Part 1

Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL; OR, THE LAST DAYS OF A PHILOSOPHER.

BY SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BART., Late President of the Royal Society.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE. 1889

INTRODUCTION.

Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December, 1778, and died at Geneva on the 29th of May, 1829, at the age of fifty. He was a philosopher who turned knowledge to wisdom; he was one of the foremost of our English men of science; and this book, written when he was dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passed through the light of earth into the light of heaven.

His father had a small patrimony at Varfell, in Ludgvan. His mother had lost in early childhood both her parents within a few hours of each other, and had been adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon in Penzance, to whom, therefore, so to speak, Humphry Davy became grandson by adoption. There were five such grandchildren--Humphry, the elder of two boys, the other boy being named John, and three girls.

At a preparatory school and at the Penzance Grammar School Humphry Davy was a noticeable boy. He read eagerly and showed great quickness of imagination, delighted in legends, when eight years old told stories to his companions, and as a boy wrote verse. There was a Quaker saddler who made for himself an electrical machine and mechanical models, in which young Davy took keen interest, and from that saddler, Robert Dunkin, came the first impulse towards experiments in science. At fifteen Davy was placed for further education at a school in Truro. A year later his father died, and John Tonkin apprenticed him, on the 10th of February, 1795, to Dr. Borlase, a surgeon in large practice at Penzance. Medical practitioners in those days dispensed their own medicines, and the inquiring mind of this young apprentice being let loose upon a store-room of chemicals, experimental chemistry became his favourite pursuit. His grandfather, by adoption, allowed him to fit up a garret as a laboratory, notwithstanding the fears of the household that "This boy, Humphry, will blow us all into the air."

Activity and originality of mind, with a persistent habit of inquiry and experiment, brought Davy friends who could appreciate and help him. When Dr. Beddoes, of Bristol, was examining the Cornish coast, in 1798, he came upon young Humphry Davy, was told of researches made by him, and urged to engage him as laboratory assistant in a Pneumatic Institution that he was then establishing in Bristol. Davy went in October, 1798, then in his twentieth year; but his good friend, and grandfather by adoption, had set his heart upon Humphry's becoming an eminent burgeon, and even altered his will when his boy yielded to the temptation of a laboratory for research. Men also know something of the trouble of the hen who has a chance duckling in her brood, and sees that contumacious chicken run into the water deaf to all the warnings of her love.

At Bristol Humphry Davy came into companionship with Coleridge and Southey, who were then also at the outset of their career, and there are poems of his in the Poetical Anthology then published by Southey. But at the same time Davy contributed papers on "Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light," on "Phos-Oxygen and its Combinations," and on "The Theory of Respiration," to a volume of West Country Collections, that filled more than half the volume. He was experimenting then on gases and on galvanism, and one day by experiment upon himself, in the breathing of carburetted hydrogen, he almost put an end to his life.

In 1799 Count Rumford was founding the Royal Institution, and its home in Albemarle Street was then bought for it. The first lecturer appointed was in bad health, and in 1801 he was obliged to resign. Young Davy was now known to men of science for the number and freshness of his experiments, and for the substantial value of his chemical discoveries. It was resolved by the managers, in July, 1801, that Humphry Davy be appointed Assistant-Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the Chemical Laboratory, and assistant-editor of the journals of the Royal Institution. His first remuneration was a room in the house, coals and candles, and 100 pounds a year. Count Rumford held out the prospect of a professorship with 300 pounds a year, and the certainty of full support in the use of the laboratory for his own private research. His age then was twenty-three. He at once satisfied men of science and amused people of fashion. His energy was unbounded; there was a fascination in his personal character and manner. He was a genial and delightful lecturer, and his inventive genius was continually finding something new. A first suggestion of the process of photography was dropped incidentally among the records of researches that attracted more attention. Davy had been little more than a year at the Royal Institution when he was made its Professor of Chemistry. After another year he was made a Fellow. Dr. Paris, his biographer, says that "the enthusiastic admiration which his lectures obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the first rank and talent--the literary and the scientific, the practical, the theoretical--blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the young, all crowded--eagerly crowded--the lecture-room." At the beginning of the year 1805 his salary was raised to 400 pounds a year. In May of that year the Royal Society awarded to him the Copley Medal. Within the next two years he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. Since 1800 he had been advancing knowledge by experiments with galvanism. The Royal Institution raised a special fund to place at his disposal a more powerful galvanic battery than any that had been constructed. The fame of his discoveries spread over Europe.

The Institute of France gave Davy the Napoleon Prize of three thousand francs for the best experiments in galvanism. Dublin, in 1810, paid Davy four hundred guineas for some lectures upon his discoveries. The Farming Society of Ireland gave him 750 pounds for six lectures on chemistry applied to agriculture. In the following year he received more than a thousand pounds for two courses of lectures at Dublin, and was sent home with the honorary degree of LL.D. In April, 1812, he was knighted, resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution, and "in order more strongly to mark the high sense of his merits" he was elected Honorary Professor of Chemistry. In the same month Davy married a young and rich widow, who had charmed all Edinburgh by her beauty and her wit. Two months after marriage Sir Humphry Davy dedicated to his wife his "Elements of Chemical Philosophy." In March, 1813, he published his "Elements of Agricultural Chemistry." He travelled abroad, and was received with honour by the chief men of science in all places that he visited. When, at Pavia, he first met Volta: he found that Volta had put on full-dress to receive him.

In August, 1815, Davy's attention was drawn to the loss of life by explosions of fire-damp, and by the end of the year he had devised his safety-lamp. The coal owners subscribed 1,500 pounds for a testimonial, gave him also a dinner and a service of plate. In October, 1818, he was made a baronet. In November, 1820, he was elected President of the Royal Society.

His next researches were chiefly on electro-magnetism and the protection of the copper sheathing on ships' bottoms. At the end of 1826 his health failed seriously. He went to Italy; resigned, in July, 1827, the Presidency of the Royal Society; came back to England, longing for "the fresh air of the mountains;" wrote and published his "Salmonia, or Days of Fly-fishing." In the spring of 1828 he left England again. He was at Rome in the winter of 1829, still engaged in quiet research, and it was then that he wrote his "Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher." His wife, who shone in London society, did not go with him upon this last journey, but travelled day and night to reach him when word came to her and to his brother John, who was a physician, that he had again been struck with palsy and was dying. That stroke of palsy followed immediately upon the finishing of the book now in the reader's hand. Davy lived to see again his wife and brother, rallied enough to leave Rome with them, and had got as far as Geneva on the 28th of May, 1829. He died in the next night.

H. M.

A NOTE,

Prefixed to the First Edition, by Sir Humphry Davy's Brother.

As is stated in the Preface which follows, this work was composed during a period of bodily indisposition;--it was concluded at the very moment of the invasion of the Author's last illness. Had his life been prolonged, it is probable that some additions and some changes would have been made. The editor does not consider himself warranted to do more than give to the world a faithful copy, making only a few omissions and a few verbal alterations. The characters of the persons of the dialogue were intended to be ideal, at least in great part such they should be considered by the reader; and, it is to be hoped, that the incidents introduced, as well as the persons, will be viewed only as subordinate and subservient to the sentiments and doctrines. The dedication, it may be specially noticed, is the author's own, and in the very words dictated by him, at a time when he had lost the power of writing except with extreme difficulty, owing to the paralytic attack, although he retained in a very remarkable manner all his mental faculties unimpaired and unclouded.

JOHN DAVY. London, January 6th, 1830.

TO THOMAS POOLE, ESQ. OF NETHER STOWEY IN REMEMBRANCE OF THIRTY YEARS OF CONTINUED AND FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

Salmonia was written during the time of a partial recovery from a long and dangerous illness. The present work was composed immediately after, under the same unfavourable and painful circumstances, and at a period when the constitution of the Author suffered from new attacks. He has derived some pleasure and some consolation, when most other sources of consolation and pleasure were closed to him, from this exercise of his mind; and he ventures to hope that these hours of sickness may be not altogether unprofitable to persons in perfect health.

Rome, February 21, 1829.

DIALOGUE THE FIRST. THE VISION.

I passed the autumn and the early winter of the years 18-- and 18-- at Rome. The society was, as is usual in that metropolis of the old Christian world, numerous and diversified. In it there were found many intellectual foreigners and amongst them some distinguished Britons, who had a higher object in making this city their residence than mere idleness or vague curiosity. Amongst these my countrymen, there were two gentlemen with whom I formed a particular intimacy and who were my frequent companions in the visits which I made to the monuments of the grandeur of the old Romans and to the masterpieces of ancient and modern art. One of them I shall call Ambrosio: he was a man of highly cultivated taste, great classical erudition, and minute historical knowledge. In religion he was of the Roman Catholic persuasion; but a Catholic of the most liberal school, who in another age might have been secretary to Ganganelli. His views upon the subjects of politics and religion were enlarged; but his leaning was rather to the power of a single magistrate than to the authority of a democracy or even of an oligarchy. The other friend, whom I shall call Onuphrio, was a man of a very different character. Belonging to the English aristocracy, he had some of the prejudices usually attached to birth and rank; but his manners were gentle, his temper good, and his disposition amiable. Having been partly educated at a northern university in Britain, he had adopted views in religion which went even beyond toleration and which might be regarded as entering the verge of scepticism. For a patrician he was very liberal in his political views. His imagination was poetical and discursive, his taste good and his tact extremely fine, so exquisite, indeed, that it sometimes approached to morbid sensibility, and disgusted him with slight defects and made him keenly sensible of small perfections to which common minds would have been indifferent.

In the beginning of October on a very fine afternoon I drove with these two friends to the Colosaeum, a monument which, for the hundredth time even, I had viewed with a new admiration; my friends partook of my sentiments. I shall give the conversation which occurred there in their own words. Onuphrio said, "How impressive are those ruins!--what a character do they give us of the ancient Romans, what magnificence of design, what grandeur of execution! Had we not historical documents to inform us of the period when this structure was raised and of the purposes for which it was designed, it might be imagined the work of a race of giants, a Council Chamber for those Titans fabled to have warred against the gods of the pagan mythology. The size of the masses of travertine of which it is composed is in harmony with the immense magnitude of the building. It is hardly to be wondered at that a people which constructed such works for their daily sports, for their usual amusements, should have possessed strength, enduring energy, and perseverance sufficient to enable them to conquer the world. They appear always to have formed their plans and made their combinations as if their power were beyond the reach of chance, independent of the influence of time, and founded for unlimited duration--for eternity!"

Ambrosio took up the discourse of Onuphrio, and said, "The aspect of this wonderful heap of ruins is so picturesque that it is impossible to regret its decay; and at this season of the year the colours of the vegetation are in harmony with those of the falling ruins, and how perfectly the whole landscape is in tone! The remains of the palace of the Caesars and of the golden halls of Nero appear in the distance, their gray and tottering turrets and their moss-stained arches reposing, as it were, upon the decaying vegetation: and there is nothing that marks the existence of life except the few pious devotees, who wander from station to station in the arena below, kneeling before the cross, and demonstrating the triumph of a religion, which received in this very spot in the early period of its existence one of its most severe persecutions, and which, nevertheless, has preserved what remains of that building, where attempts were made to stifle it almost at its birth; for, without the influence of Christianity, these majestic ruins would have been dispersed or levelled to the dust. Plundered of their lead and iron by the barbarians, Goths, and Vandals, and robbed even of their stones by Roman princes, the Barberini, they owe what remains of their relics to the sanctifying influence of that faith which has preserved for the world all that was worth preserving, not merely arts and literature but likewise that which constitutes the progressive nature of intellect and the institutions which afford to us happiness in this world and hopes of a blessed immortality in the next. And, being of the faith of Rome, I may say, that the preservation of this pile by the sanctifying effect of a few crosses planted round it, is almost a miraculous event. And what a contrast the present application of this building, connected with holy feelings and exalted hopes, is to that of the ancient one, when it was used for exhibiting to the Roman people the destruction of men by wild beasts, or of men, more savage than wild beasts, by each other, to gratify a horrible appetite for cruelty, founded upon a still more detestable lust, that of universal domination! And who would have supposed, in the time of Titus, that a faith, despised in its insignificant origin, and persecuted from the supposed obscurity of its founder and its principles, should have reared a dome to the memory of one of its humblest teachers, more glorious than was ever framed for Jupiter or Apollo in the ancient world, and have preserved even the ruins of the temples of the pagan deities, and have burst forth in splendour and majesty, consecrating truth amidst the shrines of error, employing the idols of the Roman superstition for the most holy purposes and rising a bright and constant light amidst the dark and starless night which followed the destruction of the Roman empire!"

Onuphrio now resumed the discourse. He said, "I have not the same exalted views on the subject which our friend Ambrosio has so eloquently expressed. Some little of the perfect state in which these ruins exist may have been owing to causes which he has described; but these causes have only lately begun to operate, and the mischief was done before Christianity was established at Rome. Feeling differently on these subjects, I admire this venerable ruin rather as a record of the destruction of the power of the greatest people that ever existed, than as a proof of the triumph of Christianity; and I am carried forward in melancholy anticipation to the period when even the magnificent dome of St. Peter's will be in a similar state to that in which the Colosaeum now is, and when its ruins may be preserved by the sanctifying influence of some new and unknown faith; when, perhaps, the statue of Jupiter, which at present receives the kiss of the devotee, as the image of St. Peter, may be employed for another holy use, as the personification of a future saint or divinity; and when the monuments of the papal magnificence shall be mixed with the same dust as that which now covers the tombs of the Caesars. Such, I am sorry to say, is the general history of all the works and institutions belonging to humanity. They rise, flourish, and then decay and fall; and the period of their decline is generally proportional to that of their elevation. In ancient Thebes or Memphis the peculiar genius of the people has left us monuments from which we can judge of their arts, though we cannot understand the nature of their superstitions. Of Babylon and of Troy the remains are almost extinct; and what we know of these famous cities is almost entirely derived from literary records. Ancient Greece and Rome we view in the few remains of their monuments; and the time will arrive when modern Rome shall be what ancient Rome now is; and ancient Rome and Athens will be what Tyre or Carthage now are, known only by coloured dust in the desert, or coloured sand, containing the fragments of bricks or glass, washed up by the wave of a stormy sea. I might pursue these thoughts still further, and show that the wood of the cross, or the bronze of the statue, decay as quickly as if they had not been sanctified; and I think I could show that their influence is owing to the imagination, which, when infinite time is considered, or the course of ages even, is null and its effect imperceptible; and similar results occur, whether the faith be that of Osiris, of Jupiter, of Jehovah, or of Jesus."