T. E. Thorpe

“ In every part of the world manufactures made from the mere clay and pebbles of your soil may be found; and to what is this owing? To chemical arts and experiments. You have excelled all other people in the products of industry. But why? Because you have assisted industry by science. Do not regard as indifferent what is your true and greatest glory. Except in these respects, and in the light of a pure system of faith, in what are you superior to Athens or to Rome? Do you carry away from them the palm in literature and the fine arts? ”

“ In his attention to the personal duties of his office Davy was unremitting. His addresses were a feature of the session; in these he displayed all the ardour, eloquence and poetical fervour, and, it may be added, all the egoism, which characterised his lectures. He delighted to dwell upon the power and dignity of science, its worth as a mental instrument, and its value to the national life. In his announcements of the awards of the Society’s medals the range of his knowledge, his power of exposition, and his faculty of felicitous expression found ample opportunity for exercise. ”

“ I feel peculiar satisfaction in dwelling upon a subject which is of the utmost importance, not only to the great cause of humanity, and to the mining interest of the country, but also to the commercial and manufacturing interests of the United Kingdom; for I am convinced that by the happy invention of the safe lamp large proportions of the coal mines of the empire will be rendered available, which otherwise might have remained inaccessible, at least without an invention of similar utility, which could not have been wrought without much loss of the mineral, and risk of life and capital. ”

“ THE SAFETY LAMP. Shortly after Davy’s return to England his sympathy was enlisted in a cause which enabled him to display all the attributes of his genius, and to achieve a triumph which, while greatly enhancing his popular reputation, added no little to his scientific fame. To show him how he might be useful, was at all times a certain method of securing his interest; for, like Lavoisier, he was even more the friend of humanity than of science, and to make science serviceable to humanity was, he considered, the highest object of his calling. ”

“ It is no unusual occurrence, for persons who argue in favour of practice and experience, to condemn generally all attempts to improve agriculture by philosophical inquiries and chemical methods. That much vague speculation may be found in the works of those who have lightly taken up agricultural chemistry, it is impossible to deny. It is not uncommon to find a number of changes rung upon a string of technical terms, such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and azote, as if the science depended upon words rather than upon things. ”

“ It would be impossible in the space at our disposal to attempt to give a minute analysis of Davy’s work in connection with agriculture. Its interest now is, for the most part, historical; what is of permanent importance in the way of fact has long since been woven into the common web of knowledge. Its greatest value was not in the novelty or the abundance of its facts, but rather as a closely-reasoned exposition of the relation of agriculture to science, and of the necessity for applying the principles and methods of science to the art. ”

“ It is not necessary to show how the presumptuous youth drove his hobby with all the reckless daring of a Phæton. Phlogiston and oxygen had in turn been the central conceptions of theories of chemistry; phosoxygen was to supplant them. It was to explain everything—the blue colour of the sky, the electric fluid, the Aurora Borealis, the phenomena of fiery meteors, the green of the leaf, the red of the rose, and the sable hue of the Ethiopian; perception, thought, and happiness; and why women are fairer than men. ”

“ 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 its most excellent professor of chemistry. ”

“ To attempt, with insufficient means, to support philosophy, is merely to humiliate her and render her an object of dirision. Those who establish foundations for teaching the sciences ought, at least, to understand their dignity. To connect pecuniary speculation, or commercial advantages, with schemes for promoting the progress of knowledge, is to take crops without employing manure; is to create sterility, and to destroy improvement. A scientific institution ought no more to be made an object of profit than an hospitable, or a charitable establishment. ”

“ But, withal, the essays display38 some of Davy’s best and happiest characteristics. There is dignity of treatment and a sense of the nobility of the theme on which he is engaged; the literary quality is admirable; there is clearness of perception and perspicuity of statement; the facts as he knew them—or as he thought he knew them—are marshalled with ingenuity and with a logical precision worthy of his model and teacher Lavoisier; his style is sonorous and copious, even to redundancy—some of the periods indeed glow with all the fervour and richness of his Royal Institution lectures. ”

“ The sensation created by his first [second] course of 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.78 His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations, and well-conducted experiments, excited universal attention and unbounded applause. ”

“ Davy, at Dr. Beddoes’, who has applied himself much to chemistry, has made some discoveries of importance, and enthusiastically expects wonders will be performed by the use of certain gases, which inebriate in the most delightful manner, having the oblivious effects of Lethe, and at the same time giving the rapturous sensations of the Nectar of the Gods! Pleasure even to madness is the consequence of this draught. ”

“ Davy has impressed you as he has me. I have long wished to write to you about him, for I think I can open a more fruitful field of investigation than any body else. Is it not also his most direct road to fortune? Should he not bring out a favourable result he may still exhibit talents for investigation, and entitle himself to public confidence more effectually than by any other mode. He must be maintained, but the fund will not furnish a salary from which a man can lay up anything. He must also devote his time for two or three years to the investigation. ”

“ Of course, there were persons who said that patriotism should forbid the acceptance of the award. Davy’s own view was more sensible and politic. “Some people,” he said to his friend Poole, “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.” ”

“ Davy once said that “analogy was the fruitful parent of error”; and the whole history of science probably furnishes no more extraordinary instance of perverted analogy, or one more unexpected in its consequences. In another of his lectures he said of the alchemists that “even their failures developed some unsought-for object partaking of the marvellous”—and the statement in this case is even more true of himself. Each phase in the story of this discovery indeed partakes of the marvellous. ”

“ Of the remarkable men of science whom Davy met on these occasions he has left us some slight sketches composed during his last illness, some of which are of interest to the student who desires to know something of the men whose names are as household words in the history of chemistry. Guyton de Morveau—who played such a leading part in the political Revolution of France, as well as in the revolution of its chemistry, and who, with Fourcroy, popularised the doctrines of Lavoisier whilst bringing his head to the scaffold—was found to be a gentleman of mild and conciliatory manners. ”

“ Novelty in itself is delightful, especially to people of rank and fortune, who at that time in consequence of the Continent being closed, and owing to the war, must have been delighted to have had opened to them a new and unexpected source of interest, fitted to amuse those who were suffering from ennui, and to instruct those who were anxious for instruction. The Royal Institution, moreover, was the creation of a large number of influential persons, both in the higher ranks of society and of science. ”

“ The finest spirits, the most exquisite wines, the nectars and ambrosias of modern tables, will be all spoilt by a few drops of bitter extract; and a bad temper has the same effect in life, which is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart, and secure comfort. ”

“ They are limited in their effects, which are directed towards the immutable interests of society. They cannot be made subservient to fashion or caprice; they must forever be attached to truth, and belong to nature. If we merely consider instruction in physical science, this even requires an expensive apparatus to be efficient; for without proper ocular demonstrations, all lectures must be unavailing,—things rather than words should be made the objects of study. A certain knowledge of the beings and substances surrounding us must be felt as a want by every cultivated mind. ”

“ The presence or absence of light in no wise affects the decomposition by heat of minium; chlorine, as he himself subsequently established, contains no oxygen; and a plant is incapable of decomposing pure undiluted carbonic acid, even in the brightest sunshine. But the work of a youth of nineteen, imaginative, sanguine, and impetuous, with no training as an experimentalist, and with only a limited access to scientific memoirs, cannot be judged by too severe a canon. ”

“ After having given an outline of Davy’s investigations “at the particular request of the Managers,” Dr. Dibdin proceeds:—
“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. ”

“ Some might even entertain the apprehension that so extensive a popularity among his contemporaries is the presage of a short-lived fame; but his reputation is too intimately associated with the eternal laws of Nature to suffer decay; and the name of Davy, like those of Archimedes, Galileo and Newton, which grow greener by time, will descend to the latest posterity. ”

“ 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 ”

“ An invisible and impalpable barrier made effectual against a force the most violent and irresistible in its operations; and a power, that in its tremendous effects seemed to emulate the lightning and the earthquake, confined within a narrow space, and shut up in a net of the most slender texture,—are facts which must excite a degree of wonder and astonishment from which neither ignorance nor wisdom can defend the beholder. ”