that in after-life he bitterly regretted their publication. During his engagement, his zeal and intrepidity were signally displayed in attempts to breathe different gases, supposed, or known, to be highly destructive to life, with a view to ascertain the nature of their effects. Two of these experiments, the inhaling of nitrous gas and carburetted hydrogen are remarkable, because in each he narrowly escaped death. But his attention was especially turned to the gas called nitrous oxide, which, upon respiration, appeared to transport the breather into a new and highly pleasurable state of feeling, to rouse the imagination, and give new vigour to the most sublime emotions of the soul. The effects produced, exaggerated by the enthusiasm of the patients, were in fact closely analogous to intoxication; and many persons still remember the curiosity and amusement, excited by the freaks of poets and grave philosophers, while under the operation of this novel stimulus. In 1800 he published ‘Researches Chemical and Philosophical, respecting Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration.’ The novelty of the results announced, combined with the ability shown in their investigation, and the youth of the author, produced a great sensation in philosophical circles; and through the celebrity thus acquired, and the favourable opinion of him formed upon personal acquaintance by several eminent philosophers of the day, he was offered by the conductors of the Royal Institution, the office of Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry, with the understanding that ere long he should be made sole Professor. This negotiation took place in the spring of 1801, and on May 31, 1802, he was raised to the higher appointment.
To Davy, the quitting Bristol for London was the epoch of a transformation—an elevation from the chrysalis to the butterfly state. In youth his person, voice, and address were alike uncouth; and at first sight they produced so unfavourable an impression upon Count Rumford, that he expressed much regret at having sanctioned so unpromising an engagement. The veteran philosopher soon found reason to change his opinion. Davy’s first course of lectures, which was not delivered till the spring of 1802, excited a sensation unequalled before or since. Not only the philosophical but the literary and fashionable world crowded to hear him; and his vivid imagination, fired by enthusiastic love for the science which he professed, gave, to one of the most abstruse of studies, a charm confessed by persons the least likely to feel its influence. The strongest possible testimony to his richness of illustration is supplied by Mr. Coleridge:—“I go,” he said, “to Davy’s lectures to increase my stock of metaphors.” Had this been all, the young prodigy would soon have ceased to dazzle; but his fame was maintained and increased by the success which waited on his undertakings; and, in a word, Davy became the lion of the day. The effect of this sudden change was by no means good. Sought and caressed by the highest circles of the metropolis, he endeavoured to assume the deportment of a man of fashion; but the strange dress sat awkwardly, and ill replaced a natural candour and warmth of feeling, which had singularly won upon the acquaintance of his early life. It is but justice, however, to add that his regard for his family and early friends was not cooled by this alteration in his society and prospects.
Our limits are too narrow to admit even a sketch of the various trains of original investigation pursued by Davy, during his connection with the Institution. Of these, the most important is that series of electrical inquiries pursued from 1800 to 1806, the results of which were developed in his celebrated first Bakerian Lecture, delivered in the autumn of the latter year, before the Royal Society, which received from the French Institute the prize of 3000 francs, established by the First Consul, for the best experiment in electricity or galvanism. In it he investigated the nature of electric action, and disclosed a new class of phenomena illustrative of the power of the Voltaic battery in decomposing bodies; which, in the following year, led to the most striking of his discoveries, the resolution of the fixed alkalies, potash and soda, into metallic bases. This discovery took place in October, 1807, and was published in his second Bakerian Lecture, delivered in the following November. The novelty and brilliancy of the view thus opened, raised public curiosity to the highest pitch: the laboratory of the Institution was crowded with visitors, and the high excitement thus produced, acting upon a frame exhausted by fatigue, produced a violent fever, in which for many days, he lay between life and death. Not until the following March was he able to resume his duties as a lecturer.
During the next four years he was chiefly employed in endeavouring to decompose other bodies, in prosecuting his inquiries into the nature of the alkalies and in obtaining similar metallic bases from the earths, in which he partially succeeded. The resolution of nitrogen was attempted without success. In tracing the nature of muriatic and oxymuriatic acid, he was more fortunate; and proved the latter to be an undecompounded substance, in direct opposition to his own opinion, recorded at an earlier period. This discovery is the more honourable, for nothing renders the admission of truth so difficult, as having advocated error.
On the 8th April, 1812, he received the honour of knighthood from the Prince Regent, in testimony of his scientific merits. This was the more welcome, because he was on the eve of exchanging a life of professional labour for one, not of idleness, for he pursued his course of discovery with unabated zeal, but of affluence and independence. On the 11th of the same month, he married Mrs. Apreece, a lady possessed of ample fortune; previous to which he delivered his farewell lecture to the Royal Institution. At the same time he appears to have resigned the office of Secretary to the Royal Society, to which he had been appointed in 1807. Two months afterwards he published ‘Elements of Chemical Philosophy,’ which he dedicated to Lady Davy, “as a pledge that he should continue to pursue science with unabated ardour.” In March, 1813, appeared the ‘Elements of Agricultural Chemistry,’ containing the substance of a course of lectures delivered for ten successive seasons before the Board of Agriculture.
That part of the Continent which was under French influence, being strictly closed against the English at this time, it is much to the credit of Napoleon, that he immediately assented to a wish expressed by Davy, and seconded by the Imperial Institute, that he might be allowed to visit the extinct volcanoes in Auvergne, and thence proceed to make observations on Vesuvius while in a state of action. He reached Paris, Oct. 27th, 1813. The French philosophers received him with enthusiasm: it is to be regretted that at the time of his departure their feelings were much less cordial. There was a coldness, and pride, or what seemed pride, in his manner, which disgusted a body of men too justly sensible of their own merit to brook slights; especially when, in spite of national jealousy, they had done most cordial and unhesitating justice to the transcendent achievements of the British philosopher. Nor was this the only ground for dissatisfaction. Iodine had been recently discovered in Paris, but its nature was still unknown. Davy obtained a portion, and proceeded to experiment upon it. This was thought by many an unfair interference with the fame and rights of the original investigators. Davy himself felt that some explanation at least was due, in a paper which he transmitted to the Royal Society; and as the passage in question contained what, though perhaps not meant to be such, might easily be construed into an insinuation, that but for him, the results communicated in that paper might not have been obtained, it was not likely to conciliate. There is probably much truth in the excuse offered by his biographer, for the superciliousness charged against him upon this, and other occasions, that it was merely the cloak of a perpetual and painful timidity.
It is remarkable that, with a highly poetical temperament, he seems to have been senseless to the beauties of art. The wonders of the Louvre extracted no sign of pleasure: he paced the rooms with hurried steps, in apathy, roused only by the sight of an Antinous sculptured in alabaster, “Gracious Heaven!” he then exclaimed, “what a beautiful stalactite.”
From Paris, Dec. 29th, he proceeded without visiting Auvergne, to Montpellier, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Naples, which he reached May 8th, 1814. At various places he prosecuted his researches upon iodine; and at Florence, he availed himself of the great burning lens to experiment upon the combustion of the diamond, and other forms of carbon. At Naples and Rome he instituted a minute and laborious inquiry into the colours used in painting by the ancients; the results of which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1815.
The autumn of 1815 is rendered memorable by the discovery of the safety-lamp, one of the most beneficial applications of science to economical purposes yet made, by which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives have been preserved.
