Chapter XVI: Part III: ‘The Chemistry of the Arts.’ Div. 1, of Agriculture; Div (1)

2, of Tanning; Div. 3, of Bleaching; Div. 4, of Dyeing; Div. 5, of
Metallurgy; Div. 6, of the Manufactory of Glass and Porcelain; Div.
7, of the Preparation of Food and Drink; Div. 8, of the Management
of Heat and Light Artificially Produced.

He gave his introductory lecture to the morning course on General Chemistry on Thursday, January 21, and to the evening course on Outlines of Chemical Science and Chemistry of the Arts on February 9. The allusion to the Royal Institution with which he ended his first lecture was full of poetry.

‘In reasoning concerning the future hopes of the human species we may look forward with confidence to a state of society in which the different orders and classes of men will contribute more effectually to the support of each other than they have hitherto done. 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. 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, 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.

‘In this view we do not look to distant ages or amuse ourselves with brilliant though delusive dreams concerning the infinite improvability of man, the annihilation of labour, disease, and even death; but we reason by analogy from simple facts; we consider only a state of human progression arising out of its present condition; we look for a time that we may reasonably expect, FOR A BRIGHT DAY OF WHICH WE ALREADY BEHOLD THE DAWN.’

The following day Sir H. Englefield wrote to Mr. Underwood from Tilney Street, ‘Davy, covered with glory, dines with me at five to-day. If you could meet him it would give me great pleasure.’

At this dinner Sir Henry wrote a request to Davy to print his lecture.

A friend of Davy’s some years afterwards thus mentioned the success of his lectures to Dr. Paris:

‘The sensation created by his 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. 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.’

On February 5 he again dined with Sir H. Englefield at his house at Blackheath. Eighteen long years afterwards, looking back through Davy’s career, Sir H. Englefield said of this evening, ‘It was the last flash of expiring nature.’

On May 31, 1802, at the managers’ meeting, it was resolved that Mr. Humphry Davy be for the future styled Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Institution. In July ‘he respectfully requested leave of the managers that he may be permitted to spend a few weeks during the summer in the country. It is not amusement alone that he hopes to gain during his short absence, but he believes that he may be able to collect some information that may be useful in the lectures to be given on Agriculture in the spring, and which may be in other ways connected with the views of the Institution. He will take care that his absence shall not interfere with the regular publication of the Journals, and he will never be so far from town but that he can speedily return whenever his presence may be necessary.’

He wrote to Davies Gilbert, October 26:

DEAR FRIEND,--The anxieties and hopes connected with a new
occupation have prevented me from paying sufficient attention even
to the common duties and affections of life.... Your correspondence
is to me a real source of pleasure, and, believe me, I would suffer
no opportunity to escape of making it more frequent and regular.

My labours in the theatre of the Royal Institution have been more
successful than I could have hoped from the nature of them. In
lectures the effect produced upon the mind is generally transitory;
for the most part they amuse rather than instruct, and stimulate
to inquiry rather than give information. My audience has often
amounted to four or five hundred and upwards, and amongst them some
promise to become permanently attached to chemistry. This science
is much the fashion of the day.

I mentioned to you in a former letter the great powers of
galvanism in effecting the combustion of metals. I have lately had
constructed for the laboratory of the Institution a battery of
immense size; it consists of four hundred plates of five inches in
diameter and forty of a foot in diameter.

I am now examining the agencies of it upon certain substances that
have not as yet been decomposed.

* * * * *

Have you seen the theory of my colleague, Dr. Young, on the
undulations of an ethereal medium as the cause of light? It is
not likely to be a popular hypothesis after what has been said by
Newton concerning it. He would be very much flattered if you could
offer any observations upon it, whether for or against it.

* * * * *

We are publishing at the Royal Institution a ‘Journal of Science,’
which contains chiefly abridged accounts of what is going on in
different parts of Europe, with some original papers; and, in hopes
that its diffusion may become more general, we have fixed its price
at one shilling.

* * * * *

I am beginning to think of my course of lectures for the winter.
In addition to the common course of the Institution, I have to
deliver a few lectures on Vegetable Substances, and on the
Connexion of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology, before the Board
of Agriculture.

* * * * *

I am, dear Sir, with affection and respect, yours,
H. DAVY.

In April Davy joined Dr. Young in editing the eighth number of the Journal. Count Rumford had edited the three first and Dr. Young the four following numbers. In the third number Davy had given an account of a new eudiometer, and in the fourth outlines of a view of galvanism. In another number he gave an account of a method of copying paintings upon glass, and of making profiles by the agency of light upon nitrate of silver, invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. He says, ‘Nothing but a method of preventing the unshaded parts of the delineation from being coloured by exposure to the day is wanting to render the process as useful as it is elegant.’

On February 24, 1803, an account of some experiments and observations on the constituent parts of certain astringent vegetables, and on their operation in tanning, was read by Davy at the Royal Society.

He was proposed as a Fellow of the Royal Society on April 20, and elected on November 17.

A letter from Coleridge to Mr. Purkis, dated February 17, 1803, from Nether Stowey, thus speaks of Davy at this time:

I rejoice in Davy’s progress. There are three suns recorded in
Scripture--Joshua’s, that stood still; Hezekiah’s, that went
backward; and David’s, that went forth and hastened on his course
like a bridegroom from his chamber. May our friend prove the
latter! It is a melancholy thing to see a man, like the sun in
the close of the Lapland summer, meridional in his horizon, or
like wheat in a rainy season, that shoots up well in the stalk,
but does not kern. As I have hoped and do hope more proudly of
Davy than of any other man, and as he has been endeared to me
more than any other man by the being a thing of hope to me (more,
far more, than myself to my own self in my most genial moments),
so of course my disappointment would be proportionably severe.
It were a falsehood if I said that I think his present situation
most calculated of all others to foster either his genius or the
clearness and uncorruptness of his opinions and moral feelings. I
see two serpents at the cradle of his genius--dissipation with a
perpetual increase of acquaintances and the constant presence of
inferiors and devotees, with that too great facility of attaining
admiration which degrades ambition into vanity; but the Hercules
will strangle both the reptile monsters. I have thought it possible
to exert talents with perseverance, and to attain true greatness
wholly pure even from the impulses of ambition, but on this subject
Davy and I always differed.... My book is not, strictly speaking,
metaphysical, but historical. It, perhaps, will merit the title of
a history of metaphysics in England, from Lord Bacon to Mr. Hume
inclusive. I confine myself to facts in every part of the work,
excepting that which treats of Mr. Hume; _him_ I have assuredly
besprinkled copiously from the fountains of bitterness and
contempt. As to this and the other works which you have mentioned,
‘have patience, lord, and I will pay thee all.’

Mr. T. Wedgwood goes to Italy in the first days of May. Whether I
accompany him is uncertain; he is apprehensive that my health may
incapacitate me. If I do not go with him, I shall go off myself in
the first week of April if possible.

Davy himself wrote, on May 5, to his friend Mr. Thomas Poole:

Be not alarmed, my dear friend, as to the effect of worldly society
on my mind. 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. During his stay in town I saw him seldomer than
usual; when I did see him it was generally in the midst of large
companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His
eloquence is unimpaired; perhaps it is softer and stronger. His
will is probably less than ever commensurate with his ability.
Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind like the images
of the morning clouds upon the waters: their forms are changed by
the motions of the waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and
modified by every sunbeam. He talked in the course of one hour of
beginning three works, and he recited the poem of ‘Christabel’
unfinished and as I had before heard it. What talent does he not
waste in forming visions sublime, but unconnected with the real
world! I have looked to his efforts as the efforts of a creating
being, but as yet he has not even laid the foundation for the new
world of intellectual forms.

When my agricultural lectures are finished I propose to visit
Paris, and perhaps Geneva.

On May 10 the first lecture was given before the Board of Agriculture, and five others on succeeding Fridays and Tuesdays. They were corrected and published in 1813.

Later he wrote again to Mr. Poole:

Often, very often, in the midst of the tumults of the multitude
in this great city has my spirit turned in quietness and solitude
towards you.

I hope soon to see you in Somersetshire, where we may worship
nature and the Spirit that dwells in nature in your green fields
and under your tranquil sky. My communications with you, and
Coleridge, and Southey, and other ornaments of the great existing
Being have excited feelings which cheer me in the apathy of London,
and which make me love human nature.

In December 1803 Dr. Dalton gave a course of lectures at the Royal Institution. Early in January he wrote to a friend from the Royal Institution:

I was introduced to Mr. Davy, who has rooms adjoining mine;
he is a very agreeable and intelligent young man, and we have
interesting conversations in the evening; the principal failing in
his character as a philosopher is that he does not smoke. Mr. Davy
advised me to labour at my first lecture; he told me the people
here would be inclined to form their opinion from it. Accordingly
I resolved to _write_ my first lecture wholly; to _do_ nothing,
but to tell them what I would do and enlarge upon the importance
and utility of science. I studied and wrote for near two days,
then calculated to a minute how long it would take me reading,
endeavouring to make my discourse about fifty minutes. The evening
before the lecture Davy and I went into the theatre; he made me
read the whole of it, and he went into the farthest corner. Then he
read it, and I was the audience. We criticised each other’s method.
Next day I read it to an audience of about 150 or 200 people, which
was more than were expected. They gave a very general plaudit at
the conclusion, and several came up to compliment me upon the
excellence of the introduction. Since that I have scarcely written
anything; all has been experiment and verbal explanation. In
general my experiments have uniformly succeeded, and I have never
once faltered in the elucidation of them; in fact, I can now enter
the lecture room with as little emotion nearly as I can smoke a
pipe with you on Sunday or Wednesday evening.

Before Coleridge left for Malta Davy wrote to him:

Twelve o’clock, Monday (probably March 1804).

MY DEAR COLERIDGE,--My mind is disturbed and my body harassed
by many labours, yet I cannot suffer you to depart without
endeavouring to express to you some of the unbroken higher feelings
of my spirit, which have you at once as their cause and object.

Years have passed away since we first met, and your presence, and
recollections with regard to you have afforded me continued sources
of enjoyment.

Some of the better feelings of my nature have been elevated by your
converse, and thoughts which you have nursed have been to me an
eternal source of consolation.

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.

You must not live much longer without giving to all men the proof
of power which those who know you feel in admiration. Perhaps, at
a distance from the applauding and censuring murmurs of the world,
you will be best able to execute those great works which are justly
expected from you; you are to be the historian of the philosophy of
feeling. Do not in any way dissipate your noble nature. Do not give
up your birthright. May you soon recover perfect health, the health
of strength and happiness! may you soon return to us confirmed
in all the powers essential to the exertion of genius! You were
born for your country, and your native land must be the scene of
your activity. I shall expect the time when your spirit, bursting
through the clouds of ill-health, will appear to all men, not
as an uncertain and brilliant flame, but as a fair and permanent
light, fixed, though constantly in motion, as a sun which gives its
fire not only to its attendant planets, but which sends beams from
all its parts into all worlds.

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

H. DAVY.

In October Davy thus wrote to a friend on the death of Gregory Watt, the son of James Watt:

We are deceived, my dear Clayfield, if we suppose that the human
being who has formed himself for action, but who has been unable
to act, is lost in the mass of being. There is some arrangement of
things which we can never comprehend, but in which his faculties
will be applied.

The caterpillar, in being converted into an inert scaly mass, does
not appear to be fitting itself for an inhabitant of the air, and
can have no consciousness of the brilliancy of its future being.
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.

There may be beings--thinking beings--near us, surrounding us,
which we do not perceive, which we can never imagine. We know
very little, but, in my opinion, we know enough to hope for the
immortality--the _individual immortality_--_of the better part of
man_.

I have been led into all this speculation, which you may well think
wild, in reflecting upon the fate of Gregory; my feeling has given
erring wings to my mind. He was a noble fellow and would have been
a great man.

His letters to me only three or four months ago were full of
spirit, and spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an
increasing strength of mind. Why is this in the order of nature,
that there is such a difference in the duration and destruction
of her works? If the mere stone decays, it is to produce a soil
which is capable of nourishing the moss and the lichen; when the
moss and the lichen die and decompose, they produce a mould which
becomes the bed of life to grass and to a more exalted species of
vegetables. Vegetables are the food of animals, the less perfect
animals of the more perfect, but in man the faculties and intellect
are perfected; he rises, exists for a little while in disease and
misery, and then would seem to disappear without an end and without
producing any effect.

Another mention of Coleridge occurs in February, when Davy wrote to Mr. Poole:

There has been no news lately from Coleridge; the last accounts
state that he was well in the autumn and in Sicily. On that poetic
ground we may hope and trust that his genius will call forth some
new creations, and that he may bring back to us some garlands of
never-dying verse. I have written to urge him strongly to give a
course of lectures on Poetry at the Royal Institution, where his
feeling would strongly impress and his eloquence greatly delight.

In January 1805 Davy presented his collection of minerals to the Royal Institution. They were valued at one hundred guineas.

On February 4, as Director of the Laboratory, he received an addition of 100_l._ to his salary.

He had two papers read at the Royal Society, one on a ‘New Mineral, consisting of Alumine and Water,’ and the other on a ‘New Mode of Analysing Minerals containing Fixed Alkali by Boracic Acid,’ and for these and his other papers he received the Copley medal.

In September he thus wrote to Davies Gilbert:

I came from Ireland by the Western Road about a fortnight ago.

The Irish are a noble race degraded by slavery and bearing
the insignia of persecution--extreme savageness or the lowest
servility. Yet they are ingenious and active, and seem to me to
possess all the elements of power and usefulness; but amongst the
lower orders there is a most unfortunate equality, destructive of
all great and efficient exertion, and amongst the higher classes
the greatest degree of activity is awakened only by the desire of
imitating the English, and that not so much in their virtues as in
their luxuries and follies.

And to his friend Poole he wrote, October 9:

I have very much to say about Ireland. It is an island that might
be made a new and a great country. It now boasts a fertile soil,
an ingenious and robust peasantry, and a rich aristocracy, but the
bane of the nation is the equality of poverty amongst the lower
orders. All are slaves without the probability of becoming free.
They are in the state of equality which the sans-culottes wished
for in France, and until emulation and riches and the love of
clothes and neat houses are introduced amongst them there will be
no permanent improvement.

Changes in political institutions can at first do little towards
serving them; it must be by altering their habits, by diffusing
manufactures, by destroying middle men, by dividing farms, and by
promoting industry, by making the pay proportioned to the work.
But I ought not to attempt to say anything on the subject when my
limits are so narrow.

Up to 1806 the lectures given by Davy had brought to him repute and to the Royal Institution success. To his high reputation as a lecturer he was now about to add that of a great original discoverer. As early as July 3, 1800, he wrote to Davies Gilbert, ‘We have been repeating the galvanic experiments with success.’ (See p. 316.) These experiments led him to think that all chemical decompositions might be polar. He electrised different compounds at the different poles of the battery, but he made no great discovery for five years. The assertion that acid and alkali were generated by the action of the voltaic pile in the decomposition of water led him to undertake fresh galvanic experiments in 1806. Before long he was rewarded by his great discoveries regarding chemical electricity, the decomposition of the alkalies, and the composition of chlorine.

It appears from the Laboratory Books that in September he first made experiments on phosphorus with the galvanic spark, and in the last week of October he ‘tried to decompose phosphorus by the galvanic fluid.’ He fused the phosphorus into a tube through which a platinum wire passed. This was the form of the experiment which he made a year afterwards to compel potash to give up its oxygen.

On November 20 his first Bakerian lecture was given at the Royal Society. It had this long title: On the ‘Chemical Agencies of Electricity;’ on the ‘Changes Produced in Water by Electricity;’ on the ‘Agencies of Electricity;’ on the ‘Decomposition of various Compound Bodies;’ on the ‘Transfer of certain Constituent Parts of Bodies by the Action of Electricity;’ on the ‘Passage of Acids, Alkalies, and other Substances through various Attracting Chemical Menstrua by Means of Electricity;’ ‘Some General Observations on these Phenomena, and on the Mode of Decomposition and Transition;’ on the ‘General Principles of the Chemical Changes Produced by Electricity;’ on the ‘Relations between the Electrical Energies of Bodies and their Chemical Affinities;’ on the ‘Mode of Action of the Pile of Volta, with Experimental Elucidations;’ on ‘Some General Illustrations and Applications of the Foregoing Facts and Principles.’

This was the first dawn of light regarding the inseparable union between chemical and electrical motions. The two ends of the pile of metals gave in quantity and quality different chemical results, and the chemical products varied with the variations of the liquid into which the poles were put. The identity of chemical affinity and electricity was imagined, and a new division of elements was made into electro-positive and electro-negative, according as the one or other end of the pile attracted them. The kind of polarity of each matter was thought to determine the electrical and chemical actions shown by it.

Napoleon had founded a prize of 2,400_l._ for a discovery comparable to that of Franklin or Volta, and at the same time he founded with the interest a medal, of 120_l._ value yearly, for the best experiment on the galvanic fluid. This medal for the year 1807 was given to Davy for this paper, which was then printed. Davy wrote to Mr. Poole, ‘Some people 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.’

On January 22, 1807, Davy was elected secretary of the Royal Society.

Dr. Young wrote to a friend:

I believe your pheasants have assisted in bringing my friend Davy
into a hundred a year and the office of secretary of the Royal
Society. It had never occurred to him to offer himself till I
suggested it to him one day when he dined with me. The next day he
heard of poor Gray’s death, and, upon applying to the President,
he was, after some deliberation, approved, although another person
had before been encouraged. If I had not been a member of an
_illiberal_ profession I should have liked the situation myself,
but perhaps the public is right in discouraging a divided attention.

At the end of August Davy wrote to Mr. Poole:

I am obliged to be in the neighbourhood of town during the greater
part of the summer for the purpose of correcting the proofs for the
‘Philosophical Transactions.’

If Coleridge is still with you, be kind enough to say to him that
I wrote nearly a week ago two letters about lectures, and, not
knowing where he was, I addressed them to him at different places.
I wish very much he would seriously determine on this point. The
managers of the Royal Institution are very anxious to engage him,
and I think he might be of material service to the public and
of benefit to his own mind, to say nothing of the benefit his
purse might also receive. In the present condition of society his
opinions in matters of taste, literature, and metaphysics must have
a healthy influence; and, unless he soon becomes an active member
of the living world, he must expect to be hereafter brought to
judgment for hiding his light.

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
cannot think of him without experiencing the mingled feelings of
admiration, regard, and pity.

Why do you not come to London? Many would be happy to see you, but
no one more so than your very sincere Friend, my dear Poole,

H. DAVY.

The Laboratory Books show that the last week in September 1807 he exposed magnesia upon a glass plate at the positive pole with distilled water. Four days afterwards he put oxide of zinc in a coagulated state round the positive pole.

On October 6 he began ‘a new series of experiments on polarity.’

From the account he gives of one experiment, it appears that he exposed different substances on a glass plate to the action of the platinum wires from a galvanic battery of 100 plates of 6 inches.

He tried the following substances: oxalic acid, dry; succinic acid; oxalic acid; soap; alcohol; water; carbonate of ammonia; nitrate of potash. He wrote, ‘Pure potash, as dry as it can be made, discharges the negative in a remarkable degree and insulates the positive.’

‘_Remarkable Phenomena with Potash._ It soon--’ Here the laboratory note ends, but his paper in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ says--‘fused, became a conductor, and gave brilliant light with the appearance of flame at the negative wire. When it was slightly moistened, to make it a better conductor, the potash began to fuse at both its points of electrisation; there was a violent effusion at its upper or positive surface, while at the lower or negative surface there was no liberation of an elastic fluid, but a formation of small granules resembling quicksilver, which occasionally burst with explosion.’

He then tried carbonate of ammonia, sulphuric acid and water, soap, and the flame of a candle.

The following day carbonate of ammonia and oxalic acid were tried, sulphuric acid, water, and alcohol.

From the 7th to the 16th no experiments were entered in the Laboratory Book; but to the substance that produced the gas and globules he gave the name first of alkaligen; for on the 16th he says, ‘Gas from alkaligen in alcohol;’ also ‘gas from ether and gas from oil of turpentine.’

On the 17th he again experimented on this gas from the alkaligen in ether and turpentine, and says, ‘The gas which had been collected from the globules under oil of turpentine by the action of water burnt in contact with the air. Does it (the matter of the globules) not form gaseous compounds with ether, alcohol, and the oils?’

Then he notes the action of the alkaligen on mercury. ‘Forms with it a solid amalgam, which soon loses its alkaligen in the air.’ ‘This amalgam amalgamates with platina and iron, but soon flies off on exposure to the air.’ ‘Query, Does it amalgamate with phosphorus?’

‘Probably whenever it meets with hydrogen it dissolves in it.’ ‘Probably forms an æriform compound with ether.’

On October 19 he made his famous experiment by which he showed beyond question that potash can give up its oxygen. ‘When potash was introduced into a tube having a platina wire attached to it, so (fig.), and fused into the tube so as to be a conductor--_i.e._ so as to contain just water enough, though solid--and inserted over mercury, when the platina was made negative, no gas was formed and the mercury became oxydated, and a small quantity of the alkaligen was produced round the platina wire, as was evident from its quick inflammation by the action of water. When the mercury was made the negative, gas was developed in great quantities from the positive wire, and none from the negative mercury, and this gas proved to be pure oxygen--a capital experiment, proving the decomposition of potash.’ ‘A small quantity of alkaligen was produced round the platina wire.’

‘The gas produced from alkaligen confined under mercury by the contact of water seemed to be hydrogen nearly pure. Soda decomposed with different phenomena.’

Davy made no more notes on that day.

On the 20th he worked on the gas obtained from sodagen and potagen, and writes, ‘Barytes gave at the oxygen side, when touched with the wire, an appearance like combustion--a bright rose-coloured light. Mem.: To try what effect the hydrogen side will have upon it.’

On the 21st he again worked on the gas, and says the gas from ether, when properly washed, seemed to be pure hydrogen.

He then says, ‘Examined the effect of heat this day and last night of the peculiar substance.’ Then he notes the results, and then he continues, ‘what can be the reason if the metallic globule is composed of A and H (alkaligen and hydrogen)--What is the reason that water and ether and alcohol saturated with potash still act on it so energetically?’

On the 24th he tried the substance with sulphur and phosphorus.

On the 25th, 26th, and 27th he worked on barytes, &c.

On the 27th barytes heated to whiteness did not become a conductor.

On October 30 he was still at work on the gas.

On October 31 he says, ‘When the substance amalgamated with mercury, was distilled in a glass retort, and the contents received over mercury, no air was generated; nor over water till the sublimed substance came in contact with the water, when hydrogen was evolved.’

On November 2 he was still working on potagen.

‘Probably this substance combines with oxygen in two proportions, the _red colour_ owing to this; and it is owing to this that it acts upon plate-glass.’

‘The first oxide a peculiar substance capable of being procured with much difficulty, the second potash.’

In the midst of his discovery the condition of the laboratory made him write in the book ‘some regulations with regard to the state of the laboratory.’

‘1. Everything is to be put in its proper place in the evening, and everything to be arranged for the next day’s operations.

‘2. The fire to be lighted at eight o’clock, and the apparatus for the experiments to be prepared by nine.’

On November 4 he writes, ‘The result of the distillation of as pure a piece (of potagen) as I could obtain seemed to be hydrogene nearly pure.

‘The gas given out from an amalgam of it with mercury likewise hydrogene.’

On November 5 many experiments were made.

On November 6 he still worked on the gas. His notes say ‘on the combustion of sodagen and potagen with oxygen.’

‘Potagen certainly sublimes unaltered at a temperature below red heat. It is twenty times lighter than mercury.’

On November 13 he wrote to his friend Mr. Pepys:

I have decomposed and recomposed the fixed alkalies and discovered
their bases to be two new inflammable substitutes very like
metals, but one of them lighter than ether and infinitely [more]
combustible; so that there are two bodies decomposed and two new
elementary bodies found.

The Bakerian lecture was read on November 19, only four days before Davy was obliged to take to his bed by illness. The first sketch of this famous paper was thus made in the Laboratory Book:

‘The substance is analogous to some of those imagined to exist by the alchemical visionaries.

‘Possessing all the physical properties of metals except high specific gravity, it seems to combine with all of them, and form with them truly metallic amalgams; but in all cases it is capable of being separated from them by its greater facility of oxidation.’

Then he gives the action on water and ice.

The theory of its operation upon water is extremely simple.

3. ‘When,’ he says, ‘the peculiar substance was brought in contact with a thin piece of phosphorus and pressed upon, there is a considerable action.’

4. ‘When it was brought in contact with sulphur in fusion in tubes filled with the vapour of naphtha, they combine with varied ignition.’

5. ‘The new substance produces some beautiful results with mercury.’

Then he describes the alloys.

‘The basis of potash, when thrown into the strong mineral acids, inflames and burns on the surface.’

Then he describes the effects with sulphuric acid, and nitrous acid.

‘The action of the basis of potash on fat and volatile oils, and on various bodies, is less violent than on any other class of compound substances containing oxygen, as might have been expected from the small quantity of this principle which they hold in combination.

‘The application of naphtha to its preservation I have already mentioned. On the colourless and perfectly transparent naphtha distilled from petroleum or from brown naphtha at a low heat, and defended from air, it has scarcely any action at common temperatures.’

Then he describes the further action on naphtha.

‘The fat and volatile oils closely related to naphtha in composition resemble it likewise in their habitudes with the basis of potash. The lightest naphtha that I have been able to procure by double distillation was of spec. gr. 770, water being 1,000, and was almost colourless. In this fluid, confined in close vessels, the globules swam for hours without apparently affecting it, but by degrees a yellow film formed upon them, the naphtha became brown at its point of contact, and the globules sank to the bottom of the vessel. After some days the fluid surrounding the globule appeared black and turbid.

‘The fat and volatile oils approach to naphtha in their habitudes with respect to the basis of potash.

‘The fat oils follow naphtha in the order of bodies that slightly act upon it; and the volatile oils, the fat oils; but they all contain sufficient oxygen to render the basis of potash alkaline, if it is exposed to them for a sufficient time and in proper quantities, and that more or less rapidly, according to the circumstances. When naphtha or the oils are exposed to air they soon alkalise the basis. Oxygen is absorbed from the air, and a soap is formed, brown from the decomposition of the compound fluid during the time of the alkalisation. If air be excluded the process is a much longer time in taking place; no gas is emitted in the fixed oils or in naphtha; but in the volatile oils hydrocarbonate is produced in small quantities, and in all these cases charcoal is deposited. In oil of turpentine the process is more rapid than in any other oil I have tried, and this oil contains either water or the elements of water, and perhaps a larger proportion of oxygen to its inflammable matter.

‘Nor ought we to be surprised that these substances have never been produced in nature. Their strong attraction for oxygen renders it impossible.’

‘The division into two poles:

‘The basis of potash, by its strong attraction for oxygen, decomposes all the metallic oxides which I _have_ exposed to it by a gentle heat.

‘The oxides of lead it instantly acts upon, and the metal is revived and alkali formed. In consequence of this operation it cannot be preserved in tubes of flint glass.

‘Are the bases of the fixed alkalies simple bodies? I perhaps shall be asked.

‘But are these singular bodies themselves compounds? Have we reached the limits of our analysis--More capable of combining with oxygene than the basis of water?

‘The basis of potash serves almost as an accurate indication of the proportion of oxygene in bodies and exactly in proportion--camphor, spermaceti, wax, volatile oils.

‘In the course of my inquiries many circumstances arose at first anomalous, but which soon were capable of being explained, and which, when understood, seemed to extend the general facts which had been detailed.’

A long break here occurs in the Laboratory Notes. On November 23, 1807, Davy was taken ill with fever.

On December 7 the Managers’ Minutes say, ‘Mr. Davy having been confined to his bed for the last fortnight by a severe illness, the managers are under the painful necessity of giving notice that the lectures will not commence until the first week in January next.’

On January 18 the managers of the Royal Institution ordered 500 copies of the following paper to be printed:

NEW DISCOVERY IN CHEMISTRY.

January 18, 1808.

For the satisfaction of those proprietors who were not present
at the opening of the Rev. Mr. Dibden’s introductory lecture on
Wednesday last the managers have obtained and printed the following
note of it:

‘Before I solicit your attention to the opening of those lectures
which I shall have the honour of delivering in the course of the
season, permit me to trespass upon it for a few minutes by stating
the peculiar circumstances under which this Institution is now
again opened, and how it comes to pass that it has fallen to me
rather than to a more deserving lecturer to be the first to address
you.

‘The managers of this Institution have directed me to impart to you
that intelligence which no one who is alive to the best feelings
of human nature can hear without the mixed emotions of sorrow and
delight.

‘Mr. Davy, whose frequent and powerful addresses from this place,
supported by his ingenious experiments, have been so long and so
well known to you, has for the last five weeks been struggling
between life and death. The effects of those experiments recently
made in illustration of his late splendid discovery, added to
consequent bodily weakness, brought on a fever so violent as to
threaten the extinction of life. Over him it might emphatically be
said, in the language of the immortal Milton, that--

Death his dart shook, but delayed to strike.

If it had pleased Providence to deprive the world of all _further_
benefit from his original talents and intense application there
has certainly been sufficient _already_ effected by him to entitle
him to be classed among the brightest scientific luminaries of
his country. That this may not appear to be unfounded eulogium I
shall proceed, at the particular request of the managers, to give
you an outline of the splendid discovery just alluded to, and I do
so with the greater pleasure as that outline has been drawn in a
very masterly manner by a gentleman of all others perhaps the best
qualified to do it effectually (Cavendish?)

‘In the course of the last twenty-five or thirty years the science
of chemistry has undergone great changes and has been astonishingly
augmented by various important discoveries, amongst which the most
remarkable have been the decomposition and recomposition of water
and of nitric acid, discovered by Mr. Cavendish, and the consequent
knowledge of the nature of metallic calces (now called oxides) with
that of acids in general.

‘But although the two fixed alkalies called soda and potash were
attacked by the most eminent chemists with every known chemical
agent and by every method which the improved state of science
could suggest, not the smallest effect could be produced on
them; so that the nature of these two common substances remained
totally unascertained and became a grand desideratum of chemical
science. When, however, M. Volta had communicated to the Royal
Society his great discovery of the galvanic pile, and when this
had been modified into the more convenient form of troughs by
Crookshank of Woolwich, the electro-galvanic power was found by
various philosophers to produce surprising effects when applied
to different substances, and Mr. Davy in particular distinguished
himself in these researches and made a number of valuable
experiments and observations, some of the more remarkable of which
he communicated to the Royal Society in the Bakerian lecture read
in November 1806. Mr. Davy conceived, however, from what he had
then accomplished, that much more might be done; and with equal
skill and perseverance he performed a new series of experiments, in
the course of which, by various means, he again tried the effect of
the powerful galvanic batteries belonging to the laboratory of the
Royal Institution, and particularly devoted his attention to the
two fixed alkalies (soda and potash), with the view of effecting
their decomposition and of ascertaining the nature of them by means
of that powerful agent galvanism.

‘This great discovery he at length effected; and, to the high
gratification of all men of science, he proved that soda and potash
are compound bodies, each consisting of a peculiar metal, which
has so great a tendency to combine with oxygen that no agent but
galvanism can separate them. The two metals, therefore, of soda
and potash have always hitherto been presented to us in this state
of combination with oxygen, forming the two alkalies. But some of
the primitive earths (as they are called), such as barytes and
strontites, have many alkaline properties, which induced Mr. Davy
to subject them to similar experiments; and in like manner he
discovered that these consisted of metallic bases united to oxygen,
forming compound bodies analogous to the two fixed alkalies. 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. Mr. 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.

‘This recital [said Dr. Dibden] will be sufficient to convince
those who hear of the celebrity which the author of such a
discovery has a right to attach to himself; and yet no one, I am
confident, has less inclination to challenge it. To us and to every
enlightened Englishman it will be a matter of just congratulation
that the country which has produced the two Bacons and Boyle has in
these days shown itself worthy of its former renown by the labours
of Cavendish and Davy.

‘The illness of the latter, severe as it has been, is now beginning
to abate,[35] and we may reasonably hope, from present appearances
at least, that the period of convalescence is not very remote.’[36]

The recovery of Davy was slow.

On February 22 he attended at the request of the Committee of Managers, and informed them that he should be able to commence his course of lectures on Electro-Chemical Science on Saturday, March 12, at two o’clock, and those on Geology on Wednesday evening, the sixteenth of that month. In his opening lecture he thus spoke of electro-chemistry and its power of analysis: ‘In this it will be seen that Volta has presented to us a key which promises to lay open some of the most mysterious recesses of nature. Till this discovery our means were limited; the field of pneumatic research had been exhausted, and little remained for the experimentalist except minute and laborious processes. There is now before us a boundless prospect of novelty in science, a country unexplored but noble and fertile in aspect, a land of promise in philosophy.’

In the Laboratory Book, probably about this time, he wrote, ‘An instrument for procuring those metals that have not yet been reduced--_for decomposing muriatic acid gas_, fluoric, &c., and _boracic acid gas_.’

On April 19 and 20 Davy was again at work with the battery of 520 pair of plates.

He began thus: ‘Indications of the decomposition of muriatic acid. To use every effort to ensure accuracy in the results.’

‘A given quantity of muriatic acid gas was acted upon by dry charcoal; there was continued vivid light in the galvanic circuit. The action was continued for ten minutes; when a little water was added no absorption took place, so that all the muriatic acid gas was decomposed. Some other experiments were made with dry muriate of lime and mercury and with a solution of muriate of lime, strontium, and soda.’

On June 30 he had a paper read at the Royal Society on the ‘Decomposition of the Earths Strontia, Lime, Magnesia, by Means of Iron at the Negative End of the Battery.’ Berzelius having mentioned in a letter that he had succeeded by using mercury as the negative pole, Davy repeated Berzelius’s experiment, and decomposed alumina and silica by an amalgam of mercury and potassium at the negative end of the battery.

On July 11 he laid before the managers of the Royal Institution the following paper:

A new path of discovery having been opened in the agencies of
the electrical battery of Volta, which promises to lead to the
greatest improvements in chemistry and natural philosophy and the
useful arts connected with them; and since the increase of the
size of the apparatus is absolutely necessary for pursuing it to
its full extent, it is proposed to raise a fund by subscription
for constructing a powerful battery, worthy of a national
establishment and capable of promoting the great objects of science.

Already in other countries public and ample means have been
provided for pursuing these investigations. They have had their
origin in this country, and it would be dishonourable to a nation
so great, so powerful, and so rich if, from the want of pecuniary
resources, they should be completed abroad.

An appeal to enlightened individuals on this subject can scarcely
be made in vain. It is proposed that the instrument and apparatus
be erected in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, where it
shall be employed in the advancement of this new department of
science.

The Managers’ Minutes then say:

The above paper having been laid before the board of managers, they
felt it their indispensable duty instantly to communicate the same
to every member of the Institution, lest the slightest delay might
furnish an opportunity to other countries for accomplishing this
great work, which originated in the brilliant discoveries recently
made at the Royal Institution.

Lord Dundas, W. Watson, Thomas Bernard, and C. Hatchett, the
managers present, agreed to subscribe to this undertaking, and
ordered that a book be opened at the steward’s office for the
purpose of entering the names of all those who may wish to
contribute towards this important national object.[37]

The sum wanted was soon raised, and Davy thus described the battery:

‘It consists of 200 instruments, connected together in regular order, each composed of ten double plates, arranged in cells of porcelain, and containing in each plate thirty-two square inches; so that the whole number of double plates is 2,000, and the whole surface 128,000 square inches. This battery was charged with sixty parts water and one part of nitric acid. It gave a spark from charcoal points through four inches of air.’

On July 12 the Laboratory Notes say, ‘Tried the experiments upon the decomposition of the earths by iron wire with the happiest results.’ These were obtained with the battery of only twenty pair.

On July 18 he wrote, ‘In pursuit of the researches on the deoxygenation of diamond and charcoal.

‘Is not diamond the 2-oxide of carbon, charcoal the 1-oxide, the gaseous oxide of carbon a triple compound of hydrogen, nitrogen, and charcoal?’

On September 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 experiments were tried on the production of cold by induced electricity. He tried the decomposition of sulphur ‘with success.’ He tried to decompose mercury in the Torricellian vacuum ‘with success apparently.’

‘Sulphur, after giving out hydrogen by electricity, had lost its yellow colour and _was became brownish_, but still non-conducting, crystalline, and transparent.’

Numberless experiments were made on the action of potassium on ammonia and on nitrogen.

In November he must have injured his right hand, for his notes are made with his left hand on the 19th and 20th of this month.

On December 15 he gave another Bakerian lecture on New Analytical Researches on Alkalies, Phosphorus, Sulphur, &c. In this paper he says his chief object was to show that there was oxygen in ammonia, and that potassium was not a compound of the metal and hydrogen. He made further experiments also on the decomposition of boracic, fluoric, and muriatic acids.

On December 27, 1808, Davy wrote to Coleridge:

Alas, poor Beddoes is dead! He died on Christmas Eve. He wrote to
me two letters on two successive days--22nd and 23rd. From the
first, which was full of affection and new feeling, I anticipated
his state. He is gone at the moment when his mind was purified and
exalted for noble affections and great works.

My heart is heavy. I would talk to you of your own plans, which I
shall endeavour in every way to promote; I would talk to you of
my own labours, which have been incessant since I saw you and not
without result; but I am interrupted by very melancholy feelings,
which, when you see this, I know you will partake of. Ever, my dear
Coleridge, very affectionately yours,

H. DAVY.

On December 28 he wrote in the Laboratory Book, ‘We have tried a number of experiments within the last few days on the muriatic and fluoric acids, heating them with potassium.’

Early in 1809 Davy sent an appendix to his last Bakerian lecture to the Royal Society. In it he spoke ‘of the general results being decisive with regard to a decomposition of nitrogen having been effected.’

In a letter at this time he told his friend Mr. Children ‘he hoped to show him nitrogen as a complete wreck, torn to pieces in different ways.’