•2 Professor T. E. Thorpe [Jan. 17, 



Accordingly the problem of the unemployed still remains with us, 

 whilst the new institution took the form of converting Mr. Mellish's 

 house in Albemarle Street into a place where, by regular courses of 

 philosophical lectures and experiments, the applications of the new 

 discoveries in science to the improvement of the arts and manufactures 

 might be taught, so as to facilitate the means of procuring the comforts 

 and conveniences of life. 



The Royal Institution had a troubled infancy. Like the poor it 

 was originally designed to succour, it suffered much in the outset 

 from lack of nourishment. To add to its miseries, the little starve- 

 ling was caricatured by Gillray, lampooned by Peter Pindar, and 

 ridiculed by Lord Brougham ; and it was literally in the throes of 

 dissolution when new life was breathed into it by the opportune 

 arrival, in 1801, of a small spare youth of 22, from Bristol, whom 

 the Managers had engaged at a salary of 100 guineas a year. The 

 youth was Humphry Davy, who had acted as assistant to Dr. Beddoes, 

 of the Pneumatic Institution, and who had already made some 

 slight stir in scientific circles by his discovery of a characteristic 

 property of nitrous oxide. In announcing his arrival to the Managers, 

 Count Rumford reported that he had purchased a cheap second-hand 

 carpet for Mr. Davy's room, together with such other articles as 

 appeared to him necessary to make the room habitable, and among 

 the rest a new sofa-bed, which, in order that it may serve as a model 

 for imitation, had been made complete in all its parts. Six weeks after 

 his arrival Davy was called upon to lecture, aud a descriptive para- 

 graph er of the period thus chronicles his success in the PhiJosophical 

 Magazme for 1801 : — 



" It must give pleasure to our readers to learn that this new and 

 useful institution, the object of which is the application of Science 

 to the common purposes of life, may l)e now considered as settled on 

 a firm basis. . . . 



" We have also to notice a course of lectures, just commenced at 

 the institution, on a new branch of philosophy — we mean the Galvanic 

 Phenomena. On this interesting branch, Mr. Davy (late of Bristol) 

 gave the first lecture on the 25th of April. He began with the 

 history of Galvanism, detailed the successive discoveries, and de- 

 scribed the different methods of accumulating galvanic influence. 

 .... He showed the effect of galvanism on the legs of frogs, and 

 exhibited some interesting experiments on the galvanic effects on the 

 solution of metals in acids. Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, and 

 other distinguished philosophers were present. The audience were 

 highly gratified, and testified their satisfaction by general applause. 

 Mr. Davy, who appears to be very young, acquitted himself admirably 

 well ; from the sparkling intelligence of his eye, his animated 

 manner, and the tout ensemUe, we have no doubt of his attaining 

 a distinguished eminence." 



And what was of more immediate consequence, this confident 



