46 DAVY. 



and manners, notwithstanding an exceedingly handsome and ex- 

 pressive countenance, that Count Kumford, a leading director of the 

 Institution, on seeing him for the first time, expressed no little dis- 

 appointment, even regretting the part he had taken in promoting 

 the engagement. But these feelings were of short duration. Davy 

 was soon sufficiently humanized, and even refined, to appear before 

 a London and a fashionable audience of both sexes with great ad- 

 vantage, and by his ingenuity, and happy facility of illustration, he 

 rendered his lectures so popular, that at the early age of twenty-two, 

 he found his company courted by the choicest society of the metro- 

 polis. An anecdote is told illustrative of his popularity, even among 

 the more humble classes. While passing through the streets one 

 fine night, he observed a man showing the moon through a telescope 

 to the surrounding bystanders ; Davy stopped to have a look, and 

 having satisfied his curiosity, tendered a penny <to the exhibitor. 

 The man had, however, in the meanwhile, learnt the name of his 

 customer, and exclaimed, with an important air, that he could not 

 think of taking money from a * brother philosopher.' Davy's style 

 of lecturing was animated, clear and impressive, notwithstanding 

 the naturally inharmonious tones of his voice ; whilst the ingenuity 

 of his happily devised experiments, the neatness of their execution, 

 and above all the ingenious enthusiasm which he displayed for his 

 subject, fixed and arrested the attention of his hearers. 



At this time, experimental chemistry began to be the fashion of 

 the day. Voltaic electricity had just been found to possess extra- 

 ordinary powers in effecting the decomposition of chemical com- 

 pounds ; and by the liberality of the Eoyal Institution, Davy was 

 put in possession of a battery consisting of 400 5-inch plates, and 

 one of 40 plates, 1-foot in diameter, with which batteries his early 

 and most brilliant investigations were conducted. 



In 1801 he made his first important discovery, which was com- 

 municated to the Royal Society under the title ' An Account of some 

 Galvanic Combinations formed by an Arrangement of Single Metallic 

 Plates and Fluids,' read in June of the same year. In this paper, 

 he showed that the usual galvanic phenomena might be energeti- 

 cally exhibited by a single metallic plate, and two strata of different 

 fluids ; or that a battery might be constructed of one metal and two 

 fluids, provided one of the fluids was capable of oxidizing the surface 

 of the metal. In the following year to this, Davy was appointed 

 professor to the Board of Agriculture, and in 1803 was admitted a 

 member of the Royal Society, of which he became first the secretary^ 

 and ultimately the president. 



To the ' Philosophical Transactions' of this society he continued 

 to contribute papers on different branches of experimental philosophy; 

 and it is on these papers that his claims to celebrity almost entirely 

 rest. From 1802 to 1805, Davy published several minor papers; 

 but in the following year appeared his first Bakerian lecture, read to 



