatic expression in those forcible leaders so characteristic of his pen. So long as he remained in Leeds, Reid proved a staunch friend of the College and was ever ready to do what he could for its welfare. Nor was the educational press in general at all backward in extending a welcome to the infant institution: certain members of the teaching staff did yeoman service in enlisting its interest and sympathy.

The result of this organized effort, in which all concerned—members of the Council, officers, teachers—worked with enthusiasm and unanimity, was seen in the record of the subsequent session’s work.

From this time onward the successive Annual Reports of the College constitute an unbroken story of continued development. It was not, of course, surprisingly rapid, but it was steady and continuous. The progress of the institution was general; it was to be measured by the gradual increase in the number of its teachers, in the character and range of their subjects, and in the sessional entry of the students. It is, perhaps, significant of the change that a quarter of a century had made in the attitude of the middle class towards educational matters that the growth of the Yorkshire College, during its early years, should have been relatively far greater than that of Owens College at the corresponding period of its existence. But there may have been other factors to account for, or at least to increase, the difference. The generally acknowledged success to which the Manchester foundation had attained at the time of the establishment of the Leeds College may have been, and probably was, by the force of example and desire of emulation, a potent contributory cause.

The courses of study at Owens College, so far as circumstances and its means would permit, were avowedly based, at the outset, on the examples of the older Universities. The little regard that was then paid to Science by the Trustees was indicated by the small stipend that was attached to the science chairs as compared with those on humanity subjects. There was no general recognition, even in the home of Dalton, of the beneficent part that science was able to play in the industrial life of the district. On the other hand, the Yorkshire College started wholly untrammelled by the traditions of ancient seats of learning, and its counsels were only remotely influenced by those who had been nursed in them. As its original designation implied, its projectors clearly recognized the value of science in relation to industry. They founded the College, indeed, in the strength of their conviction. They began, in fact, at a point to which Owens College had arrived when Roscoe made his influence felt upon its policy.

It cannot be said, however, that the educational aims of the governing body of the Leeds institution to begin with were very sharply defined; nor was the action of the Council always consistent. This was, perhaps, inevitable in a body which contained no professed educationists. Most of its members had everything to learn of the technique of education, and, as is not unknown in the history of similar institutions, it was some time before the Council could be induced to adopt formal means of availing themselves of the knowledge and experience of the academic element they sought to direct. At the outset there was no clear apprehension by them of the lines upon which the College should develop.

There were two distinct parties in the Council, and their views occasionally conflicted. The College had been ostensibly founded to serve the industrial interests of the district, and the support of many of its wealthy manufacturers had been enlisted solely on that ground. This fact led a certain section of the Council to attempt to impress upon the College the character of an institute of technology. Whilst they were willing enough to extend its science side so long as it bore directly upon industrial needs, they had but little sympathy with the literæ humaniores, and all attempts to include such subjects were viewed with disfavour as a departure from the original intentions of the projectors. But the majority of the Council soon came to have a higher conception of the true functions of the young institution, and it was only the limitations of their means—their poverty and not their will—that prevented them from attempting to realize their ideals. To this section the example of Owens College was, without doubt, a constant stimulus. It served eventually to direct the College upon the lines upon which it ultimately developed. But for a time this diversity of aim on the part of the government of the College made itself manifest with each attempt to enlarge its curriculum.

Fortunately the professoriate was of one mind on this question, and their unanimity was not without influence on the policy of the College. They recognized, of course, that there is no necessary antagonism between the two aims. Both should be developed pari passu: that is a condition demanded by modern necessities. It is the essential and characteristic feature of the higher education of the present time. The difficulty was to give practical effect to these views under the restrictions imposed by the financial circumstances of the College. But the fact that the Staff held them and not only gave expression to them, but sought to realize them so far as lay in their limited power secured for the Professors the appreciation and confidence of the governing body, and ultimately obtained for them a responsible share in its counsels.

In the first few years of its existence several circumstances conspired to enhance the public reputation of the College and to consolidate its position. In its second session the teaching staff received a great accession to its strength by the appointment of Mr. Louis C. Miall as Lecturer in, and afterwards as Professor of Biology. Mr. Miall had already established a reputation as a man of science, as an able and attractive lecturer and a sound and experienced teacher. He brought to the aid of his colleagues a wise judgment and a knowledge of local conditions which under the special circumstances proved most helpful. His appointment at this period was not without its significance as an indication of the broad and liberal views which the majority of the Council entertained as to the scope and functions of the College. It was a wise policy to attach to its fortunes all who could in any way serve its true interests, whether in teaching, in enlisting public sympathy, or in the management of its affairs.

At the beginning of the following session (1876) the professors, who had now formed themselves into an Academic Board holding regular meetings in order to discuss the educational affairs of the College, addressed a memorandum to the Council inviting them to consider the advisability of extending the curriculum so as to include Literature and Classics. They pointed out that they had frequent applications from students for advice as to obtaining the degrees of the University of London, or as to complying with the requirements for open science scholarships at the other Universities, but that, as at present constituted, the College was unable to afford the necessary facilities. They were of opinion that if the College were in a position to enable the students to obtain the science degrees of the University of London its usefulness would be considerably increased, and the wider curriculum might be expected to result in an augmentation of the yearly entry. The Council, on the whole, were not indisposed to consider the suggestion benevolently, but they regretted they were unable to take any action from lack of funds. The matter, however, was not allowed to drop. At that time Mr. Stuart and his syndicate at Cambridge were busy in their attempts to spread culture among the hives of industry, and their missionaries were at work in Leeds under the auspices of a committee of which the late Bishop of Truro (Dr. Gott), then Vicar of Leeds, and the late Sir Edward Baines, one of the truest and most zealous friends the College ever possessed, were active members. These gentlemen approached the governing body with a view of ascertaining whether some arrangement might not be possible whereby the work initiated by the University Extension Movement could be conducted by the College in a more systematic and permanent manner than hitherto, and they undertook on behalf of the Committee to be responsible, for a term of years, for a considerable proportion of the money that would be required to give effect to the suggestion. The result of the negotiation was the establishment of Chairs of Classical Literature and History, and Modern Literature and History, which were filled, respectively, by the appointment of Professor John Marshall, M.A., of Balliol College, Oxford, afterwards Rector of the High School, Edinburgh, a distinguished classic, and author of an English rendering of the “Odes and Epodes of Horace,” “Xenophon Memorabilia,” and other works; and Professor F. S. Pulling, B.A. (Oxon). This enlargement of the educational work of the College necessitated a slight but significant change in its designation: henceforward it became known simply as the Yorkshire College until it was raised to the rank of a university, when it took the name of the town in which it was situated.

The executive of the College now publicly expressed their conviction that there is no good reason against grouping in one institution the studies belonging to liberal culture, and systematic instruction in scientific and artistic principles and methods as applied to staple industries.

An event of hardly less importance in public estimation at this period was the purchase of a considerable fraction of the site upon which the handsome and extensive buildings of the University now stand. The decision to take this step was one of the most momentous departures in the history of the institution, and the writer well remembers how seriously and with what anxiety it was discussed by the small body which assembled in the office of the legal adviser to the College to confer with the Chairman of its Finance Committee on the subject. Mr. Francis Lupton, who at that period held the office, was an ideal custodian of its financial affairs. No man could be more prudent in their management: at the same time no one realized more fully that an ill-judged parsimony might be the worst form of economy, and that a timely expenditure might be the wisest investment. The two members of the Staff who were present at this interview, with the courage of faith and the enthusiasm of conviction, used their best endeavours to incline him to sanction what everybody who had knowledge of the financial condition of the institution could not but regard as a most onerous obligation. But in the end there was practical unanimity among those present as to the expediency and opportuneness of the step, and the event proved its wisdom.

The foundation-stone of the new College buildings was laid on October 23, 1877, by the Archbishop of York. As architect the Council had secured the services of the late Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., whose experience and success in the erection of Owens College seemed to them the highest possible qualification. By the generosity of the Clothworkers’ Company, who had voted the sum of £10,000 for the purpose, the authorities were enabled to take in hand without further delay the buildings designed for the Textile Industries Department.

The publicity given to these proceedings greatly strengthened the position of the College in the county, and especially in the West Riding. These events were no doubt such as must have come naturally and in the fullness of time, but their advent at this particular juncture was possibly accelerated by the action of Owens College in seeking for university powers. This movement on the part of Manchester had already engaged the attention of the Council of the Yorkshire College and was watched by them with no little apprehension. They realized that it was certain to have an important bearing upon the question of higher education in Yorkshire, both directly and indirectly, and that the future of the Yorkshire College was intimately bound up with it. It was therefore all the more necessary to prove to the world that Yorkshire men, in their own interests, were very much in earnest about their young institution; that they were determined to secure for it the fullest possible freedom of development and to extend and consolidate its position, unhampered by limitations to which it might conceivably be subjected by the presence of a relatively rich and powerful university close to its own area.

In the next chapter we purpose to indicate briefly the steps which led immediately to the foundation of the new university in Manchester and to show how the action of the Yorkshire College resulted in modifying its Constitution as originally contemplated.

CHAPTER V
THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY

At the time of this movement in favour of the creation of a university in Manchester the writer of this memoir was, as already stated, a member of the teaching staff of the Yorkshire College, and was then, as for some years previously, in constant friendly communication with Roscoe. A letter informing him of the feeling in Leeds and the district concerning the action of Owens College, and the desire of the authorities of the Yorkshire College that its interests should in some way be safeguarded, brought the following reply under date January 31, 1877:

Thanks for the leader, which I had seen. What does Leeds want? A peripatetic university? First in Manchester, then in Leeds, then in Bristol, next in Newcastle? Or will it be content with an affiliation scheme? Do you want to come in now, incomplete as you are, or will you be content to wait till you are developed into more of a two-or three-sided sort of thing? How can the unity of an institution be kept up if all kinds and conditions of other institutions claim an equal voice in all the arrangements? In short, would it not be much better for Leeds, and Bristol and Newcastle, to have separate universities as well as Manchester, than to make a union in which there would not be strength? However, our proposed scheme will provide for the admission and representation of other places if they like to come in, but a university, like most other things, must not only have a name, but also a local habitation, and hence I do not see how the idea of a wandering minstrel kind of university could possibly answer, and this is what, I take it, the writer of the article (who was he?) means.… I will send you a copy of our proposals as soon as they are settled.

After the special meeting of the governors of the Owens College, at which it was decided to take steps to obtain a university charter, Roscoe wrote to the present writer as follows under date March 27, 1877:

You may unofficially and on your own responsibility state to the Secretary of your College that you have reason to know that in the proposals to obtain a Charter to grant Degrees the authorities of this College have added a clause to enable other colleges, under certain conditions, to enter into union with the proposed University.

We were unable to accede to the request to forward the documents officially, as the Committee on the subject had not met. But you may say (privately) that it is the wish of those who are interested in the movement to make this admission of other colleges an essential part of the scheme.

This to show your Council that their claims will be properly and fairly considered.

The following letter, dated December 5, 1877, was received after the Manchester deputation to the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, when the Lord President of the Council suggested some alteration in the government of the proposed university, which the memorialists considered and adopted.

At a meeting yesterday of the University Sub-Committee a more detailed scheme for the proposed Constitution was considered. I think you may like to know unofficially a few of the particulars, bearing in mind that it is simply as yet a proposal.

(1) The Charter to be granted to the Court of Governors of Owens College modified so as to give a somewhat larger representation of the Academical Element.

(2) The representation on the Court, when sitting for University purposes, of any other qualified College in union with the University to be as follows: the President, the Treasurer or Chairman of the Council; the Principal of such College; such proportionate numbers of (a) the Senate, and (b) the Governing Body of such College as may be determined by the University Court with the sanction of the Lord President of the Council.

(3) The Executive Body of the University to consist of members nominated by the Court and also, on the union of any other qualified College, the President, Treasurer, or Chairman, Principal and the members of the Senate of such Colleges nominated on the Court.

(4) The Court to be summoned for University purposes as distinguished from Owens College purposes by the Executive Body of the University.

Another point of importance to you is this: That power shall be given to the Court of the University, after considering the report of the Executive Body upon the subject, to accept the application of any other College for incorporation with the University, provided always that the Court should be satisfied: (1) that such College has established a reasonably complete curriculum and possesses a reasonably sufficient teaching staff in the Departments of Arts and Science at least; (2) that such College has furnished proofs of its means and appliances for teaching being established on a footing of permanent security; (3) that such College is under the independent control of its own Governing Body; and (4) that the admission shall receive the sanction of the Lord President of the Council.

Again, power to be given to any such College to appeal for final decision to the Lord President.

One other point. On incorporation the professors of such College shall take a proportionate share in all the examinations of the University as decided by the University Court.

I hope that these proposals will be found to meet your views.

Meanwhile the Council of the Yorkshire College, acting in conjunction with its Academic Board, had been carefully considering the situation. Influenced to a large extent, no doubt, by the local Press, public feeling in the district set strongly in the direction of immediate action. Although the infant institution was barely three years old, there could no longer be any doubt that it was already firmly implanted in the estimation and regard of the community in which it was placed. Indeed, nothing in its short career up to that time stimulated and strengthened this regard more than this particular crisis in its fortunes. The call for sympathy and support which now was spread throughout the Ridings was the finest réclame it could possibly have. It served to deprive the College of the last semblance of being a merely local foundation; henceforth it was in fact as in name a county organization.

In the following May a deputation arranged by the Yorkshire College waited upon the Lord President of the Council. The report of the Council of the College pointed out that whilst the Owens College scheme admitted of the admission of other colleges to the university, the provisions that the charter should be granted to the Owens College, and that the university should be named after the City of Manchester were very generally considered incompatible with the future incorporation of institutions in other towns. Lord Ripon, in introducing the deputation, gave forcible expression to these views. The memorial was supported by representatives of the municipalities of the large towns in the West Riding and elsewhere in the county, by a number of scientific organizations, and by many eminent educational authorities.

As the Owens College memorialists had already expressed their willingness to consider favourably the inclusion of other colleges, under reasonable conditions, there was little difficulty in opening friendly negotiations between the two Colleges with the desire on both sides to arrive at a satisfactory arrangement. The Duke of Devonshire, who was a liberal supporter of both Colleges, and had shown great interest in their welfare—Lord Frederick Cavendish being President of the Yorkshire College—convened a conference at Devonshire House between representatives of the two Colleges, when after full discussion the basis of a federal scheme was devised. The details of this were worked out by committees of the two Colleges. Eventually complete agreement was arrived at, and it was decided to present a joint memorial from the two Colleges praying that Her Majesty might be advised:

(1) To create a new university, in which the Owens College, Manchester, and such other institutions as may now or hereafter be able to fulfil the conditions of incorporation laid down in the Charter, may be incorporated colleges.

(2) To grant to each of such incorporated colleges a share in the government of the university, depending only upon its magnitude and efficiency, in accordance with the suggested Constitution.

(3) To be graciously pleased to allow the said university to be called the Victoria University.

In the various conferences needed to reach this solution the late Sir Arthur Rücker, who acted as one of the representatives of the Yorkshire College, took an active and leading share, and it was in no small degree due to his tact, urbanity, and diplomatic skill that it was secured.

In reference to this matter the present Master of Peterhouse, Sir A. W. Ward, who was at the time Principal of the Owens College, bears the following testimony:

“I remember very well how admirably he conducted the case of the Yorkshire College, which was at first adverse to our wishes at Manchester, and afterwards was conjoined with our own application. He had great difficulties to contend against; for the Yorkshire College seemed to be opposing our application for a university charter without being able to set up a similar claim for itself, and the federal principle to which resort was ultimately had was by no means free from objections. He had, if I remember right, very effective parliamentary support, especially in the late Mr. W. E. Forster, and then, or afterwards, in the late Lord Ripon. But he was the active representative of Leeds, and the virtual success of the action of the College was very largely due to him.

“Personally he was a man of great charm of manner and a very pleasant as well as effective speaker.”

The deputation presenting the joint memorials waited upon the Lord President, who was accompanied by the Marquis of Salisbury, on May 5, 1879. It was headed by the Duke of Devonshire, as president of the Owens College, and the Archbishop of York, as representing the Yorkshire College, and consisted of noblemen and gentlemen of influence connected with the two counties; representatives of different denominations, municipalities, scientific and educational bodies, as well as other gentlemen interested in higher education. It received the customary promise “that the proposal should have the most attentive consideration of Her Majesty’s Government.”

The various steps in the procedure needed to obtain a royal charter are many and devious. They need only be indicated by stating that they seem expressly designed to afford abundant occupation for lawyers. The following letter from Roscoe, sent to the writer from the Athenæum Club, and dated June 19, 1879, bears upon this point:

It is most important that you should at once get a Petition to “The Queen in Council” drawn up and sent to the Parliamentary Agents for presentation. We are doing so. The Duke of Devonshire will sign our petition, and yours in identical terms should be signed by the Archbishop [of York] and Lord Frederick Cavendish.

…

The Council meets on the 26th June, and everything must be sent in before that date.

I have seen Mr. [W. E.] Forster who has telegraphed to your secretary this evening.

We have the draft of our petition at O[wens] College if you wish to consult it.

It is most important to get this done and to get your Archbishop to sign.

The next letter, so far as regards the Victoria University, requires some explanation. The then Chairman of the Council of the Yorkshire College, the late Dr. Heaton, was not wholly friendly to the idea of a new northern university, and ultimately he dissociated himself from his colleagues on this particular question. He was never able to persuade himself that another university was actually needed or was desirable. In his judgment the interests of higher education, so far at least as the creation of degree-granting bodies could serve them, were sufficiently assured in England by the existence of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London. He viewed with considerable apprehension the attempt to establish rival universities: he imagined that the stress of competition for students might lower the standard of scholarship. Above all he was strongly opposed, in what he thought the true interests of the medical profession, to the increase in the number of possible avenues to practice: in his opinion there were already too many for an efficient standard of qualification to be maintained. It was perhaps characteristic of him to suppose that the immediate, and indeed the ultimate, effect of the establishment of the university in Manchester would be not to hearten and rouse his colleagues to fresh exertions in order to make the Leeds College worthy to be received as a member of the University: on the contrary, he thought that, by force of circumstances, the enthusiasm of the friends of that institution would be gradually damped, and their energy proportionally weakened, as the neighbouring College grew in power and prestige after being raised to the dignity of a university. He was specially concerned about the future of the Leeds Medical School, of which he had been a member for many years. It was well established and had an excellent record, but its position would, he considered, be undermined and its continued existence jeopardized by the proximity of a school attached to a degree-giving body. He was not able to carry his colleagues on the Council of the Yorkshire College with him in his view of the probable influence of the new University on its fortunes. As the sequel proved, he entirely misconceived its effect: so far from weakening the energies of its friends, events showed that it acted as the most powerful stimulus the Leeds College ever received. But Dr. Heaton’s authority and influence with respect to the Medical School enabled him to carry his point in regard to the proposed medical degrees, and the Yorkshire representatives were instructed to disavow any wish that power should be sought to grant them. A suggestion to send a private message to the Lord President to this effect was made after it had been represented by the legal agents that no observations on the draft chapter could be received by the Privy Council. Under the circumstances the authorities of Owens College were not without justification for their disappointment and annoyance.

In the first place I would propose to you that we should together do the atomic weight of Titanium. You and I both thought of doing it. You are busy with other things.… I will sketch a method out, prepare some more TiCl₄ and send the proposals to you. If you like, that is. So much for private affairs.

Now with regard to the Victoria University. We all have been much annoyed and surprised to find that you at Leeds, having so far acquiesced in our proposals—see memorial, etc.—now at the last moment put in a caveat about Medical Degrees! This appears to us rather too bad. If this move was intended we ought to have had previous information of it. If you have only now determined on this course it is more obviously unfair to us to start the hare now! Fancy what the University will be without such power. Think of Glasgow and Edinburgh thus emasculated. Is this what you wish us to come to?

Then I think that R.’s proposal to send a private message through your President to the Duke of Richmond still more objectionable. “Openly we agree, but we come to inform you privately that you will please us by striking out the provision.” This is really what you propose to do! This, coupled with the petition from Liverpool and the opposition and jealousy of other Medical Schools, may suffice to so mutilate our Charter that it won’t be worth having.

Do see what can be done to dissuade your people from sending any such message to the Duke.

The private message above referred to was not sent. At the same time Dr. Heaton’s views, backed up as they were by the action of the College of Surgeons and British Medical Association, and a great number of the leading hospital surgeons and teachers in London and elsewhere, prevailed, and the application for power to grant degrees in medicine and surgery was, for the time at least, withdrawn, in the expectation that legislative action on the general question of medical education and qualification was contemplated. As no such action was taken, a supplementary charter removing the restriction was granted on April 20, 1883.

The next letter, under date February 14, 1880, shows a further stage in the progress of the application. By a then recent Act it had to be laid before both Houses of Parliament for thirty days before any report on the subject could be submitted to the Sovereign.

…

By the way, you know, of course, that the Charter (unaltered) is now lying on the table of both Houses, and if we can only keep everybody quiet it will be law in less than thirty days!

When are you coming over?

The Charter was granted by the Queen in Council on April 6th, and was finally ratified on April 20, 1880.

The next letter (March 30, 1880) shows that this event was to be celebrated, as a matter of course, in the customary British method.

I am very sorry that you cannot dine with the P.C.S. [President of the Chemical Society—Roscoe himself] on the 16th. I intended you to have been there as Longstaff medallist! I am asking the officers and some of the Council.

You must all reserve yourselves for July 14th or 15th. The opening of the V.U. [Victoria University] and a Banquet at the Town Hall!!

The following letter (January 16, 1881) shows how cordial the relations between the sister Colleges had now become, thanks to the frank and friendly discussion between their representatives, and how loyally those in authority at Owens were prepared to carry out the compact:

Accept my sincere though tardy thanks for your beautiful photograph, which is a marvellous study of volcanic action.

I have lately heard that P⸺ has been making a statement (on whose authority I cannot think) that the Yorkshire College would not be allowed to join the V.U. Though I know that you would take this for what it is worth, I think that others may misunderstand, and I think that you should inform any one who reports such a statement that it is wholly without foundation. In the first place, the V.U. cannot refuse even if they desired to do so. In the second, I for one, and many with me if not all, will cordially welcome any addition to ourselves, for those who have to work the new University desire to have other competent persons to help to share their great responsibility.

Roscoe, in fact, from the very beginning of its career had always shown a sympathetic interest in the fortunes of the Yorkshire College. Badly housed and poorly endowed at its start, its early struggles and difficulties were watched by him with a kindly regard, based, no doubt, to some extent on the memory of his own experiences. He was not unfrequently in Leeds in those days, and his breezy optimism and cheerful confidence that things would come right, in spite of checks and disappointments, were at once stimulating and encouraging to the small band of young professors who were striving to mould the institution according to the pattern of that which he had himself done so much to fashion. An indication of that interest was manifested by his presence, in December 1880, at the formal opening of the new buildings which the College owes to the wise liberality of the Clothworkers’ Company. At the banquet which followed he responded to the toast of “The Victoria University,” and expressed, on behalf of the authorities of Owens College, the hope that before long the Yorkshire College would become one of the incorporated Colleges, and would help the Owens College to uphold the dignity and usefulness of the new University.

Roscoe took a leading part in shaping the curriculum of the new University, and at the meeting of the Court which settled its general lines he might be said to have been the mouthpiece of the party which succeeded in impressing upon it its characteristic features. What had to be considered were the needs of great industrial communities. What sort of knowledge do they desire, and what should they be encouraged to pursue? The discussion mainly turned upon the place which the classical languages should hold in the university courses. “Compulsory” Greek was no longer regarded as a practical question. Should “compulsory” Latin also be eliminated? Are these ancient languages, or either of them, still to be regarded as an indispensable part of a liberal education and an indispensable requisite for a degree? The claims of the Classics were not without defenders, but as a local newspaper pointed out in a leading article, curiously enough it would seem that among the stoutest of these were to be found some of the very men who might have been supposed to be the natural champions of the newer learning, and if orthodox academic traditions received a rude blow, it was because they were deserted by the very men who had been nursed in them. With two exceptions, the professorial members of the Court were unanimous in recommending that Latin should not be made obligatory for a degree. The Chancellor and Lord Derby supported the contention that whatever may be the value as mental food and training of the Classics when thoroughly mastered, the wretched minimum of ill-learnt Latin and soon-forgotten Greek prescribed in university examinations as preliminary to more serious studies possesses no educational value whatever. Perhaps the argument most decisive with the Court was that given by Roscoe. He said they had to consider the large number of persons who came to the Owens College for special instruction, and more particularly for engineering and mathematics, but who had never been at any school where Latin was taught. Those were the men who carried off the best engineering prizes, and for them it was that this door had wisely been kept open. They must not be guided by what Oxford or Cambridge had done, but by what was good for their own district and what was advisable at the present moment. Let them remember what a number of men such as he had mentioned there were in their neighbourhood, and how flourishing were the mathematical schools, and then let them say whether they could cut off those schools and men from university education. The “innovators” won the day by a majority of 2 to 1, and thus effected “the dethronement, never to rise again, of this mischievous idol.”

It was amusing to notice the perturbation which this departure from a time-honoured tradition caused in certain scholastic circles and among the self-styled “friends of culture.” But on the whole the action was favourably commented upon by the more influential newspapers and leading educational journals. It was regarded as the inevitable consequence of modern necessity, and of the gradual recognition that the traditions of mediæval schoolmen were not sacrosanct or necessarily the best adapted to new requirements.

In drafting the Constitution of the new University power was of course taken in accordance with established procedure, and in deference to the democratic tendencies of British seats of learning, to form the body known as Convocation, and those of the former students of Owens College who came within certain definitions were made its first members.

It would seem to be the inevitable tendency of all Convocations to play the part of a Parliamentary Opposition. Their primary duty, as they conceive it, is to criticize and to take an independent view of the policy of the university, as determined by the governing or executive powers. No doubt such criticism is salutary if wisely directed, but experience has shown that it is sometimes factious and occasionally obstructive. Much, therefore, depends upon the chairman. It was felt by many of the members that it was specially important at the outset to make a prudent selection if Convocation was to secure from the beginning its proper influence and dignity as a deliberative assembly. The Extreme Left—there is always such a group in such a gathering—had promptly proposed Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst, a student of the College in the Quay Street days, and now mainly remembered as the husband and father of certain ladies who have distinguished themselves in the cause of Woman Suffrage. Dr. Pankhurst was never regarded quite seriously in College circles—least of all by his former associates, who on a dull evening at the Union would occasionally put him up to make a political harangue in the style of the Convention, when he would declaim the most blood-curdling sentiments in a highly pitched falsetto, with all the fiery eloquence and fervid passion of a Danton or a Hebert. But however powerful the appeals to a youthful enthusiasm, the stones of Quay Street remained unmoved, nor was Deansgate at any time blocked with barricades.

Later on Dr. Pankhurst went to the Bar, when he followed in the footsteps and sought to better the example of a once well-known Chartist orator whose name is well-nigh forgotten, became an active local politician, and made one or two futile attempts to gain a parliamentary seat as the most extreme of advanced Radicals. It was possible, of course, that when weighted with the responsibilities of office Dr. Pankhurst’s conduct of the chair might have been irreproachable. But the majority of Convocation were not disposed to take the risk. Accordingly an “influentially signed” memorial was issued suggesting Roscoe as first chairman. The advantage of securing at this early period a chairman well acquainted with the work of the other co-ordinate bodies of the University was obvious. But there was another reason, as the terms of the memorial indicated. The general body of the members were anxious to testify their appreciation of the services of the man who had been so largely instrumental in making a Convocation at all possible.

By knowledge and experience no man was more qualified to promote administrative accord than Dr. Roscoe. From him came the first proposal of the new University; and no one worked with greater zeal and devotion in the movement, which after a long struggle was so happily successful. No sacrifice of time and labour was too great for him, and his forethought and knowledge of business were of untold advantage during the negotiations.

The suggestion that he should be the first chairman was made without Roscoe’s knowledge, but it was so well received that he consented to be nominated and was elected by a large majority. The Intransigeants, of course, affirmed that they were fighting solely for a principle, and “as a protest that those who teach and train ought not to govern and examine and fill all the positions in the University.” They next proceeded to move “a kind of vote of censure on the Executive Council for anticipating the jurisdiction of Convocation in arranging for degrees, examinations, and so forth.” This was met by “the previous question” and lost, whereupon the meeting proceeded to discuss the absorbingly interesting subject of academic costume, and the dissident minority melted away.

At this first meeting the clerk informed Convocation that at the next ordinary meeting of the Court the Council proposed to report as to the University making use of its power to grant degrees to persons being at the date of the University Charter associates of the Owens College. The first graduation ceremony of the University took place in the autumn of 1882, when Professor Ward in presenting the Associates said:

The Associates of the Owens College, whom it is my privilege to present to you to-day, are spontaneously linking their names and reputations with the name and fame of our University, and it seems a twice-blessed relationship which on both sides is founded on goodwill. Many of those whom I am about to lead to you are men distinguished in letters and science, and in the several learned professions and other occupations to which their lives are devoted. Some are members of the governing and teaching bodies of our own University. A great number hold the degrees of other Universities—of those older Universities from which our own has received so many signs of kindly and ready sympathy, or of that great examining University without which much of the educational progress of the last half-century—without which such progress as was made within the walls of Owens College, would itself have lacked its trustworthiest tests.

The following letters from Roscoe to the writer have reference to this function, which took place in the Manchester Town Hall—with, as the descriptive reporter stated, “all the ceremony and pageantry that help to cast a glamour over the older seats of learning.”

Manchester,
October 14, 1882.

I write a line to say how much we all hope that you will run over on November 1st to have the degree of the V.U. conferred upon you. It is of importance that our best Associates should show up on the occasion, and I am particularly anxious that you should not be wanting. The ceremony is to be held in the Town Hall, and we hope that Lord Derby and Mr. Mundella will be present.

How are you getting on? We are full in our laboratories and hard at it.

Unfortunately, the recipient of these letters (and of the degree) was unable to be present. He had just succeeded by effluxion of time to a position formerly held by Roscoe himself in “that great examining University” which had in the past so efficiently tested the educational progress of Owens College, and his official duties kept him in London.

October 22, 1882.

I think in spite of Mrs. A. B. B.Sc. it would be as well if you would come to have the V.U. degree granted. If you do not come, unpleasant remarks may be made as to the cause of your absence.

I never supposed you did care for the degree as a degree: it is simply an enrolment of yourself as a bona-fide member of the University.… My feeling is that all those who have an interest in the University and who have taken active steps in its foundation should not hold aloof on this occasion, but show that they are willing and anxious to support the new University to the best of their power.

You took an active part in modifying the original lines on which we had decided to lay our University, and I think that therefore you are, perhaps, more bound than other people to help now to make it a success on its present footing.…

I am very glad you are coming to open our Chemical Society’s Session here on Friday. I fear I may be away as my Commission [Technical Instruction Commission] meets on Wednesday for some consecutive days. If I can get back I will.

The time, perhaps, has not yet arrived to attempt to assess the effect on the higher education of the country which has followed from the establishment of these modern universities, but that it has already been very great there can be no question. Since they are free, for the most part, from the influence of the schoolmen, and are unhampered by mediæval traditions and the prepossessions of the past, they are the more readily able to shape their course in accordance with the demands of industrial progress and the necessities of modern life. From the circumstance that they are nearly all situated in large towns and in the midst of industrial communities, the study of science is, as a rule, a prominent feature in their scheme of instruction, and accordingly their science faculties are usually strongly developed. A spirit of emulation makes them all active centres of research, especially in physical science and in its technical applications, and their aggregate output of original scientific inquiry is now very considerable, and in extent and quality compares most favourably with that of continental nations. Their influence upon the conduct of those industries which ultimately depend upon science is already very marked, and as the number of scientifically trained men becomes larger, as the result of their instruction, that influence is bound to become still greater. With the diffusion of a knowledge of scientific principles new applications of science to practice will follow, and these in their turn will react upon the instruction in the schools of science. The ultimate effect of all this will be a still clearer recognition by the community that the permanence and eventual success of our manufacturing industries depends upon the intelligent application of science.

We are thus able to perceive how Roscoe’s action in helping on the development of Owens College on modern lines and in raising it eventually to the status of a university has reacted, and is bound still further to react, upon the intellectual and material welfare of this country. It was the great success of the Manchester College as a centre for the diffusion of knowledge in its own district that incited other towns to seek to emulate its example, and when Owens College sought for the position as a university to which she was entitled, the same spirit of emulation quickened the efforts of her friendly rivals to make themselves not less worthy of such a dignity.

Of course it is not claimed for Roscoe that he actually initiated this remarkable movement—a movement which must be regarded as one of the most significant features of our times; he shares the credit with others. But he certainly was one of the mainsprings of it. It may be said the time was ripe for the step. Nevertheless, it is due to him to affirm that he was one of the earliest to perceive that fact, and to take occasion boldly by the hand. If he cannot justly be said to have actually started the action, he was at least one of its most powerful prime movers.

CHAPTER VI
ROSCOE AS A TEACHER

Some years before Owens College attained to the position of a university, several attempts were made to induce Roscoe to sever his connection with it. In 1870 he was offered the lectureship on Chemistry at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in succession to Dr. Matthiessen.

The following letter under date October 14, 1870, refers to this circumstance:

…

I have just refused to go to London again! They wanted me at St. Bartholomew’s.

Miller is to be succeeded by ⸺ ⸺, and it appears that this gentleman has made a compromise with the New School, and is to adopt O = 12! Is not this rich? Originality at King’s was always at a discount, but then Orthodoxy reigns supreme, and this is the “Wahre Jakob,” as they say in German!

Lockyer is down here visiting Stewart, and I had a physical and astronomical party here last night (my wife being away), at which a large number of interesting new observations on the heavenly bodies and on science in general were made, which did not conclude until the small hours.

I cannot buckle to the new book—but I have arranged the order of things to my tolerable satisfaction. Whether it will ever see the daylight remains a mystery.…