V 



CONFIRMATION OF VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY. 



sion refenvd rather to the discoveries of Galvani than to those of 

 Volta : the latter were, indeed, hardly known in France till the con- 

 quest of Italy by Bonaparte, in 1801. France was, at the period of 

 these discoveries, separated from all other countries by war, and espe- 

 cially from England, 3 where Volta's Memoirs were published. 



The political revolutions of Italy affected, in very different manners, 

 the two discoverers of whom we speak. Galvani refused to take an 

 oath of allegiance to the Cisalpine republic, which the French conqueror 

 otablished; he was consequently stripped of all his offices; and 

 deprived, by the calamities of the times, of most of his relations, he 

 sank into poverty, melancholy, and debility. At last his scientific 

 reputation induced the republican rulers to decree his restoration to 

 his professorial chair; but his claims were recognised too late, and he 

 lied without profiting by this intended favor, in 1798. 



Volta, on the other hand, was called to Paris by Bonaparte as a 

 man of science, and invested with honors, emoluments, and titles. 

 The conqueror himself, indeed, was strongly interested by this train 

 of research. 4 He himself founded valuable prizes, expressly with a 

 view to promote its prosecution. At this period, there was some- 

 thing in this subject peculiarly attractive to his Italian mind ; for the 

 first glimpses of discoveries of great promise have always excited an 

 enthusiastic activity of speculation in the philosophers of Italy, though 

 generally accompanied with a want of precise thought. It is nar- 

 rated 5 of Bonaparte, that after seeing the decomposition of the salts 

 by means of the voltaic pile, he turned to Corvisart, his physician, and 

 said, " Here, doctor, is the image of life ; the vertebral column is the 

 pile, the liver is the negative, the bladder the positive, pole." The 

 importance of voltaic researches is not less than it was estimated by 

 Bonaparte ; but the results to which it was to lead were of a kind 

 altogether different from those which thus suggested themselves to 

 his mind. The connexion of mechanical and chemical action was the 

 first great point to be dealt with ; and for this purpose the laws of the 

 mechanical action of voltaic electricity were to be studied. 



It will readily be supposed that the voltaic researches, thus begun, 

 opened a number of interesting topics of examination and discussion. 

 These, however, it does not belong to our place to dwell upon at 

 present; since they formed parts of the theory of the subject, which 



a Biog. Univ., art. Volta, (by Biot ) . 4 Becquerel, Trait?. dElectr. t. i. p. 107; 

 Tb. t i. p. 108. 

 VOL. II 1G. 



