THE LIFE AND SCIENTIFIC LABOURS OF SIR HUMPHRY DAVY.
CHAPTER SECOND.
IN our last number we left the subject of our memoir in readiness to emerge from his native town, and, bursting from obscurity, to enter upon a wider field of usefulness and honour. We are now prepared to accompany him in his progress ; and, with the honest desire of affording instruction as well as amusement, we shall not only continue to point out the various circumstances that may have contributed to his scientific renown, but shall offer such occasional reflections, arising out of their consideration, as may best promote the great moral end of biography. We have stated that an arrangement had been concluded between Dr. BEDDOES and Mr. DAVY; and it is only justice to add, that this was of the most liberal and honourable description. Dr. BEDDOES had just established, at Bristol, his " Pneumatic Institution," for the purpose of investigating the medical powers of the different gases; and to DAVY was assigned the office of superintending the necessary experiments. It is now generally acknowledged, that the art of physic has not derived any direct advantage from the application of a class of agents that held out the highest promise of benefit; and they are, accordingly, rarely used in the treatment of disease, except, perhaps, by a few ignorant or crafty empirics. The investigahon,.however, paved the way to some new and important discoveries in science ; so that, although our philosophers failed in obtaining the treasure for which they.so eagerly dug, they, at least, by turning up and pulverizing the soil, rendered it fertile. DAVY was now constantly engaged in the prosecution of new experiments ; in the conception of which, as he himself candidly informs us, he was greatly aided by the conversation and advice of his friend Dr. BEDDOES. He was also occasionally assisted by Mr W. CLAYFIELD, a gentleman ardently attached to chemical pursuits, and whose name is not unknown in the annals of science : indeed itaptears, that to him DAVY was indebted for the invention of a mercurial at-holder, by which he was enabled to collect and measure the variots gases submitted to examination. In the course of these investigatiois, the respirability and singularly intoxicating effects of Nitrous Oxide were first discovered ; which led to a new train of research conceining its preparation, composition, properties, combinations, and phystAogical action on living beings ; inquiries which were extended to the ilifferent substances connected with Nitrous Oxide, such as Nitrous Gas, Nitrous Acid, and Ammonia ; when, by multiplying experiments, and comparing the facts they disclosed, DAVY ultimately succeeded in re. conciling apparent anomalies, and by removing the greater number of those difficulties which had obscured this branch of science, was enabled to present a clear and satisfactory history of the combinations of OXYGEN and NITROGEN'.
These interesting results were published in a separate volume, entitled " Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiViy concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration; by Humphry Davy, Superintendent of the Medical Pneumatic Institution." Our readers will probably agree with us in thinking, that whatever might be the merits of this production, they did not shine forth in the title-page ; but the best criterion of its value is to be found in the admiration which it excited: its author was barely twenty-one years old, and yet, although a mere boy, he was hailed as the Hercules in science, who had cleared an Augean stable of its impurities. In amajority of cases, precocious merit enjoys but an ephemeral popularity ; the sensations it excites are too vivid to be permanent, and the individual sinks into an obscurity rendered ten times more profound by the brilliancy of the flash which preceded it: but every event in DAvy's life appeared as if it were created and directed for his welfare, by a presiding genius, whose activity in throwing circumstances in his way was rivalled only by the energy and address with which he converted them to his pur pose. The experiments to which.we have alluded, favourably as they received, would probably have shared the fate of many other dis coveries, whose practical applications were not obvious ; but before the impression produced on the scientific world had lost its glow, Count RUMFORD was seeking for some rising philosopher, who might fill the chemical chair of the recently-established institution of Great Britain ;—could there be any doubt as to whom he should apply ? DAVY was proposed, and immediately elected. Had we not so pointedly questioned the utility of biographical minutiw, we might, in this place, have been tempted to offer some personal anecdotes, for the purpose of showing what a change was suddenly effected in the habits and manners of DAVY by his elevation. His enemies may avail themselves of the circumstance, and we shall not envy their triumph; but we ask in candour. where is a man of twenty-two years of age to be found, unless the temperature of his blood be below zero, who could remain uninfluenced by such a change ? Look at DAry in the laboratory at Bristol, pursuing with eager industry various abstract points of research ; mixing only with a few philosophers, sanguine like himself in the investigation of chemical phenomena, but whose worldly knowledge was bounded by the walls of the institution in which they were engaged. Shift the scene—could the spells of an enchanter effect a more magical transformation ! Behold him in the theatre of the Royal Institution ! surrounded by an aristocracy of intellect, as well as of rank, by the flowers of genius, the elite of fashion, and the beauty of England,—whose very respirations were suspended in their eagerness to catch his novel and satisfactory elucidations of the mysteries of Nature ! We admit that his vanity was excited by such extraordinary demonstrations of devotion ; that he lost that simplicity which constituted the charm of his character, and assumed the garb and airs of a man of fashion ;—can we wonder if, under such circumstances, the robe should not have always fallen in graceful draperies ? But the charms of the ball-room did not allure him from the pursuits of the laboratory. He had a capacity for both, and his devotions to Terpsichore did not interfere with the rites of Minerva. So popular did he become, under the auspices of the Duchess of GORDON, and other leaders of fashion, that their soirjes were considered incomplete without his presence ; and yet the crowds that repaired to the Institution in the morning were, day after day, gratified by newly-devised and instructive experiments, performed with the utmost address, and explained in language at once the most intelligible and the most eloquent. He brought down Science from those heights which were before only accessible to a few, and placed it within the reach of all. He divested the goddess of all her severity of aspect, and represented her as attired by the Graces. It may be said, and indeed it has been alluded to by some modern Zoilus, who has sought only to discover the defects of Davv, that his style was too florid and imaginative for communicating the plain lessons of truth. We admit that Minerva, like the statue of a Lysippus, may be spoilt by ; but circumstances must be allowed to modify the acceptation of all such general propositions. Let us consider the class of persons to whom DAVY addressed himself: were they students, prepared to toil with systematic precision in order to obtain knowledge, as a matter of necessity ? No, they were composed of the gay and the idle, who could only be tempted to admit instruction by the prospect of receiving pleasure. It has been well observed, that necessity alone can urge the traveller over barren tracks and snow-topt mountains, while he treads with rapture along the fertile vales of those happier climes where every breeze is perfume and every scene a picture. But in speaking of DAVY'S lectures, as mere specimens of happy oratory, we do injustice to the philosopher: had he merely added the festoon and the Corinthian foliage to a temple built by other hands, he might not have merited any other eulogiurn ;. but the edifee was his own—he brought the stone from the quarry, formed it into a regular pile, and then with his masterly chisel added to strength beauty, and to its utility grace. , About two years after his introduction to the scientific world, having )een elected Professor of Chemistry to the Board of Agriculture, Favv commenced a series of lectures before its members ; and vthicl he continued to deliver every successive session for ten years, modlying and extending their views, from time to time, in such a marner as the progress of chemical discovery might require. These divourses were published in the year 1813, at the request of the Presilent and members of the Board; and they form the only complete work we possess On the subject of AGRIMTLIRAL CHEMISTRY. When we consider the many opportunities which the author enjoyed of acquiring practical information from the intelligent members of the Board, and of putting to the test of experience the truth of those various theories which his science had suggested, we can scarcely expect that another author should arise in our times who will be able to produce a superior work. He has treated the interesting subject of Manures with singular success ; showing the manner in which they become the nourishment of the plant, the changes produced in them, by the processes of fermentation and putrefaction, and the utility of mixing and combining them with each other. He has also pointed out the chemical principles upon which depends the improvement of lands by burning and fallowing ; he has. elucidated the theory of convertible husbandry, founded on regular rotations of different crops; and, in short, has brought his knowledge to bear on various other agricultural questions connected with chemistry, which the limits of our memoir will not allow us to detail. We must not, however, omit to mention the important mformation he has afforded on the subject of the composition of different Soils, and the methods to be adopted for their analysis. The processes in use for such an examination, previous to his time, were always complicated, and frequently fallacious : he simplified the operations, and introduced new and convenient apparatus for the purpose.. Nor ought we to pass over in silence the curious results of his experiments on the quantity of nutritive matters contained in varieties of the different substances that have been used as articles of food, either for men or cattle, by which he was enabled to explain numerous facts connected with the comparative excellence of different articles. Thus, for instance, in the South of Europe, hard, or thin , skinned wheat, is in higher estimation than soft, or thick-skinned
, wheat ; a fact which he showed to depend upon the larger quantity of gluten and nutritive'matter which the former contains. .
In the year 1803, DAVY was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; he subsequently becameits Secretary, and lastly its President. During a period of five-and-twenty years, he constantly supplied its Transactions with payers ; and it is not too much to say, that no individual philosopher, in any ag,e or country, ever contributed so largely in tending truth, or ever itehievea so much in eradicating error_ 11.1..t theory of LAVOISIEE, which was received throughout Europe with the homage due to an oracle, and was even classed in certainty with the doctrine of Gravitation—which had withstood all the assaults of the Stahlian philosophers, in Germany, Sweden, and Britain, and passed unimpaired through the most severe ordeals to which any system was ever exposed—yielded, in some of its most essential points, to the cool and dispassionate reasoning of DAVY. We cannot but admire the candour and humility with which DAVY alludes to the circumstance : in speaking of the experiments which it was "his good fortune to institute," he says, "the novel results, while they have strengthened some of the doctrines of the school of LAVOISIER, have overturned others, and have proved that the generalizations of the Antiphlogistic philosophers were far from having anticipated the whole progress of discovery." Would this have been the language of the French chemist, had he been similarly fortunate ? Would his rival have been treated with the same philosophical consideration and courtesy? This question is best answered by referring to his treatment of our countryman Dr. BLACK; to whom he was indebted for the support, if not for the suggestion, of the most brilliant part of his theory of Combustion : he even attempted to conceal the name of the discoverer of Latent Heat. But it was the general policy of the chemists of France to obliterate every discovery that had not originated in their own country. Was he a generous conqueror to his vanquished rival STAHL ? No sooner had the Parisian chemists completed their grand experiment on the composition of water, as discovered by CAVENDISH, than they held a festival, at which Madame LAVOISIER, in the habit of a priestess, burnt the works of STAHL on an altar erected for the occasion, while solemn music played a requiem to his departed system. As the researches detailed in DAVY'S papers are far too important and numerous to be hastily examined, we must reserve their consideration for a future chapter.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
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