166 BIOGRAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 



Me toils and pleasures alternate share, 



Books and the converse of the fair, 



To see is to adore them; 



With these and London for my home, 



I envy not the joys of Rome, 



The circus or the Forum. 



At the Royal Institution he had plenty of time for 

 research, a good laboratory, and influential friends who 

 took the greatest interest in his work and welfare. How 

 different it was with poor Linnaeus ! 



Concerning Davy's first course of lectures at the Royal 

 Institution, it has been stated that 



. . . the enthusiastic admiration which they obtained is scarcely to 

 be imagined. Men of the first rank and talent, the literary and the 

 scientific, the practical and the theoretical, blue-stockings and women 

 of fashion, the old and the young all crowded, eagerly crowded, the 

 lecture room. His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his 

 chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted experi- 

 ments, excited universal attention and unbounded applause. Com- 

 pliments, invitations, and presents were showered upon him in 

 abundance from all quarters; his society was courted by all, and all 

 appeared proud of his acquaintance. 



The age of Davy was essentially the age of the voltaic 

 battery in chemical research ; and what he did with the 

 battery, recently invented by Volta, were discoveries in 

 chemistry second to no others. 



The researches, indicated in his Bakerian lecture of 

 1806, were rewarded with a prize of three thousand francs 

 by the Acade'mie des Sciences. He began his electro- 

 chemical researches in the early years of the last century. 

 In his Elements of Chemical Philosophy he says : 



