Famous Men of Science Part 10

He finishes this essay with an allegory. G.o.d is described as deliberating with the angels on the propriety of creating woman.

Justice, Peace, and Virtue plead against her creation, as through her Adam will be driven out of Paradise. Then Divine Love stands before Jehovah, her countenance covered with smiles. "Create her," she says, "for Paradise itself will afford no delight to man without woman. She will be the cause of his misery, but she will likewise be the cause of all his happiness. She will console him in affliction; she will comfort and harmonize his soul; she will wipe the tears from his eyes, and compose the fury of his pa.s.sions. Her friendship shall make him virtuous, and her love shall make him happy; and, lastly, the tree of their transgression, and the plant of immortality, nourished by the blood of her son, shall flourish, and grow out of Paradise, and overspread the earth: man shall eat of their fruit, and be immortal and happy."

All through these early note-books are scattered his poems, showing a pa.s.sion for the blue sea at Penzance, and an unbounded love of nature.

Just as he was entering his nineteenth year, young Davy began the study of chemistry, as a branch of his profession. He read "Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry," and "Nicholson's Dictionary of Chemistry."

Suddenly a new world seemed to open before him. He began to think for himself, and to make experiments. As his means were limited, his apparatus consisted of vials, wine-gla.s.ses, tea-cups, tobacco-pipes, and earthen crucibles.

His first experiments were the effects of acids and alkalies on vegetable colors, the kind of air in the vesicles of common seaweed, and the solution and precipitation of metals. These were made in his bedroom in Mr. Tonkin's house, or in the kitchen, when he required fire. This old gentleman had brought up his mother and her two orphan sisters, and now was like a father to Humphrey. He said, "This boy, Humphrey, is incorrigible. Was there ever so idle a dog! He will blow us all into the air." He was at this time probably making a detonating composition, which he called "thunder power," his sister Kitty being his a.s.sistant.

At this time, a young man came to board at the house of Mrs. Davy, Gregory Watt, the only child of James Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine. He was the idol of his parents; possessed of a mind so unusual in its pa.s.sionate love for knowledge, and a nature so companionable, that everybody loved him. He was twenty-one, and Humphrey nineteen.

Between these two young men there grew a most ardent and lasting friendship; lasting because it had the only sure foundation, moral and mental worth. They were always together. They visited the neighboring mines and mountains, and came home with their pockets filled with minerals.

The brilliant Gregory died at twenty-eight, but Davy lived to show the fruits of one of the most beautiful things in life, the affinity of two n.o.ble and intellectual souls, with similar tastes and aspirations. This death was a great loss to Humphrey. He wrote to a friend: "Poor Watt! He ought not to have died. I could not persuade myself that he would die: and until the very moment when I was a.s.sured of his fate, I would not believe he was in any danger.

"His letters to me only three or four months ago were full of spirit, and spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an increased strength of mind. Why is this in the order of nature, that there is such a difference in the duration and destruction of her works? If the mere stone decays, it is to produce a soil which is capable of nourishing the moss and the lichen; when the moss and the lichen die, and decompose, they produce a mould, which becomes the bed of life to gra.s.ses, and to more exalted species of vegetables. Vegetables are the food of animals; the less perfect animals of the more perfect; but in man the faculties and intellect are perfected. He rises, exists for a little while in disease and misery; and then would seem to disappear, without an end, and without producing any effect.

"We are deceived, my dear Clayfield, if we suppose that the human being, who has formed himself for action, but who has been unable to act, is lost in the ma.s.s of being; there is some arrangement of things which we can never comprehend, but in which his faculties will be applied....

Gregory was a n.o.ble fellow, and would have been a great man. Oh! there was no reason for his dying--he ought not to have died."

This death broke the spirit of James Watt, the father, who ever after kept beside him, in the attic at Heathfield, the little, old-fashioned hair trunk of his beloved Gregory, full of his school-books, letters, and childish toys. It stands to-day, where it did eighty years ago, beside the mouldering beams of the sculpture machine. That life is not short, however few the years, which leaves such an undying influence and such beautiful memories.

Humphrey was now twenty-six, and much had come into his young life. He had applied himself with zeal to his professional studies, had read Locke, and Rollin, and Gibbon, and Shakspeare, and at twenty had been appointed to take charge of the Pneumatic Inst.i.tution at Clifton, established by Dr. Beddoes. It had been founded to give an opportunity of trying the medicinal effects of various gases, and was supported by liberal men of science. So distressed was his old friend, Mr. Tonkin, that he should give up the idea of being a surgeon in Penzance, that he revoked a legacy he had made him in his will!

Davy's life was now an extremely busy one. He published, when he was twenty-one, his "Essays on Heat and Light," beginning his work, like Sir Isaac Newton, when but a youth. He discovered silica in the epidermis of the stems of weeds, corn, and gra.s.ses. He found the intoxicating effects of breathing nitrous oxide, April 9, 1799, and his experiments on this subject were published the following year. He spent ten months of incessant labor in them, often endangering and once nearly losing his life from breathing carburetted hydrogen. He made experiments on galvanic electricity, increasing the powers of the Galvanic Pile of Volta. He also planned and partly wrote an epic poem on the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt.

Worn with overwork, he returned to see his widowed mother at Penzance.

He had been absent a year. How glad were all to greet the rising young scientist! Not least glad was Davy's water spaniel, Chloe. When very small, and about to be drowned, he begged her as a gift, and with great care reared her to be his hunting and fishing companion. At first she did not know him, but when, with his peculiarly musical voice, he called her by name, "she was in a transport of joy."

Davy never forgot his early life at Penzance. In his will he left a sum of money to be paid annually to the master of the grammar school, "_on condition that the boys may have a holiday on his birthday_."

One secret of Davy's early success was, no doubt, his ambition. He used to say that he had been kept largely from the temptations of youth by "an active mind, a deep ideal feeling of good, and _a look towards future greatness_." The young man or woman who definitely plans to be somebody seldom finds any obstacles along the road too great to be overcome.

He wrote in his note-book: "I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth to recommend me; yet, if I live, I trust I shall not be of less service to mankind, and to my friends, than if I had been born with these advantages."

At the Pneumatic Inst.i.tution he found in Mrs. Beddoes "the best and most amiable woman in the world," a helper in the development of his genius.

Like the wife of William Humboldt, and like any other woman who combines heart and intellect, Mrs. Beddoes gathered about her, in her home, Coleridge and Southey, and other bright minds of Clifton. Here Davy, scarcely more than a boy, with his soft brown curling hair, his beautiful smile, and his "wonderfully bright eyes, which seemed almost to emit a soft light, when animated," in the midst of congenial friends, was stimulated to do his best.

Years after this, Wordsworth gave Dr. John Davy a letter to Coleridge, on the back of which he had written: "This from Davy, the great chemist.

It is an affectionate letter."

"MY DEAR COLERIDGE,--My mind is disturbed, and my body hara.s.sed by many labors; yet I cannot suffer you to depart, without endeavoring to express to you some of the unbroken and higher feelings of my spirit, which have you at once for their cause and object.

"Years have pa.s.sed away since we first met; and your presence, and recollections with regard to you, have afforded me continued sources of enjoyment. Some of the better feelings of my nature have been elevated by your converse, and thoughts which you have nursed have been to me an eternal source of consolation.

"In whatever part of the world you are, you will often live with me, not as a fleeting idea, but as a recollection possessed of creative energy,--as an imagination winged with fire, inspiring and rejoicing....

"May blessings attend you, my dear friend! Do not forget me: we live for different ends, and with different habits and pursuits; but our feelings with regard to each other have, I believe, never altered. They must continue; they can have no natural death; and I trust they can never be destroyed by fortune, chance, or accident."

Thus his sweet, kindly nature was an inspiration to others. He believed in amiability. He said, later, of temper in the marriage state: "Upon points of affection it is only for the parties themselves to form just opinions of what is really necessary to ensure the felicity of the marriage state. Riches appear to me not at all necessary; but competence, I think, is; and after this more depends upon the _temper_ of the individual than upon personal or even intellectual circ.u.mstances.

The finest spirits, the most exquisite wines, the nectars and ambrosias of modern tables, will be all spoilt by a few drops of bitter extract; and a bad temper has the same effect in life, which is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort."

When Davy was twenty-three, a brilliant opening came to him; came as it did to Cuvier, Newton, and others, through the influence of a friend.

Count Rumford had been instrumental in founding the Royal Philosophical Inst.i.tution for the diffusion of a knowledge of science. Through his works on heat, nitrous oxide, and galvanic electricity, Davy had made the acquaintance of Dr. Hope, the distinguished professor of chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. He recommended Davy to Count Rumford, as fitted for the professorship of chemistry in the Royal Inst.i.tution, an appointment, Davy wrote to his mother, "as honorable as any scientific appointment in the kingdom, with an income of at least five hundred pounds a year." He had evidently kept the "look towards future greatness" in his heart.

Six weeks after his arrival in London, in the spring of 1801, Davy gave his first lecture, upon the history of galvanism, and the different modes of acc.u.mulating galvanic influence. "The sensation created by his first course of lectures at the Inst.i.tution," says the _Philosophical Magazine_, "and the enthusiastic admiration which they obtained, is at this period hardly 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 ill.u.s.trations and well conducted experiments, excited universal attention and unbounded applause. Compliments, 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." He usually wrote his lecture the day before he delivered it, on this day dining in his own room, generally on fish. His manner in speaking was very animated, but natural. He believed in enthusiasm. He said, "Great powers have never been exerted independent of strong feelings. The rapid arrangement of ideas from their various a.n.a.logies to the equally rapid comparisons of these a.n.a.logies, with facts uniformly occurring during the progress of discovery, have existed only in those minds where the agency of strong and various motives is perceived--of motives modifying each other, mingling with each other, and producing that _fever of emotion_ which is the joy of existence and the consciousness of life."

Coleridge used to say, "I attend Davy's lectures to increase my stock of metaphors."

In the s.p.a.cious and well supplied laboratory of the Inst.i.tution, in making his experiments, says his brother, "his zeal amounted to enthusiasm, which he more or less imparted to those around him. With cheerful voice and countenance, and a hand as ready to manipulate as his mind was quick to contrive, he was indefatigable in his exertions. He was delighted with success, but not discouraged by failure; and he bore failures and accidents in experiments with a patience and forbearance, even when owing to the awkwardness of a.s.sistants, which could hardly have been expected from a person of his ardent temperament."

He was very happy in these years of work. Says his brother: "In going to bed, and rising, and sometimes in the dead of night, I used to hear him, in a loud voice, reciting favorite pa.s.sages in prose or verse, or declaiming some composition of his own, or humming some angler's song."

He spent his evenings often in society, but wrote to a friend concerning himself: "Be not alarmed, my dear friend, as to the effect of worldly society on my mind.... There are in the intellectual being of all men paramount elements,--certain habits and pa.s.sions that cannot change. I am a lover of nature with an ungratified imagination. I shall continue to search for untasted charms, for hidden beauties. My _real_, my _waking_ existence is amongst the objects of scientific research.

Common amus.e.m.e.nts and enjoyments are necessary to me only as dreams to interrupt the flow of thoughts too nearly a.n.a.logous to enlighten and vivify."

During his vacations he explored most parts of Great Britain, the Hebrides, and Ireland, studying the geological structure, collecting agricultural knowledge, and making sketches. He never hesitated to ask questions, and often the miners and farmers thought they had never seen a person so inquisitive.

In his early years at the Inst.i.tution he was asked to investigate astringent vegetables in connection with tanning. He entered the work with his usual ardor; visited tan-yards, and made the acquaintance of practical farmers. In 1802 he began to deliver, at the request of the Board of Agriculture, a course of lectures, "On the Connection of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology." He had made himself acquainted with the different kinds of soil and the various methods of agriculture.

For ten years he delivered these lectures at the meetings of the Board.

They were published in book form, and translated into almost every European language.

"We feel grateful," said the _Edinburgh Review_, "for his having thus suspended for a time the labors of original investigation, in order to apply the principles and discoveries of his favorite science to the ill.u.s.tration and improvement of an art which, above all others, ministers to the wants and comforts of man."

He now continued his work with the voltaic pile or battery. If water could be decomposed by it, why not some substances heretofore regarded as simple or elementary bodies?

In October, 1806, he discovered that potash and soda can be decomposed, with pota.s.sium and sodium as resultant bases.

When he saw the minute globules of pota.s.sium burst through the crust of potash, and take fire as they entered the atmosphere, he is said to have bounded about the room in ecstatic delight, some time elapsing before he could compose himself sufficiently to go on with his experiment.

He had worked so constantly that he became very ill, and for several weeks his life was despaired of. All London was agitated over the expected death of the young chemist. Bulletins were prepared by the physicians morning, noon, and night, for the scores who came to ask concerning him.

When he had recovered and returned to his work, the Royal Inst.i.tution provided him with a voltaic battery of six hundred double plates of four inches square, four times as powerful as any that had been constructed, and not long after, one of two thousand plates. Scientific papers were constantly coming from his pen. He soon decomposed boracic acid with the battery. By heating boron in oxygen, it burnt, and was reconverted into boracic acid. In his experiments with muriatic acid gas he found chlorine to be a simple substance, and discovered euchlorine, a compound of chlorine and oxygen.

He had already been made a fellow of the Royal Society at twenty-five, and at twenty-nine one of the secretaries. His lectures were crowded, as ever, by a thousand people. The Dublin Society now invited him to give courses of lectures in 1810 and 1811, which he did, ticket-holders each paying ten dollars for a course. So difficult was it to gain admission to the lectures that many offered from fifty to a hundred dollars for a course ticket!

He writes these facts to his mother, and adds, "This is merely for your eye: it may please you to know that your son is not unpopular or useless. Every person here, from the highest to the lowest, shows me every attention and kindness.

"I shall come to see you as soon as I can. I hear with infinite delight of your health, and I hope Heaven will continue to preserve and bless a mother who deserves so well of her children."

Trinity College, Dublin, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. Cuvier said of him: "Davy, not yet thirty-two, in the opinion of all who could judge of such labors, held the first rank among the chemists of this or of any other age." The National Inst.i.tute of France had awarded him the prize given by Napoleon to the greatest discovery by the means of galvanism.

And yet all this fame and honor had been won by incessant labor. He writes to his mother: "At present, except when I resolve to be idle for health's sake, I devote every moment to labors which I hope will not be wholly ineffectual in benefiting society, and which will not be wholly inglorious for my country hereafter; and the feeling of this is the _reward_ which will continue to keep me employed."

His brother John, who had been for three years at the Royal Inst.i.tution, now went to Edinburgh to study medicine. Davy writes him: "Let no difficulties alarm you, you may be what you please. Trust me, I know what your powers are. Preserve the dignity of your mind, and the purity of your moral conduct. You set sail with a fair wind on the ocean of life. You have great talents, good feelings, and an unbroken and an uncorrupted spirit. Move straight forward on to moral and intellectual excellence. Let no example induce you to violate decorum,--no ridicule prevent you from guarding against sensuality or vice. Live in such a way that you can always say, the whole world may know what I am doing."

In 1812 Davy was knighted by the Prince Regent. Only thirty-three, and he had come to great renown!

And now an important change was to come into his life. During the preceding year he had become acquainted with Mrs. Appreece, towards whom esteem gradually ripened into affection. When their marriage had been decided upon, he wrote his mother: "I am the happiest of men, in the hope of a union with a woman equally distinguished for virtues, talents, and accomplishments.... You, I am sure, will sympathize in my happiness.