But the marvellous results achieved at the Royal Institution have more than justified the existence of so anomalous an enterprise. Superlatives are always dangerous, but it may well be doubted whether there is another single institution in the world where so many novel original discoveries in physical science have been made as have been brought to light in the laboratories of the building on Albemarle Street during this first century of its occupancy; for practically all that is to be credited to Thomas Young, Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday, and John Tyndall, not to mention living investigators, is to be credited also to the Royal Institution, whose professorial chairs these great men have successively occupied. Davy spent here the best years of his youth and prime. Faraday, his direct successor, came to the institution in a subordinate capacity as a mere boy, and was the life of the institution for half a century. Tyndall gave it forty years of service. What wonder, then, that the Briton speaks of the institution as the "Pantheon of Science"?
If you visit the Royal Institution to-day you will find it in most exterior respects not unlike what it presumably was a century ago. Its long, stone front, dinged with age, with its somewhat Pantheon-like colonnade, has an appearance of dignity rather than of striking impressiveness. The main entrance, jutting full on the sidewalk, is at the street level, and the glass door gives hospitable glimpses of the interior. Entering, one finds himself in a main central hall, at the foot of the main central staircase. The air of eminent respectability so characteristic of the British institution is over all; likewise the pervasive hush of British reserve. But you will not miss also the atmosphere of sincere if uneffusive British courtesy.
At your right, as you mount the stairway, is a large statue of Faraday; on the wall right ahead is a bronze medallion of Tyndall, placed beneath a large portrait of Davy. At the turn of the stairs is a marble bust of Wollaston. Farther on, in hall and library, you will find other busts of Faraday, other portraits of Davy; portraits of Faraday everywhere, and various other busts of notables who have had connection with the institution. You will be shown the lecture-hall where Davy, Faraday, and Tyndall pronounced their marvellous discourses; the arrangement, the seats, the cushions even if appearances speak truly, and certainly the lecture-desk itself, unchanged within the century. You may see the crude balance, clumsy indeed to modern eyes, with which Davy performed his wonders. The names and the memories of three great men--Davy, Faraday, and Tyndall--will be incessantly before you, and the least impressionable person could not well escape a certain sense of consecration of his surroundings. The hush that is over everything seems but fitting.