The bust just mentioned, attracted John Tyndall for another reason: Carlyle had written of the man it symboled: "Reader, to thee, thyself, even now, he has one counsel to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy. Think of living! Thy life, wert thou the pitifullest of all the sons of earth, is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thine own; it is all thou hast with which to front eternity. Work, then, even as he has done--like a star, unhasting and unresting." * * * * * At Marburg, Tyndall was on good terms with the great Bunsen, and used to act as his assistant in making practical chemical experiments before his classes. These amazing things done by chemists in public are seldom of much value beyond giving a thrill to visitors who would otherwise drowse; it is like humor in an oration: it opens up the mental pores. Alexander Humboldt once attended a Bunsen lecture at Marburg and complimented Tyndall by saying, "When I take up sleight-of-hand work, consider yourself engaged as my first helper." Tyndall's way of standing with his back to the audience, shutting off the view of Bunsen's hands while he was getting ready to make an artificial peal of thunder, made Humboldt laugh heartily. Humboldt thought so well of the young man who spoke German with an Irish accent, that he presented him with an inscribed copy of one of his books. The volume was a most valuable one, for Humboldt published only in deluxe, limited editions, and Tyndall was so overcome that all he could say was, "I'll do as much for you some day." Not long after this, through loaning money to a fellow student, Tyndall found himself sadly in need of funds, and borrowed two pounds on the book from an 'Ebrew Jew. That night, he dreamed that Humboldt found the volume in a secondhand store. In the morning, Tyndall was waiting for the pawnbroker to open his shop to get the book back ere the offense was discovered. Heinrich Heine once inscribed a volume of his poems to a friend, and afterward discovered the volume on the counter of a secondhand dealer. He thereupon haggled with the bookman, bought the book and beneath his first inscription wrote, "With the renewed regards of H. Heine." He then sent the volume for the second time to his friend. 'T is possible that Tyndall had heard of this. In Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when Tyndall was thirty years of age, he visited London, and of course went to the British Institution. There he met Faraday for the first time and was welcomed by him. The British Institution consists of a laboratory, a museum and a lecture-hall, and its object is scientific research. It began in a very simple way in one room and now occupies several buildings. It was founded by Benjamin Thompson, an American, and so it was but proper that its sister concern, the Smithsonian Institution, should have been founded by an Englishman.