(757.) 
His scien- 
tific cha- 
racter, 
(758.) 
History of 
the pile of 
Volta con- 
tinued. 
(759.) 
966 
His scientific character is easily summed up. He 
was patient, intelligent, and devoted to science from 
youth to age. He had, in an eminent degree, that 
patience and tenacity of purpose and of interest 
which Newton described as the chief attributes of his 
own genius. He had the candour which is more 
especially to be desired in the experimentalist ; and 
he wrote without pretension, and generally clearly, 
though not without that diffuseness which is often 
associated with the use of the Italian language 
even in matters of science, On the other hand, his 
intellect may be rather described as opening itself to 
conviction, than as forcing its way by a native power 
of penetration to great results. His taste and his 
talent lay far more in experimental than in abstract 
reasoning. His explanations of the effects which he 
observed were often involved and obscure ; yet he had 
a very happy talent of combination, which led him 
MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
[Diss. VI. 
to effect what others only talked about. His instru- 
mental inventions, including the pile, were his hap- 
piest efforts. His theories, on the other hand, were 
surrounded, even in his own mind, with a certain 
obscurity. Even the contact theory, with its manifold 
paradoxes, was perhaps only vigorously carried out 
by him under the excitement of an active contro- 
versy. The invention of the pile may, in very many 
respects, be placed on a par with that of the steam- 
engine. The results of the former were indeed more 
interesting, immediately, to pure science; the latter 
to the arts of life and the needs of civilization. Yet, 
after half a century, this distinction can hardly be 
drawn with severity. The rapid pace of steam is 
insufficient for our demands. ‘The electric wire con- 
veys to its destination, ere the locomotive has time to 
start on its journey, tidings of joy and sorrow—life 
and death—of victories won, and kingdoms lost. 
§ 3. Str Humpnry Davy. Progress of Voltaic Electricity—Electro-Chemistry ; Berzelius.— 
Davy’s Invention of the Safety-Lamp.—WOoLLASTON; his Electrical and other Observations. 
Contrast of his Character with that of Davy. 
The pile of Volta was, in one sense, rather a 
means of discovery than a discovery itself. Volta 
had neither a just theory of the source of power 
which he invented, nor was he successful in applying 
it to any important research. The discovery of its 
chemical efficiency by Nicholson and Carlisle, stimu- 
lated, as we have seen, for a short time his interest 
and curiosity; but he never seriously attached him- 
self to this line of discovery, His subsequent papers 
are chiefly controversial, in support of the Contact 
theory. The generation, as well as the expendi- 
ture of chemical forces by the pile, consequently re- 
mained, as far as he was concerned, in complete 
obscurity. 
The invention of the pile having been communi- 
was also more than usually interesting, and his career 
of discovery, short, brilliant, and decisive, is at once 
one of the most instructive and remarkable of 
those which we have to consider. The contrast be- 
tween him and his contemporary, Wollaston, was 
one of those curious antitheses of really great minds 
which occasionally occur in such close connection, 
and with such prominent relief, as to compel rather 
than invite a comparison between them, It is an 
instructive lesson to observe, how natures, the most 
unlike, cultivated in a school the most opposite, may 
yet, when both directed by a common impulse to 
similar objects, promote the development of truth, 
and the cause of scientific discovery. 
Sir Humpnry Davy wag born at Penzance on the 
Cruick- 
shanks, 
Wollaston, 
Davy. 
cated to the world through the Royal Society, natu- 
rally gave an impulse to English electricians and che- 
mists. The first discoverers of its chemical energy 
did not however themselves prosecute their experi- 
17th December 1778. His was an ardent boyhood. phry Davy 
Educated in a manner somewhat irregular, and with —his early 
only the ordinary advantages of a remote country town, om oat 
his talents appeared in the earnestness with which he gpjegenius. 
ments to a great extent, but Cruickshanks decom- 
posed salis and revived the metals by the voltaic 
current, whilst he improved the form of the appa- 
ratus in an important manner. Colonel Haldane 
ascertained the significant fact that the action of the 
pile cannot be continued in an atmosphere deprived 
of its oxygen. Hisinger and Berzelius, carrying out 
Cruickshanks’ experiments, showed that, generally 
in the decomposition of compounds, the alcaline and 
metallic elements appear to be attracted towards the 
negative wire of the battery, and the acids to the po- 
sitive one. In the mean time, Davy and Wollaston 
appeared on the arena, and the former especially filled 
so important a part in the history of science for the 
next twenty years, that we can hardly give his name 
too great a prominence in a review of the character- 
istics of the period, The constitution of Davy’s mind 
’ cultivated at once the most various branches of know- 
ledge and speculation. He was fond of metaphysics ; 
he was fond of experiment ; he was an ardent student 
of nature ; and he possessed at an early age poetic 
powers, which, had they been cultivated, would, in the 
opinion of competent judges, have made him as emi- 
nent in literature as he became in science. -All these 
tastes endured throughout life. Business could not 
stifle them,—even the approach of death was un- 
able to extinguish them. The reveries of his boy- 
hood on the sea-worn cliffs of Mount’s Bay, may yet 
be traced in many of the pages dictated during the 
last year of his life amidst the ruins of the Coli- 
seum. But the physical sciences—those more em- 
phatically called at that time chemical—speedily 
attracted and absorbed his most earnest attention. 
The philosophy of the imponderables—of Light, Heat, 
