Not the least strange fact in the history of this original man is that during his life he received no thanks for all that he did for the Royal Institution. Moreover at the present time he is scarcely known as the finder of Davy and the founder of that place where very many of the greatest scientific discoveries of this century have been made. For the account of the origin and progress of the Institution I have searched the minutes of the meetings of the managers, the proprietors, and the members. I am much indebted to Earl Spencer, who has lent me from the Althorp library a printed copy of the first prospectus of the Royal Institution. This was written by Count Rumford. I have found many forgotten things in the manuscript letters to and from Sir Joseph Banks, to which I have had access by permission of the Knatchbull family; also in a manuscript life of Mr. Webster, the architect of the Royal Institution theatre; and in some letters which belonged to Mr. Savage, the clerk and first printer at the Institution, and for which I am indebted to his daughters. For the sketch of the lives of Dr. Garnett and of Dr. Young I have been able to find very little original matter. For the life of Sir Humphry Davy I have met with some new facts in his laboratory note-books. These books give most of his daily work at the time when he was making his great discoveries regarding chemical electricity, the alkalies, and chlorine. I have also had the use of the notes by Faraday of four of the last lectures given by Davy at the Institution. This is the manuscript volume sent to Davy by Faraday when he asked to be employed at the Institution. It consists of 386 small quarto pages. Davy at this time was thirty-three, and Faraday was twenty-one. The one was full of energy to profit by the excellence he could follow, or to shun the evil he could foresee; the other had long reached the climax of his success by his youthful popularity as a lecturer and his early renown as a discoverer; and was about to make a rich and an unsuitable marriage; and before long was to suffer from the restlessness of the failing health that ended in fatal disease. Whenever a true comparison between these two nobles of the Institution can be made, it will probably be seen that the genius of Davy has been hid by the perfection of Faraday. Incomparably superior as Faraday was in unselfishness, exactness, and perseverance, and in many other respects also, yet certainly in originality and in eloquence he was inferior to Davy, and in love of research he was by no means his superior. Davy, from his earliest energy to his latest feebleness, loved research; and, notwithstanding his marriage, his temper, and his early death, he first gained for the Royal Institution that great reputation for original discovery which has been and is the foundation of its success. H. B. J.