Part 18

"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....

"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; and I trust they can never be destroyed by fortune, chance, or accident."

Thus his sweet, kindly nature was an inspiration to others. He believed in amiability. He said, later, of temper in the marriage state: "Upon points of affection it is only for the parties themselves to form just opinions of what is really necessary to ensure the felicity of the marriage state. Riches appear to me not at all necessary; but competence, I think, is; and after this more depends upon the temper of the individual than upon personal or even intellectual circumstances. 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."

When Davy was twenty-three, a brilliant opening came to him; came as it did to Cuvier, Newton, and others, through the influence of a friend. Count Rumford had been instrumental in founding the Royal Philosophical Institution for the diffusion of a knowledge of science. Through his works on heat, nitrous oxide, and galvanic electricity, Davy had made the acquaintance of Dr. Hope, the distinguished professor of chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. He recommended Davy to Count Rumford, as fitted for the professorship of chemistry in the Royal Institution, an appointment, Davy wrote to his mother, "as honorable as any scientific appointment in the kingdom, with an income of at least five hundred pounds a year." He had evidently kept the "look towards future greatness" in his heart.

Six weeks after his arrival in London, in the spring of 1801, Davy gave his first lecture, upon the history of galvanism, and the different modes of accumulating galvanic influence. "The sensation created by his first course of lectures at the Institution," says the Philosophical Magazine, "and the enthusiastic admiration which they obtained, is at this period hardly 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." He usually wrote his lecture the day before he delivered it, on this day dining in his own room, generally on fish. His manner in speaking was very animated, but natural. He believed in enthusiasm. He said, "Great powers have never been exerted independent of strong feelings. The rapid arrangement of ideas from their various analogies to the equally rapid comparisons of these analogies, with facts uniformly occurring during the progress of discovery, have existed only in those minds where the agency of strong and various motives is perceived--of motives modifying each other, mingling with each other, and producing that fever of emotion which is the joy of existence and the consciousness of life."

Coleridge used to say, "I attend Davy's lectures to increase my stock of metaphors."

In the spacious and well supplied laboratory of the Institution, in making his experiments, says his brother, "his zeal amounted to enthusiasm, which he more or less imparted to those around him. With cheerful voice and countenance, and a hand as ready to manipulate as his mind was quick to contrive, he was indefatigable in his exertions. He was delighted with success, but not discouraged by failure; and he bore failures and accidents in experiments with a patience and forbearance, even when owing to the awkwardness of assistants, which could hardly have been expected from a person of his ardent temperament."

He was very happy in these years of work. Says his brother: "In going to bed, and rising, and sometimes in the dead of night, I used to hear him, in a loud voice, reciting favorite passages in prose or verse, or declaiming some composition of his own, or humming some angler's song."

He spent his evenings often in society, but wrote to a friend concerning himself: "Be not alarmed, my dear friend, as to the effect of worldly society on my mind.... There are in the intellectual being of all men paramount 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 vivify."

During his vacations he explored most parts of Great Britain, the Hebrides, and Ireland, studying the geological structure, collecting agricultural knowledge, and making sketches. He never hesitated to ask questions, and often the miners and farmers thought they had never seen a person so inquisitive.

In his early years at the Institution he was asked to investigate astringent vegetables in connection with tanning. He entered the work with his usual ardor; visited tan-yards, and made the acquaintance of practical farmers. In 1802 he began to deliver, at the request of the Board of Agriculture, a course of lectures, "On the Connection of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology." He had made himself acquainted with the different kinds of soil and the various methods of agriculture. For ten years he delivered these lectures at the meetings of the Board. They were published in book form, and translated into almost every European language.

"We feel grateful," said the Edinburgh Review, "for his having thus suspended for a time the labors of original investigation, in order to apply the principles and discoveries of his favorite science to the illustration and improvement of an art which, above all others, ministers to the wants and comforts of man."

He now continued his work with the voltaic pile or battery. If water could be decomposed by it, why not some substances heretofore regarded as simple or elementary bodies?

In October, 1806, he discovered that potash and soda can be decomposed, with potassium and sodium as resultant bases.

When he saw the minute globules of potassium burst through the crust of potash, and take fire as they entered the atmosphere, he is said to have bounded about the room in ecstatic delight, some time elapsing before he could compose himself sufficiently to go on with his experiment.

He had worked so constantly that he became very ill, and for several weeks his life was despaired of. All London was agitated over the expected death of the young chemist. Bulletins were prepared by the physicians morning, noon, and night, for the scores who came to ask concerning him.

When he had recovered and returned to his work, the Royal Institution provided him with a voltaic battery of six hundred double plates of four inches square, four times as powerful as any that had been constructed, and not long after, one of two thousand plates. Scientific papers were constantly coming from his pen. He soon decomposed boracic acid with the battery. By heating boron in oxygen, it burnt, and was reconverted into boracic acid. In his experiments with muriatic acid gas he found chlorine to be a simple substance, and discovered euchlorine, a compound of chlorine and oxygen.

He had already been made a fellow of the Royal Society at twenty-five, and at twenty-nine one of the secretaries. His lectures were crowded, as ever, by a thousand people. The Dublin Society now invited him to give courses of lectures in 1810 and 1811, which he did, ticket-holders each paying ten dollars for a course. So difficult was it to gain admission to the lectures that many offered from fifty to a hundred dollars for a course ticket!

He writes these facts to his mother, and adds, "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."

Trinity College, Dublin, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. Cuvier said of him: "Davy, not yet thirty-two, in the opinion of all who could judge of such labors, held the first rank among the chemists of this or of any other age." The National Institute of France had awarded him the prize given by Napoleon to the greatest discovery by the means of galvanism.

And yet all this fame and honor had been won by incessant labor. He writes to his mother: "At present, except when I resolve to be idle for health's sake, I devote every moment to labors 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."

His brother John, who had been for three years at the Royal Institution, now went to Edinburgh to study medicine. Davy writes him: "Let no difficulties alarm you, you may be what you please. Trust me, I know what your powers are. Preserve the dignity of your mind, and the purity of your moral conduct. You set sail with a fair wind on the ocean of life. You have great talents, good feelings, and an unbroken and an uncorrupted spirit. Move straight forward on to moral and intellectual excellence. Let no example induce you to violate decorum,--no ridicule prevent you from guarding against sensuality or vice. Live in such a way that you can always say, the whole world may know what I am doing."

In 1812 Davy was knighted by the Prince Regent. Only thirty-three, and he had come to great renown!

And now an important change was to come into his life. During the preceding year he had become acquainted with Mrs. Appreece, towards whom esteem gradually ripened into affection. When their marriage had been decided upon, he wrote his mother: "I am the happiest of men, in the hope of a union with a woman equally distinguished for virtues, talents, and accomplishments.... You, I am sure, will sympathize 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."

To his brother he writes: "I have been very miserable. The lady whom I love best of any human beings 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 going to be married to-morrow; and I have a fair prospect of happiness, with the most amiable and intellectual woman I have ever known." How love idealizes all things, makes a new heaven and a new earth for us! He found in her the two needed qualities for happiness; amiability, without which the life of a man is usually made wretched, and intellectuality, without which a cultivated man can have little companionship in a wife.

The marriage seems to have been a happy one, for he writes to John later: "Lady D. is a noble creature, and every day adds to my contentment by the powers of her understanding, and her amiable and delightful tones of feeling."

Like the wife of Herschel, she was a wealthy widow, so that after his marriage Davy was enabled to travel, and devote himself wholly to original investigation. He resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution after twelve most useful years.