Bence Jones

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men of science, wherever situated, he considered fellow-subjects of one great republic spread over the world. As to his amusements he would say, “It is not the sport only, though there is a great pleasure in successful dexterity, but it is the ardour of the pursuit, the pure air, the contemplation of the fine country, the exercise, all which invigorate the body and excite the mind to its best efforts.” ”

“ Go on, my dear sir, and be assured that you will contribute more essentially to the revival of taste and morals, of energy, industry, benevolence, and prosperity in your favoured country than all the speculators and reformers in the three kingdoms.
When society is arrived at a certain degree of torpid indifference and enervation of mind and body, which are the unavoidable effects of wealth, luxury, and inordinate indulgence, mankind must either be allured or shamed into action. Precepts and admonitions have no effect on them. ”

“ Gradually the ‘usefulness of science to the poorer classes and to the common purposes of life’ ceased to be the prime object of the Institution. The school for mechanics, the workshops, and the models, the kitchens and the Journals, died away; and the laboratory, the lectures, and the library became the life of the new Institution, and its object became ‘the diffusion of knowledge and the application of science to the improvement of arts and manufactures.’
The most memorable scientific incident in the history of the Rumford Institution was its relationship with Dr. Thomas Young. ”

“ May the important undertaking in which the inhabitants of Edinburgh are now engaged—the prevention of that most disgusting and disgraceful of public evils, mendicity—and the formation of a permanent establishment for the instruction and employment of the poor be completely successful, and may it serve as a model for imitation to every city and every town in Great Britain and Ireland. ”

“ I have endeavoured to unite the interest of the soldier with the interest of civil society, and to render the military force, even in the times of peace, subservient to the public good.’ To make soldiers citizens, and citizens soldiers, the soldier was better paid, better clothed, better housed, better taught, better occupied, better amused, and, above all, allowed to earn money and to spend it as he pleased. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of the last thoughts in his note-book, written at Ravenna, shows his mind:
‘Our real knowledge is but to be sure that we know nothing, and I can but doubt if this be a curse or blessing. Those who hope, trust, and believe are surely happier far than those who doubt; and the submissive child, who of his father’s goodness is secure, is far more blessed than the froward one, who sets himself against his powerful will, which, after all his struggles and vain efforts, he must at last obey, rebelling against the love which would have made him happy. ”

“ As they are too indolent to take the trouble either to investigate or to choose, they must be led to acts of useful benevolence as they are led in everything else—by fashion; when you shall have rendered it perfectly ridiculous for a man of fashion and fortune to have the appearance of being insensible to the most noble and most delightful of human enjoyments—that which results from doing good—you will have done more for the relief of the poor than all that the Poor Laws can ever effect. ”

“ That which is beautiful, that which is pathetic, that which is sublime, can never lose its effects. There is one course of passion and feeling in all times and in all countries; we should never cease to consider with admiration and gratitude those models of excellence which have been happily preserved amongst the wrecks [Pg 299] of cultivated nations to be our guides in the Middle Ages, to be our shelter in the storm, and our light in the darkness, the beacons to guide us to pure taste, to correct our wanderings, to bring us to nature and truth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In considering and hoping that the human species is capable of becoming more enlightened and more happy we can only expect [Pg 328] 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. ”

“ A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a thunder-storm may render the blue, limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these effects are rare and transient; in a few hours, or at least days, all the sources of beauty are renovated; and Nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity, no hopes for ever blighted in the bud, no beings full of life, beauty, and promise taken from us in the prime of youth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have this conviction full on my mind, that [Pg 398] intellectual beings spring from the same breath of Infinite Intelligence, and return to it again, but by different courses, like rivers born amidst the clouds of heaven and lost in the deep and eternal ocean; some in youth rapid and short-lived torrents, some in manhood powerful and copious rivers, and some in age by a winding and slow course, half lost in their career and making their exit by many sandy and shallow mouths. ”

“ Profound lectures on metaphysics would be unsuitable to the place; he may do some good if he makes the subject amusing. He will contribute, like his other associates of the Institution, to make the real blue-stockings a little more disagreeable than ever and sensible women a little more sensible. It seems to me, for the interest of general conversation, that these subjects should not be quite so unknown to them as to be thought unintelligible pedantry if mentioned in their company; and the impertinence of those who set up as adepts is the price we must pay for this important acquisition. ”

“ 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 have, notwithstanding my infirmities, attended to scientific objects whenever it was in my power, and I have sent to the Royal Society a paper, which they will publish, on the ‘Peculiar Electricity of the Torpedo,’ which I think bears remotely on the functions of life. I attend a good deal to natural history.
I fight against sickness and fate, believing I have still duties to perform, and that even my illness is connected in some way with my being made useful to my fellow-creatures. ”

“ The managers have no doubt that the friends of science will come forward when the Institution interests the country at large, and they believe the body of proprietors will make any sacrifice of personal interest and advantage to erect a public, national, and permanent establishment devoted to the cultivation of science and to the promotion of every improvement in agriculture, manufactures, and the useful arts of life that may be conducive to the happiness and prosperity of the British Empire. ”

“ You will wish to know what sort of a place we live in. The house is rather an old-fashioned concern, but in a plot of over two acres of land, in the very centre and finest part of Paris, near the Champs Elysées and the Tuileries and principal boulevards. I have already made great alterations in our place, and shall do a vast deal more. When these are done I think Madame de Rumford will find it in a very different condition from that in which it was, that being very pitiful with all her riches.
Our style of living is really magnificent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the sake of those who are not disposed to undertake the labour of following with mathematical accuracy all the steps of the demonstrations on which the doctrines of the mechanical sciences are founded, I shall endeavour to avoid in the whole of this course of lectures every intricacy which might be perplexing to a beginner, and every argument which is fitter for the closet than for a public theatre. ”

“ Rue d’Anjou, Paris, October 24, 1807.
I can do no more, my dear Sally, than simply give you the latest news upon this the anniversary of my marriage, for I am still here, and so far from things getting better they become worse every day. We are more violent and more open, and more public, as may really be said, in our quarrels. If she does not mind publicity, for a certainty I shall not. ”

“ But, after remaining some time in suspense, I found some reason to be apprehensive that those who are at the head of an Institution which professes to be a grand and national establishment were not altogether possessed of that liberality of sentiment and knowledge of the subject necessary for carrying into effect plans which can only be accomplished by those whose industry has made them acquainted with the arts and sciences taught. ”

“ Has the Royal Society degraded its publications into bulletins of new and fashionable theories for the ladies who attend the Royal Institution? Proh pudor! Let the [Pg 237] Professor continue to amuse his audience with an endless variety of such harmless trifles, but, in the name of science, let them not find admittance into that venerable repository which contains the works of Newton, and Boyle, and Cavendish, and Maskelyne, and Herschel. ”

“ I flatter myself I am settled down here for life, far removed from wars and all arduous duties, as a recompense for past services, with plenty to live upon and at liberty to pursue my own natural propensities, such as have occupied me through life—a life, as I try to fancy, that may come under the denomination of a benefit to mankind. ”

“ It suits me better to write away my days in this solitary state of existence in the contemplation of nature than to attempt to enter into London society, where recollections call up the idea of what I was, and the want of bodily power teaches me what a shadow I am. ”

“ It may be useful to observe here that it never was the intention of the managers, nor of any of them, to expose to public view models of machines of all kinds indiscriminately. Considerable alarms have, it is said, been occasioned among some of our principal manufacturers from an idea that the construction of their machines and the valuable secrets of their trade, on which the excellence of their manufactures depend, are in danger of being disclosed by means of the public lectures and exhibitions of the Royal Institution, but the event will show that these apprehensions are without foundation. ”

“ 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. ”