THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN 211 



his delight, and began dancing around the room in a transport of joy, and it 

 was some time before he recovered snflicient composure to continue the experi- 

 ment." The directors and principal members of the institutiou afterwards 

 caused a galvanic battery of 600 pairs of four-inch plates to be constructed, 

 and this again was replaced by a battery of 2,000 pairs. Tliis powerful artil- 

 lery was directed against the earths, and the new metals received the names of 

 barivmi, strontium, calcium, and magnesium, after the names of the earths from 

 which they were separated. 



The limits which we have prescribed to ourselves do not permit us to follow 

 Davy after his retirement from the Institution. " If I relinquish teaching," he 

 wrote to his brother at the time of his marriage, " it is solely with the purpose 

 of having more time to devote to original researches and to the advancement of 

 the great objects of science," But from 1812 his life Avas essentially that of a 

 traveller and man of the world; he was created baronet in 1818, three years 

 after the discovery of the safety-lamp,* and died at Geneva May 29, 1829. 



VII. — N0JII2s"ATI0N or DK. YOUNG TO THE CHAIR OF XATUEAL PHILOSOPHY. 



Towards the close of 1801 the directors of the Royal Institution nominated 

 to the chair of natural philosoph}^ (physics and mechanics) a man of perhaps 

 still greater genius than Davy, the celebrated Dr. Young. 



Thomas Young was born at Milverton, in Somersetshire, June 13, 1773. He 

 was an infant prodigy. At two years of age he could read fluently ; at four he 

 could recite from memory a great number of English writers and even Latin 

 poems, of which, however, he understood not a word. From nine to fourteen 

 he learned, besides Greek and Latin, the French, Italian, Hebrew, Persic, and 

 Arabic languages ; " French and Italian, incidentally, for the purpose of satis- 

 fying the curiosity of a comrade who had in his possession several works printed 

 at Paris, whose contents he was desirous of knowing ; Hebrew, in order to nead 

 the Bible in the original ; Persic and Arabic, with a view to the decision of 

 the question, which had arisen in a conversation at table, whether differences exist 

 between the oriental languages as marked as those which exist between European 

 languages." (Arago, Biography of Thomas Young. J His passion for knowl- 

 edge was unbounded, and no obstacles stopped him in its pursuit. Having seen 

 a land-surveyor at work, when he was scarcely eight years old, he applied him- 

 self to learn, by means of a dictionary of mathematics, the nature of the opera- 

 tions, and soon qualified himself to make the calculations. Still later, he con- 

 ceives an ardent taste for botany, and undertakes to construct a microscope. 

 For that purpose lie must first know the theory of the instrument ; and, as he 

 has at hand nothing but a book bristling with analytic formulas, he studies 

 the differential calculus in order to comprehend it, and, between times, acquires 

 great skill in the art of turnery. His favorite maxim was, that efcrij man mag 

 do what any other man has done. "While he was prosecuting his medical studies 

 in Edinburgh, which had been commenced in London, he acquired so much 

 skill in funambulism as to compete with a famous professor of the art ; and at 

 Gottingen, where he passed nine months, and where he received the degree of 

 doctor of medicine, he attained extraordinary dexterity as a vaultcr on horse- 

 back. Profoundly versed in the theory of music, he also cultivated his powers 



* See the History of the Royal Society of London, where will be found other details respect- 

 ing Davy, and, among the rest, respecting tlie niortilication which he sustained in relation 

 to certain means he had proposed for preventing the corrosion of the copper with which ves- 

 sels are lined. I add an extract from a letter, which he wrote on this occasion to Mr. Chil- 

 dren : "A mind of much sensibility might be disgusted, and one might be led to say : Why 

 labor for the public interest, when the sole recompense is abuse ? Tliey have irritated mo 

 more than I should have been, but I become wiser day by day, calling to remembrance 

 Galileo and the time when the philosophers and benefactors of society obtained no other 

 recompense for their services but the stake." 



