And he was able to do this because he was one of the most wonderful of thinkers and one of the greatest of writers.

The disclosure, the interpretation, the development of that great intellectual revolution which was in the air, and which was practically carried forward in obscurity, day by day, by the fathers of modern astronomy and chemistry and physiology, had fallen to the task of a genius, second only to Shakespeare.

He had the power to tell the story of what they were doing and were to do with a force of imaginative reason of which they were utterly incapable.

He was able to justify their attempts and their hopes as they themselves could not.

He was able to interest the world in the great prospects opening on it, but of which none but a few students had the key.