DAVY. 459 



though it decomposes water with a hissing noise, and 

 makes with it a solution of soda. To these metals the 

 discoverer gave the name of potassium and sodium. The 

 glory of having now made the greatest discovery of the 

 age was plainly Davy's ; and it was not the result of 

 happy accident, but of laborious investigation, conducted 

 with a skill and a patience equally admirable, and 

 according to the strict rules of the soundest philo- 

 sophy. He had indeed begun by discovering the laws 

 of electrical action, and had thus formed the means of 

 his new discovery, which was the fruit of the science 

 he had founded, as Newton's tjieory of dynamics and 

 of astronomy was the fruit of the calculus which he 

 had so marvellously discovered when hardly arrived at 

 man's estate. 



The wonder excited by the strange bodies with 

 which philosophers were thus brought acquainted, was 

 of course in part owing to their novel and singular 

 properties, which formed no part of the discoverer's 

 merits, yet might be reckoned as the perquisites of his 

 genius. His praise would have been the same if in- 

 stead of at once discovering the alkalis to be oxides, 

 and the metal forming the base to be one lighter than 

 water, or bees'-wax or box- wood, and the other to burn 

 unheated in the open air, he had only shown those 

 salts to be oxides of well-known metals. Yet, as his 

 investigation had been crowned with the discovery of 

 strange substances, metallic, and yet like no other 

 metals, we justly admire the more, and the more 

 thank him for his double service rendered to science. 



The long labour thus ending in so mighty a result, 

 and the excitement naturally enough produced in an 

 irritable habit, threw him into an illness of a most 



