The automatic arrangement alluded to has already been mentioned. It was not proceeded with.

CHAPTER VIII
ROSCOE AND CHEMICAL LITERATURE

Roscoe’s services to chemistry are to be measured as much by his contributions to its educational literature as by his efforts to enlarge its boundaries by original inquiry. For there can be no question that his various text-books, ranging from the most elementary “first-steps” and primers, through different grades to the most comprehensive of treatises, have proved of the greatest service to the teacher, and have exercised a profound influence in the diffusion of chemical knowledge in this country and abroad.

His “Lessons in Elementary Chemistry,” one of the earliest of Macmillan’s series of class text-books, was first published in 1866, the fair copy for the press being written out with characteristic neatness by his wife. Its appearance so soon after the remarkable report of the Duke of Devonshire’s Commission which had awakened widespread attention to the almost universal neglect of all science teaching in our public schools was most timely. The book went through edition after edition, and despite the competition of dozens of similar works is still a favourite class-book.

At the suggestion of his friend Lothar Meyer it was translated into German by Schorlemmer, and published by Vieweg & Son, and has been largely used in German schools and colleges. Translations have also appeared in Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, in modern Greek, Japanese, and in one of the Indian vernaculars, Urdu. Concerning this last translation, Roscoe used to tell an amusing story. The Urdu work was lithographed, not printed, the page being nearly twice the size of that of the English original, which was a small octavo. The illustrations were also proportionately magnified, including that showing the length of a decimetre and its sub-divisions of centimetres and millimetres!

Still more successful, as regards its sale, was his “Chemistry Primer,” published in 1870, and intended to serve as the first step in chemistry in schools. It also was widely translated, editions having appeared in Icelandic, Polish, German, Italian, Japanese, Bengali, Turkish, Malayalam, and Tamil.

He also published two text-books on “Inorganic Chemistry,” one for beginners, in conjunction with Dr. Lunt; and a larger one for advanced students, in association with Dr. Harden, each of which has reached a second edition.

A far more ambitious undertaking was the preparation and publication of the large “Treatise on Chemistry,” in the writing of which he had the invaluable co-operation of his colleague Schorlemmer. The first volume appeared in 1877. It is so well known that no description of it is necessary. It is an eminently readable work, admirably printed and beautifully illustrated. Indeed, in style and appearance it is hardly approached by anything of the kind in the language. It was translated into German by Schorlemmer, and published by Vieweg & Son, and has now largely replaced the time-honoured Graham-Otto as a text-book in German colleges and technical schools. Unfortunately, owing to Schorlemmer’s death in 1892, the organic section in the English edition was never finished. It has, however, been completed in the German edition under the direction of the late Professor Brühl of Heidelberg—a circumstance which would seem to throw some light on the comparative position of organic chemistry in this country and in Germany. It ought, however, to be stated that if the whole of the organic section were compiled with the same attention to historical detail, and the same fullness of information that characterizes the inorganic portion, the work would become practically unsaleable on account of its size. At the time the treatise was planned the extraordinary expansion of organic chemistry which has occurred during the past forty years could hardly have been anticipated. It may be, as old Thomas Fuller wrote, that “learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.” But philanthropy is not the first business of publishers.

The inorganic section of the English work has passed through several editions, and was thoroughly revised and largely re-written from time to time with the help of numerous collaborators. The fifth edition on “The Metals and their Compounds” made its appearance in the autumn of 1913—and is a goodly volume of nearly 1,500 pages. Roscoe, then in his eightieth year, worked hard at the revision and read the proofs with all the care and diligence he expended on the original work.

Some time prior to 1895 he was induced by his friend, the late Sir Wemyss Reid, to undertake the editorship of the Century Series of Biographies of Scientific Men, projected by Cassell & Co. To this he contributed a popular account of the life and work of Dalton under the title of “John Dalton and the Rise of Modern Chemistry”—a little work which he wrote with much zest and a thorough appreciation of the fine character of the grand old Cumbrian Quaker.

Mention has already been made of the “New View of Dalton’s Atomic Theory,” which Roscoe published in collaboration with Dr. Harden. This book is of considerable interest and value in regard to the genesis of a conception which marks a turning-point in the history of chemistry. From a careful study of Dalton’s manuscripts and note-books which had been discovered in the rooms of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, the authors were led to conclusions concerning the origin of the atomic theory of chemistry which differ fundamentally from those which had been generally accepted. It had hitherto been supposed that it was the experimental discovery of the law of combination in multiple proportions which, in his search for an explanation of this fact, led Dalton to the idea that chemical combination consists in the approximation of atoms of definite and characteristic weight, the theory of atoms being adopted to explain the facts discovered by chemical analysis. In reality the exact opposite was the case. It was the theory of the existence of atoms of different weights that led Dalton to the discovery of the facts of combination in multiple proportions.

The late Dr. Debus, some two years previously in a pamphlet published at Cassell, had reached a similar conclusion from a study of Dalton’s published works, but by a different line of argument. As a matter of priority there is no doubt that to Debus belongs the credit of first pointing out that the commonly accepted view of the genesis of Dalton’s atomic theory is erroneous, but it is no less true that the method of reasoning by which he came to that conclusion cannot be substantiated even if it is not actually disproved by the evidence from Dalton’s note-books. Of course the idea of atoms, that is, of small indivisible particles, did not, as is popularly supposed, originate with Dalton: it is older than Science itself. How and where it first arose cannot be exactly stated. Dr. Debus attributes it to Moschus, a Phœnician philosopher living at Sidon about 1100 B.C. It was resuscitated by Gassendi in the middle of the seventeenth century, and applied by Boyle, who speaks of it as the Phœnician philosophy, to the explanation of chemical phenomena. Newton made use of it to explain Boyle’s law and the “spring of air.” Dalton almost certainly derived it from Newton, with whose corpuscular notions he was quite familiar, and employed it to explain the phenomena of diffusion and absorption. He was therefore quite ready to extend it to all gaseous phenomena, and indeed to chemical phenomena in general, to the extent that it seemed applicable.

It has been held that Dalton anticipated Avogadro in assuming that all gases contain equal numbers of “atoms” (molecules). Dr. Debus adopts this view, and assumes that Dalton in 1801 made use of it to explain the phenomena of the diffusion of gases, and that this idea, along with his early experiments on nitric oxide and oxygen, led to his atomic theory. Roscoe and Harden, on the other hand, held that Dalton never definitely held the view that equal volumes of gases contain an equal number of atoms (molecules), nor had such a conception any bearing upon his explanation of the facts of diffusion. Dissatisfied with the theory which he did hold (viz. the repulsion exerted by an atom on all others of its kind, but not on atoms of a different kind), he was led to consider the behaviour of atoms of unequal size, and finding an agreement with the observed facts, he then sought for means of determining whether or not the atoms were actually of unequal size, and so was led to the further developments of the theory. The weight of the evidence goes to show that Dalton arrived at his theory in the latter half of 1803, and that assumption on which it turned was “that no two species [of pure elastic fluids] agree in the size of their particles.” There is no clear indication that Dalton ever imagined that the simple gases were diatomic in structure, which, of course, is the main point in Avogadro’s hypothesis. It seems necessary to set out this matter in some detail as misapprehension appears to exist, especially in Germany, as to the merits of the controversy which arose after the appearance of Roscoe and Harden’s work.

Some years after he had reached the allotted span, Roscoe was induced to think of putting his reminiscences on paper. It was at no time easy to get him to talk about himself, and the effort of recalling his recollections with a view to printing them was irksome to him. The autobiography consequently made no very rapid progress; it ultimately got into something like a tangle, and was more than once on the point of being committed to the flames. However, during a particularly stormy winter at the seaside, when he was confined to the house, a sustained effort on the part of a determined coadjutor got it into shape, and under the title of “The Life and Experiences of Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. Written by Himself,” it was published by Macmillans in the spring of 1906. The book was well received. It was recognized as possessing at least two of the main essentials of a successful autobiography—something worth writing about and the faculty of narration. It is written with sincerity and directness, and with, as one critic said, “a charming simplicity of style and thought, illumined throughout by a soft glow of kindly humour” eminently characteristic of its author, and is of interest as a record of a singularly full and varied career. The gospel of work never had a more strenuous disciple. It has historical value also as the story of the educational changes, particularly in science, which he helped to secure or lived to witness. It reflects many of his noteworthy features: his strong common sense; his straightforwardness and honesty of purpose; his liberality and invincible optimism; his geniality and sense of humour. His enjoyment of a good story makes him tell it even if he is the victim of it. The whole is a pleasing picture of a uniformly calm, contented, and successful life—of the life of one who was what the Romans called “a man of good fortune,” that is, of one whose prosperity was not the result of chance or accident, but of wisdom and the capacity to bring its aims and efforts to a successful ending.

CHAPTER IX
ROSCOE AND THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

Roscoe was elected into the Royal Society in 1863, and served on its Council from 1872 to 1877, and again during two subsequent periods, viz. 1881-1883 and 1888-1890. He was a Vice-President in 1881-1882, and again in 1888-1890. He gave two Bakerian Lectures, viz. in 1865 and 1868, and was awarded a Royal Medal in 1873 “for his various Chemical Researches, more especially for his Investigations of the Chemical Action of Light, and of the Combinations of Vanadium.”

He joined the Chemical Society in 1855, and was a member of its Council in 1860-1864, and again in 1871-1873. He was a Vice-President in 1873-1875, and again in 1877-1880, and was President from 1880 to 1882. His two presidential addresses, “abstracts and brief chronicles of the time,” dealt mainly with the results of chemical inquiry during the preceding year, especially in relation to the inorganic section of the science. On the first occasion it fell to his duty to refer to the death of Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, a former secretary and president of the Society, whose friendship, as his autobiography testifies, he valued “as that of a true, generous, and noble-hearted man.”

Roscoe was the Mæcenas of the Chemical Society. Indeed, he may be said to have resembled that grand seigneur in the simplicity and cordiality which, as the poet tells us, characterized his relations to the men of his circle. Certainly no Fellow of the Society ever showed himself a more beneficent or more generous patron. The walls of its rooms bear witness to his kindly thought and constant remembrance. Its library has been augmented by gifts from him of close upon a thousand volumes, including rare alchemical and early chemical works, and of complete sets of some of the most valuable of the serial publications of the science.

It was in grateful recognition of this liberal and warm-hearted encouragement of the objects for which the Society was instituted that his old pupils resolved to commemorate his connection with it by placing, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, his bust in the library which he had done so much to enrich, and at the same time to offer a replica of Mr. Drury’s admirable work to his family.

Roscoe was one of the original members of the Society of Chemical Industry, and took a leading part in establishing it on its present basis as a national institution, with local sections in many of our principal towns, and branches in certain of our colonies, and in America. How it originated may be gleaned from the following letter. There had been a previous attempt to establish a local society with special reference to the South Lancashire district. But Roscoe, with others of its projectors, had conceived the idea of placing it on a wider plane, and the meeting referred to was called to ascertain the general feeling as to the expediency of the action.

At this gathering it was decided to attempt to establish a society to subserve the general interests of chemical industry and not merely those of the South Lancashire district, and to call a meeting in London to discuss the project. He presided at this meeting in the rooms of the Chemical Society when the Society was formally inaugurated. He served as its first President, and was the first chairman of its Manchester section. He opened the proceedings of its first annual general meeting in 1881 with an account of the reasons for the formation of such a society; he indicated its proposed scope, and dwelt upon the many advantages to science and industry that might be expected to follow its creation. What he said then is not less pertinent now. Perhaps, indeed, it is even more so. His words were words of wisdom and of warning. Read in the fierce light of current events, and of present disabilities, we may well inquire whether the generation that has passed has been as mindful as he had hoped it would be of its opportunities. If it had quickened its energies and marshalled its forces as he encouraged it to do, we should have been better able to meet the strenuous times that are now in store for us. For upwards of a century—ever since, indeed, the renascence of chemical science which originated with Lavoisier—far-sighted men have been preaching the same story. But to the great majority in this country it has been as seed fallen by the wayside. Not so abroad. Thanks mainly to a clearer recognition of the part that science plays under the changing and progressive conditions of modern life, other nations have been more heedful: the seed with them fell upon more receptive soil. The catastrophe which has overtaken us has brought a rude awakening. We are beginning to realize the imperfection of a system of national education which has no adequate relation to present-day necessities.

Roscoe, one is consoled to think, lived to see the evidence of this quickening. The doctrine which he preached with an insistency and pertinacity that never flagged, during more than half a century, is now, under the stress of necessity, coming home to men’s business and bosoms as it never did before.

One proof of the Society’s recognition of its indebtedness to its first President may be seen in the award to him of its medal on the occasion of the Nottingham meeting in 1914.

In 1909 he was Honorary President of the Seventh International Congress of Applied Chemistry which met in London in that year. It was his wish that his friend, Dr. Ludwig Mond, as an eminent industrial chemist, should be appointed to that office, but Mond declined the position and proposed Roscoe’s name instead at the preceding meeting in Rome.

To Roscoe, therefore, fell the honour of introducing the Prince and Princess of Wales—our present King and Queen—to the meeting of three thousand industrial chemists assembled in the Albert Hall, when the Prince welcomed the gathering in a felicitous speech. The foreign delegates were afterwards received in private audience by King Edward VII, when Roscoe, as Honorary President, had the honour of presenting them.

Roscoe’s first introduction to the British Association was at the Glasgow meeting in 1855, when the late Lord Playfair was President of the Chemical Section, and when he himself acted as the secretary. At this meeting he read a paper on the results of a joint investigation with Bunsen on the action of light upon chlorine water, an examination and extension of Wittwer’s work on the same subject. This was subsequently published in the Journal of the Chemical Society and in Liebig’s Annalen. As already stated, he acted as one of the local secretaries at the Manchester meeting of 1861, when he presented a report jointly with the late Drs. Schunck and R. Angus Smith, “On the Condition of Manufacturing Chemistry in the South Lancashire District” (Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1861, pp. 108-128). At the Bath meeting in 1864 he gave one of the evening lectures on the chemical action of light. At the Liverpool meeting of 1870 he presided over the Chemistry Section.

Then, as now, France and Germany were at war, and that fact naturally called for reference. But, Eheu! neither the cosmopolitan character of Science to which he then alluded, nor upwards of forty years of that comity among those interested in Science and its applications which he confidently hoped would “render impossible the breaking out of disasters so fatal to the progress of Science and to the welfare of humanity!” as he then witnessed, have served to avert an even more fearful disaster. The small but living fire which he contended would in the end surely serve to melt down national animosities has been now almost wholly extinguished by the arrogant pride and lust of power which has obsessed a nation claiming to be the most enlightened in the world.

In 1884 he again served as President of the Chemical Section at the meeting in Montreal. In 1887 he was President of the Association at the Manchester meeting in that year—an honour he prized all the more on account of his long association with that city. The meeting was notable as being the largest held since the foundation of the Association, and was specially characterized by the number of foreign chemists who were present. He continued to take an active interest in the affairs of the Association up to the time of his death, and was a constant attendant at the meetings of its Council.

CHAPTER X
PUBLIC SERVICES—POLITICAL AND PROFESSIONAL WORK

Roscoe’s position in the educational world, and in scientific circles, coupled with his well-known business capacity and sound judgment, frequently led to his being invited to place his knowledge and experience at the service of the State in connection with Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees. During his tenure of his professorship at Manchester he served on two important Royal Commissions; the first in 1876, when Mr. Cross, then Home Secretary, nominated him as a member of Lord Aberdare’s Commission on Noxious Vapours, which led to the amended Alkali Acts of 1891 and 1892; the second in 1881, when Mr. A. J. Mundella, then Vice-President of the Education Council, appointed him a member of Sir Bernhard Samuelson’s Commission on Technical Instruction—one of the most important Commissions ever issued by reason of its influence on the industrial history of this country. Roscoe threw himself heart and soul into its work. The task was thoroughly congenial to him, for he was profoundly convinced of its importance. It required long and frequent visits abroad in order to inquire into the methods of the continental trade-schools and polytechnics, and to judge by direct observation of their results. The preparation of the Report was a tedious and complicated business, but with the help of his colleagues, whom he invited to his holiday-home in the Lakes, it was gradually, as he says, “licked into shape,” the last touches to its recommendations being made at the Chairman’s country house in Devonshire.

During the ten years that followed the publication of the Report, Roscoe, in common with several of his colleagues, addressed innumerable public meetings throughout the country in order to make its lessons as widely known as possible. The work of the Commission bore fruit in the Technical Instruction Act of 1889, and still later and to a greater extent in the Education Act of 1902. This last measure was preceded by the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, of which Roscoe was a member under the chairmanship of the present Lord Bryce. In 1896 he introduced a strong and representative deputation to urge upon the Lord President of the Council the desirability of taking steps to enforce its recommendations. It was then intimated that it was the intention of the Government to introduce legislation dealing with the organization of our secondary schools—thus foreshadowing the Act of 1902.

Although more than thirty years have passed since the Report of the Technical Instruction Commission was issued, it may still be read with profit. Indeed, the lessons it teaches are singularly applicable to the present juncture. In spite of what has been accomplished, Roscoe was far from being satisfied with our national position. In 1906 he wrote:

In 1884 a knighthood was conferred on him, as stated in Mr. Gladstone’s letter when intimating the Queen’s pleasure, “in acknowledgment of his distinguished service on the Technical Education Commission.”

Roscoe has recorded in his autobiography the circumstances, altogether unexpected by him, which led to his introduction to active political life. He was elected for South Manchester—a constituency largely composed of the upper and middle class—in 1885, the first Member of Parliament for the division in which the University is situated and the only Liberal then returned for the city. He held his seat during two succeeding elections (1886 and 1892), but lost it in 1895, by a narrow majority, to the Marquis of Lorne. Although frequently solicited to re-enter Parliament he felt, to use his own phrase, that he “had had enough.”

Roscoe was a strong and consistent Liberal, a member of the Manchester School of Economists, and a devoted adherent of Mr. Gladstone, whom he followed in the Home Rule split. During the greater part of his parliamentary career, that is from 1886 to 1892, he sat on the Opposition benches, and had therefore comparatively little opportunity of accomplishing much in the way of legislative achievement. On questions involving scientific matters he could always secure the ear of the House, especially when these related to the comfort and well-being of its members, as when he took in hand the ventilation, lighting, and drainage of the Palace of Westminster. In 1888, and again in 1889, he introduced a Technical Education Bill, but it failed to reach the statute-book. In the latter year, however, the Government passed the Technical Instruction Act already referred to; this, although not wholly in accord with the views he had put forward, he gladly accepted as a satisfactory instalment. His efforts to pass an amending Bill in the following year met with no success. In 1891 the National Association for the Promotion of Technical Education, which was founded as a result of the Report of the Royal Commission of 1881, entrusted him with a Bill to remove certain disabilities which had been found to attend the working of the Act of 1889, and this he succeeded in carrying. It was one of the few private Bills of the session of 1891 that became law.

He was frequently called upon to serve upon select committees, and in his last session he was Chairman of the Select Committee on Weights and Measures which led to Mr. Balfour’s Bill for legalizing the use of the metrical system in this country.

Roscoe was a Vice-President of the Decimal Association, and lost no opportunity of advocating the use of a system of weights and measures which practically every other civilized community has found it expedient to adopt. The reform of the method of holding parliamentary elections, continuation schools, opening museums on Sundays, the housing of the science collections at South Kensington, grants to University colleges, industrial employment in Ireland, limitation of moisture in weaving sheds, river pollution—were all questions upon which he was able to exercise his influence and knowledge, and most of which he lived to see satisfactorily settled. But, on the whole, he found little satisfaction in his parliamentary life. There was much in it that was irksome and distasteful to a man of his active and independent mind. It was unfortunate for him that the greater part of his political career should have to be spent in opposition, thus affording him only limited opportunities of initiating legislative action. Owing to the political circumstances of the time many questions with which he was specially qualified to deal never came up for consideration. Others were only discussed for the purpose of “marking time,” and he deplored the loss of opportunity and waste of effort thereby involved. His rejection in 1895, therefore, occasioned him no very great concern. Whatever feeling of disappointment he may have felt soon passed away, and he quickly went back to his old occupations, and to pursuits more congenial to him than haunting the precincts of the House of Commons. The following letter from Woodcote, under date July 20, 1895, affords some indication of the way in which he regarded the loss of his seat.

Shortly after his removal to London he became interested in the sewage problem of the Metropolis, and was called upon to advise the Metropolitan Board of Works with respect to methods for improving the condition of the river Thames. In connection with this work he established a laboratory, specially equipped for studying its problems, in the Earl’s Court Road, not far from his London residence. During the year 1887 he was engaged, with the assistance of his former pupil Mr. Harry Baker, in reporting to Lord Magheramorne, the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, on the chemical methods employed for the deodorization of sewage (a) in the metropolitan sewers, and (b) at the outfalls. Early in 1888 much larger problems were submitted to him: viz. the purification of the sewage, the disposal of the sludge, and the effect of the discharge of sewage sludge at sea on the foreshores of the estuary of the Thames. In connection with these subjects he became impressed with the importance of obtaining accurate scientific methods for determining the changes which polluted water experiences during its natural purification. Some of the results of his inquiries he published in conjunction with his pupil Mr. Joseph Lunt in two memoirs, one “On Schützenberger’s Process for the Estimation of Dissolved Oxygen in Water,” communicated to the Chemical Society in 1889, and published in the Transactions,[28] and the other entitled “Contributions to the Chemical Bacteriology of Sewage,” which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.[29] The former paper contained the results of a careful investigation of the conditions under which this method is alone trustworthy, and served to explain the causes of the discrepancy between the statements of previous observers who had critically examined it. The latter paper gave the results of a protracted examination of the chemical and bacteriological phenomena of crude sewage with the object of ascertaining the species of organisms present, both pathogenic and saprophytic, and of determining their chemical characteristics.

These investigations were carried on for more than two years, concurrently with the technical and outside work required. During this time purification works had been established at Crossness and Barking outfalls, a sludge ship had been provided for the disposal of the sewage sludge at sea, and the effect of the discharge had been studied in the lower reaches and estuary of the Thames, and a chemical survey of the condition of the foreshores had been completed. But the formation of the London County Council, with Lord Rosebery as the first Chairman, involved new arrangements. This circumstance, combined with the death of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the Chief Engineer, and the opposition of the Labour Party, resulted in Roscoe resigning his post as Scientific Adviser.

Mr. Lunt transferred his services to the British Institute of Preventive Medicine, but Roscoe continued to carry on his laboratory with the assistance of Mr. Frank Scudder until 1898. During this period he acted as chemical adviser to sanitary authorities all over the country on questions of sewage purification and water-supply; and was frequently consulted by manufacturers on works-processes, and on legal, patent, and trade-mark cases, and in connection with parliamentary inquiries, e.g. humidity and purity of air in textile mills, flashpoint of paraffin oils, etc. He was further concerned in the promotion of Bills for the creation of rivers boards, as, for example, those of the Mersey and Irwell and West Riding. He gave considerable attention to the question of the manufacture and use of water gas (“carburetted” and “blue” gas), and inspected most of the water-gas plants then in operation in England and on the Continent, sending Mr. Scudder to visit and report on the installations in the principal cities of America. In 1898 they both gave evidence before a Parliamentary Committee on the question of restricting the amount of the poisonous carbonic oxide in town gas.

In 1891 Roscoe’s services were retained by the Mersey and Irwell Joint Committee to report on the influence of the various manufacturing works in the Mersey and Irwell basins in polluting the streams, and as to the best means of preventing it. In 1893 the Committee made the position of Scientific Adviser a permanent appointment, and established a properly equipped laboratory in Manchester in connection with its work. Roscoe retained the appointment until 1905, when the frequent journeys to attend the meetings of the Joint Committee began to tell upon his health, and at his suggestion Mr. Scudder was appointed to succeed him. The London laboratory was given up in 1908.

CHAPTER XI
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON—ETON COLLEGE—UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF DUNDEE—SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES COMMISSION—ROYAL COMMISSION OF THE 1851 EXHIBITION—CARNEGIE TRUST: SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES—SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT: SCIENCE MUSEUMS—LISTER INSTITUTE OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

Roscoe was long and honourably connected with the University of London. A graduate in 1853, he acted as examiner in chemistry from 1874 to 1878. It was largely through his action that practical laboratory work was included in the curriculum in chemistry for science degrees. This not only greatly enhanced their status, but reacted beneficially upon the general character of laboratory instruction throughout the country. On relinquishing parliamentary work he became a member of the Senate, and took part in the movement for the reform of the University which led incidentally to the formation of an association of teachers and others for the promotion of a so-called Professorial University, of which Huxley was President. The following letter refers to this circumstance:

He made proposals with the idea of uniting what have come to be called the Internal and External sides of the University, and in his evidence before Lord Cowper’s Commission he suggested a machinery of a less cumbrous and, as he hoped, of a more satisfactory character than that which became law in 1898. In 1896 he succeeded Sir Julian Goldsmid as Vice-Chancellor. It was during his term of office that the Act of 1898, which reconstituted the University as the result of Earl Cowper’s Commission, was passed. As Vice-Chancellor it became his duty to watch the progress of the measure, and to use his influence in promoting its passage through Parliament.

Unfortunately the University was as a house divided against itself. One section of its Senate, numerically not very strong, was avowedly hostile to its reconstitution as a teaching body. Some members of Convocation acted as if their conception of the sole purpose of a University was the holding of examinations and the giving of degrees. Their object, apparently, was to strengthen by all possible means the influence of Convocation; to make it, in fact, the main controlling power. Accordingly, they used such parliamentary support as they could command to wreck the Bill, or failing that, so to modify its provisions as to preserve as far as possible the existing constitution of the institution, and to perpetuate its restricted functions. Thanks, however, to the action and alertness of Lord Bryce, Lord Haldane, Sir W. Priestley, and Sir John Gorst, and the firmness of the Government, the measure was steered safely through Parliament and received the Royal Assent.

The statutory commission which followed the University of London Act of 1898 reported in 1900; its provisions were approved by Parliament in June of that year, and the new Senate held its first meeting in the following October. Roscoe took an active share in the rearrangements consequent on the reconstitution of the University, and in the changes necessitated by its removal from Burlington Gardens to the buildings of the Imperial Institute at South Kensington.

This last step was a somewhat delicate matter. As housed in Burlington Gardens the University was only moderately well provided for as regards examination-rooms and administrative offices, but such laboratories and store-rooms as it possessed were wholly inadequate for the practical work required in the examinations for science and medical degrees. The pressure on the limited space grew more severe each session, and for some time previous to 1898 the necessity of making fresh provision had forced itself upon the notice of the authorities. The wants of the University in this respect had been freely ventilated in the course of the discussion on the Bill. Accordingly, overtures were made to the Senate to take over some portion of the building of the Imperial Institute as a home for the reconstituted University. The offer was not received with any great enthusiasm. The Imperial Institute had not fulfilled the anticipations of its projectors; its associations, to say the least, were not altogether academic, and this circumstance naturally created a prejudice against it. Moreover, the building itself, although grandiose in design, and possessing an admirable façade, was rather like the geometrical definition of a line—length without breadth; and when that portion of it intended to be assigned to the University was measured up, it was actually not much, if any, larger in superficial area than was available in Burlington Gardens. There was, however, more space in the neighbourhood, and a certain amount of rearrangement and new construction was possible. Moreover, the authorities of the Science and Art Department were projecting new laboratories for chemistry and physics, and it was hoped that facilities might be granted to the University to enable them, under certain conditions, to use them, or some portion of them, for their practical examinations in those sciences. But objections were raised in regard to the geographical position of the building, its distance from the main-line stations, etc. Its possible association with what was styled “the South Kensington clique” was another rock of offence.

There were possible difficulties also with the Council of the Institute as to the partition of the structure, use of the main entrance, etc. But all these matters were adjusted eventually by the skill, tact, and firmness of the Vice-Chancellor, with the concurrence of the Treasury and of the Office of Works; and the University entered into the possession of the eastern half of the building.

Not the least of the services which Roscoe rendered to the University was his action with regard to the selection of the late Sir Arthur Rücker as its first Principal. It was entirely through his efforts that the appointment was made. Its success, he says in his “Life and Experiences,” more than justified those efforts, and he always spoke of it as the best day’s work he ever did for the University.

Roscoe resigned the Vice-Chancellorship in 1902, when he presented to the University the handsome mace which now lies on the table during the meetings of the Senate, and which is used on ceremonial occasions. It was so employed, draped in crape, at the memorial service held in Rosslyn Hill Chapel at his death.

He remained a member of the Senate until 1910, when age and increasing deafness necessitated his retirement. In the resolution of condolence which the Senate passed at its first meeting after his death, they recalled with gratitude and admiration the great services he had rendered to the University during the twenty-one years of his membership of the Senate, at first as Fellow and later as one of the representatives of His Majesty in Council; and especially the wisdom, born of long experience in academic administration, with which he guided the University during the six years of his Vice-Chancellorship, which witnessed its reconstitution under the Act of 1898.

Roscoe was a Fellow of Eton College, as a representative of the Royal Society, from 1889 to 1912, and did what he could during the twenty-three years he served on the Governing Body to overcome what he terms “the enormous inertia of this ancient machine.” He sought to further the teaching of physical science in the School by himself giving lectures, and through his efforts it is the richer by no less than one large and one small physical laboratory, a physics lecture-room, a workshop, and two more chemical laboratories, with store-rooms, etc. He also reorganized the system of teaching, and introduced graduated courses, which have resulted in an all-round improvement. Nevertheless, the results have not been commensurate with all the hard work and enthusiasm he put into his efforts. They have been largely discounted by factors over which he had no control. No one realized this more clearly than himself, and he felt keenly the disappointment of his hopes, so much so that more than once he considered the advisability of resigning his Fellowship as a protest. He earned the gratitude of the science staff by his uniform kindness and sympathy, and by the readiness with which he would discuss their difficulties with them and help them with advice and encouragement.

As the representative of the Royal Society, his chief interests lay with the teaching of physical science, but they did not rest there. No Fellow worked harder for the general welfare of the School. In order to make himself acquainted first-hand with facts connected with the subjects to be discussed at the meetings of the Provost and Fellows, he constantly visited Eton. His opinion and advice on all sorts of questions were sought and respected, and he has left behind him a record of whole-hearted service to the School that will long be remembered with appreciation and gratitude.

Roscoe’s experience as an educationist, and his success in furthering the development of Owens College, naturally caused him to be consulted when institutions of a similar type were projected, and he was occasionally induced to take part in their foundation and government. Thus he had a large share in the arrangement of the curriculum of the University College of Dundee in 1881, and he was afterwards concerned, as a member of the Scottish Universities Commission, in establishing the connection of that College with the University of St. Andrews. He was appointed by the Duke of Devonshire to a governorship of University College, Liverpool, a position particularly gratifying to him as a member of a distinguished Liverpool family. He represented the University of London on the Council of Firth College, Sheffield, which has since risen to the dignity of a university, and was of service with respect to its science curriculum.

In 1888 Roscoe acted as a member of an Executive Commission appointed to carry out the provisions of the Scottish Universities Act. The Commission succeeded in devising ordinances which in many respects revolutionized the systems of the Scottish Universities, and by providing new avenues to degrees are destined, it may be hoped, to have an important effect upon the character of scientific education in Scotland.

In 1890 he was appointed a member of a Committee along with Lord Playfair, Lord Kelvin, Professor Huxley, Mr. Mundella, Sir Norman Lockyer, and Dr. William Garnett, to advise the Commissioners of the 1851 Exhibition on the question of establishing scholarships to aid the development of scientific education in the manufacturing districts of the country.

Roscoe remained a member of that body after it had presented its Report and had been entrusted with the duty of putting into operation the scheme which had been devised for the distribution and regulation of the scholarships. The character of these scholarships cannot be better described than in his own words:—