"Amongst the glorious throng my companion pointed out to me many of
those great men and women whom I seemed to know by their writings and
portraits when on the earth. At one table sat Mary Somerville,
Leverrier, Adams, La Place, Gauss and Helmholz; at another Dalton,
Schonbeim, Davy, Tyndall, Berthollet, Berzelius, Priestly, Lavoisier,
and Liebig; here were groups of physicists--Faraday, Volta, Galvani,
Ampere, Fahrenheit, Henry, Draper, Biot, Chladini, Black, Melloni,
Senarmont, Regnault, Daniells, Fresnel, Fizeau, Mariotte, Deville,
Troost, Gay-Lussac, Foucault, Wheatstone, and many, many more. At a
small table immediately beneath a dome of glass, through whose softly
opaline texture an aureole of light seemed to embrace them, sat
Franklin, Galileo and Newton. It would be impossible to describe to you
my amazement at the astonishing picture.
"It almost seemed as if the air vibrated with the excitement of its
impact and use, as these giant minds conversed together. Endowed again
with youth, scintillating, brilliant, the flush of a semi-immortality
impressed upon their faces, which again bespoke the eminence of their
intellects, in picturesque and effective, almost pictorial groupings,
this wondrous gathering filled me with new rapture. My comrade led me to
other branching halls similarly occupied. Chemists were here
conspicuous--Chevreuil, Talbot, Wedgewood, Daguerre, Cooke, Fresenius,
Schmidt, Avogadro, Liebig, Davy, Berthollet, and many, many more.
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