Eloge of' Alexander Volia. 2$ 



derived from oxides ; that chemistry now possesses metals, such 

 as potassium, which can be moulded by the fingers like wax, 

 which are lighter than water, and therefore float on its surface, 

 which kindle spontaneously, and diffuse the most brilliant light. 



This would be the place to bring together all that is myste- 

 rious, I may say incomprehensible, in the decompositions effect- 

 ed by the voltaic pile ; to insist on the separate disengagements of 

 two gaseous elements from a liquid ; on the precipitations of the 

 principal solid constituents of the same saline molecule, which are 

 effected in points of the dissolving fluid very remote from each 

 other ; and on the singular carrying or transporting power which 

 these different phenomena appear to imply ; but this would oc- 

 cupy too much time. Before leaving the subject, however, I 

 must remark, that the pile does not act as a means of analysis 

 only ; if in changing to such an extent the electrical relations of 

 the elements of bodies, it often occasions their complete separa- 

 tion, a judicious management of its power is become, in the 

 hands of one of our Associates, the principal generator of nume- 

 rous combinations of a most remarkable nature, and which art 

 has hitherto been unable to imitate. 



I said some time ago, gentlemen, with some diffidence, that 

 the pile is the most wonderful instrument which human intel- 

 ligence has ever constructed. If the enumeration which I 

 have made to you of its varicms properties has at all done jus- 

 tice to the subject, I may now revert to my assertion, and re- 

 gard it as fully established. 



According to some biographers, Volta had so exhausted the 

 energies of his mind by his long continued labours, particularly 

 by the construction of the pile, that he was incapable of any new- 

 exertion. Others have regarded an obstinate silence of nearly 

 thirty years' duration, as the effect of a puerile timidity from 

 which this illustrious man was unable to free himself. He was 

 apprehensive, they say, lest by comparing his new researches 

 with the important discoveries he had already made in electricity, 

 his mental vigour should be thought diminished. These two 

 explanations are doubtless very ingenious, but they have the 

 defect of being entirely futile ; the date of the pile is in reality 

 1800 ; but two ingenious memoirs, one of them on the Phetio* 

 mena of Hail^ the other on the Periodicity of Storms and the 



