remarkable connexion with the progress of the invention in England: they
seem, indeed, almost to have diverted it from its natural course, which
certainly would have led from the illumination at Soho to its public
adoption.

In 1804, Dr. Henry delivered a course of lectures on chemistry, at
Manchester, in which he showed the mode of producing gas from coal, and
the facility and advantage of its use. Dr, Henry analyzed the
composition and investigated the properties of carburetted hydrogen gas.
His experiments were numerous and accurate, and made upon a variety of
substances; and having obtained the gas from wood, peat, different kinds
of coal, oil, wax, &c. he endeavoured to estimate the relative quantity
of light yielded by each.

In 1805, Mr. Samuel Clegg, to whom the world is much indebted for the
improvements he subsequently introduced into the manufacture of gas,
having left Soho, directed his attention to the construction of gas
apparatus. The first he erected was in the cotton mill of Mr. H Lodge,
near Halifax, in Yorkshire. Mr. Josiah Pemberton, one of those ingenious
men happily not rare in the centre of our manufactures, whose minds are
perpetually employed on the improvement of mechanical contrivances, and
who, as soon as they have accomplished one discovery, leave others to
reap the benefit, and themselves pursue the chase alter new inventions,
had for some time been experimenting on the nature of gas. A resident of
Birmingham, his attention was probably roused by the exhibition at Soho;
and such was the fertility of his invention, and his practical skill as
a mechanic, that it has been observed by those who know him, that he
never undertook to make an article without inventing an improvement in
its construction. About 1806, he exhibited gas-lights in a variety of
forms, and with great brilliance, at the front of his manufactory in