Chapter VI · LIFE OF DAVY. 1778 to 1829.

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.

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.

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 upwards of 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.

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.

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 such scientific 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 was invited 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 the tout ensemble we 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 often fostered 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.

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 constructed without 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 Royal Society. 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.

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 expect that 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, his chemical 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 sufficient attention 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.

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 thing to 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; him I 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.

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.

My real, my waking existence 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.

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 to write my first lecture wholly; to do nothing, 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 have scarcely 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 through the 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—the individual 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.

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.

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.’ (See p. 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, and at 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 an illiberal profession 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 about lectures, 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.

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 substance that 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.’

On October 19 he made his famous experiment by which he showed beyond question that potash can give up its oxygen. ‘When potash was introduced into a tube having a platina wire attached to it, so (fig.), and fused into the tube so as to be a conductor—i.e. so as to contain just water enough, though solid—and inserted over mercury, when the platina was made negative, no gas was formed and the mercury became oxydated, and a small quantity of the alkaligen was produced round the platina wire, as was evident from its quick inflammation by the action of water. When the mercury was made the negative, gas was developed in great quantities from the positive wire, and none from the negative mercury, and this gas proved to be pure oxygen—a capital experiment, proving the decomposition of potash.’ ‘A small quantity of alkaligen was produced round the platina wire.’

‘The gas produced from alkaligen confined under mercury by the contact of water seemed to be hydrogen nearly pure. Soda decomposed with different phenomena.’

Davy made no more notes on that day.

On the 20th he worked on the gas obtained from sodagen and potagen, and writes, ‘Barytes gave at the oxygen side, when touched with the wire, an appearance like combustion—a bright rose-coloured light. Mem.: To try what effect the hydrogen side will have upon it.’

On the 21st he again worked on the gas, and says the gas from ether, when properly washed, seemed to be pure hydrogen.

He then says, ‘Examined the effect of heat this day and last night of the peculiar substance.’ Then he notes the results, and then he continues, ‘what can be the reason if the metallic globule is composed of A and H (alkaligen and hydrogen)—What is the reason that water and ether and alcohol saturated with potash still act on it so energetically?’

On the 24th he tried the substance with sulphur and phosphorus.

On the 25th, 26th, and 27th he worked on barytes, &c.

On the 27th barytes heated to whiteness did not become a conductor.

On October 30 he was still at work on the gas.

On October 31 he says, ‘When the substance amalgamated with mercury, was distilled in a glass retort, and the contents received over mercury, no air was generated; nor over water till the sublimed substance came in contact with the water, when hydrogen was evolved.’

On November 2 he was still working on potagen.

‘Probably this substance combines with oxygen in two proportions, the red colour owing to this; and it is owing to this that it acts upon plate-glass.’

‘The first oxide a peculiar substance capable of being procured with much difficulty, the second potash.’

In the midst of his discovery the condition of the laboratory made him write in the book ‘some regulations with regard to the state of the laboratory.’

‘1. Everything is to be put in its proper place in the evening, and everything to be arranged for the next day’s operations.

‘2. The fire to be lighted at eight o’clock, and the apparatus for the experiments to be prepared by nine.’

On November 4 he writes, ‘The result of the distillation of as pure a piece (of potagen) as I could obtain seemed to be hydrogene nearly pure.

‘The gas given out from an amalgam of it with mercury likewise hydrogene.’

On November 5 many experiments were made.

On November 6 he still worked on the gas. His notes say ‘on the combustion of sodagen and potagen with oxygen.’

‘Potagen certainly sublimes unaltered at a temperature below red heat. It is twenty times lighter than mercury.’

On November 13 he wrote to his friend Mr. Pepys:

I have decomposed and recomposed the fixed alkalies and discovered their bases to be two new inflammable substitutes very like metals, but one of them lighter than ether and infinitely [more] combustible; so that there are two bodies decomposed and two new elementary bodies found.

The Bakerian lecture was read on November 19, only four days before Davy was obliged to take to his bed by illness. The first sketch of this famous paper was thus made in the Laboratory Book:

‘The substance is analogous to some of those imagined to exist by the alchemical visionaries.

‘Possessing all the physical properties of metals except high specific gravity, it seems to combine with all of them, and form with them truly metallic amalgams; but in all cases it is capable of being separated from them by its greater facility of oxidation.’

Then he gives the action on water and ice.

The theory of its operation upon water is extremely simple.

3. ‘When,’ he says, ‘the peculiar substance was brought in contact with a thin piece of phosphorus and pressed upon, there is a considerable action.’

4. ‘When it was brought in contact with sulphur in fusion in tubes filled with the vapour of naphtha, they combine with varied ignition.’

5. ‘The new substance produces some beautiful results with mercury.’

Then he describes the alloys.

‘The basis of potash, when thrown into the strong mineral acids, inflames and burns on the surface.’

Then he describes the effects with sulphuric acid, and nitrous acid.

‘The action of the basis of potash on fat and volatile oils, and on various bodies, is less violent than on any other class of compound substances containing oxygen, as might have been expected from the small quantity of this principle which they hold in combination.

‘The application of naphtha to its preservation I have already mentioned. On the colourless and perfectly transparent naphtha distilled from petroleum or from brown naphtha at a low heat, and defended from air, it has scarcely any action at common temperatures.’

Then he describes the further action on naphtha.

‘The fat and volatile oils closely related to naphtha in composition resemble it likewise in their habitudes with the basis of potash. The lightest naphtha that I have been able to procure by double distillation was of spec. gr. 770, water being 1,000, and was almost colourless. In this fluid, confined in close vessels, the globules swam for hours without apparently affecting it, but by degrees a yellow film formed upon them, the naphtha became brown at its point of contact, and the globules sank to the bottom of the vessel. After some days the fluid surrounding the globule appeared black and turbid.

‘The fat and volatile oils approach to naphtha in their habitudes with respect to the basis of potash.

‘The fat oils follow naphtha in the order of bodies that slightly act upon it; and the volatile oils, the fat oils; but they all contain sufficient oxygen to render the basis of potash alkaline, if it is exposed to them for a sufficient time and in proper quantities, and that more or less rapidly, according to the circumstances. When naphtha or the oils are exposed to air they soon alkalise the basis. Oxygen is absorbed from the air, and a soap is formed, brown from the decomposition of the compound fluid during the time of the alkalisation. If air be excluded the process is a much longer time in taking place; no gas is emitted in the fixed oils or in naphtha; but in the volatile oils hydrocarbonate is produced in small quantities, and in all these cases charcoal is deposited. In oil of turpentine the process is more rapid than in any other oil I have tried, and this oil contains either water or the elements of water, and perhaps a larger proportion of oxygen to its inflammable matter.

‘Nor ought we to be surprised that these substances have never been produced in nature. Their strong attraction for oxygen renders it impossible.’

‘The division into two poles:

‘The basis of potash, by its strong attraction for oxygen, decomposes all the metallic oxides which I have exposed to it by a gentle heat.

‘The oxides of lead it instantly acts upon, and the metal is revived and alkali formed. In consequence of this operation it cannot be preserved in tubes of flint glass.

‘Are the bases of the fixed alkalies simple bodies? I perhaps shall be asked.

‘But are these singular bodies themselves compounds? Have we reached the limits of our analysis—More capable of combining with oxygene than the basis of water?

‘The basis of potash serves almost as an accurate indication of the proportion of oxygene in bodies and exactly in proportion—camphor, spermaceti, wax, volatile oils.

‘In the course of my inquiries many circumstances arose at first anomalous, but which soon were capable of being explained, and which, when understood, seemed to extend the general facts which had been detailed.’

A long break here occurs in the Laboratory Notes. On November 23, 1807, Davy was taken ill with fever.

On December 7 the Managers’ Minutes say, ‘Mr. Davy having been confined to his bed for the last fortnight by a severe illness, the managers are under the painful necessity of giving notice that the lectures will not commence until the first week in January next.’

On January 18 the managers of the Royal Institution ordered 500 copies of the following paper to be printed:

NEW DISCOVERY IN CHEMISTRY.

January 18, 1808.

For the satisfaction of those proprietors who were not present at the opening of the Rev. Mr. Dibden’s introductory lecture on Wednesday last the managers have obtained and printed the following note of it:

‘Before I solicit your attention to the opening of those lectures which I shall have the honour of delivering in the course of the season, permit me to trespass upon it for a few minutes by stating the peculiar circumstances under which this Institution is now again opened, and how it comes to pass that it has fallen to me rather than to a more deserving lecturer to be the first to address you.

‘The managers of this Institution have directed me to impart to you that intelligence which no one who is alive to the best feelings of human nature can hear without the mixed emotions of sorrow and delight.

‘Mr. Davy, whose frequent and powerful addresses from this place, supported by his ingenious experiments, have been so long and so well known to you, has for the last five weeks been struggling between life and death. The effects of those experiments recently made in illustration of his late splendid discovery, added to consequent bodily weakness, brought on a fever so violent as to threaten the extinction of life. Over him it might emphatically be said, in the language of the immortal Milton, that—

If it had pleased Providence to deprive the world of all further benefit from his original talents and intense application there has certainly been sufficient already effected by him to entitle him to be classed among the brightest scientific luminaries of his country. That this may not appear to be unfounded eulogium I shall proceed, at the particular request of the managers, to give you an outline of the splendid discovery just alluded to, and I do so with the greater pleasure as that outline has been drawn in a very masterly manner by a gentleman of all others perhaps the best qualified to do it effectually (Cavendish?)

‘In the course of the last twenty-five or thirty years the science of chemistry has undergone great changes and has been astonishingly augmented by various important discoveries, amongst which the most remarkable have been the decomposition and recomposition of water and of nitric acid, discovered by Mr. Cavendish, and the consequent knowledge of the nature of metallic calces (now called oxides) with that of acids in general.

‘But although the two fixed alkalies called soda and potash were attacked by the most eminent chemists with every known chemical agent and by every method which the improved state of science could suggest, not the smallest effect could be produced on them; so that the nature of these two common substances remained totally unascertained and became a grand desideratum of chemical science. When, however, M. Volta had communicated to the Royal Society his great discovery of the galvanic pile, and when this had been modified into the more convenient form of troughs by Crookshank of Woolwich, the electro-galvanic power was found by various philosophers to produce surprising effects when applied to different substances, and Mr. Davy in particular distinguished himself in these researches and made a number of valuable experiments and observations, some of the more remarkable of which he communicated to the Royal Society in the Bakerian lecture read in November 1806. Mr. Davy conceived, however, from what he had then accomplished, that much more might be done; and with equal skill and perseverance he performed a new series of experiments, in the course of which, by various means, he again tried the effect of the powerful galvanic batteries belonging to the laboratory of the Royal Institution, and particularly devoted his attention to the two fixed alkalies (soda and potash), with the view of effecting their decomposition and of ascertaining the nature of them by means of that powerful agent galvanism.

‘This great discovery he at length effected; and, to the high gratification of all men of science, he proved that soda and potash are compound bodies, each consisting of a peculiar metal, which has so great a tendency to combine with oxygen that no agent but galvanism can separate them. The two metals, therefore, of soda and potash have always hitherto been presented to us in this state of combination with oxygen, forming the two alkalies. But some of the primitive earths (as they are called), such as barytes and strontites, have many alkaline properties, which induced Mr. Davy to subject them to similar experiments; and in like manner he discovered that these consisted of metallic bases united to oxygen, forming compound bodies analogous to the two fixed alkalies. These may justly be placed amongst the most brilliant and valuable discoveries which have ever been made in chemistry, for a great chasm in the chemical system has been filled up; a blaze of light has been diffused over that part which before was utterly dark; and new views have been opened so numerous and interesting that the more any man who is versed in chemistry reflects on them, the more he finds to admire and to heighten his expectation of future important results. Mr. Davy’s name, in consequence of these discoveries, will be always recorded in the annals of science amongst those of the most illustrious philosophers of his time. His country, with reason, will be proud of him; and it is no small honour to the Royal Institution that these great discoveries have been made within its walls, in that laboratory and by those instruments which, from the zeal of promoting useful knowledge, have with so much propriety been placed at the disposal and for the use of the Professor of Chemistry.

‘This recital [said Dr. Dibden] will be sufficient to convince those who hear of the celebrity which the author of such a discovery has a right to attach to himself; and yet no one, I am confident, has less inclination to challenge it. To us and to every enlightened Englishman it will be a matter of just congratulation that the country which has produced the two Bacons and Boyle has in these days shown itself worthy of its former renown by the labours of Cavendish and Davy.

‘The illness of the latter, severe as it has been, is now beginning to abate,[35] and we may reasonably hope, from present appearances at least, that the period of convalescence is not very remote.’[36]

The recovery of Davy was slow.

On February 22 he attended at the request of the Committee of Managers, and informed them that he should be able to commence his course of lectures on Electro-Chemical Science on Saturday, March 12, at two o’clock, and those on Geology on Wednesday evening, the sixteenth of that month. In his opening lecture he thus spoke of electro-chemistry and its power of analysis: ‘In this it will be seen that Volta has presented to us a key which promises to lay open some of the most mysterious recesses of nature. Till this discovery our means were limited; the field of pneumatic research had been exhausted, and little remained for the experimentalist except minute and laborious processes. There is now before us a boundless prospect of novelty in science, a country unexplored but noble and fertile in aspect, a land of promise in philosophy.’

In the Laboratory Book, probably about this time, he wrote, ‘An instrument for procuring those metals that have not yet been reduced—for decomposing muriatic acid gas, fluoric, &c., and boracic acid gas.’

On April 19 and 20 Davy was again at work with the battery of 520 pair of plates.

He began thus: ‘Indications of the decomposition of muriatic acid. To use every effort to ensure accuracy in the results.’

‘A given quantity of muriatic acid gas was acted upon by dry charcoal; there was continued vivid light in the galvanic circuit. The action was continued for ten minutes; when a little water was added no absorption took place, so that all the muriatic acid gas was decomposed. Some other experiments were made with dry muriate of lime and mercury and with a solution of muriate of lime, strontium, and soda.’

On June 30 he had a paper read at the Royal Society on the ‘Decomposition of the Earths Strontia, Lime, Magnesia, by Means of Iron at the Negative End of the Battery.’ Berzelius having mentioned in a letter that he had succeeded by using mercury as the negative pole, Davy repeated Berzelius’s experiment, and decomposed alumina and silica by an amalgam of mercury and potassium at the negative end of the battery.

On July 11 he laid before the managers of the Royal Institution the following paper:

A new path of discovery having been opened in the agencies of the electrical battery of Volta, which promises to lead to the greatest improvements in chemistry and natural philosophy and the useful arts connected with them; and since the increase of the size of the apparatus is absolutely necessary for pursuing it to its full extent, it is proposed to raise a fund by subscription for constructing a powerful battery, worthy of a national establishment and capable of promoting the great objects of science.

Already in other countries public and ample means have been provided for pursuing these investigations. They have had their origin in this country, and it would be dishonourable to a nation so great, so powerful, and so rich if, from the want of pecuniary resources, they should be completed abroad.

An appeal to enlightened individuals on this subject can scarcely be made in vain. It is proposed that the instrument and apparatus be erected in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, where it shall be employed in the advancement of this new department of science.

The Managers’ Minutes then say:

The above paper having been laid before the board of managers, they felt it their indispensable duty instantly to communicate the same to every member of the Institution, lest the slightest delay might furnish an opportunity to other countries for accomplishing this great work, which originated in the brilliant discoveries recently made at the Royal Institution.

Lord Dundas, W. Watson, Thomas Bernard, and C. Hatchett, the managers present, agreed to subscribe to this undertaking, and ordered that a book be opened at the steward’s office for the purpose of entering the names of all those who may wish to contribute towards this important national object.[37]

The sum wanted was soon raised, and Davy thus described the battery:

‘It consists of 200 instruments, connected together in regular order, each composed of ten double plates, arranged in cells of porcelain, and containing in each plate thirty-two square inches; so that the whole number of double plates is 2,000, and the whole surface 128,000 square inches. This battery was charged with sixty parts water and one part of nitric acid. It gave a spark from charcoal points through four inches of air.’

On July 12 the Laboratory Notes say, ‘Tried the experiments upon the decomposition of the earths by iron wire with the happiest results.’ These were obtained with the battery of only twenty pair.

On July 18 he wrote, ‘In pursuit of the researches on the deoxygenation of diamond and charcoal.

‘Is not diamond the 2-oxide of carbon, charcoal the 1-oxide, the gaseous oxide of carbon a triple compound of hydrogen, nitrogen, and charcoal?’

On September 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 experiments were tried on the production of cold by induced electricity. He tried the decomposition of sulphur ‘with success.’ He tried to decompose mercury in the Torricellian vacuum ‘with success apparently.’

‘Sulphur, after giving out hydrogen by electricity, had lost its yellow colour and was became brownish, but still non-conducting, crystalline, and transparent.’

Numberless experiments were made on the action of potassium on ammonia and on nitrogen.

In November he must have injured his right hand, for his notes are made with his left hand on the 19th and 20th of this month.

On December 15 he gave another Bakerian lecture on New Analytical Researches on Alkalies, Phosphorus, Sulphur, &c. In this paper he says his chief object was to show that there was oxygen in ammonia, and that potassium was not a compound of the metal and hydrogen. He made further experiments also on the decomposition of boracic, fluoric, and muriatic acids.

On December 27, 1808, Davy wrote to Coleridge:

Alas, poor Beddoes is dead! He died on Christmas Eve. He wrote to me two letters on two successive days—22nd and 23rd. From the first, which was full of affection and new feeling, I anticipated his state. He is gone at the moment when his mind was purified and exalted for noble affections and great works.

My heart is heavy. I would talk to you of your own plans, which I shall endeavour in every way to promote; I would talk to you of my own labours, which have been incessant since I saw you and not without result; but I am interrupted by very melancholy feelings, which, when you see this, I know you will partake of. Ever, my dear Coleridge, very affectionately yours,

H. Davy.

On December 28 he wrote in the Laboratory Book, ‘We have tried a number of experiments within the last few days on the muriatic and fluoric acids, heating them with potassium.’

Early in 1809 Davy sent an appendix to his last Bakerian lecture to the Royal Society. In it he spoke ‘of the general results being decisive with regard to a decomposition of nitrogen having been effected.’

In a letter at this time he told his friend Mr. Children ‘he hoped to show him nitrogen as a complete wreck, torn to pieces in different ways.’

On January 18 he wrote, ‘Capital result from the action of potassium on ammonia. Nitrogen was lost. If the nitrogen is to be considered as converted into oxygen and hydrogen, it must be regarded as containing much more oxygen than water; and if we do not adopt this supposition, the only alternative is that water is the ponderable matter which, under different modifications of electro-chemical existence, constitutes oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and the nitrous compounds.’

On February 15 he wrote in the Laboratory Book, ‘Were a description, indeed, to be given of all the experiments I have made, of all the difficulties I have encountered, of the doubts that have occurred, and the hypotheses formed—’ The sentence was not finished, and more time was lost on the investigation.

Throughout the spring and summer more experiments were made on ammonia and nitrogen.

He ignited potassium by the voltaic spark in nitrogen, and found that some hydrogen was evolved and some nitrogen lost; but when the potassium was free from potash this did not occur, and at last he gave up trying to show that nitrogen was a compound of oxygen and a metallic basis.

At the end of August he was working on tellurium and made telluretted hydrogen.

To his mother he wrote in August:

At present, except when I resolve to be idle for health’s sake, I devote every moment to labours which I hope will not be wholly ineffectual in benefiting society, and which will not be wholly inglorious for my country hereafter; and the feeling of this is the reward which will continue to keep me employed.

On September 13 he wrote in the Laboratory Book this verbal picture of his laboratory:

Objects much wanted in the laboratory of the Royal Institution: Cleanliness, neatness, and regularity.

The laboratory must be cleaned every morning when operations are going on before ten o’clock.

It is the business of W. Payne[38] to do this, and it is the duty of Mr. E. Davy to see that it is done and to take care of and keep in order the apparatus.

There must be in the laboratory pen, ink, paper, and wafers, and these must not be kept in the slovenly manner in which they usually are kept. I am now writing with a pen and ink such as was never used in any other place.

There are wanting small graduated glass tubes blown here and measured to ten grains of mercury.

There are wanting four new stopcocks fitted to our air-pump.

There are wanting twelve green glass retorts.

There are wanting most of the common metallic and saline solutions, such as acetate of copper, nitrate of silver, nitrate of barytes—most of these made in the laboratory.

All the wine-glasses should be cleaned.

And, as all operation ceases at six o’clock in the evening, there is plenty of time for getting things in order before night; but if they are not got into order the same night, they must be by ten o’clock the next day.

The laboratory is constantly in a state of dirt and confusion.

There must be a roller with a coarse towel for washing the hands and a basin of water and soap, and every week at least a whole morning must be devoted to the inspection and ordering of the voltaic battery.

For Thursday—i.e. to-morrow—the experiments in the morning are on the excitation of radiant heat and electricity in different gases. For the experiments on Friday, which will be on tellurium, there are wanting very pure hydrogen; two bottles of new, very pure oxymuriatic gas; two new stopcocks cemented into retorts, with stoppers, either green or white; some tubes of this bore or near it, closed at one end and six inches long; a spirit lamp made from a phial of large bore and the tube larger than that at present used.

On September 14 he tried various experiments on the excitation of electricity. The Laboratory Book says, ‘Present in these and the former experiments, Mr. Cavendish, Dr. Herschel, Mr. Herschel, Sir Charles Blagden (not in the second set on electricity); Dr. Wollaston, Mr. Warburton.’

The repulsion of the machine was compared to the repulsion in a partial vacuum, in hydrogen, in carbonic acid, and in rarefied carbonic acid. The former experiments the same day were on the rise of a thermometer heated by a coil of platinum wire in different gases.

On September 21 the Note-Book says:

An Experiment to Decompose Muriatic Acid Gas.—A balloon having three openings, to one of which a stopcock was cemented, and in the other two were corks containing wires, so adapted to each other that a contact might be made. Pieces of well-burnt charcoal were fastened to the ends of the wires. The apparatus, being air-tight, was exhausted and filled with hydrogen; another exhaustion being made, the balloon was filled with oxymuriatic gas from a gas-holder, with which it was connected by means of a stopcock. The two wires being joined to the voltaic apparatus and a contact of the charcoal made, the ignition was brilliant without any apparent combustion; white fumes were presently produced, which in a short time disappeared again, and were afterwards, during the remaining time the experiment was in hand, only formed when two new points of charcoal came in contact, or when the flame played on the copper wire which fastened the charcoal. The light emitted was a brilliant yellowish colour, frequently assuming a fine lake. After an hour’s time the gas appeared unaltered, of its original colour. The higher parts of the pieces of charcoal were covered with a fine greenish-yellow powder, otherwise unaltered.

Tin-leaf thrown in through one of the openings began immediately to form with the oxymuriatic acid gas the fuming liquor of Libavius. When shook it inflamed.

On September 23, 1809, in a letter to Mr. Children, he mentions this experiment, and says ‘it is as difficult to decompose as nitrogen, except when all its elements can be made to enter into new combinations.’

On October 3, among ‘the hints for experiments’ in the Note-Book is this, to detonate together hydrogen and oxymuriatic acid.

Another Bakerian lecture was given, and then he continued his researches on ammonia.

On November 24 ‘experiments to be in progress’ are thus entered in the Laboratory Book:

1. To decompose sulphuretted hydrogen by electricity in an apparatus by which the results can be accurately known.

2. To pass potassium through ignited powdered quartz.

3. To decompose muriatic acid gas by potassium, so as to ascertain the quantity of hydrogen formed.

4. To weigh ammonia, hydrogen, and nitrogen, sulphuretted hydrogen and gaseous fluoric acid, nitrous oxide, and oxymuriatic acid gas.

5. To make a series of experiments upon the ores and products of cast iron.

6. To ascertain with greater precision than has been yet obtained the nature of the acid matter formed in pure water, oxygenated or not.

7. To decompose fluoric acid gas, and to ascertain the source of the hydrogen which it gives by the operation of potassium.

8. To make various experiments on the amalgamation of ammonia, using different amalgams of mercury and different modes of excluding water.

9. To endeavour to bring the ὑδὼρ theory to a test of producing oxygen from water without hydrogen.

10. To decompose muriate of soda and litharge and other bodies that contain no water by electricity, and to see what happens.

In the early part of 1810 the experiments were chiefly on the action of potassium on sulphur and phosphorus.

From analogy oxygen had been considered as the acidifying principle of the muriatic acid, or spirit of salt. It was thought to combine with more oxygen, and then was called oxygenated muriatic acid, although its powers as an acid were weakened and it became more volatile and bleached.

Davy sent two papers to the Royal Society, on this subject. The first was on July 12, ‘Researches on Oxymuriatic Acid and the Elements of Muriatic Acid; with Experiments on Sulphur and Phosphorus,’ and the second, on November 15, was the ‘Bakerian Lecture on Some of the Combinations of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygen, and on the Chemical Relations of these Principles to Inflammable Bodies.’

In the first paper he says, ‘Scheele considered oxymuriatic acid as more simple than muriatic acid, and that it became muriatic acid by union with phlogiston. Berthollet said it contained oxygen. The vivid combustion of many bodies in this gas has favoured the presumption that it contained oxygen very loosely combined, and ready to exert its utmost power of affinity; but it is mere presumption, since heat and light result also from the intense agency of any other combination without the presence of oxygen.’

On July 3 he wrote, ‘Equal parts of oxymuriatic acid and hydrogene, both dried, were detonated. There was a diminution equal to about ¹⁄₁₂, and muriatic gas was formed; and this was over mercury, and some of the oxymuriatic acid burnt the mercury, and there was an excess of ¼ hydrogene. Equal parts of oxymuriatic acid and sulphuretted hydrogene, diminution about ¹⁄₁₂. Muriatic gas formed; sulphuretted hydrogene apparently in excess.’

A most important experiment had been made on September 21, 1809, on the resistance of oxymuriatic acid to galvanic decomposition; and as long previously as April 19, 1808, he had decomposed muriatic acid with a battery of 520 pair of plates.[39]

The experiments which were detailed in the Bakerian lecture read during the absence of Davy on November 15, were made in July and August.

On August 30, after entering things wanted, he wrote in the Laboratory Book:

‘No experiments are to be made or carried on in the laboratory without the consent and approbation of the Professor of Chemistry. The attempt at original experiment, unless preceded by knowledge, merely interferes with the progress of discovery. There are a sufficient number of new and interesting objects which a modest student would wish to pursue, and in which the path is marked and distinct.’

On September 8 he was again experimenting on the decomposition of nitrogen. He wrote, ‘And if it be said that no air and no water were present (in the potassium, boracic acid, and ammonia), the experiment is decisive as to the destruction of nitrogen and its containing the same kind of elementary matter as water.’

To the like experiment, September 13, he wrote, ‘This experiment seems almost decisive on the decomposition of nitrogen.’

Soon after he wrote, ‘Query, Does not the general tenor of the last experiments lead to the suspicion of the decomposition of nitrogen?’

On September 16 he made this note: ‘Objects to be attempted during the next week: To-morrow, oxymuriatic acid pure, to try absorption by two grains of different metals—tin, arsenic, antimony, bismuth, copper, platina, lead, zinc.’

On October 4, when he was about to start for Dublin, he wrote in the Laboratory Book, ‘The principal thing, the laboratory in complete order.’ He was absent from October 4 to the middle of December. No experiments were entered until October 27; then there are some on oxymuriatic acid by E. Davy.

On November 15 the action of oxymuriatic gas on dried nitrous gas was repeated.

The next experiment was on November 24. ‘Two grains of silver were entirely converted into horn-silver; the absorption of chlorine gas was ⁹⁄₁₀ of a cubic inch.’ This was the first use of the word CHLORINE in the Note-Book; it occurs daily afterwards. Oxymuriatic gas continued the chief subject of the experiments in the laboratory up to the end of February in the following year.

This year Davy was invited to deliver a course of lectures on Electro-Chemical Science, and another course of six lectures on the Application of Chemistry to Agriculture, in the new laboratory of the Dublin Society. Having obtained permission as secretary to be absent from the meetings of the Royal Society, he commenced his course on November 8 and finished it on the 29th, and the Society requested his acceptance of 500 guineas.

In 1811 he again delivered two courses, one on the Elements of Chemical Philosophy and the other on Geology. For these he received 750l., and Trinity College made him a Doctor of Laws. Such consideration for lectures on this side of the Atlantic sounds fabulous.

He wrote to his mother:

Balina, Ireland, October 24, 1811.

The laboratory in Dublin, which has been enlarged, so as to hold 550 people, will not hold half the persons who desire to hear my lectures. The 550 tickets issued for the course by the Dublin Society at two guineas each were all disposed of the first week, and I am told now that from ten to twenty guineas are offered for a ticket.

This is merely for your eye; it may please you to know that your son is not unpopular or useless. Every person here, from the highest to the lowest, shows me every attention and kindness.

I shall come to see you as soon as I can. I hear with infinite delight of your health, and I hope Heaven will continue to preserve and bless a mother who deserves so well of her children.

I am, your very affectionate Son, H. Davy.

During 1811 he made the acquaintance of Mrs. Appreece, the daughter and heiress of Charles Carr, of Kelso, and about the end of the year probably he wrote to his mother:

My dear Mother,—You possibly may have heard reports of my intended marriage. Till within the last few days it was mere report. It is, I trust, now a settled arrangement. I am the happiest of men in the hope of a union with a woman equally distinguished for virtues, talent, and accomplishments.

You, I am sure, will sympathise in my happiness. I believe I should never have married but for this charming woman, whose views and whose tastes coincide with my own, and who is eminently qualified to promote my best efforts and objects in life.

I am, your affectionate Son, H. Davy.

He wrote to his brother, at that time a medical student at Edinburgh:

My dear John,—Many thanks for your last letter. I have been very miserable. The lady whom I love best of any human being has been very ill. She is now well and I am happy. Mrs. Appreece has consented to marry me, and when the event takes place I shall not envy kings, princes, or potentates.

I am, my dear Brother, ever most affectionately yours,

H. Davy.

The Laboratory Note-Book at this time contains very little work.

On February 21, 1811, he had a paper read to the Royal Society on a ‘Combination of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygen Gas, called Euchlorine.’

In July the action of chlorine on carbonic oxide, exposed for hours to bright sunshine, was examined. He wrote, ‘The new gas seems to consist of equal volumes of chlorine and carbonic oxide condensed to one volume.’

On August 7 Davy wrote in the Laboratory Book, ‘To get nitrous oxide, nitrous gas, and very pure chlorine for experiments. To try to decompose nitrogen or to combine it with chlorine.’

On the 10th the exposure to the light had been continued two days without result.

In the middle of August he experimented on the action of potassium on silicated fluoric gas.

From September 2 to December 20 there are no entries in the Laboratory Book. That day—the first after his return from Ireland—there are experiments on the electrolization of water.

Early in the following year Sir Joseph Banks wrote to Sir George Staunton (in China):

We are going on here as usual, but I think the taste for science is on the increase. The Royal Society has been well supplied with papers, and continues to be so. Davy, our secretary, is said to be on the point of marrying a rich and handsome widow, who has fallen in love with science and marries him in order to obtain a footing in the academic groves; her name is Apreece, the daughter of Mr. Carr, who made a fortune in India, and the niece of Dr. Carr, of Northampton. If this takes place, it will give to science a kind of new éclat; we want nothing so much as the countenance of the ladies to increase our popularity.

Very little laboratory work was done in 1812. It appears from Davy’s notes that a few experiments on euchlorine were made in January. In February he was again working on sulphur and phosphorus and chlorine. In March he was experimenting on borum with oxygen, and with chlorine.

In August an experiment was made to ascertain whether there is, according to the received belief, a neutral part in the voltaic circle.

The battery consisted of forty double plates, thus arranged: Each trough, excepting the end ones, was separately connected with a glassful of mercury by polished copper wire, and each pair of glasses was connected by very fine polished iron wire.

The effects took place at the moment of contact at all the wires, so that there could have been no neutral point.

For the last time, after innumerable failures, he returned to the decomposition of nitrogen.

On August 13 ‘experiment very cautiously made of the action of potassium on nitrogene. Light green when mercury is employed, red when potassium.’

On October 23 the Laboratory Book says:

‘A series of experiments to attempt to decompose hydrofluoric acid, and to ascertain the constitution of the fluoric combinations.

‘1. To obtain pure hydrofluoric acid.

‘2. To obtain silicofluoric acid gas, and to decompose it by potassium and by potash, and to ascertain the quantity of fluate of lime they will give.

‘3. To make pure prussic acid.

‘4. To act upon pure prussic acid by chlorine.’

On November 5 a new detonating compound was formed; this was the chloride of nitrogen.

This year Davy gave his last course of lectures on Chemical Philosophy at the Royal Institution.

An account of four of these lectures ‘was taken off from notes by Mr. Faraday.’ The subjects were Radiant Matter, Chlorine, Simple Inflammables, and Metals. After the report of each lecture he gave the experiments as a sequel, illustrated with drawings; the whole made a small quarto of 386 pages, with an index of twenty-five pages. The volume was bound by Mr. Faraday, and was sent to Davy as an evidence of Faraday’s ‘knowledge, diligence, and order,’ when he asked for an engagement at the Royal Institution.