110 DAVY. 



that Count Rumford, a leading director of the Institu- 

 tion, on seeing him for the first time, expressed no 

 little disappointment, even regretting the part he had 

 taken in promoting the engagement. But these feelings 

 were of short duration. Davy was soon sufficiently hu- 

 manized, and even refined, to appear before a London 

 and a fashionable audience of both sexes with great ad- 

 vantage, and his first course of lectures had unboun- 

 ded and unparalleled success. This he owed, certainly, 

 to the more superficial accomplishments of good and 

 lively language, an agreeable delivery, and, above all, 

 an ingenuous enthusiasm for his subject which in- 

 formed and quickened his whole discourse. But the 

 fame which he thus acquired would have been of 

 limited extent and of short duration, had his reliance 

 only been upon the fickle multitude whom such quali- 

 ties can please. The first consequences of his success 

 in the line of mere exhibition were unfavourable, and 

 threatened to be fatal ; for he was led away by the 

 plaudits of fashion, and must needs join in its frothy, 

 feeble current. For awhile he is remarked to have shown 

 the incongruous combination of science and fashion, 

 which form a most imperfect union, and produce a 

 compound of no valuable qualities, somewhat resem- 

 bling the nitrous gas on which he experimented earlier 

 in life, having an intoxicating effect on the party tast- 

 ing it, and a ludicrous one on all beholders. They 

 who have recorded this transformation, while they la- 

 ment the substitution of anything for "the natural 

 candour and warmth of feeling which had singularly 

 won upon the acquaintance of his early life," add most 

 justly that the weakness which they describe never 

 " cooled his regard for his family and former friends." 

 I can vouch for the change, which was merely super- 

 ficial, being of very short duration ; and it is pleasing 

 to add that, even while it lasted, there was none of 

 that most offensive of all the effects produced by such 

 a transition state to be found in his conversation ; he 



