CHAPTER VI.LIFE OF DAVY.1778 to 1829.

Towards the end of February Mr. Harris, the Librarian and Superintendent of the House, reported to the managers ‘that, hearing a great noise one evening in the lecture room, he went to see the cause of it. He found Mr. Payne and Mr. Newman at high words, and Mr. Newman complained of having been struck by Payne for representing to him his neglect of duty in being absent when he should have attended on Mr. Brande.’ The managers immediately resolved that Mr. Payne should be dismissed from the Royal Institution, and that a gratuity of 10l.should be paid him in consideration of his long services. He had come as a boy to the Institution before November 1803.

At the following meeting (March 1) Sir Humphry Davy ‘had the honour to inform the managers that he had found Michael Faraday,’ and the managers engaged him and resolved ‘that the clerk furnish him with a copy of the order relating to his duties accordingly.’

In March 1813 the chairman of the Committee of Chemistry having through Sir H. Davy expressed a desire that an open committee of chemistry should be held in the ensuing week, the managers resolved that ‘a committee of chemistry, open to all members and gentlemen personally introduced by members, should be held in the theatre of the Institution on Wednesday, March 31, at three o’clock, when the Professor of Chemistry will demonstrate a new series of facts on the fluoric principle’ (fluorine).

At the general meeting of members on April 5 Sir Humphry Davy begged leave to resign his situation of Professor of Chemistry. ‘He by no means wished to give up his connection with the Royal Institution, as he should ever be happy to communicate his researches in the first instance to the Institution in the manner he did in the presence of the members last Wednesday, and to do all in his power to promote the interest and success of this Institution.’ Sir H. Davy having retired, Earl Spencer moved ‘that the thanks of this meeting be returned to Sir Humphry Davy for the inestimable services rendered by him to the Royal Institution.’ The motion was seconded by the Earl of Darnley and agreed to unanimously. Earl Spencer further moved ‘that, in order more strongly to mark the high sense of this meeting of the merits of Sir Humphry Davy, he be elected Honorary Professor of Chemistry.’ The Earl of Winchester, the President of the Royal Institution, was requested to sign these resolutions and to convey them to Sir Humphry Davy, and Mr. Brande was elected to the professorship of chemistry.

At the end of June the two rooms that had been occupied by Sir Humphry Davy were ordered to be prepared for Mr. Brande. A few months later he was appointed Superintendent of the House, and was allowed to transfer his chemical class of students of medicine to the laboratory.

On October 4 Sir H. Davy reported to the managers that ‘Michael Faraday had expressed a wish to accompany him on his scientific travels, but that he would not engage Mr. Faraday if the Professor of Chemistry considered his services as at all essential to the Institution, or if the managers had the slightest objection to the measure.’ Mr. Brande reported that ‘arrangements could be made to prevent Mr. Faraday’s resignation being felt, and that, as he had shown considerable diligence and attention in cleaning and arranging the mineral collection, he recommended his services to the managers’ attention, as this was not his immediate duty.’

The managers permitted Mr. Faraday to resign his situation, and ordered that he should be paid a month’s wages on the day of his departure.

The assistant porter was engaged as assistant in the laboratory on the same terms as Michael Faraday.

This year Campbell again lectured on Poetry, and Southey and Moore declined to lecture. Flaxman gave two lectures gratuitously, and was elected a life subscriber. Two o’clock was tried as the lecture hour, but a change was soon made back to three as heretofore.

In 1814, during the absence of Sir H. Davy, the Institution did little for science, but, though poor, it strove to be fashionable. On May 23 it gave ‘a cold collation’ to the Grand Duchess of Oldenburgh, for which Gunter, of Berkeley Square, was paid by contract twenty guineas. The funds of the Institution were by no means flourishing; the balance in favour of the Institution on the accounts of 1813 was 66l., but many bills were paid out of the ‘benefactions to the fund for discharging the debts and for providing for the future support of the Institution.’ A list of the benefactors was ordered to be sent round to the members and subscribers on the two last Saturdays in June.

For the promotion of science the three committees (1) on chemistry and geology, (2) on general science and literature, and (3) on mathematics and mechanics were requested by the managers to meet and to elect each two chairmen and a secretary.

In 1815, in February, Mr. Babbage began a course of lectures on Astronomy.

On May 15 Sir Humphry Davy was present at the meeting of managers. That day Mr. Brande stated that he wanted assistance in the laboratory, and that Michael Faraday was ‘willing to resume his situation.’ Themanagers resolved that the assistant porter should be discharged, and that the former assistant porter should take his place, and ‘that Michael Faraday be engaged as assistant in the laboratory and mineralogical collection and superintendent of the apparatus at a salary of 30s.a week, and that he be accommodated with apartments in the house under the superintendence of Mr. Brande.’

The rooms given to him were 25 and 26, the two furthest on the attic floor. The sister of the librarian, Mr. Harris, occupied the smallest of these (26), and there were difficulties about any other arrangement, so that a few weeks afterwards the librarian asked permission to reside out of the house.

In 1816 the managers decided that, in consideration of the additional labour caused to Michael Faraday by the lectures of Mr. Brande in the laboratory, his salary should be raised to 100l.per annum. The pecuniary difficulties of the Institution were increasing, and Sir Humphry Davy, Mr. Auriol, and Mr. Solly were appointed as a sub-committee to examine the expenditure. In 1817 the debts increased.

In 1818 the bill for coals in 1816 was paid. Mr. Fuller, who ultimately founded the Fullerian Professorships, allowed one thousand pounds, which he had invested for the benefit of the Institution, to be used for the payment of debts. In the autumn Sir Thomas Bernard died.

In 1819 Mr. Brande applied to the board, on the part of Mr. Faraday, for permission to occupy the two southernmost front rooms on the second floor.

In 1820 an anniversary dinner was held on May 8 at Willis’s Rooms. The following year Mr. Faraday was given the use of two more rooms on the second floor, and appointed Superintendent of the House and Laboratory in the absence of Mr. Brande.

In 1822 the treasurer had to advance 1,000l.to pay the bills, and in 1823 a loan of 4,000l.without interest was raised amongst the members.

In 1824 Faraday first lectured at the Royal Institution, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his discoveries made in the laboratory.

From 1815 the life of Faraday and the history of the Royal Institution became inseparable, and from 1824 it was kept alive by his unselfish devotion to its welfare.

The history of thirteen years of the life of Davy, like that of fifty of the life of Faraday, is closely interwoven with the history of the Royal Institution. Their lives were the life of the place; and hence, to complete the history of the Institution to the time of Faraday, a sketch of Davy and his scientific life must be given here.

Humphry Davy was born on December 17, 1778, at Penzance. He was the son of a wood carver and was apprenticed to a surgeon.

Mr. Davies Gilbert heard that the boy was fond of making chemical experiments. He encouraged him and spoke of him to Dr. Beddoes, Professor of Geology and Chemistry at Oxford, who happened to be at work upon the ‘Geology of Cornwall.’

Afterwards Dr. Beddoes established the Pneumatic Institution at Clifton, and he required an assistant to prepare the gases and superintend the Pneumatic Hospital, and Mr. Gilbert proposed Davy. He went on October 2, 1798, ‘to superintend experiments on the medical powers of factitious airs or gases.’

Davy thus wrote to Mr. Davies Gilbert:

November 12, 1798.I have purposely delayed writing until I could communicate to you some intelligence of importance concerning the new Pneumatic Institution. The speedy execution of the plan will, I think, interest you both as a subscriber and a friend to science and mankind. The present subscription is, we suppose, nearly adequate to the purpose of investigating the medicinal powers of factitious airs. It still continues to increase, and we may hope for the ability of pursuing the investigation to its full extent. We are negotiating for a house in Downe Square, the proximity of which to Bristol and its general situation and advantages render it very suitable for the purpose. The funds will, I suppose, enable us to provide for eight or ten patients in the Hospital, and for as many out of it as we can procure.We shall try the gases in every possible way.We are printing in Bristol the first volume of the ‘West Country Collection,’ which will, I suppose, be out the beginning of January.Believe me, dear Sir, with affection and respect, truly yours,Humphry Davy.

November 12, 1798.

I have purposely delayed writing until I could communicate to you some intelligence of importance concerning the new Pneumatic Institution. The speedy execution of the plan will, I think, interest you both as a subscriber and a friend to science and mankind. The present subscription is, we suppose, nearly adequate to the purpose of investigating the medicinal powers of factitious airs. It still continues to increase, and we may hope for the ability of pursuing the investigation to its full extent. We are negotiating for a house in Downe Square, the proximity of which to Bristol and its general situation and advantages render it very suitable for the purpose. The funds will, I suppose, enable us to provide for eight or ten patients in the Hospital, and for as many out of it as we can procure.

We shall try the gases in every possible way.

We are printing in Bristol the first volume of the ‘West Country Collection,’ which will, I suppose, be out the beginning of January.

Believe me, dear Sir, with affection and respect, truly yours,

Humphry Davy.

The first two hundred pages of this collection, constituting very nearly half the volume, consist of essays of Davy on ‘Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light,’ on ‘Phos-Oxygen or Oxygen and its Combinations,’ and on the ‘Theory of Respiration.’

He wrote on February 22, 1799, to Davies Gilbert:

Dear Friend,—(For I love you too well to call you by a more ceremonious name), I have delayed writing to you,expecting that some of our experiments would produce results worthy of communication.I am now as much convinced of the non-existence of caloric as I am of the existence of light.Our laboratory in the Pneumatic Institution is nearly finished.I hope the gaseous oxide of azote will prove to be a specific stimulus for the absorbents.I know of little general scientific news. Berthollet makes sulphuretted hydrogen out to be an acid.I remain, with affection and respect, yours,Humphry Davy.

Dear Friend,—(For I love you too well to call you by a more ceremonious name), I have delayed writing to you,expecting that some of our experiments would produce results worthy of communication.

I am now as much convinced of the non-existence of caloric as I am of the existence of light.

Our laboratory in the Pneumatic Institution is nearly finished.

I hope the gaseous oxide of azote will prove to be a specific stimulus for the absorbents.

I know of little general scientific news. Berthollet makes sulphuretted hydrogen out to be an acid.

I remain, with affection and respect, yours,

Humphry Davy.

Again on April 10, 1799, to Mr. Gilbert, writing of light and heat, he said:

The supposition of active powers common to all matter from the different modifications of which all the phenomena of its changes result, appears to me more reasonable than the assumption of certain imaginary fluids, alone endowed with active powers, and bearing the same relation to common matter as the vulgar philosophy supposes spirit to bear to matter.It is only by forming theories, and then comparing them with facts, that we can hope to discover the true system of nature.I made a discovery yesterday which proves how necessary it is to repeat experiments. The gaseous oxide of azote is perfectly respirable when pure. It is never deleterious but when it contains nitrous gas. I have found a mode of obtaining it pure, and I breathed it to-day in the presence of Dr. Beddoes and some others—sixteen quarts of it for near seven minutes. It appears to support life longer than even oxygen gas, and absolutely intoxicated me. Pure oxygen gas produced no alteration in my pulse nor any other material effect, whereas this gas raised my pulse upwardsof twenty strokes, made me dance about the laboratory as a madman, and has kept my spirits in a glow ever since.Yours, with affection and respect,Humphry Davy.

It is only by forming theories, and then comparing them with facts, that we can hope to discover the true system of nature.

I made a discovery yesterday which proves how necessary it is to repeat experiments. The gaseous oxide of azote is perfectly respirable when pure. It is never deleterious but when it contains nitrous gas. I have found a mode of obtaining it pure, and I breathed it to-day in the presence of Dr. Beddoes and some others—sixteen quarts of it for near seven minutes. It appears to support life longer than even oxygen gas, and absolutely intoxicated me. Pure oxygen gas produced no alteration in my pulse nor any other material effect, whereas this gas raised my pulse upwardsof twenty strokes, made me dance about the laboratory as a madman, and has kept my spirits in a glow ever since.

Yours, with affection and respect,Humphry Davy.

Dr. Paris says Coleridge gave him this account of of the caution of Davy at this time:

Dr. Beddoes thought nitrous oxide gas would cure paralysis. A patient was to be treated by Davy. He first took the temperature by means of a small thermometer placed under the tongue. The patient immediately declared that he felt better. The opportunity was too tempting to be lost. Davy cast an intelligent glance at Mr. Coleridge, and desired the patient to renew his visit on the following day, when the same ceremony was again performed, and repeated every succeeding day for a fortnight, the patient gradually improving during that period, when he was dismissed as cured, no other application having been used than that of the thermometer.

Southey thus wrote his opinion and that of Coleridge regarding Davy at this time: ‘He is a marvellous young man, whose talents I can only wonder at.’

Later he wrote:

My residence at Westbury was one of the happiest portions of my life.... I was in habits of the most frequent and intimate intercourse with Davy, then in the flower and freshness of his youth. We were within an easy walk of each other over some of the most beautiful ground in that beautiful part of England. When I went to the Pneumatic Institution he had to tell me of some new experiment or discovery and of the views which it opened for him, and when he came to Westbury there was a fresh portion of Madoc for his hearing.

On July 3, 1800, Davy wrote from Bristol to Gilbert:

We have been repeating the galvanic experiments with success. Nicholson, by means of a hundred pieces of silver and zinc, has procured a visible spark. Cruickshank has revived oxidated metals in solution by means of the nascent hydrogen produced from the decomposition of water by the shock, and both he and Carlisle have absolutely resolved water into oxygen and hydrogen by means of it, making use of silver and platina wires. An immense field of investigation seems opened by this discovery; may it be pursued so as to acquaint us with some of the laws of life!You have undoubtedly heard of Herschel’s discovery concerning the production of heat by invisible rays emitted from the sun?Coleridge is gone to reside in Cumberland.Yours, with sincere affection,Humphry Davy.

You have undoubtedly heard of Herschel’s discovery concerning the production of heat by invisible rays emitted from the sun?

Coleridge is gone to reside in Cumberland.

Yours, with sincere affection,Humphry Davy.

On October 20, 1800, again he wrote to Gilbert:

In pursuing experiments on galvanism during the last two months I have met with unexpected and unhoped-for success. Some of the new facts on this subject promise to afford instruments capable of destroying the mysterious veil which nature has thrown over the operation and properties of ethereal fluids.Galvanism I have found, by numerous experiments, to be a process purely chemical.I remain, with sincere respect and affection, yours,Humphry Davy.

Galvanism I have found, by numerous experiments, to be a process purely chemical.

I remain, with sincere respect and affection, yours,

Humphry Davy.

During this year he published a volume entitled ‘Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration.’

In the spring of 1800 Mr. Underwood, a geologist and artist, had become a proprietor of the Royal Institution. He had several conversations with Count Rumford on the subject of Davy’s superior talents and the advantages that would accrue to the Institution from engaging him as a lecturer. ‘The Count called on me,’ Underwood says, ‘on January 5, 1801, having received from the managers of the Institution full powers to negotiate upon this subject. On this occasion, however, I thought it advisable to introduce the Count to Mr. James Thompson, as being the more eligible person to treat in behalf of Davy, not only on account of his greater intimacy with him, but because, not being a proprietor, he was unconnected with the interests of the Institution.’ Mr. Thompson wrote to Davy. With his characteristic energy Davy answered in person, and had several conferences with Count Rumford. The following letter from Count Rumford to Davy, written from the Royal Institution, is dated February 16, 1801:

Dear Sir,—In consequence of the conversations I have had with you, respecting your engaging in the service of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, I this day laid the matter before the managers of the Institution at their meeting,[32]and I have the pleasure to acquaint you that the proposal I made to them was approved, and the following resolution unanimously taken by them: ‘Resolved,—That Mr. Humphry Davy be engaged in the service of the Royal Institution in the capacity of Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the Chemical Laboratory, and Assistant Editor of the Journals of the Institution, and that he be allowed to occupy a room in the house and be furnished with coals and candles, and that he be paid a salary of 100l.per annum.’On this occasion I did not neglect to give an account to the managers of the whole of what passed between us respecting the situation it was intended you should fill in the Institution on your engaging in its service, and the prospects that could with propriety be held out to you of future advantages, and the managers agreed with me in thinking that, as you had expressed your willingness to devote yourself entirely and permanently to the Institution, it would be right and proper to hold out to you the prospect of becoming, in the course of two or three years, Professor of Chemistry in the Institution, with a salary of 300l.per annum, provided that within that period you shall have given proofs of your fitness to hold that distinguished situation.Although you must ever consider the duties of the offices you may hold under the Institution as the primary objects of your care and attention, yet the managers are so far from being desirous that you should relinquish the private philosophical investigations in which you have hitherto been engaged, and by which you have so honourably distinguished yourself and attracted their attention, that it will afford them the sincerest pleasure to encourage and assist you in these laudable pursuits, and give you every facility which the philosophical apparatus at the Institution can afford to make new and interesting experiments.You will naturally consider the Journals of the Institution as the most proper vehicle for communicating to the public from time to time short accounts of the progress you may make in your investigations; this will, however, by no means be considered as precluding you in any degree from presenting to the Royal Society of London, or any other learned body, philosophical papers or memoirs on suchscientific subjects as may engage your attention, or from publishing in any other manner the results of your researches.As you are fully informed with respect to the nature and objects of the Royal Institution and are acquainted with the respectable character of those distinguished persons with whom I have the honour to act in the management of its concerns, you cannot, I think, entertain the smallest doubt of their constant protection and of their readiness on all occasions to do full justice to the zeal and abilities you may display in the situation in which they have placed you.It is with much esteem and a sincere desire that the talents which at so early a period of life you discovered may be cultivated with care, and always employed with success, that I am, dear Sir, your most obedient Servant,Rumford.

On this occasion I did not neglect to give an account to the managers of the whole of what passed between us respecting the situation it was intended you should fill in the Institution on your engaging in its service, and the prospects that could with propriety be held out to you of future advantages, and the managers agreed with me in thinking that, as you had expressed your willingness to devote yourself entirely and permanently to the Institution, it would be right and proper to hold out to you the prospect of becoming, in the course of two or three years, Professor of Chemistry in the Institution, with a salary of 300l.per annum, provided that within that period you shall have given proofs of your fitness to hold that distinguished situation.

Although you must ever consider the duties of the offices you may hold under the Institution as the primary objects of your care and attention, yet the managers are so far from being desirous that you should relinquish the private philosophical investigations in which you have hitherto been engaged, and by which you have so honourably distinguished yourself and attracted their attention, that it will afford them the sincerest pleasure to encourage and assist you in these laudable pursuits, and give you every facility which the philosophical apparatus at the Institution can afford to make new and interesting experiments.

You will naturally consider the Journals of the Institution as the most proper vehicle for communicating to the public from time to time short accounts of the progress you may make in your investigations; this will, however, by no means be considered as precluding you in any degree from presenting to the Royal Society of London, or any other learned body, philosophical papers or memoirs on suchscientific subjects as may engage your attention, or from publishing in any other manner the results of your researches.

As you are fully informed with respect to the nature and objects of the Royal Institution and are acquainted with the respectable character of those distinguished persons with whom I have the honour to act in the management of its concerns, you cannot, I think, entertain the smallest doubt of their constant protection and of their readiness on all occasions to do full justice to the zeal and abilities you may display in the situation in which they have placed you.

It is with much esteem and a sincere desire that the talents which at so early a period of life you discovered may be cultivated with care, and always employed with success, that I am, dear Sir, your most obedient Servant,

Rumford.

On March 8 Davy wrote to Davies Gilbert:

I cannot think of quitting the Pneumatic Institution without giving you information of it in a letter; indeed, I believe I should have done this some time ago had not the hurry of business and the fever of emotion produced by the prospect of novel changes in futurity destroyed to a certain extent my powers of consistent action.You, my dear sir, have behaved to me with great kindness, and the little ability I possess you have very much contributed to develope; I should therefore accuse myself of ingratitude were I to neglect to ask your approbation of the measures I have adopted with regard to the change of my situation and the enlargement of my views in life.In consequence of an invitation from Count Rumford, given to me with some proposals relative to the Royal Institution, I visited London in the middle of February, where, after several conferences with that gentleman, I wasinvited by the managers of the Royal Institution to become the director of their laboratory and their assistant professor of chemistry. At the same time I was assured that, within the space of two or three seasons, I should be made sole professor of chemistry, still continuing director of the laboratory.The immediate emolument offered was sufficient for my wants, and the sole and uncontrolled use of the apparatus in the Institution for private experiments was to be granted me.The behaviour of Count Rumford, Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Cavendish, and the other principal managers was liberal and polite, and they promised me any apparatus that I might need for new experiments.The time required to be devoted to the services of the Institution was but short, being limited chiefly to the winter and spring. The emoluments to be attached to the office of sole professor of chemistry are great, and, above all, the situation is permanent and held very honourable.These motives, joined to the approbation of Dr. Beddoes, who, with great liberality, has absolved me from my engagements at the Pneumatic Institution, and the strong wishes of most of my friends in London and Bristol determined my conduct.Thus I am quietly to be transferred to London, whilst my sphere of action is considerably enlarged, and as much power as I could reasonably expect, or even wish for at my time of life, secured to me without the obligation of labouring at a profession.The Royal Institution will, I hope, be of some utility to society. It has undoubtedly the capability of becoming a great instrument of moral and intellectual improvement. Its funds are very great. It has attached to it the feelings of a great number of people of fashion and property, and consequently may be the means of employing to useful purposes money which would otherwise be squandered in luxury and in the production of unnecessary labour.Count Rumford professes that it will be kept distinct from party politics. I sincerely wish that such may be the case, though I fear it. As for myself, I shall become attached to it, full of hope, with the resolution of employing all my feeble powers towards promoting its true interests.I have been pursuing galvanism with labour and some success; I have been able to produce galvanic power from single plates, by effecting on them different oxidating and deoxidating processes.After the 11th I shall be in town—my direction, Royal Institution.I am, my dear Friend, with respect and affection, yours,Humphry Davy.

You, my dear sir, have behaved to me with great kindness, and the little ability I possess you have very much contributed to develope; I should therefore accuse myself of ingratitude were I to neglect to ask your approbation of the measures I have adopted with regard to the change of my situation and the enlargement of my views in life.

In consequence of an invitation from Count Rumford, given to me with some proposals relative to the Royal Institution, I visited London in the middle of February, where, after several conferences with that gentleman, I wasinvited by the managers of the Royal Institution to become the director of their laboratory and their assistant professor of chemistry. At the same time I was assured that, within the space of two or three seasons, I should be made sole professor of chemistry, still continuing director of the laboratory.

The immediate emolument offered was sufficient for my wants, and the sole and uncontrolled use of the apparatus in the Institution for private experiments was to be granted me.

The behaviour of Count Rumford, Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Cavendish, and the other principal managers was liberal and polite, and they promised me any apparatus that I might need for new experiments.

The time required to be devoted to the services of the Institution was but short, being limited chiefly to the winter and spring. The emoluments to be attached to the office of sole professor of chemistry are great, and, above all, the situation is permanent and held very honourable.

These motives, joined to the approbation of Dr. Beddoes, who, with great liberality, has absolved me from my engagements at the Pneumatic Institution, and the strong wishes of most of my friends in London and Bristol determined my conduct.

Thus I am quietly to be transferred to London, whilst my sphere of action is considerably enlarged, and as much power as I could reasonably expect, or even wish for at my time of life, secured to me without the obligation of labouring at a profession.

The Royal Institution will, I hope, be of some utility to society. It has undoubtedly the capability of becoming a great instrument of moral and intellectual improvement. Its funds are very great. It has attached to it the feelings of a great number of people of fashion and property, and consequently may be the means of employing to useful purposes money which would otherwise be squandered in luxury and in the production of unnecessary labour.

Count Rumford professes that it will be kept distinct from party politics. I sincerely wish that such may be the case, though I fear it. As for myself, I shall become attached to it, full of hope, with the resolution of employing all my feeble powers towards promoting its true interests.

I have been pursuing galvanism with labour and some success; I have been able to produce galvanic power from single plates, by effecting on them different oxidating and deoxidating processes.

After the 11th I shall be in town—my direction, Royal Institution.

I am, my dear Friend, with respect and affection, yours,

Humphry Davy.

At the meeting of the managers of the Royal Institution on February 16 (present, Sir J. Banks, Earl Morton, Count Rumford, and Mr. R. Clark, Chamberlain of the City of London), it was resolved ‘that Mr. Humphry Davy be engaged in the service of the Royal Institution in the capacities of Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the Laboratory, and Assistant Editor of the Journals of the Institution; that he be allowed to occupy a room in the house, and be furnished with coals and candles; and that he be paid a salary of one hundred guineas per annum.’

On March 16 Count Rumford, after reporting that a room had been prepared and furnished, stated that Mr. Davy had arrived at the Institution on Wednesday, March 11, and taken possession of his situation.

Davy gave three courses of lectures in the spring of 1801.

His first course consisted of five lectures on the ‘New Branch of Philosophy’—the galvanic phenomena.His first lecture was on Tuesday evening, April 25. He began with the history of galvanism, detailed the successive discoveries, and described the different methods of accumulating galvanic influence. Polished plates of different metals and the effect of their lying together in contact with water and air were exhibited. ‘Air is absolutely necessary to the oxydating process.’ He observed that ‘it was difficult to prove that hydrogen was given out in the decomposition of water in this way, and that it seemed rather probable that alkali was formed.’ He showed the effects of galvanism on the legs of frogs, and exhibited some interesting experiments on the galvanic effects on the solution of metals in acids. As a recent discovery of his own he showed that with one kind of metal only, more powerful effects may be produced than with two, as heretofore employed; but in this case there must be more than one liquid interposed between the plates. He stated that copper, for example, and discs of cloth or pasteboard, moistened with diluted nitrous acid and solutions of muriat of soda and sulphuret of potash, and arranged in the order named (viz. copper, nitrous acid, muriat of soda, sulphuret of potash, &c.), give much more sensible shocks than the pile as at first constructed. The reporter added: ‘Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, and other distinguished philosophers were present. The audience was highly gratified, and testified their satisfaction by general applause. Mr. Davy, who appears to be very young, acquitted himself admirably well; from the sparkling intelligence of his eye, his animated manner, and thetout ensemblewe have no doubt of his attaining a distinguished eminence.’

The second lecture was given on the 28th, and the others were to be delivered on the Tuesday and Saturday evenings till completed. He gave another short course on Pneumatic Chemistry. ‘The lectures were extremely ingenious and excited considerable attention.’ The concluding lecture was on June 20, on Respiration, and after the lecture an opportunity was given to such as wished it to breathe some of the nitrous oxide. The reporter said, ‘Mr. Grosvenor Bedford, Mr. Stodart, and Mr. Underwood breathed the gas, and the effects it produced, and especially on the last, were truly wonderful. Mr. Underwood experienced so much pleasure from breathing it that he lost all sense of everything else, and the breathing bag could only be taken from him at last by force.’ ‘The irresistible tendency to muscular action produced by this gas was such as cannot be described. It must be witnessed to be conceived.’

‘Professor Pictet, of Geneva, who is now on a visit in this country, Count Rumford, and other philosophers of eminence were present, and seemed not a little gratified with the exhibition of the gas.’[33]

‘Another galvanic course was also given by Mr. Davy, which, being delivered in the fore part of the day, was attended not only by men of science, but by numbers of people of rank and fashion, a proof that the Institution bids fair to promote a taste for philosophical pursuits among those whose wealth has but too oftenfostered the idea that such subjects were beneath the notice of independence.’

At a meeting of managers, held on June 1, it was resolved ‘that Mr. Humphry Davy, Director of the Chemical Laboratory and Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry, since he has been employed at the Institution, has given satisfactory proofs of his talents as a lecturer, and also it was resolved that he be appointed and in future denominated Lecturer on Chemistry at the Royal Institution, instead of continuing to occupy the place of Assistant Lecturer, which he has hitherto filled.’

On June 18 his first paper was read at the Royal Society. It was an account of some galvanic combinations formed by an arrangement of single metallic plates and fluids analogous to the galvanic apparatus of M. Volta.

On June 29 a permanent committee for the general purposes of chemical investigation and analysis was appointed at the Royal Institution, and the Minutes say that Mr. Davy was instructed to prepare himself to give in the month of December next a course of lectures on the Philosophical and Chemical Principles of the Art of Dyeing, or on the Arts of Staining or Printing with Colours, Woollen, Linen, and Cotton Goods. ‘That Mr. Davy have permission to absent himself during the months of July, August, and September for the purpose of making himself more particularly acquainted with the practical part of the business of tanning.’

Davy first went to Bristol, and thence he wrote to his friend Mr. Underwood to join him for a tour in Cornwall.

My dear Underwood,—That part of Almighty God which resides in the rocks and woods, in the blue and tranquil sea, in the clouds and sunbeams of the sky, is calling upon thee with a loud voice; religiously obey its commands, and come and worship with me on the ancient altars of Cornwall.I shall leave Bristol on Thursday next, possibly before; so that by this day week I shall probably be at Penzance. Ten days or a fortnight after I shall expect to see you, and to rejoice with you. We will admire together the wonders of God—rocks and the sea, dead hills and living hills covered with verdure. Amen.Write to me immediately, and say when you will come. Direct, H. Davy, Penzance. Farewell, being of energy. Yours with unfeigned affection,H. Davy.

I shall leave Bristol on Thursday next, possibly before; so that by this day week I shall probably be at Penzance. Ten days or a fortnight after I shall expect to see you, and to rejoice with you. We will admire together the wonders of God—rocks and the sea, dead hills and living hills covered with verdure. Amen.

Write to me immediately, and say when you will come. Direct, H. Davy, Penzance. Farewell, being of energy. Yours with unfeigned affection,

H. Davy.

On November 14 he wrote to Davies Gilbert from the Royal Institution:

I didn’t arrive in London until the 20th of September. On my arrival I found that Count Rumford had altered his plans of absence, and had left London on that very day for the Continent, purposing to return in about two months. He is now at Paris, and in about a fortnight we expect him here.I yesterday ascertained rather an important fact; namely, that a galvanic battery may be constructedwithout any metallic substance. By means of ten pieces of well-burnt charcoal, nitrous acid, and water, arranged alternately in wine-glasses, I produced all the effects usually obtained from zinc, silver, and water.The Bakerian lecture[34]by Dr. Young, our Lecturer on Natural Philosophy, is now reading before the RoyalSociety. He attempts to revive the doctrine of Huygens and Euler, that light depends upon undulations of an ethereal medium. His proofs (i.e.his presumptive proofs) are drawn from some strong and curious analogies he has discovered between light and sound.You should fix your permanent residence in London, where alone you can do what you ought—instruct and delight numbers of improved men. I am, my Friend, yours with unfeigned esteem and respect,Humphry Davy.

I yesterday ascertained rather an important fact; namely, that a galvanic battery may be constructedwithout any metallic substance. By means of ten pieces of well-burnt charcoal, nitrous acid, and water, arranged alternately in wine-glasses, I produced all the effects usually obtained from zinc, silver, and water.

The Bakerian lecture[34]by Dr. Young, our Lecturer on Natural Philosophy, is now reading before the RoyalSociety. He attempts to revive the doctrine of Huygens and Euler, that light depends upon undulations of an ethereal medium. His proofs (i.e.his presumptive proofs) are drawn from some strong and curious analogies he has discovered between light and sound.

You should fix your permanent residence in London, where alone you can do what you ought—instruct and delight numbers of improved men. I am, my Friend, yours with unfeigned esteem and respect,

Humphry Davy.

On January 5, 1802, a syllabus of Davy’s course of lectures on Chemistry was printed at the press of the Royal Institution. He wrote for it the following advertisement:

It is generally admitted that the best method of teaching the sciences is to begin with simple facts, and gradually to proceed from them to the more complicated phenomena.In the following pages, which contain the outlines of a course of lectures on Chemistry, an attempt has been made to employ such a method. Hence the abstruse doctrines concerning the imponderable fluids have been separated from the history of simple chemical action, and the applications of the science from the science itself. The classification of substances adopted is founded rather upon facts than analogies, and in consequence certain bodies have been placed among the simple principles which, from their resemblance to other bodies of known composition, have been generally arranged in the class of compounds. This is an imperfection, but on the principles assumed it could not easily be avoided. And it will be fortunate for the author if a discerning public should not discover many more important imperfections.Part I. ‘The Chemistry of Ponderable Substances.’Part II. ‘The Chemistry of Imponderable Substances.’Div. 1, of Heat or Caloric; Div. 2, of Light; Div. 3, of the Electric Influence; Div. 4, of Galvanism.Part III. ‘The Chemistry of the Arts.’ Div. 1, of Agriculture; Div. 2, of Tanning; Div. 3, of Bleaching; Div. 4, of Dyeing; Div. 5, of Metallurgy; Div. 6, of the Manufactory of Glass and Porcelain; Div. 7, of the Preparation of Food and Drink; Div. 8, of the Management of Heat and Light Artificially Produced.

It is generally admitted that the best method of teaching the sciences is to begin with simple facts, and gradually to proceed from them to the more complicated phenomena.

In the following pages, which contain the outlines of a course of lectures on Chemistry, an attempt has been made to employ such a method. Hence the abstruse doctrines concerning the imponderable fluids have been separated from the history of simple chemical action, and the applications of the science from the science itself. The classification of substances adopted is founded rather upon facts than analogies, and in consequence certain bodies have been placed among the simple principles which, from their resemblance to other bodies of known composition, have been generally arranged in the class of compounds. This is an imperfection, but on the principles assumed it could not easily be avoided. And it will be fortunate for the author if a discerning public should not discover many more important imperfections.

Part I. ‘The Chemistry of Ponderable Substances.’

Part II. ‘The Chemistry of Imponderable Substances.’Div. 1, of Heat or Caloric; Div. 2, of Light; Div. 3, of the Electric Influence; Div. 4, of Galvanism.

Part III. ‘The Chemistry of the Arts.’ Div. 1, of Agriculture; Div. 2, of Tanning; Div. 3, of Bleaching; Div. 4, of Dyeing; Div. 5, of Metallurgy; Div. 6, of the Manufactory of Glass and Porcelain; Div. 7, of the Preparation of Food and Drink; Div. 8, of the Management of Heat and Light Artificially Produced.

He gave his introductory lecture to the morning course on General Chemistry on Thursday, January 21, and to the evening course on Outlines of Chemical Science and Chemistry of the Arts on February 9. The allusion to the Royal Institution with which he ended his first lecture was full of poetry.

‘In reasoning concerning the future hopes of the human species we may look forward with confidence to a state of society in which the different orders and classes of men will contribute more effectually to the support of each other than they have hitherto done. This state, indeed, seems to be approaching fast; for, in consequence of the multiplication of the means of instruction, the man of science and the manufacturer are daily becoming more assimilated to each other.

‘The arts and sciences also are in high degree patronised by the rich and privileged orders.

‘The unequal division of property and of labour, the differences of rank and condition amongst mankind, are the sources of power in civilised life—its moving causes and even its very soul. In considering and hoping that the human species is capable of becoming more enlightened and more happy we can only expectthat the different parts of the great whole of society should be intimately united together by means of knowledge and the useful arts, that they should act as the children of one great parent with one determinate end, so that no power may be rendered useless, no exertions thrown away.

‘In this view we do not look to distant ages or amuse ourselves with brilliant though delusive dreams concerning the infinite improvability of man, the annihilation of labour, disease, and even death; but we reason by analogy from simple facts; we consider only a state of human progression arising out of its present condition; we look for a time that we may reasonably expect,FOR A BRIGHT DAY OF WHICH WE ALREADY BEHOLD THE DAWN.’

The following day Sir H. Englefield wrote to Mr. Underwood from Tilney Street, ‘Davy, covered with glory, dines with me at five to-day. If you could meet him it would give me great pleasure.’

At this dinner Sir Henry wrote a request to Davy to print his lecture.

A friend of Davy’s some years afterwards thus mentioned the success of his lectures to Dr. Paris:

‘The sensation created by his lectures at the Institution and the enthusiastic admiration which they obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the first rank and talent, the literary and the scientific, the practical and the theoretical, blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the young, all crowded, eagerly crowded, the lecture room. His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, hischemical knowledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted experiments excited universal attention and unbounded applause.

‘Compliments, invitations, and presents were showered upon him in abundance from all quarters. His society was courted by all, and all appeared proud of his acquaintance.’

On February 5 he again dined with Sir H. Englefield at his house at Blackheath. Eighteen long years afterwards, looking back through Davy’s career, Sir H. Englefield said of this evening, ‘It was the last flash of expiring nature.’

On May 31, 1802, at the managers’ meeting, it was resolved that Mr. Humphry Davy be for the future styled Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Institution. In July ‘he respectfully requested leave of the managers that he may be permitted to spend a few weeks during the summer in the country. It is not amusement alone that he hopes to gain during his short absence, but he believes that he may be able to collect some information that may be useful in the lectures to be given on Agriculture in the spring, and which may be in other ways connected with the views of the Institution. He will take care that his absence shall not interfere with the regular publication of the Journals, and he will never be so far from town but that he can speedily return whenever his presence may be necessary.’

He wrote to Davies Gilbert, October 26:

Dear Friend,—The anxieties and hopes connected with a new occupation have prevented me from paying sufficientattention even to the common duties and affections of life.... Your correspondence is to me a real source of pleasure, and, believe me, I would suffer no opportunity to escape of making it more frequent and regular.My labours in the theatre of the Royal Institution have been more successful than I could have hoped from the nature of them. In lectures the effect produced upon the mind is generally transitory; for the most part they amuse rather than instruct, and stimulate to inquiry rather than give information. My audience has often amounted to four or five hundred and upwards, and amongst them some promise to become permanently attached to chemistry. This science is much the fashion of the day.I mentioned to you in a former letter the great powers of galvanism in effecting the combustion of metals. I have lately had constructed for the laboratory of the Institution a battery of immense size; it consists of four hundred plates of five inches in diameter and forty of a foot in diameter.I am now examining the agencies of it upon certain substances that have not as yet been decomposed.Have you seen the theory of my colleague, Dr. Young, on the undulations of an ethereal medium as the cause of light? It is not likely to be a popular hypothesis after what has been said by Newton concerning it. He would be very much flattered if you could offer any observations upon it, whether for or against it.We are publishing at the Royal Institution a ‘Journal of Science,’ which contains chiefly abridged accounts of what is going on in different parts of Europe, with some original papers; and, in hopes that its diffusion may become more general, we have fixed its price at one shilling.I am beginning to think of my course of lectures for the winter. In addition to the common course of the Institution, I have to deliver a few lectures on Vegetable Substances, and on the Connexion of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology, before the Board of Agriculture.I am, dear Sir, with affection and respect, yours,H. Davy.

My labours in the theatre of the Royal Institution have been more successful than I could have hoped from the nature of them. In lectures the effect produced upon the mind is generally transitory; for the most part they amuse rather than instruct, and stimulate to inquiry rather than give information. My audience has often amounted to four or five hundred and upwards, and amongst them some promise to become permanently attached to chemistry. This science is much the fashion of the day.

I mentioned to you in a former letter the great powers of galvanism in effecting the combustion of metals. I have lately had constructed for the laboratory of the Institution a battery of immense size; it consists of four hundred plates of five inches in diameter and forty of a foot in diameter.

I am now examining the agencies of it upon certain substances that have not as yet been decomposed.

Have you seen the theory of my colleague, Dr. Young, on the undulations of an ethereal medium as the cause of light? It is not likely to be a popular hypothesis after what has been said by Newton concerning it. He would be very much flattered if you could offer any observations upon it, whether for or against it.

We are publishing at the Royal Institution a ‘Journal of Science,’ which contains chiefly abridged accounts of what is going on in different parts of Europe, with some original papers; and, in hopes that its diffusion may become more general, we have fixed its price at one shilling.

I am beginning to think of my course of lectures for the winter. In addition to the common course of the Institution, I have to deliver a few lectures on Vegetable Substances, and on the Connexion of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology, before the Board of Agriculture.

I am, dear Sir, with affection and respect, yours,

H. Davy.

In April Davy joined Dr. Young in editing the eighth number of the Journal. Count Rumford had edited the three first and Dr. Young the four following numbers. In the third number Davy had given an account of a new eudiometer, and in the fourth outlines of a view of galvanism. In another number he gave an account of a method of copying paintings upon glass, and of making profiles by the agency of light upon nitrate of silver, invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. He says, ‘Nothing but a method of preventing the unshaded parts of the delineation from being coloured by exposure to the day is wanting to render the process as useful as it is elegant.’

On February 24, 1803, an account of some experiments and observations on the constituent parts of certain astringent vegetables, and on their operation in tanning, was read by Davy at the Royal Society.

He was proposed as a Fellow of the Royal Society on April 20, and elected on November 17.

A letter from Coleridge to Mr. Purkis, dated February 17, 1803, from Nether Stowey, thus speaks of Davy at this time:

I rejoice in Davy’s progress. There are three suns recorded in Scripture—Joshua’s, that stood still; Hezekiah’s, that went backward; and David’s, that went forth and hastened on his course like a bridegroom from his chamber. May our friend prove the latter! It is a melancholy thingto see a man, like the sun in the close of the Lapland summer, meridional in his horizon, or like wheat in a rainy season, that shoots up well in the stalk, but does not kern. As I have hoped and do hope more proudly of Davy than of any other man, and as he has been endeared to me more than any other man by the being a thing of hope to me (more, far more, than myself to my own self in my most genial moments), so of course my disappointment would be proportionably severe. It were a falsehood if I said that I think his present situation most calculated of all others to foster either his genius or the clearness and uncorruptness of his opinions and moral feelings. I see two serpents at the cradle of his genius—dissipation with a perpetual increase of acquaintances and the constant presence of inferiors and devotees, with that too great facility of attaining admiration which degrades ambition into vanity; but the Hercules will strangle both the reptile monsters. I have thought it possible to exert talents with perseverance, and to attain true greatness wholly pure even from the impulses of ambition, but on this subject Davy and I always differed.... My book is not, strictly speaking, metaphysical, but historical. It, perhaps, will merit the title of a history of metaphysics in England, from Lord Bacon to Mr. Hume inclusive. I confine myself to facts in every part of the work, excepting that which treats of Mr. Hume;himI have assuredly besprinkled copiously from the fountains of bitterness and contempt. As to this and the other works which you have mentioned, ‘have patience, lord, and I will pay thee all.’Mr. T. Wedgwood goes to Italy in the first days of May. Whether I accompany him is uncertain; he is apprehensive that my health may incapacitate me. If I do not go with him, I shall go off myself in the first week of April if possible.

Mr. T. Wedgwood goes to Italy in the first days of May. Whether I accompany him is uncertain; he is apprehensive that my health may incapacitate me. If I do not go with him, I shall go off myself in the first week of April if possible.

Davy himself wrote, on May 5, to his friend Mr. Thomas Poole:

Be not alarmed, my dear friend, as to the effect of worldly society on my mind. The age of danger has passed away; there are in the intellectual being of all men permanent elements, certain habits and passions that cannot change. I am a lover of nature with an ungratified imagination; I shall continue to search for untasted charms, for hidden beauties.Myreal, mywakingexistence is amongst the objects of scientific research; common amusements and enjoyments are necessary to me only as dreams to interrupt the flow of thoughts too nearly analogous to enlighten and to vivify. Coleridge has left London for Keswick. During his stay in town I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him it was generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired; perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is probably less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind like the images of the morning clouds upon the waters: their forms are changed by the motions of the waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and modified by every sunbeam. He talked in the course of one hour of beginning three works, and he recited the poem of ‘Christabel’ unfinished and as I had before heard it. What talent does he not waste in forming visions sublime, but unconnected with the real world! I have looked to his efforts as the efforts of a creating being, but as yet he has not even laid the foundation for the new world of intellectual forms.When my agricultural lectures are finished I propose to visit Paris, and perhaps Geneva.

Myreal, mywakingexistence is amongst the objects of scientific research; common amusements and enjoyments are necessary to me only as dreams to interrupt the flow of thoughts too nearly analogous to enlighten and to vivify. Coleridge has left London for Keswick. During his stay in town I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him it was generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired; perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is probably less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind like the images of the morning clouds upon the waters: their forms are changed by the motions of the waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and modified by every sunbeam. He talked in the course of one hour of beginning three works, and he recited the poem of ‘Christabel’ unfinished and as I had before heard it. What talent does he not waste in forming visions sublime, but unconnected with the real world! I have looked to his efforts as the efforts of a creating being, but as yet he has not even laid the foundation for the new world of intellectual forms.

When my agricultural lectures are finished I propose to visit Paris, and perhaps Geneva.

On May 10 the first lecture was given before the Board of Agriculture, and five others on succeeding Fridays and Tuesdays. They were corrected and published in 1813.

Later he wrote again to Mr. Poole:

Often, very often, in the midst of the tumults of the multitude in this great city has my spirit turned in quietness and solitude towards you.I hope soon to see you in Somersetshire, where we may worship nature and the Spirit that dwells in nature in your green fields and under your tranquil sky. My communications with you, and Coleridge, and Southey, and other ornaments of the great existing Being have excited feelings which cheer me in the apathy of London, and which make me love human nature.

Often, very often, in the midst of the tumults of the multitude in this great city has my spirit turned in quietness and solitude towards you.

I hope soon to see you in Somersetshire, where we may worship nature and the Spirit that dwells in nature in your green fields and under your tranquil sky. My communications with you, and Coleridge, and Southey, and other ornaments of the great existing Being have excited feelings which cheer me in the apathy of London, and which make me love human nature.

In December 1803 Dr. Dalton gave a course of lectures at the Royal Institution. Early in January he wrote to a friend from the Royal Institution:

I was introduced to Mr. Davy, who has rooms adjoining mine; he is a very agreeable and intelligent young man, and we have interesting conversations in the evening; the principal failing in his character as a philosopher is that he does not smoke. Mr. Davy advised me to labour at my first lecture; he told me the people here would be inclined to form their opinion from it. Accordingly I resolved towritemy first lecture wholly; todonothing, but to tell them what I would do and enlarge upon the importance and utility of science. I studied and wrote for near two days, then calculated to a minute how long it would take me reading, endeavouring to make my discourse about fifty minutes. The evening before the lecture Davy and I went into the theatre; he made me read the whole of it, and he went into the farthest corner. Then he read it, and I was the audience. We criticised each other’s method. Next day I read it to an audience of about 150 or 200 people, which was more than were expected. They gave a very general plaudit at the conclusion, and several came up to compliment me upon the excellence of the introduction. Since that I havescarcely written anything; all has been experiment and verbal explanation. In general my experiments have uniformly succeeded, and I have never once faltered in the elucidation of them; in fact, I can now enter the lecture room with as little emotion nearly as I can smoke a pipe with you on Sunday or Wednesday evening.

Before Coleridge left for Malta Davy wrote to him:

Twelve o’clock, Monday (probably March 1804).My dear Coleridge,—My mind is disturbed and my body harassed by many labours, yet I cannot suffer you to depart without endeavouring to express to you some of the unbroken higher feelings of my spirit, which have you at once as their cause and object.Years have passed away since we first met, and your presence, and recollections with regard to you have afforded me continued sources of enjoyment.Some of the better feelings of my nature have been elevated by your converse, and thoughts which you have nursed have been to me an eternal source of consolation.In whatever part of the world you are you will often live with me, not as a fleeting idea, but as a recollection possessed of creative energy, as an imagination winged with fire, inspiring and rejoicing.You must not live much longer without giving to all men the proof of power which those who know you feel in admiration. Perhaps, at a distance from the applauding and censuring murmurs of the world, you will be best able to execute those great works which are justly expected from you; you are to be the historian of the philosophy of feeling. Do not in any way dissipate your noble nature. Do not give up your birthright. May you soon recover perfect health, the health of strength and happiness! may you soon return to us confirmed in all the powers essential to the exertion of genius! You were born for your country, and your native land must be the scene of your activity. I shall expect the time when your spirit, bursting throughthe clouds of ill-health, will appear to all men, not as an uncertain and brilliant flame, but as a fair and permanent light, fixed, though constantly in motion, as a sun which gives its fire not only to its attendant planets, but which sends beams from all its parts into all worlds.May blessings attend you, my dear friend! Do not forget me; we live for different ends and with different habits and pursuits, but our feelings with regard to each other have, I believe, never altered. They must continue; they can have no natural death. I trust they can never be destroyed by fortune, chance, or accident.H. Davy.

Twelve o’clock, Monday (probably March 1804).

My dear Coleridge,—My mind is disturbed and my body harassed by many labours, yet I cannot suffer you to depart without endeavouring to express to you some of the unbroken higher feelings of my spirit, which have you at once as their cause and object.

Years have passed away since we first met, and your presence, and recollections with regard to you have afforded me continued sources of enjoyment.

Some of the better feelings of my nature have been elevated by your converse, and thoughts which you have nursed have been to me an eternal source of consolation.

In whatever part of the world you are you will often live with me, not as a fleeting idea, but as a recollection possessed of creative energy, as an imagination winged with fire, inspiring and rejoicing.

You must not live much longer without giving to all men the proof of power which those who know you feel in admiration. Perhaps, at a distance from the applauding and censuring murmurs of the world, you will be best able to execute those great works which are justly expected from you; you are to be the historian of the philosophy of feeling. Do not in any way dissipate your noble nature. Do not give up your birthright. May you soon recover perfect health, the health of strength and happiness! may you soon return to us confirmed in all the powers essential to the exertion of genius! You were born for your country, and your native land must be the scene of your activity. I shall expect the time when your spirit, bursting throughthe clouds of ill-health, will appear to all men, not as an uncertain and brilliant flame, but as a fair and permanent light, fixed, though constantly in motion, as a sun which gives its fire not only to its attendant planets, but which sends beams from all its parts into all worlds.

May blessings attend you, my dear friend! Do not forget me; we live for different ends and with different habits and pursuits, but our feelings with regard to each other have, I believe, never altered. They must continue; they can have no natural death. I trust they can never be destroyed by fortune, chance, or accident.

H. Davy.

In October Davy thus wrote to a friend on the death of Gregory Watt, the son of James Watt:

We are deceived, my dear Clayfield, if we suppose that the human being who has formed himself for action, but who has been unable to act, is lost in the mass of being. There is some arrangement of things which we can never comprehend, but in which his faculties will be applied.The caterpillar, in being converted into an inert scaly mass, does not appear to be fitting itself for an inhabitant of the air, and can have no consciousness of the brilliancy of its future being. We are masters of the earth, but perhaps we are the slaves of some great but unknown beings. The fly that we crush with our finger or feed with our viands, has no knowledge of man and no consciousness of his superiority. We suppose that we are acquainted with matter and with all its elements, and yet we cannot even guess at the cause of electricity or explain the laws of the formation of the stones which fall from meteors.There may be beings—thinking beings—near us, surrounding us, which we do not perceive, which we can never imagine. We know very little, but, in my opinion, we know enough to hope for the immortality—theindividual immortality—of the better part of man.I have been led into all this speculation, which you may well think wild, in reflecting upon the fate of Gregory; my feeling has given erring wings to my mind. He was a noble fellow and would have been a great man.His letters to me only three or four months ago were full of spirit, and spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an increasing strength of mind. Why is this in the order of nature, that there is such a difference in the duration and destruction of her works? If the mere stone decays, it is to produce a soil which is capable of nourishing the moss and the lichen; when the moss and the lichen die and decompose, they produce a mould which becomes the bed of life to grass and to a more exalted species of vegetables. Vegetables are the food of animals, the less perfect animals of the more perfect, but in man the faculties and intellect are perfected; he rises, exists for a little while in disease and misery, and then would seem to disappear without an end and without producing any effect.

The caterpillar, in being converted into an inert scaly mass, does not appear to be fitting itself for an inhabitant of the air, and can have no consciousness of the brilliancy of its future being. We are masters of the earth, but perhaps we are the slaves of some great but unknown beings. The fly that we crush with our finger or feed with our viands, has no knowledge of man and no consciousness of his superiority. We suppose that we are acquainted with matter and with all its elements, and yet we cannot even guess at the cause of electricity or explain the laws of the formation of the stones which fall from meteors.

There may be beings—thinking beings—near us, surrounding us, which we do not perceive, which we can never imagine. We know very little, but, in my opinion, we know enough to hope for the immortality—theindividual immortality—of the better part of man.

I have been led into all this speculation, which you may well think wild, in reflecting upon the fate of Gregory; my feeling has given erring wings to my mind. He was a noble fellow and would have been a great man.

His letters to me only three or four months ago were full of spirit, and spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an increasing strength of mind. Why is this in the order of nature, that there is such a difference in the duration and destruction of her works? If the mere stone decays, it is to produce a soil which is capable of nourishing the moss and the lichen; when the moss and the lichen die and decompose, they produce a mould which becomes the bed of life to grass and to a more exalted species of vegetables. Vegetables are the food of animals, the less perfect animals of the more perfect, but in man the faculties and intellect are perfected; he rises, exists for a little while in disease and misery, and then would seem to disappear without an end and without producing any effect.

Another mention of Coleridge occurs in February, when Davy wrote to Mr. Poole:

There has been no news lately from Coleridge; the last accounts state that he was well in the autumn and in Sicily. On that poetic ground we may hope and trust that his genius will call forth some new creations, and that he may bring back to us some garlands of never-dying verse. I have written to urge him strongly to give a course of lectures on Poetry at the Royal Institution, where his feeling would strongly impress and his eloquence greatly delight.

In January 1805 Davy presented his collection of minerals to the Royal Institution. They were valued at one hundred guineas.

On February 4, as Director of the Laboratory, he received an addition of 100l.to his salary.

He had two papers read at the Royal Society, one on a ‘New Mineral, consisting of Alumine and Water,’ and the other on a ‘New Mode of Analysing Minerals containing Fixed Alkali by Boracic Acid,’ and for these and his other papers he received the Copley medal.

In September he thus wrote to Davies Gilbert:

I came from Ireland by the Western Road about a fortnight ago.The Irish are a noble race degraded by slavery and bearing the insignia of persecution—extreme savageness or the lowest servility. Yet they are ingenious and active, and seem to me to possess all the elements of power and usefulness; but amongst the lower orders there is a most unfortunate equality, destructive of all great and efficient exertion, and amongst the higher classes the greatest degree of activity is awakened only by the desire of imitating the English, and that not so much in their virtues as in their luxuries and follies.

I came from Ireland by the Western Road about a fortnight ago.

The Irish are a noble race degraded by slavery and bearing the insignia of persecution—extreme savageness or the lowest servility. Yet they are ingenious and active, and seem to me to possess all the elements of power and usefulness; but amongst the lower orders there is a most unfortunate equality, destructive of all great and efficient exertion, and amongst the higher classes the greatest degree of activity is awakened only by the desire of imitating the English, and that not so much in their virtues as in their luxuries and follies.

And to his friend Poole he wrote, October 9:

I have very much to say about Ireland. It is an island that might be made a new and a great country. It now boasts a fertile soil, an ingenious and robust peasantry, and a rich aristocracy, but the bane of the nation is the equality of poverty amongst the lower orders. All are slaves without the probability of becoming free. They are in the state of equality which the sans-culottes wished for in France, and until emulation and riches and the love of clothes and neat houses are introduced amongst them there will be no permanent improvement.Changes in political institutions can at first do little towards serving them; it must be by altering their habits, by diffusing manufactures, by destroying middle men, by dividing farms, and by promoting industry, by making the pay proportioned to the work. But I ought not to attempt to say anything on the subject when my limits are so narrow.

Changes in political institutions can at first do little towards serving them; it must be by altering their habits, by diffusing manufactures, by destroying middle men, by dividing farms, and by promoting industry, by making the pay proportioned to the work. But I ought not to attempt to say anything on the subject when my limits are so narrow.

Up to 1806 the lectures given by Davy had brought to him repute and to the Royal Institution success. To his high reputation as a lecturer he was now about to add that of a great original discoverer. As early as July 3, 1800, he wrote to Davies Gilbert, ‘We have been repeating the galvanic experiments with success.’ (Seep. 316.) These experiments led him to think that all chemical decompositions might be polar. He electrised different compounds at the different poles of the battery, but he made no great discovery for five years. The assertion that acid and alkali were generated by the action of the voltaic pile in the decomposition of water led him to undertake fresh galvanic experiments in 1806. Before long he was rewarded by his great discoveries regarding chemical electricity, the decomposition of the alkalies, and the composition of chlorine.

It appears from the Laboratory Books that in September he first made experiments on phosphorus with the galvanic spark, and in the last week of October he ‘tried to decompose phosphorus by the galvanic fluid.’ He fused the phosphorus into a tube through which a platinum wire passed. This was the form of the experiment which he made a year afterwards to compel potash to give up its oxygen.

On November 20 his first Bakerian lecture was given at the Royal Society. It had this long title: On the ‘Chemical Agencies of Electricity;’ on the‘Changes Produced in Water by Electricity;’ on the ‘Agencies of Electricity;’ on the ‘Decomposition of various Compound Bodies;’ on the ‘Transfer of certain Constituent Parts of Bodies by the Action of Electricity;’ on the ‘Passage of Acids, Alkalies, and other Substances through various Attracting Chemical Menstrua by Means of Electricity;’ ‘Some General Observations on these Phenomena, and on the Mode of Decomposition and Transition;’ on the ‘General Principles of the Chemical Changes Produced by Electricity;’ on the ‘Relations between the Electrical Energies of Bodies and their Chemical Affinities;’ on the ‘Mode of Action of the Pile of Volta, with Experimental Elucidations;’ on ‘Some General Illustrations and Applications of the Foregoing Facts and Principles.’

This was the first dawn of light regarding the inseparable union between chemical and electrical motions. The two ends of the pile of metals gave in quantity and quality different chemical results, and the chemical products varied with the variations of the liquid into which the poles were put. The identity of chemical affinity and electricity was imagined, and a new division of elements was made into electro-positive and electro-negative, according as the one or other end of the pile attracted them. The kind of polarity of each matter was thought to determine the electrical and chemical actions shown by it.

Napoleon had founded a prize of 2,400l.for a discovery comparable to that of Franklin or Volta, andat the same time he founded with the interest a medal, of 120l.value yearly, for the best experiment on the galvanic fluid. This medal for the year 1807 was given to Davy for this paper, which was then printed. Davy wrote to Mr. Poole, ‘Some people say I ought not to accept this prize, and there have been foolish paragraphs in the papers to that effect; but if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would indeed be a civil war of the worst description; we should rather, through the instrumentality of men of science, soften the asperities of national hostility.’

On January 22, 1807, Davy was elected secretary of the Royal Society.

Dr. Young wrote to a friend:

I believe your pheasants have assisted in bringing my friend Davy into a hundred a year and the office of secretary of the Royal Society. It had never occurred to him to offer himself till I suggested it to him one day when he dined with me. The next day he heard of poor Gray’s death, and, upon applying to the President, he was, after some deliberation, approved, although another person had before been encouraged. If I had not been a member of anilliberalprofession I should have liked the situation myself, but perhaps the public is right in discouraging a divided attention.

At the end of August Davy wrote to Mr. Poole:

I am obliged to be in the neighbourhood of town during the greater part of the summer for the purpose of correcting the proofs for the ‘Philosophical Transactions.’If Coleridge is still with you, be kind enough to say to him that I wrote nearly a week ago two letters aboutlectures, and, not knowing where he was, I addressed them to him at different places. I wish very much he would seriously determine on this point. The managers of the Royal Institution are very anxious to engage him, and I think he might be of material service to the public and of benefit to his own mind, to say nothing of the benefit his purse might also receive. In the present condition of society his opinions in matters of taste, literature, and metaphysics must have a healthy influence; and, unless he soon becomes an active member of the living world, he must expect to be hereafter brought to judgment for hiding his light.

I am obliged to be in the neighbourhood of town during the greater part of the summer for the purpose of correcting the proofs for the ‘Philosophical Transactions.’

If Coleridge is still with you, be kind enough to say to him that I wrote nearly a week ago two letters aboutlectures, and, not knowing where he was, I addressed them to him at different places. I wish very much he would seriously determine on this point. The managers of the Royal Institution are very anxious to engage him, and I think he might be of material service to the public and of benefit to his own mind, to say nothing of the benefit his purse might also receive. In the present condition of society his opinions in matters of taste, literature, and metaphysics must have a healthy influence; and, unless he soon becomes an active member of the living world, he must expect to be hereafter brought to judgment for hiding his light.

Seven months afterwards Davy again wrote to Mr. Poole:

Coleridge, after disappointing his audience twice from illness, is announced to lecture again this week. He has suffered greatly from excessive sensibility, the disease of genius. His mind is a wilderness in which the cedar and the oak, which might aspire to the skies, are stunted in their growth by underwood, thorns, briars, and other parasitical plants. With the most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and enlightened mind he will be the victim of want of order, precision, and regularity. I cannot think of him without experiencing the mingled feelings of admiration, regard, and pity.Why do you not come to London? Many would be happy to see you, but no one more so than your very sincere Friend, my dear Poole,H. Davy.

Why do you not come to London? Many would be happy to see you, but no one more so than your very sincere Friend, my dear Poole,

H. Davy.

The Laboratory Books show that the last week in September 1807 he exposed magnesia upon a glass plate at the positive pole with distilled water. Four days afterwards he put oxide of zinc in a coagulated state round the positive pole.

On October 6 he began ‘a new series of experiments on polarity.’

From the account he gives of one experiment, it appears that he exposed different substances on a glass plate to the action of the platinum wires from a galvanic battery of 100 plates of 6 inches.

He tried the following substances: oxalic acid, dry; succinic acid; oxalic acid; soap; alcohol; water; carbonate of ammonia; nitrate of potash. He wrote, ‘Pure potash, as dry as it can be made, discharges the negative in a remarkable degree and insulates the positive.’

‘Remarkable Phenomena with Potash.It soon—’ Here the laboratory note ends, but his paper in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ says—‘fused, became a conductor, and gave brilliant light with the appearance of flame at the negative wire. When it was slightly moistened, to make it a better conductor, the potash began to fuse at both its points of electrisation; there was a violent effusion at its upper or positive surface, while at the lower or negative surface there was no liberation of an elastic fluid, but a formation of small granules resembling quicksilver, which occasionally burst with explosion.’

He then tried carbonate of ammonia, sulphuric acid and water, soap, and the flame of a candle.

The following day carbonate of ammonia and oxalic acid were tried, sulphuric acid, water, and alcohol.

From the 7th to the 16th no experiments were entered in the Laboratory Book; but to the substancethat produced the gas and globules he gave the name first of alkaligen; for on the 16th he says, ‘Gas from alkaligen in alcohol;’ also ‘gas from ether and gas from oil of turpentine.’

On the 17th he again experimented on this gas from the alkaligen in ether and turpentine, and says, ‘The gas which had been collected from the globules under oil of turpentine by the action of water burnt in contact with the air. Does it (the matter of the globules) not form gaseous compounds with ether, alcohol, and the oils?’

Then he notes the action of the alkaligen on mercury. ‘Forms with it a solid amalgam, which soon loses its alkaligen in the air.’ ‘This amalgam amalgamates with platina and iron, but soon flies off on exposure to the air.’ ‘Query, Does it amalgamate with phosphorus?’

‘Probably whenever it meets with hydrogen it dissolves in it.’ ‘Probably forms an æriform compound with ether.’

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