228 Scientifie Labors and Character of 
and we recognize in him, as in our own Franklin, an uncommon un- 
ion of the philosopher with the man of strong common sense. 
The foregoing lectures, together with his public lectures as pro- 
fessor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, appear to have occupied 
a great share of his attention from 1802 to 1806, when we arrive ata 
new era in his life. It was during this and the following year, that 
he made his brilliant discoveries in Galvanism. ‘The discovery of 
the metallic bases of the fixed alkalies, which has led also to the 
knowledge of the composition of the earths, was one of the most im- 
portant discoveries hitherto made in chemistry, and deservedly ranks 
with the discovery of carbonic acid by Dr. Black, of oxygen gas by 
Dr. Priestley, and of the composition of water by Mr. Cavendish. 
Some men of intelligence, however, not particularly conversant with 
chemical science, have expressed to us their inability to comprehend 
the reason why so much importance has been attached to the gal- 
vanic discoveries of Davy, or why they have been rewarded -with 
such unbounded applause. To evolve from a piece of potash a me- 
tallic globule, seems too inconsiderable a matter, to: deserve the pop- 
ularity with which the achievement has been rewarded. But they 
do not reflect that it is one of the peculiarities of chemical analysis, 
-that discoveries made with the minutest quantities of bodies, often 
lead to the grandest conclusions. Thus a drop of water was no 
sooner resolved into its constituent elements, oxygen and hydrogen, 
than a new flood of light beamed forth upon the world ; not only dis- 
playing to the mind, in a new and more interesting view, the expanse 
of waters, but revealing at once the cause of innumerable phenomena 
of chemistry which depend on the agencies of water, and disclosing 
he | ious constitution of the vegetable kingdom. In like man- 
ner, the knowledge of the composition of a particle of potash, con- 
ducted us to-a knowledge of the elementary constitution of the solid 
globe itself. To pass by the remarkable and brilliant physical prop- 
erties of potassium, it became, moreover, in its turn, a most powe 
auxiliary in investigating the composition of many other bodies } for, 
it was its strong affinity for oxygen, the strongest possessed by any 
known body, that had enabled it, under all previous trials, to disguise 
Ns metallic nature ; but this oxygen being withdrawn from it, potas- 
sium itself now became a powerful agent of analysis, appropriating to 
itself as it does the oxygen of every other substance that contains - 
_ Itis far greater merit in science to discover new powers of nature; 
_ or new facts which admit of extensive generalization, than to arrive 
