CHAPTER XV.
Sir H. Davy's paper on the Phenomena of Volcanoes.—His experiments on Vesuvius.—Theory of Volcanic action.—His reception abroad.—Anecdotes.—His last letter to Mr. Poole from Rome.—His paper on the Electricity of the Torpedo.—Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher.—Analysis of the work.—Reflections suggested by its style and composition.—Davy and Wollaston compared.—His last illness.—Arrival at Geneva.—His Death.
A short time before Sir Humphry Davy quitted England, to which he was destined never to return, he communicated to the Royal Society a paper "On the Phenomena of Volcanoes;" which was read on the 20th of March 1828, and published in the Transactions of that year.
The object of this memoir was to collect and record the various observations and experiments which he had made on Vesuvius, during his several visits to that volcano. The appearances which it presented in 1814 and 1815 have been already noticed; it was in December 1819, and during the two succeeding months, that the mountain offered a favourable opportunity for making those experiments which form the principal subject of the present communication.
It was a point of great importance to determine whether any combustion was going on at the moment the lava issued from the mountain; for this fact being once discovered, and the nature of the combustible matter ascertained, we should gain an immense step towards a just theory of the sources of volcanic action. For this purpose, he carefully examined both the lava and the elastic fluids with which it was accompanied. He was unable, however, to detect any thing like deflagration with nitre, which must have taken place had the smallest quantity of carbonaceous matter been present; nor could he, by exposing the ignited mass to portions of atmospheric air, discover that any appreciable quantity of oxygen had been absorbed. On immersing fused lava in water, no decomposition of that fluid followed, so that there could not have existed any quantity of the metallic bases of the alkalies or earths. Common salt, chloride of iron, the sulphates and muriates of potash, and soda, generally constituted the mass of solid products; while steam, muriatic acid fumes, and occasionally sulphurous acid vapours, formed the principal elastic matters disengaged.
He informs us it was on the 26th of January 1820, that he had the honour to accompany his Royal Highness the Prince of Denmark in an excursion to the mountain, on which occasion his friend, Cavalier Monticelli, was also present. At this time, the lava was seen nearly white hot through a chasm near the place where it flowed from the mountain; and yet, although he threw nitre upon it in large quantities through this chasm, there was no more increase of ignition than when the experiment was made on lava exposed to the free air. He observed that the appearance of the sublimations was very different from that which they had presented on former occasions; those near the aperture were coloured green and blue by salt of copper; but there was, as usual, a great quantity of muriate of iron. On the 5th, the sublimate of the lava was pure chloride of sodium; in the sublimate of January 6th, there were both sulphate of soda and indications of sulphate of potash; but in those which he collected during this last visit, the sulphate of soda was in much larger quantities, and there was much more of a salt of potash.
For nearly three months the craters, of which there were two, were in activity. The larger one threw up showers of ignited ashes and stones to a height apparently of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet; and from the smaller crater steam arose with great violence. Whenever the crater could be approached, it was found incrusted with saline matter: and the walk to the edge of the small crater, on the 6th of January, was through a mass of loose saline matter, principally common salt coloured by muriate of iron, in which the foot sunk to some depth. It was easy, even at a great distance, to distinguish between the steam disengaged by one of the craters, and the earthy matter thrown up by the other. The steam appeared white in the day, and formed perfectly white clouds, which reflected the morning and evening light of the purest tints of red and orange. The earthy matter always appeared as a black smoke, forming dark clouds, and in the night it was highly luminous at the moment of the explosion.
He concludes this paper on Volcanoes with some observations on the theory of their phenomena. "It appears," says he, "almost demonstrable, that none of the chemical causes anciently assigned for volcanic fires can be true. Amongst these, the combustion of mineral coal is one of the most current; but it seems wholly inadequate to account for the phenomena. However large the stratum of pit-coal, its combustion under the surface could never produce violent and excessive heat; for the production of carbonic acid gas, when there was no free circulation of air, must tend constantly to impede the process: and it is scarcely possible that carbonaceous matter, if such a cause existed, should not be found in the lava, and be disengaged with the saline or aqueous products from the bocca or craters. There are many instances in England of strata of mineral coal which have been long burning; but the results have been merely baked clay and schists, and it has produced no result similar to lava.
"If the idea of Lemery were correct, that the action of sulphur on iron may be a cause of volcanic fires, sulphate of iron ought to be the great product of the volcano; which is known not to be the case; and the heat produced by the action of sulphur on the common metals is quite inadequate to account for the appearances. When it is considered that volcanic fires occur and intermit with all the phenomena that indicate intense chemical action, it seems not unreasonable to refer them to chemical causes. But for phenomena upon such a scale, an immense mass of matter must be in activity, and the products of the volcano ought to give an idea of the nature of the substances primarily active. Now, what are these products? Mixtures of the earths in an oxidated and fused state, and intensely ignited; water and saline substances, such as might be furnished by the sea and air, altered in such a manner as might be expected from the formation of fixed oxidated matter. But it may be said, if the oxidation of the metals of the earths be the causes of the phenomena, some of these substances ought occasionally to be found in the lava, or the combustion ought to be increased at the moment the materials passed into the atmosphere. But the reply to this objection is, that it is evident that the changes which occasion volcanic fires take place in immense subterranean cavities; and that the access of air to the acting substances occurs long before they reach the exterior surface.
"There is no question but that the ground under the solfaterra is hollow; and there is scarcely any reason to doubt of a subterraneous communication between this crater and that of Vesuvius: whenever Vesuvius is in an active state, the solfaterra is comparatively tranquil. I examined the bocca of the solfaterra on the 21st of February 1820, two days before the activity of Vesuvius was at its height: the columns of steam which usually arise in large quantities when Vesuvius is tranquil, were now scarcely visible, and a piece of paper thrown into the aperture did not rise again; so that there was every reason to suppose the existence of a descending current of air. The subterraneous thunder heard at such great distances under Vesuvius is almost a demonstration of the existence of great cavities below filled with aëriform matter: and the same excavations which, in the active state of the volcano, throw out, during so great a length of time, immense volumes of steam, must, there is every reason to believe, in its quiet state, become filled with atmospheric air.[115]
"To what extent subterraneous cavities may exist, even in common rocks, is shown in the limestone caverns of Carniola, some of which contain many hundred thousand cubical feet of air; and in proportion as the depth of an excavation is greater, so is the air more fit for combustion.
"The same circumstances which would give alloys of the metals of the earths the power of producing volcanic phenomena, namely, their extreme facility of oxidation, must likewise prevent them from ever being found in a pure combustible state in the products of volcanic eruptions; for before they reach the external surface, they must not only be exposed to the air in the subterranean cavities, but be propelled by steam; which must possess, under the circumstances, at least the same facility of oxidating them as air. Assuming the hypothesis of the existence of such alloys of the metals of the earths as may burn into lava in the interior, the whole phenomena may be easily explained from the action of the water of the sea and air on those metals; nor is there any fact, or any of the circumstances which I have mentioned in the preceding part of this paper, which cannot be easily explained according to that hypothesis. For almost all the volcanoes in the old world of considerable magnitude are near, or at no considerable distance from the sea: and if it be assumed that the first eruptions are produced by the action of sea-water upon the metals of the earths, and that considerable cavities are left by the oxidated metals thrown out as lava, the results of their action are such as might be anticipated; for, after the first eruptions, the oxidations which produce the subsequent ones may take place in the caverns below the surface; and when the sea is distant, as in the volcanoes of South America, they may be supplied with water from great subterranean lakes, as Humboldt states that some of them throw up quantities of fish.
"On the hypothesis of a chemical cause for volcanic fires, and reasoning from known facts, there appears to me no other adequate source than the oxidation of the metals which form the bases of the earths and alkalies; but it must not be denied, that considerations derived from thermometrical experiments on the temperature of mines and of sources of hot water, render it probable that the interior of the globe possesses a very high temperature: and the hypothesis of the nucleus of the globe being composed of fluid matter offers a still more simple solution of the phenomena of volcanic fires than that which has been just developed."
It must be admitted that the concluding sentence of this memoir is rather equivocal. He states that the metalloidal theory of volcanoes is most chemical, but that the hypothesis which assumes the high temperature of the interior of the globe is the most simple; but he leaves us in doubt as to his own belief upon the subject. In his "Last Days," however, we shall find that he offers a less reserved opinion upon this question.
With respect to Sir Humphry Davy's last journey to Rome, I have nothing of particular interest to relate. Universally known and respected, a member of almost every scientific society in Europe, there was not a part of the Continent in which he felt as a stranger in a foreign land. I might, in addition to the circumstances which have been already mentioned, relate several anecdotes in proof of the widely-extended popularity which his genius and discoveries had secured for him. The following striking incidents deserve particular notice.—Whilst sporting in Austria, he was assaulted by some peasants; and the outrage was no sooner made known to the Emperor, than he expressed his sorrow and indignation in the strongest language, and immediately directed that a party of troops should surround the district, and a most rigorous search be made for the culprits. The search was of course successful, and the "Carinthian boors" received merited chastisement.
For the following anecdote I am indebted to Lady Davy. Her Ladyship was travelling alone, on account of ill health, and upon arriving at Basle, she naturally felt a strong desire to visit its far-famed library; it so happened, however, that Sunday was the only day which afforded her this opportunity, and so strictly is the sabbath observed at that place, that she was at once informed that an admission to the library, under any circumstances, was altogether impossible. She nevertheless addressed a note to the librarian, stating to him her name, and the reasons for her unusual request. He immediately returned an answer, and appointed the hour of ten for her visit. Having shown her all that deserved inspection, he concluded his attentions by saying, "Madam, I have held the keys of this library for thirty years, during which period only three persons have been admitted to see its treasures on the Sunday; two of these were crowned heads, the third the wife of the most celebrated philosopher in Europe."
The following is the last letter which Davy ever wrote to his much-valued friend Mr. Poole.—
TO THOMAS POOLE, ESQ.
Rome, Feb. 6, 1829.
MY DEAR POOLE,
I have not written to you during my absence from England, because I had no satisfactory account of any marked progress towards health to give you, and the feelings of an invalid are painful enough for himself, and should, I think, never form a part of his correspondence; for they are not diminished by the conviction that they are felt by others. Would I were better! I would then write to you an agreeable letter from this glorious city; but I am here wearing away the winter; a ruin amongst ruins! I am anxious to hear from you,—very anxious, so pray write to me with this address, "Sir H. Davy, Inglese, posta restanti, Rovigo, Italia." You know you must pay the postage to the frontier, otherwise the letters, like one a friend sent to me, will go back to you. Pray be so good as to be particular in the direction,—the "Inglese" is necessary. I hope you got a copy of my little trifle "Salmonia." I ordered copies to be sent to you, to Mr. W——, and to Mr. Baker: but as the course of letters in foreign countries is uncertain, I am not sure you received them; if not, you will have lost little; a second edition will soon be out, which will be in every respect more worthy of your perusal, being, I think, twice (not saying much for it) as entertaining and philosophical. I will take care by early orders that you have this book. I write and philosophize a good deal, and have nearly finished a work with a higher aim than the little book I speak of above, and which I shall dedicate to you. It contains the essence of my philosophical opinions, and some of my poetical reveries. It is, like the "Salmonia," an amusement of my sickness; but "paulo majora canamus." I sometimes think of the lines of Waller, and seem to feel their truth:
"The soul's dark cottage, batter`d and decay'd,
Lets in new lights through chinks that Time has made."
I have, notwithstanding my infirmities, attended to scientific objects whenever it was in my power, and I have sent the Royal Society a paper which they will publish, on the peculiar Electricity of the Torpedo, which I think bears remotely upon the functions of life. I attend a good deal to Natural History, and I think I have recognised in the Mediterranean a new species of eel, a sort of link between the conger and the muræna of the ancients. I have no doubt Mr. Baker is right about the distinction between the conger and the common eel. I am very anxious to hear what he thinks about their generation. Pray get from him a distinct opinion on this subject. I am at this moment getting the eels in the markets here dissected, and have found ova in plenty. Pray tell me particularly what Mr. Baker has done; this is a favourite subject with me, and you can give me no news so interesting. My dear friend, I shall never forget your kindness to me. You, with one other person, have given me the little happiness I have enjoyed since my severe visitation.
I fight against sickness and fate, believing I have still duties to perform, and that even my illness is connected in some way with my being made useful to my fellow-creatures. I have this conviction full on my mind, that intellectual beings spring from the same breath of Infinite Intelligence, and return to it again, but by different courses. Like rivers, born amidst the clouds of heaven, and lost in the deep and eternal ocean—some in youth, rapid and short-lived torrents; some in manhood, powerful and copious rivers; and some in age, by a winding and slow course, half lost in their career, and making their exit through many sandy and shallow mouths. I hope to be at Rovigo about the first week in April. I travel slowly and with my own horses. If you will come and join me there, I can give you a place in a comfortable carriage, and can show you the most glorious country in Europe—Illyria and Styria, and take you to the French frontier before the beginning of autumn,—perhaps to England. If you can come, do so at once. I have two servants, and can accommodate you with every thing. I think of taking some baths before I return, in Upper Austria; but I write as if I were a strong man, when I am like a pendulum, as it were, swinging between death and life.
God bless you, my dear Poole.
Your grateful and affectionate friend,
H. Davy.
Pray remember me to our friends at Stowey.
His paper on the Electricity of the Torpedo, to which he alludes in the foregoing letter, appears to have been written shortly after he had finished his "Salmonia," as it is dated from Lubiana, Illyria, on the 24th of October, and it was read before the Royal Society on the 20th of November 1828, and published in the first part of the Transactions for 1829. It will be remembered, that this subject had long engaged his attention; and he expresses his surprise that the electricity of living animals should not have been an object of greater attention, both on account of its physiological importance, and its general relation to the science of electro-chemistry.
When Volta discovered his wonderful pile, he imagined he had made a perfect resemblance of the organ of the Gymnotus and Torpedo; and Davy observes, that whoever has felt the shocks of the natural and artificial instruments must have been convinced, as far as sensation is concerned, of their strict analogy.
After the discovery of the chemical power of the Voltaic instrument, he was naturally desirous of ascertaining whether this property was possessed by the electrical organs of living animals; for which purpose, he instituted various experiments, but he could not discover that such was the fact. Upon mentioning his researches to Signor Volta, with whom he passed some time in the summer of 1815, the Italian philosopher showed him a peculiar form of his instrument, which appeared to fulfil the conditions of the organs of the torpedo; viz. a pile, of which the fluid substance was a very imperfect conductor, such as honey or a strong saccharine extract, which required a certain time to become charged, and which did not decompose water, though it communicated weak shocks.
The discovery by Oersted of the effects of Voltaic electricity on the magnetic needle induced Davy to examine whether the electricity of living animals possessed a similar power. Having, after some trouble, procured two lively and recently caught Torpedoes, he passed the shocks from the largest of these animals a number of times through the circuit of an extremely delicate magnetic electrometer, but, although every precaution was used, not the slightest deviation of, or effect on, the needle could be perceived.
"These negative results," says he, "may be explained by supposing that the motion of the electricity in the torpedinal organ is in no measurable time, and that a current of some continuance is necessary to produce the deviation of the magnetic needle; and I found that the magnetic electrometer was equally insensible to the weak discharge of a Leyden jar as to that of the torpedinal organ; though whenever there was a continuous current from the smallest surfaces in Voltaic combinations of the weakest power, but in which some chemical action was going on, it was instantly and powerfully affected. Two series of zinc and silver, and paper moistened in salt and water, caused the permanent deviation of the needle several degrees, though the plates of zinc were only one-sixth of an inch in diameter.
"It would be desirable to pursue these enquiries with the electricity of the Gymnotus, which is so much more powerful than that of the Torpedo; but if they are now to be reasoned upon, they seem to show a stronger analogy between common and animal electricity, than between Voltaic and animal electricity; it is however, I think, more probable that animal electricity will be found of a distinctive and peculiar kind.
"Common electricity is excited upon non-conductors, and is readily carried off by conductors and imperfect conductors. Voltaic electricity is excited upon combinations of perfect and imperfect conductors, and is only transmitted by perfect conductors, or imperfect conductors of the best kind.
"Magnetism, if it be a form of electricity, belongs only to perfect conductors; and, in its modifications, to a peculiar class of them.
"The animal electricity resides only in the imperfect conductors forming the organs of living animals, and its object in the economy of nature is to act on living animals.
"Distinctions might be established in pursuing the various modifications or properties of electricity in these different forms; but it is scarcely possible to avoid being struck by another relation of this subject. The torpedinal organ depends for its powers upon the will of the animal. John Hunter has shown how copiously it is furnished with nerves. In examining the columnar structure of the organ of the Torpedo, I have never been able to discover arrangements of different conductors similar to those in galvanic combinations, and it seems not improbable that the shock depends upon some property developed by the action of the nerves.
"To attempt to reason upon any phenomena of this kind as dependent upon a specific fluid would be wholly vain. Little as we know of the nature of electrical action, we are still more ignorant of the nature of the functions of the nerves. There seems, however, a gleam of light worth pursuing in the peculiarities of animal electricity,—its connexion with so large a nervous system, its dependence upon the will of the animal, and the instantaneous nature of its transfer, which may lead, when pursued by adequate enquirers, to results important for physiology."
He concludes this paper by expressing his fear that the weak state of his health will prevent him from following the subject with the attention it seems to deserve; and he therefore communicates these imperfect trials to the Royal Society, in the hope that they may lead to more extensive and profound researches.
We come now to the consideration of the last production of his genius—"Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher:" A work which, he informs us in the preface, was composed immediately after Salmonia, under the same unfavourable and painful circumstances, and at a period when his constitution suffered from new attacks. From this exercise of the mind, he tells us, that he derived some pleasure and some consolation, when most other sources of consolation and pleasure were closed to him; and he ventures to hope that those hours of sickness may be not altogether unprofitable to persons in perfect health. His brother, Dr. Davy, who edited the work after the decease of Sir Humphry, informs us that it was concluded at the very moment of the invasion of the author's last illness, and that, had his life been prolonged, it is probable some additions and some changes would have been made.
"The characters of the persons of the dialogue," continues the Editor, "were intended to be ideal, at least in great part;—such they should be considered by the reader; and it is to be hoped, that the incidents introduced, as well as the persons, will be viewed only as subordinate and subservient to the sentiments and the doctrines. The dedication, it may be specially noticed, is the Author's own, and in the very words dictated by himself at a time when he had lost the power of writing, except with extreme difficulty, owing to the paralytic attack, although he retained in a very remarkable manner all his mental faculties unimpaired and unclouded." The words of the Dedication are "To Thomas Poole, Esq. of Nether Stowey; in remembrance of thirty years of continued and faithful friendship."
This is a most extraordinary and interesting work: extraordinary, not only from the wild strength of its fancy, and the extravagance of its conceptions, but from the bright light of scientific truth which is constantly shining through its metaphorical tissue, and irradiating its most shadowy imaginings. It may be compared to the tree of the lower regions in the Æneid, to every leaf of which was attached a dream; and yet, however wildly his fancy may dream, his philosophy never sleeps; and in his exit from the land of phantoms, the author can in no instance be accused of having mistaken the gate of ivory for that of horn. To the biographer, the work is of the highest interest and value, by confirming, in a remarkable manner, the opinion so frequently expressed in the course of these memoirs, with respect to the diversified talents of Sir Humphry Davy; and above all, by elucidating that rare combination of imagination with judgment, which imparted to his genius its more striking peculiarities.
The work consists of six Dialogues:—1. The Vision; 2. Discussions connected with the Vision in the Colosæum; 3. The Unknown; 4. The Proteus, or Immortality; 5. The Chemical Philosopher; and 6. Pola, or Time.
The interlocutors of the first dialogue are two intellectual Englishmen, one of whom the author calls Ambrosio; a man of highly cultivated taste, great classical erudition, and minute historical knowledge: a Catholic in religion, but so liberal in his sentiments, that in another age he might have been secretary to Ganganelli. The other friend, whom he calls Onuphrio, was a man of a very different character: belonging to the English aristocracy, he had some of the prejudices usually attached to birth and rank; but his manners were gentle, his temper good, and his disposition amiable. Having been partly educated at a northern university in Britain, he had adopted views in religion which went even beyond toleration, and which might be regarded as entering the verge of scepticism. For a patrician, he was very liberal in his political views. His imagination was poetical and discursive, his taste good, and his tact extremely fine,—so exquisite, indeed, that it sometimes approached to morbid sensibility, and disgusted him with slight defects, and made him keenly sensible of small perfections to which common minds have been indifferent.
The author, with these his two friends, makes an excursion to the Colosæum, and the conversation, which a view of those magnificent ruins produced, together with the account of a dream, or vision, which occurred to him while left alone amidst these mouldering monuments, forms the subject-matter of the first dialogue. It is impossible for any person of the least imagination to contemplate this decay of former magnificence without strong emotion; but the direction and tone of such feeling will be necessarily modified by the qualities of the mind in which it is excited; and the author has therefore very properly assigned to each of the dramatis personæ, such opinions as might best correspond with his character and temperament.
They are all represented as being struck with the transiency of human monuments; but Ambrosio views with triumph the sanctifying influence of a few crosses planted around the ruins, in arresting the farther decay of the pile. "Without the influence of Christianity," he exclaims, "these majestic ruins would have been dispersed or levelled to the dust. Plundered of their lead and iron by the barbarians, Goths and Vandals, and robbed even of their stones by Roman princes—the Barberini, they owe what remains of their relics to the sanctifying influence of that faith which has preserved for the world all that was worth preserving, not merely arts and literature, but likewise that which constitutes the progressive nature of intellect, and the institutions which afford to us happiness in this world, and hopes of a blessed immortality in the next." And he continues,—"What a contrast the present application of this building, connected with holy feelings and exalted hopes, is to that of the ancient one, when it was used for exhibiting to the Roman people the destruction of men by wild beasts, or of men more savage than wild beasts by each other, to gratify a horrible appetite for cruelty, founded upon a still more detestable lust, that of universal domination! And who would have supposed, in the time of Titus, that a faith, despised in its insignificant origin, and persecuted from the supposed obscurity of its founder and its principles, should have reared a dome to the memory of one of its humblest teachers, more glorious than was ever framed for Jupiter or Apollo in the ancient world, and have preserved even the ruins of the temples of the Pagan deities, and have burst forth in splendour and majesty, consecrating truth amidst the shrines of error, employing the idols of the Roman superstition for the most holy purposes, and rising a bright and constant light amidst the dark and starless night which followed the destruction of the Roman empire!"
It was not to be expected that Onuphrio, whose views are represented as verging upon scepticism, should have tacitly coincided in these opinions of Ambrosio. He admits, indeed, that some little of the perfect state in which these ruins exist may have been owing to the causes just described; but these causes, he maintains, have only lately begun to operate, and the mischief was done before Christianity was established at Rome. "Feeling differently on these subjects," says he, "I admire this venerable ruin rather as the record of the destruction of the power of the greatest people that ever existed, than as a proof of the triumph of Christianity; and I am carried forward, in melancholy anticipation, to the period when even the magnificent dome of St. Peter's will be in a similar state to that in which the Colosæum now is, and when its ruins may be preserved by the sanctifying influence of some new and unknown faith; when perhaps the statue of Jupiter, which at present receives the kiss of the devotee, as the image of St. Peter, may be employed for another holy use, as the personification of a future saint or divinity; and when the monuments of the Papal magnificence shall be mixed with the same dust as that which now covers the tombs of the Cæsars.
"Such, I am sorry to say, is the general history of all the works and institutions belonging to humanity. They rise, flourish, and then decay and fall; and the period of their decline is generally proportional to that of their elevation. In ancient Thebes or Memphis, the peculiar genius of the people has left us monuments from which we can judge of their arts, though we cannot understand the nature of their superstitions. Of Babylon and of Troy, the remains are almost extinct; and what we know of those famous cities is almost entirely derived from literary records. Ancient Greece and Rome we view in the few remains of their monuments; and the time will arrive when modern Rome shall be what ancient Rome now is; and ancient Rome and Athens will be what Tyre or Carthage now are, known only by coloured dust in the desert, or coloured sand, containing the fragments of bricks, or glass, washed up by the wave of a stormy sea."
For this desponding view of passing events, Onuphrio finds consolation in the evidences of revealed religion. In the origin, progress, elevation, decline, and fall of the empires of antiquity, he sees proofs that they were intended for a definite end in the scheme of human redemption; and he finds prophecies which have been amply verified. He regards the foundation or the ruin of a kingdom, which appears in civil history so great an event, as comparatively of small moment in the history of man and in his religious institutions. He considers the establishment of the worship of one God amongst a despised and contemned people, as the most important circumstance in the history of the early world. He regards the Christian dispensation as naturally arising out of the Jewish, and the doctrines of the Pagan nations all preparatory to the triumph and final establishment of a creed fitted for the most enlightened state of the human mind, and equally adapted to every climate and every people."
We cannot but regard these passages with great interest, as indicating the train of thought which must have occupied the mind of their author, and as proving that, in his latter days, he not only studied the doctrines of Christianity, but derived the greatest consolation from its tenets.
After some farther conversation, Onuphrio and Ambrosio leave their friend the author to pursue his meditations amidst the solitude of the ruins.
Seated in the moonshine on one of the steps leading to the seats supposed to have been occupied by the patricians in the Colosæum at the time of the public games, the train of ideas in which he had before indulged continued to flow with a vividness and force increased by the stillness and solitude of the scene, and by the full moon, which, he observes, has always a peculiar effect on these moods of feeling in his mind, giving to them a wildness and a kind of indefinite sensation, such as he supposes belong at all times to the true poetical temperament.
"It must be so," thought he, "no new city will rise again out of the double ruins of this; no new empire will be founded upon these colossal remains of that of the old Romans. The world, like the individual, flourishes in youth, rises to strength in manhood, falls into decay in age; and the ruins of an empire are like the decrepid frame of an individual, except that they have some tints of beauty, which nature bestows upon them. The sun of civilization arose in the East, advanced towards the West, and is now at its meridian; in a few centuries more, it will probably be seen sinking below the horizon, even in the new world; and there will be left darkness only where there is a bright light, deserts of sand where there were populous cities, and stagnant morasses where the green meadow, or the bright corn-field once appeared. Time," he exclaimed, "which purifies, and, as it were, sanctifies the mind, destroys and brings into utter decay the body; and even in nature its influence seems always degrading. She is represented by the poet as eternal in her youth; but amongst these ruins she appears to me eternal in her age, and here, no traces of renovation appear in the ancient of days."
He had scarcely concluded this ideal sentence, when his reverie became deeper, and his imagination called up a spirit, who, having rebuked him for his ignorance and presumption, undeceives him in his views of the history of the world, by unfolding to him in a vision the progress of man from a state of barbarity to that of high civilization. He is first shown a country covered with forests and marshes; wild animals were grazing in large savannahs, and carnivorous beasts, such as lions and tigers, occasionally disturbing and destroying them. Man appeared as a naked savage, feeding upon wild fruits, or devouring shell-fish, or fighting with clubs for the remains of a whale which had been thrown upon the shore. His habitation was a cave in the earth—"See the birth of Time!" exclaimed the Genius; "look at man in his newly-created state, full of youth and vigour. Do you see aught in this state to admire or envy?"
In the next scene, a country opened upon his view, which appeared partly wild and partly cultivated; and men were seen covered with the skins of animals, and driving cattle to enclosed pastures; others were reaping and collecting corn, and others again were making it into bread. Cottages appeared furnished with many of the conveniences of life. The Genius now said, "Look at these groups of men who are escaped from the state of infancy; they owe their improvement to a few superior minds still amongst them. That aged man whom you see with a crowd around him taught them to build cottages; from that other they learnt to domesticate cattle; from others, to collect and sow corn and seeds of fruit. And these arts will never be lost; another generation will see them more perfect. You shall be shown other visions of the passages of time; but as you are carried along the stream which flows from the period of creation to the present moment, I shall only arrest your transit to make you observe some circumstances which will demonstrate the truths I wish you to know." He then proceeds to describe in succession the different scenes as they appeared before him, and to relate the observations by which his genius, or intellectual guide, accompanied him.
A great extent of cultivated plains, large cities on the sea-shore, palaces, forums, and temples, were displayed before him. He saw men associated in groups, mounted on horses, and performing military exercises; galleys moved by oars on the ocean; roads intersecting the country covered with travellers, and containing carriages moved by men or horses. The Genius now said, "You see the early state of civilization of man: the cottages of the last race you beheld have become improved into stately dwellings, palaces, and temples, in which use is combined with ornament. The few men to whom, as I said before, the foundations of these improvements were owing, have had divine honours paid to their memory. But look at the instruments belonging to this generation, and you will find they were only of brass. You see men who are talking to crowds around them, and others who are apparently amusing listening groups by a kind of song or recitation; these are the earliest bards and orators; but all their signs of thought are oral, for written language does not yet exist."
The Genius next presented to him a scene of varied business and imagery. He saw a man who bore in his hands the same instruments as our modern smiths, presenting a vase, which appeared to be made of iron, amidst the acclamations of an assembled multitude; and he saw in the same place men who carried rolls of papyrus in their hands, and wrote upon them with reeds containing ink, made from the soot of wood mixed with a solution of glue.—"See," the Genius said, "an immense change produced in the condition of society by the two arts of which you now see the origin; the one, that of rendering iron malleable, which is owing to a single individual, an obscure Greek; the other, that of making thought permanent in written characters,—an art which has gradually arisen from the hieroglyphics which you may observe on yonder pyramids. You will now see human life more replete with power and activity."
In the scenes that succeeded, he saw bronze instruments thrown away; malleable iron converted into hard steel, and applied to a thousand purposes of civilized life; bands of men traversing the sea, founding colonies, building cities, and, wherever they established themselves, carrying with them their peculiar arts. He saw the Roman world succeeded by cities filled with an idle and luxurious population, and the farms which had been cultivated by warriors, who left the plough to take the command of armies, now in the hands of slaves; and the militia of free men supplanted by bands of mercenaries, who sold the Empire to the highest bidder. He saw immense masses of warriors collecting in the North and East, carrying with them no other proofs of cultivation but their horses and steel arms. He saw these savages every where plundering cities and destroying the monuments of arts and literature. Ruin, desolation, and darkness were before him, and he closed his eyes to avoid the melancholy scene. "See," said the Genius, "the termination of a power believed by its founders invincible, and intended to be eternal. But you will find, though the glory and greatness belonging to its military genius have passed away, yet those belonging to the arts and institutions by which it adorned and dignified life, will again arise in another state of society."
Upon again opening his eyes, he saw Italy recovering from her desolation, towns arising with governments almost upon the model of ancient Athens and Rome, and these different small states rivals in arts and arms;—he saw the remains of libraries, which had been preserved in monasteries and churches by a holy influence, which even the Goth and Vandal respected, again opened to the people;—he saw Rome rising from her ashes, the fragments of statues found amidst the ruins of her palaces and imperial villas, becoming the models for the regeneration of art;—he saw magnificent temples raised in this city, become the metropolis of a new and Christian world, and ornamented with the most brilliant master-pieces of the arts of design.—"Now," the Genius said, "society has taken its modern and permanent aspect. Consider for a moment its relations to letters and to arms, as contrasted with those of the ancient world." He looked, and he saw that, in the place of the rolls of papyrus, libraries were now filled with books. "Behold," the Genius said, "The Printing Press! By the invention of Faust, the productions of genius are, as it were, made imperishable, capable of indefinite multiplication, and rendered an unalienable heritage of the human mind. By this art, apparently so humble, the progress of society is secured, and man is spared the humiliation of witnessing again scenes like those which followed the destruction of the Roman Empire. Now look to the warriors of modern times; you see the spear, the javelin, and the cuirass are changed for the musket and the light artillery. The German monk who discovered gunpowder did not meanly affect the destinies of mankind; wars are become less bloody by becoming less personal; mere brutal strength is rendered of comparatively little avail; all the resources of civilization are required to move a large army; wealth, ingenuity, and perseverance become the principal elements of success; civilized man is rendered in consequence infinitely superior to the savage, and gunpowder gives permanence to his triumph, and secures the cultivated nations from being ever again overrun by the inroads of millions of barbarians."[116]
The Genius then directs his attention to scenes in which are displayed the triumphs of modern science; such as the steam-engine, and the thousand resources furnished by the chemical and mechanical arts; and she concludes by endeavouring to impress upon him the conviction, "That the results of intellectual labour, or of scientific genius, are permanent, and incapable of being lost. Monarchs change their plans, governments their objects, a fleet or an army effect their purpose and then pass away; but a piece of steel touched by the magnet preserves its character for ever, and secures to man the dominion of the trackless ocean. A new period of society may send armies from the shores of the Baltic to those of the Euxine, and the empire of the followers of Mahomet may be broken in pieces by a Northern people, and the dominion of the Britons in Asia may share the fate of Tamerlane or Zengis-khan; but the steam-boat which ascends the Delaware, or the St. Lawrence, will be continued to be used, and will carry the civilization of an improved people into the deserts of North America, and into the wilds of Canada. In the common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general, almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes in their dynasties, and events are usually referred either to sovereigns, chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate from entirely different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature."
Having instructed him in the history of man as an inhabitant of the earth, the Genius proceeds to reveal to him the mysteries of spiritual natures, in which the author evidently shows his attachment to the belief that our intellectual essence is destined hereafter to enjoy a higher and better state of planetary existence,[117] drinking intellectual light from a purer source, and approaching nearer to the Infinite and Divine mind. I shall not attempt to follow him and his Genius to the verge of the solar system, witnessing in his career the inhabitants of planets and comets. We may upon this occasion truly apply to the author the words of Lucretius—
"Processit longe flammantia mœnia mundi."
"His vigorous and active mind was hurl'd
Beyond the flaming limits of the world."—Creech.
In the former part of the dialogue, his poetical coruscations appeared only as brilliant sparks thrown off by the rapidity of the machinery which he worked for a useful end and for a definite purpose; his vivid imagination may now be compared to a display of fire-works, which dazzle and confound without enlightening the senses, and leave the spectator in still more profound darkness.
His Second Dialogue, entitled "Discussions connected with the Vision in the Colosæum," may be considered as a commentary upon the views he had unfolded; and a more appropriate spot, perhaps, could not have been selected for a conversation upon the progress of civilization, than the summit of Vesuvius, from which, to adopt the language of Ambrosio, "We see not only the power and activity of man as existing at present, and of which the highest example may be represented by the steam-boat departing from Palermo, but we may likewise view scenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and as it were make us live with the generations of past ages."
The author, who assumes throughout this dialogue the name of Philalethes, after having been duly rallied by his friends on the subject of his vision, thus expresses himself:—"I will acknowledge that the vision in the Colosæum is a fiction; but the most important parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly that in which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity of space, under the guidance of a tutelary genius. And the origin and progress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which I had many years ago; and it was in the reverie which happened when you quitted me in the Colosæum, that I wove all these thoughts together, and gave them the form in which I narrated them to you.—I do not say that they are strictly to be considered as an accurate representation of my waking thoughts; for I am not quite convinced that dreams are always the representations of the state of the mind, modified by organic diseases or by associations. There are certainly no absolutely new ideas produced in sleep; yet I have had more than one instance, in the course of my life, of most extraordinary combinations occurring in this state, which have had considerable influence on my feelings, my imagination, and my health."
Philalethes now relates a fact to which his preceding observation more immediately referred; he anticipates unbelief,—but he declares that he mentions nothing but a simple fact.
"Almost a quarter of a century ago, I contracted that terrible form of typhus fever known by the name of jail fever,—I may say, not from any imprudence of my own, but whilst engaged in putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisons of the metropolis.[118] My illness was severe and dangerous; as long as the fever continued, my dreams and deliriums were most painful and oppressive; but when weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when the probability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life, there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations. I remained in an apparently senseless or lethargic state, but, in fact, my mind was peculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautiful woman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectual conversation."
Ambrosio and Onuphrio very naturally suggest that this could have been no other than the image of some favourite maiden which had haunted his imagination; but Philalethes rejects with indignation such an explanation of the vision. "I will not," he exclaims, "allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point, till you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I had recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful maiden fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my mind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part of the narrative: ten years after,—twenty years after my first illness, at a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady, which for many years threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my visionary female; and to her kindness and care, I believe, I owe what remains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, and though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my guardian genius during the illness of my youth."
The reader will probably agree with Onuphrio, in seeing in this history nothing beyond the influence of an imagination excited by disease.
The discourse now turns upon that part of the vision in the Colosæum in which was exhibited the early state of man, after his first creation, and which Ambrosio considers as not only incompatible with revelation, but likewise with reason and every thing that we know respecting the history or traditions of the early nations of antiquity.
I shall merely state the objection which Ambrosio offers. I must then refer the reader to the work itself for an account of the discussion it provoked.
"Ambrosio.—You consider man, in his early state, a savage like those who now inhabit New Holland, or New Zealand, acquiring, by the little use that they make of a feeble reason, the power of supporting and extending life. Now, I contend that, if man had been so created, he must inevitably have been destroyed by the elements, or devoured by savage beasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical force."
During the discussion, an opinion is advanced by Ambrosio, so singular, that I must be allowed to quote it. "I consider," says he, "all the miraculous parts of our religion as effected by changes in the sensations or ideas of the human mind, and not by physical changes in the order of nature! To Infinite Wisdom and Power, a change in the intellectual state of the human being may be the result of a momentary will, and the mere act of faith may produce the change. How great the powers of imagination are, even in ordinary life, is shown by many striking facts, and nothing seems impossible to this imagination when acted upon by Divine influence."
This is surely a most extraordinary line of argument for the apologist of the Christian faith, and of the miracles by which it is supported.
In the Third Dialogue, called the Unknown, the author and his friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, make an excursion to the remains of the temples of Pæstum. "Were my existence to be prolonged through ten centuries," exclaims the author, "I think I could never forget the pleasure I received on that delicious spot." In contemplating beautiful scenery, much of its interest depends upon the feelings and associations of the moment; and the author was upon this occasion evidently in that poetical frame of mind which sheds a magic light over every landscape, and converts the most ordinary objects into emblems of morality: in the admixture of the olive and the cypress tree, he saw a connection, to memorialize, as it were, how near each other are life and death, joy and sorrow; while the music of the birds, and, above all, the cooing of the turtle-doves, by overpowering the murmuring of the waves and the whistling of the winds, served but to show him that, in the strife of nature, the voice of love is predominant.
With their hearts touched by the scene they had witnessed, the travellers descended to the ruins, and began to examine those wonderful remains which have outlived even the name of the people by whom they were raised. While engaged in measuring the Doric columns in the interior of the Temple of Neptune, a stranger, remarkable both in dress and appearance, was observed to be writing in a memorandum book; the author immediately addresses him, and becoming mutually pleased with each other, they enter into a conversation of high scientific interest.
The sentiments delivered by the "Unknown," for by this title is the philosopher designated, notwithstanding their dramatic dress, are evidently to be received as the bequest of the latest scientific opinions of Sir H. Davy upon several important subjects, and must consequently command our respect and consideration.
To a question relative to the nature of the masses of travertine, of which the ruins consisted, the Unknown replied, that they were certainly produced by deposition from water; and he rather believed, that a lake in the immediate neighbourhood of the city furnished the quarry. The party are then described as visiting this spot.
"There was something peculiarly melancholy in the character of this water; all the herbs around it were grey, as if incrusted with marble; a few buffaloes were slaking their thirst in it, which ran wildly away at our approach, and appeared to retire into a rocky excavation or quarry at the end of the lake. 'There,' said the stranger, 'is what I believe to be the source of those large and durable stones which you see in the plain before you. This water rapidly deposits calcareous matter, and even, if you throw a stick into it, a few hours is sufficient to give it a coating of this substance. Whichever way you turn your eyes, you see masses of this recently produced marble, the consequence of the overflowing of the lake during the winter floods.'
"This water is like many, I may say most, of the sources which rise at the foot of the Apennines; it holds carbonic acid in solution, which has dissolved a portion of the calcareous matter of the rock through which it has passed:—this carbonic acid is dissipated in the atmosphere, and the marble, slowly thrown down, assumes a crystalline form, and produces coherent stones. The lake before us is not particularly rich in the quantity of calcareous matter, for, as I have found by experience, a pint of it does not afford more than five or six grains; but the quantity of fluid and the length of time are sufficient to account for the immense quantities of tufa and rock which, in the course of ages, have accumulated in this situation.
"It can, I think, be scarcely doubted that there is a source of volcanic fire at no great distance from the surface, in the whole of southern Italy; and, this fire acting upon the calcareous rocks of which the Apennines are composed, must constantly detach from them carbonic acid, which rising to the sources of the springs, deposited from the waters of the atmosphere, must give them their impregnation, and enable them to dissolve calcareous matter. I need not dwell upon Ætna, Vesuvius, or the Lipari Islands, to prove that volcanic fires are still in existence; and there can be no doubt that, in earlier periods, almost the whole of Italy was ravaged by them; even Rome itself, the eternal city, rests upon the craters of extinct volcanoes; and I imagine that the traditional and fabulous record of the destruction made by the conflagration of Phaeton, in the chariot of the Sun, and his falling into the Po, had reference to a great and tremendous igneous volcanic eruption which extended over Italy, and ceased only near the Po, at the foot of the Alps. Be this as it may, the sources of carbonic acid are numerous, not merely in the Neapolitan but likewise in the Roman and Tuscan states. The most magnificent waterfall in Europe, that of the Velino near Terni, is partly fed by a stream containing calcareous matter dissolved by carbonic acid, and it deposits marble, which crystallizes even in the midst of its thundering descent and foam, in the bed in which it falls.
"There is a lake in Latium, a few yards above the Lacus Albula, where the ancient Romans erected their baths, which sends down a considerable stream of tepid water to the larger lake; but this water is less strongly impregnated with carbonic acid; the largest lake is actually a saturated solution of this gas, which escapes from it in such quantities in some parts of its surface, that it has the appearance of being actually in ebullition. Its temperature I ascertained to be, in the winter, in the warmest parts, above 80 degrees of Fahrenheit, and as it appears to be pretty constant, it must be supplied with heat from a subterraneous source, being nearly twenty degrees above the mean temperature of the atmosphere. Kircher has detailed, in his Mundus Subterraneus, various wonders respecting this lake, most of which are unfounded; such as, that it is unfathomable,—that it has at the bottom the heat of boiling water, and that floating islands rise from the gulf which emits it. It must certainly be very difficult, or even impossible, to fathom a source which rises with so much violence from a subterraneous excavation; and at a time when chemistry had made small progress, it was easy to mistake the disengagement of carbonic acid for an actual ebullition. The floating islands are real; but neither the Jesuit, nor any of the writers who have since described this lake, had a correct idea of their origin, which is exceedingly curious. The high temperature of this water, and the quantity of carbonic acid that it contains, render it peculiarly fitted to afford a pabulum or nourishment to vegetable life; the banks of travertine are every where covered with reeds, lichens, confervæ, and various kinds of aquatic vegetables; and at the same time that the process of vegetable life is going on, the crystallizations of the calcareous matter, which is every where deposited in consequence of the escape of carbonic acid, likewise proceed, giving a constant milkiness to what from its tint would otherwise be a blue fluid. So rapid is the vegetation, owing to the decomposition of the carbonic acid, that even in winter, masses of confervæ and lichens, mixed with deposited travertine, are constantly detached by the current of water from the bank, and float down the stream, which being a considerable river, is never without many of these small islands on its surface; they are sometimes only a few inches in size, and composed merely of dark green confervæ, or purple or yellow lichens; but they are sometimes even of some feet in diameter, and contain seeds and various species of common water-plants, which are usually more or less incrusted with marble. There is, I believe, no place in the world where there is a more striking example of the opposition or contrast of the laws of animate and inanimate nature, of the forces of inorganic chemical affinity and those of the powers of life. Vegetables, in such a temperature, and every where surrounded by food, are produced with a wonderful rapidity; but the crystallizations are formed with equal quickness, and they are no sooner produced than they are destroyed together. The quantity of vegetable matter and its heat make it the resort of an infinite variety of insect tribes; and, even in the coldest days in winter, numbers of flies may be observed on the vegetables surrounding its banks or on its floating islands, and a quantity of their larvæ may be seen there, sometimes incrusted and entirely destroyed by calcareous matter, which is likewise often the fate of the insects themselves, as well as of various species of shell-fish that are found amongst the vegetables which grow and are destroyed in the travertine on its banks.
"I have passed many hours, I may say, many days, in studying the phenomena of this wonderful lake; it has brought many trains of thought into my mind connected with the early changes of our globe, and I have sometimes reasoned from the forms of plants and animals preserved in marble in this warm source, to the grander depositions in the secondary rocks, where the zoophytes or coral insects have worked upon a grand scale, and where palms and vegetables now unknown are preserved with the remains of crocodiles, turtles, and gigantic extinct animals of the Sauri genus, and which appear to have belonged to a period when the whole globe possessed a much higher temperature.
"Then, from all we know, this lake, except in some change in its dimensions, continues nearly in the same state in which it was described seventeen hundred years ago by Pliny, and I have no doubt contains the same kinds of floating islands, the same plants, and the same insects. During the fifteen years that I have known it, it has appeared precisely identical in these respects; and yet it has the character of an accidental phenomenon depending upon subterraneous fire. How marvellous then are those laws by which even the humblest types of organic existence are preserved, though born amidst the sources of their destruction, and by which a species of immortality is given to generations, floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles on a stream raised from the deepest caverns of the earth, and instantly losing what may be called its spirit in the atmosphere!"
From this interesting discourse on the formation of Travertine, the conversation naturally turned to Geology; and I shall here again be compelled to give another copious extract, in order to show what were the latest opinions of Sir H. Davy upon this subject. If any doubt could exist as to the views here given being those entertained by the author, it is at once removed by his letter to Mr. Poole, in which, alluding to the work under review, he says, "It contains the essence of my philosophical opinions."
"On the geological scheme of the early history of the globe, there are only analogies to guide us, which different minds may apply and interpret in different ways; but I will not trifle with a long preliminary discourse. Astronomical deductions and actual measures by triangulation prove that the globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles; and this form, we know, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is precisely the one which a fluid body revolving round its axis and become solid at its surface by the slow dissipation of its heat or other causes, would assume. I suppose, therefore, that the globe, in the first state in which the imagination can venture to consider it, was a fluid mass with an immense atmosphere, revolving in space round the sun, and that by its cooling, a portion of its atmosphere was condensed in water which occupied a part of the surface. In this state, no forms of life, such as now belong to our system, could have inhabited it; and I suppose the crystalline rocks, or, as they are called by geologists, the primary rocks, which contain no vestiges of a former order of things, were the results of the first consolidation on its surface. Upon the farther cooling, the water which more or less had covered it, contracted; depositions took place, shell-fish, and coral insects of the first creation began their labours, and islands appeared in the midst of the ocean, raised from the deep by the productive energies of millions of zoophytes. These islands became covered with vegetables fitted to bear a high temperature, such as palms, and various species of plants similar to those which now exist in the hottest part of the world. And the submarine rocks or shores of these new formations of land became covered with aquatic vegetables, on which various species of shell-fish and common fishes found their nourishment. The fluids of the globe in cooling deposited a large quantity of the materials they held in solution, and these deposits agglutinating together the sand, the immense masses of coral rocks, and some of the remains of the shells and fishes found round the shores of the primitive lands, produced the first order of secondary rocks.
"As the temperature of the globe became lower, species of the oviparous reptiles were created to inhabit it; and the turtle, crocodile, and various gigantic animals of the Sauri kind, seem to have haunted the bays and waters of the primitive lands. But in this state of things there was no order of events similar to the present,—the crust of the globe was exceedingly slender, and the source of fire a small distance from the surface. In consequence of contraction in one part of the mass, cavities were opened, which caused the entrance of water, and immense volcanic explosions took place, raising one part of the surface, depressing another, producing mountains and causing new and extensive depositions from the primitive ocean. Changes of this kind must have been extremely frequent in the early epochas of nature; and the only living forms of which the remains are found in the strata that are the monuments of these changes, are those of plants, fishes, birds, and oviparous reptiles, which seem most fitted to exist in such a war of the elements.
"When these revolutions became less frequent, and the globe became still more cooled, and the inequalities of its temperature preserved by the mountain chains, more perfect animals became its inhabitants, many of which, such as the mammoth, megalonix, megatherium, and gigantic hyena, are now extinct. At this period, the temperature of the ocean seems to have been not much higher than it is at present, and the changes produced by occasional eruptions of it have left no consolidated rocks. Yet one of these eruptions appears to have been of great extent and of some duration, and seems to have been the cause of those immense quantities of water-worn stones, gravel, and sand, which are usually called diluvian remains;—and it is probable that this effect was connected with the elevation of a new continent in the southern hemisphere by volcanic fire. When the system of things became so permanent, that the tremendous revolutions depending upon the destruction of the equilibrium between the heating and cooling agencies were no longer to be dreaded, the creation of man took place; and since that period there has been little alteration in the physical circumstances of our globe. Volcanoes sometimes occasion the rise of new islands, portions of the old continents are constantly washed by rivers into the sea, but these changes are too insignificant to affect the destinies of man, or the nature of the physical circumstances of things. On the hypothesis that I have adopted, however, it must be remembered, that the present surface of the globe is merely a thin crust surrounding a nucleus of fluid ignited matter; and consequently, we can hardly be considered as actually safe from the danger of a catastrophe by fire.
"I beg you to consider the views I have been developing as merely hypothetical, one of the many resting-places that may be taken by the imagination in considering this subject. There are, however, distinct facts in favour of the idea, that the interior of the globe has a higher temperature than the surface; the heat increasing in mines the deeper we penetrate, and the number of warm sources which rise from great depths, in almost all countries, are certainly favourable to the idea. The opinion, that volcanoes are owing to this general and simple cause, is, I think, likewise more agreeable to the analogies of things, than to suppose them dependent upon partial chemical changes, such as the action of air and water upon the combustible bases of the earths and alkalies, though it is extremely probable that these substances may exist beneath the surface, and may occasion some results of volcanic fire;—and on this subject my notion may perhaps be the more trusted, as for a long while I thought volcanic eruptions were owing to chemical agencies of the newly discovered metals of the earths and alkalies, and I made many and some dangerous experiments in the hope of confirming this notion, but in vain.
"I have no objection to the 'refined Plutonic view,' (of Professor Playfair and Sir James Hall,) as capable of explaining many existing phenomena; indeed, you must be aware that I have myself had recourse to it. What I contend against is, its application to explain the formations of the secondary rocks, which I think clearly belong to an order of facts not at all embraced by it. In the Plutonic system, there is one simple and constant order assumed, which may be supposed eternal. The surface is constantly imagined to be disintegrated, destroyed, degraded, and washed into the bosom of the ocean by water, and as constantly consolidated, elevated, and regenerated by fire; and the ruins of the old form the foundations of the new world. It is supposed that there are always the same types both of dead and living matter,—that the remains of rocks, of vegetables, and animals of one age are found imbedded in rocks raised from the bottom of the ocean in another. Now, to support this view, not only the remains of living beings which at present people the globe, might be expected to be found in the oldest secondary strata, but even those of the art of man, the most powerful and populous of its inhabitants, which is well known not to be the case. On the contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks contains remains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables and animals. In those strata which are deepest, and which must consequently be supposed to be the earliest deposited, forms even of vegetable life are rare; shells and vegetable remains are found in the next order; the bones of fishes and oviparous reptiles exist in the following class; the remains of birds, with those of the same genera mentioned before, in the next order; those of quadrupeds of extinct species in a still more recent class; and it is only in the loose and slightly consolidated strata of gravel and sand, and which are usually called diluvian formations, that the remains of animals, such as now people the globe, are found, with others belonging to extinct species. But in none of these formations, whether called secondary, tertial, or diluvial, have the remains of man, or any of his works, been discovered. It is, I think, impossible to consider the organic remains found in any of the earlier secondary strata, the lias-limestone and its congenerous formations, for instance, without being convinced, that the beings whose organs they formed belonged to an order of things entirely different from the present. Gigantic vegetables, more nearly allied to the palms of the equatorial countries than to any other plants, can only be imagined to have lived in a very high temperature; and the immense reptiles, the Megalosauri, with paddles instead of legs, and clothed in mail, in size equal, or even superior to the whale; and the great amphibia Plethiosauri, with bodies like turtles, but furnished with necks longer than their bodies, probably to enable them to feed on vegetables growing in the shallows of the primitive ocean, seem to show a state in which low lands, or extensive shores, rose above an immense calm sea, and when there were no great mountain chains to produce inequalities of temperature, tempests, or storms. Were the surface of the earth now to be carried down into the depths of the ocean, or were some great revolution of the waters to cover the existing land, and it was again to be elevated by fire, covered with consolidated depositions of sand or mud, how entirely different would it be in its characters from any of the secondary strata! Its great features would undoubtedly be the works of man: hewn stones, and statues of bronze and marble, and tools of iron, and human remains, would be more common than those of animals, on the greatest part of the surface; the columns of Pæstum, or of Agrigentum, or the immense iron bridges of the Thames, would offer a striking contrast to the bones of the crocodiles, or Sauri, in the older rocks, or even to those of the mammoth, or Elephas primogenius, in the diluvial strata. And whoever dwells upon this subject must be convinced, that the present order of things, and the comparatively recent existence of man, as the master of the globe, is as certain as the destruction of a former and a different order, and the extinction of a number of living forms, which have now no types in being, and which have left their remains wonderful monuments of the revolutions of nature."
The Fourth Dialogue, to which is given the title of "The Proteus, or Immortality," is of a more desultory nature than those which precede it. It contains many beautiful descriptions of scenery in the Alpine country of Austria; furnishes an interesting account of that most singular reptile the Proteus Anguinus, which is found only in the limestone caverns of Carniola, and concludes with reflections upon the indestructibility of the sentient principle.
The author's companion, during the tour he describes, is a scientific friend, whom he calls Eubathes. The dialogue opens with a passage of considerable pathos and eloquence: the author having been recalled to England by a melancholy event, the death of a very near and dear relation, describes his feelings on entering London.
"In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered London without feelings of pleasure and hope. It was to me as the grand theatre of intellectual activity, the field of every species of enterprise and exertion, the metropolis of the world of business, thought, and action. There, I was sure to find the friends and companions of my youth, to hear the voice of encouragement and praise. There, society of the most refined kind offered daily its banquets to the mind, with such variety that satiety had no place in them, and new objects of interest and ambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics, literature, or science.
"I now entered this great city in a very different tone of mind—one of settled melancholy, not merely produced by the mournful event which recalled me to my country, but owing likewise to an entire change in the condition of my physical, moral, and intellectual being. My health was gone, my ambition was satisfied; I was no longer excited by the desire of distinction; what I regarded most tenderly was in the grave; and to take a metaphor, derived from the change produced by time in the juice of the grape, my cup of life was no longer sparkling, sweet, and effervescent; it had lost its sweetness without losing its power, and it had become bitter."
There is perhaps not a more splendid passage to be found in the work; and it is scarcely inferior to Dr. Johnson's memorable conclusion to the preface of his Dictionary.
"After passing a few months in England," says he, "and enjoying (as much as I could enjoy any thing) the society of the few friends who still remained alive, the desire of travel again seized me. I had preserved amidst the wreck of time, one feeling strong and unbroken—the love of natural scenery; and this, in advanced life, formed a principal motive for my plans of conduct and action."
The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmünden, was one of his favourite haunts; and he describes an accident of the most awful description which befell him at this place. While amusing himself on the water by a rapid species of locomotion, in a boat so secured by a rope as to allow only of a limited range, the tackle gave way, and he was rapidly precipitated down the cataract. He remained for some time after his rescue in a state of insensibility, and on recovering found himself attended by his mysterious friend the "Unknown," who had so charmed him in his excursion to Pæstum.
With this stranger, he proceeded on his tour; and he again becomes the medium through which much philosophical information is conveyed to the reader.
They visit together the grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsberg, and he gives us the conversation that took place in that extraordinary cavern.
"Philalethes.—If the awful chasms of dark masses of rock surrounding us appear like the work of demons, who might be imagined to have risen from the centre of the earth, the beautiful works of nature above our heads may be compared to a scenic representation of a temple or banquet-hall for fairies or genii, such as those fabled in the Arabian romances.
"The Unknown.—A poet might certainly place here the palace of the king of the Gnomes, and might find marks of his creative power in the small lake close by, on which the flame of the torch is now falling; for, there it is that I expect to find the extraordinary animals which have been so long the objects of my attention.
"Eubathes.—I see three or four creatures, like slender fish, moving on the mud below the water.
"The Unknown.—I see them; they are the Protei,—now I have them in my fishing-net, and now they are safe in the pitcher of water. At first view, you might suppose this animal to be a lizard, but it has the motions of a fish. Its head, and the lower part of its body and its tail, bear a strong resemblance to those of the eel; but it has no fins; and its curious bronchial organs are not like the gills of fishes; they form a singular vascular structure, as you see, almost like a crest, round the throat, which may be removed without occasioning the death of the animal, who is likewise furnished with lungs. With this double apparatus for supplying air to the blood, it can live either below or above the surface of the water. Its fore-feet resemble hands, but they have only three claws or fingers, are too feeble to be of use in grasping, or supporting the weight of the animal; the hinder feet have only two claws or toes, and in larger specimens are found so imperfect as to be almost obliterated. It has small points in place of eyes, as if to preserve the analogy of nature. Its nasal organs appear large; and it is abundantly furnished with teeth, from which it may be concluded that it is an animal of prey; yet in its confined state it has never been known to eat, and it has been kept alive for many years by occasionally changing the water in which it is placed.
"Eubathes.—Is this the only place in Carniola where these animals are found?
"The Unknown.—They were first discovered here by the late Baron Zois; but they have since been found, though rarely, at Sittich, about thirty miles distant, thrown up by water from a subterraneous cavity; and I have lately heard it reported that some individuals of the same species have been recognised in the calcareous strata in Sicily. I think it cannot be doubted, that their natural residence is an extensive deep subterranean lake, from which in great floods they sometimes are forced through the crevices of the rocks into this place where they are found; and it does not appear to me impossible, when the peculiar nature of the country in which we are is considered, that the same great cavity may furnish the individuals which have been found at Adelsberg and at Sittich.
"This adds one more instance to the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places which seem the least suited to organized existence. And the same infinite power and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for the deserts of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest for the caves of Java, the whale for the Polar seas, and the morse and white bear for the Arctic ice, has given the Proteus to the deep and dark subterraneous lakes of Illyria,—an animal to whom the presence of light is not essential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on the surface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud."
Much interesting physiological discussion follows. I shall, however, merely notice the opinion delivered by the "Unknown," on the subject of respiration, and which I think shows that, at the conclusion of his career, Davy entertained the same notions, with regard to the communication of some ethereal principle to the blood, as he maintained in the earlier part of his life.[119]—"The obvious chemical alteration of the air is sufficiently simple in this process; a certain quantity of carbon only is added to it, and it receives an addition of heat or vapour; the volumes of elastic fluid inspired and expired (making allowance for change of temperature,) are the same, and if ponderable agents only were to be regarded, it would appear as if the only use of respiration were to free the blood from a certain quantity of carbonaceous matter. But it is probable that this is only a secondary object, and that the change produced by respiration upon the blood is of a much more important kind. Oxygen, in its elastic state, has properties which are very characteristic; it gives out light by compression, which is not certainly known to be the case with any other elastic fluid except those which oxygen has entered without undergoing combustion; and from the fire it produces in certain processes, and from the manner in which it is separated by positive electricity in the gaseous state from its combinations, it is not easy to avoid the supposition, that it contains, besides its ponderable elements, some very subtile matter which is capable of assuming the form of heat and light. My idea is, that the common air inspired enters into the venous blood entire, in a state of dissolution, carrying with it its subtile or ethereal part, which in ordinary cases of chemical change is given off; that it expels from the blood carbonic acid gas and azote; and that, in the course of the circulation, its ethereal part and its ponderable part undergo changes which belong to laws that cannot be considered as chemical,—the ethereal part probably producing animal heat and other effects, and the ponderable part contributing to form carbonic acid and other products. The arterial blood is necessary to all the functions of life, and it is no less connected with the irritability of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves than with the performance of all the secretions."
The Fifth Dialogue is entitled "The Chemist." Its object is to demonstrate the importance of this noble science. An interlocutor is made to disparage its utility, and to mark its weaker points. These of course are answered, the sceptic becomes a true believer, and the intellectual gladiators separate mutually satisfied with each other.
"Eubathes.—I feel disposed to join you in attacking this favourite study of our friend, but merely to provoke him to defend it, in order to call forth his skill and awaken his eloquence.
"The Unknown.—I have no objection. Let there be a fair discussion: remember, we fight only with foils, and the point of mine shall be covered with velvet."
After having enumerated the scientific attainments necessary to constitute the chemist, and described the apparatus essential for understanding what has been already done in the science, he proceeds to define the intellectual qualities which he considers necessary for discovery, or for the advancement of the science. Amongst them, patience, industry, and neatness in manipulation, and accuracy and minuteness in observing and registering the phenomena which occur, are essential. A steady hand and a quick eye are most useful auxiliaries; but there have been very few great chemists who have preserved these advantages through life; for the business of the laboratory is often a service of danger, and the elements, like the refractory spirits of romance, though the obedient slaves of the magician, yet sometimes escape the influence of his talisman, and endanger his person. Both the hands and eyes of others, however, may be sometimes advantageously made use of. By often repeating a process or an observation, the errors connected with hasty operations or imperfect views are annihilated; and, provided the assistant has no preconceived notions of his own, and is ignorant of the object of his employer in making the experiment, his simple and bare detail of facts will often be the best foundation for an opinion. With respect to the higher qualities of intellect necessary for understanding and developing the general laws of the science, the same talents, I believe, are required as for making advancement in every other department of human knowledge; I need not be very minute. The imagination must be active and brilliant in seeking analogies; yet entirely under the influence of the judgment in applying them. The memory must be extensive and profound; rather, however, calling up general views of things than minute trains of thought;—the mind must not be like an Encyclopedia,—a burthen of knowledge, but rather a critical Dictionary, which abounds in generalities, and points out where more minute information may be obtained.
"In announcing even the greatest and most important discoveries, the true philosopher will communicate his details with modesty and reserve; he will rather be a useful servant of the public, bringing forth a light from under his cloak when it is needed in darkness, than a charlatan exhibiting fire-works, and having a trumpeter to announce their magnificence.
"I see you are smiling, and think what I am saying in bad taste; yet, notwithstanding, I will provoke your smiles still farther, by saying a word or two on his other moral qualities. That he should be humble-minded, you will readily allow, and a diligent searcher after truth, and neither diverted from this great object by the love of transient glory or temporary popularity, looking rather to the opinion of ages than to that of a day, and seeking to be remembered and named rather in the epochas of historians than in the columns of newspaper writers or journalists. He should resemble the modern geometricians in the greatness of his views and the profoundness of his researches, and the ancient alchemists in industry and piety. I do not mean that he should affix written prayers and inscriptions[120] of recommendations of his processes to Providence, as was the custom of Peter Wolfe, who was alive in my early days; but his mind should always be awake to devotional feelings; and in contemplating the variety and the beauty of the external world, and developing its scientific wonders, he will always refer to that Infinite Wisdom, through whose beneficence he is permitted to enjoy knowledge; and, in becoming wiser, he will become better,—he will rise at once in the scale of intellectual and moral existence, his increased sagacity will be subservient to a more exalted faith, and in proportion as the veil becomes thinner through which he sees the causes of things, he will admire more the brightness of the divine light by which they are rendered visible."
The Sixth and last Dialogue, entitled "Pola, or Time," presents a series of reflections, to which a view of the decaying amphitheatre at Pola, an ancient town in the peninsula of Istria, is represented as having given origin. On former occasions, the inspection of the mouldering works of past ages called up trains of thought rather of a moral than of a physical character; in the present dialogue, the effects of time are considered in their relations to the mechanical and chemical laws by which material forms are destroyed, or rather changed,—for the author has shown by a number of beautiful examples, that without decay there can be no reproduction, and that the principle of change is a principle of life.
Having considered the influence of gravitation, the chemical and mechanical agencies of water, air, and electricity, and the energies of organized beings, in producing those diversified phenomena which, in our metaphysical abstractions, we universally refer to Time, he proceeds to enquire how far art can counteract their operation. A great philosopher, he observes, has said, "Man can in no other way command Nature but in obeying her laws:" it is evident that, by the application of some of those principles which she herself employs, we may for a while arrest the progress of changes which are ultimately inevitable.
"Yet, when all is done that can be done in the work of conservation, it is only producing a difference in the degree of duration. It is evident that none of the works of a mortal can be eternal, as none of the combinations of a limited intellect can be infinite. The operations of Nature, when slow, are no less sure; however man may, for a time, usurp dominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire. He converts her rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, and ships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth, as instruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute its surface, as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water, and tortures water by fire to change, or modify, or destroy the natural forms of things. But in some lustrums his works begin to change, and in a few centuries they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples, framed as it were for immortal and divine purposes, and his bridges formed of granite and ribbed with iron, and his walls for defence, and the splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity even to his perishable remains, are gradually destroyed; and these structures, which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempests of the sky, and the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews of heaven,—of frost, rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric influences; and as the worm devours the lineaments of his mortal beauty, so the lichens and the moss and the most insignificant plants shall feed upon his columns and his pyramids, and the most humble and insignificant insect shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces and the falling seats of his earthly glory."
On no occasion can such a subject be presented to a contemplative mind, without filling it with awe and wonder; but the circumstances under which these reflections are presented to us, in the last days of our philosopher, impress upon them an almost oracular solemnity. When we remember that while the mind of the philosopher was thus engaged in identifying the processes of decay with those of renovation in the system of nature, his body was palsied, and the current of his life fast ebbing, we cannot but admire that active intelligence which sparkled with such undiminished lustre amidst the wreck of its earthly tenement.
In the extracts which have been introduced from this last work, I trust the pledge that was given in the earlier part of these memoirs, has been redeemed by showing that a powerful imagination is not necessarily incompatible with a sound judgment, that the flowers of fancy are not always blighted by the cold realities of science, but that the poet and philosopher may, under the auspices of a happy genius, mutually assist each other in expounding the mysteries of nature. It cannot be denied, as a general aphorism, that the tree which expands its force in flowers is generally deficient in fruit; but the mind of Davy, to borrow one of his own metaphors, may be likened to those fabled of the Hesperides, which produced at once buds, leaves, blossoms, and fruits.
The happy effects resulting from this rare and nicely adjusted combination of talents, offer themselves as interesting subjects of biographical contemplation, and they can be studied only with success by a comparative analysis of different minds.
That the superiority of Davy greatly depended upon the vivacity and compass of his imagination cannot be doubted, and such an opinion was well expressed by Mr. Davies Gilbert, in his late address to the Society:—"The poetic bent of Davy's mind seems never to have left him. To that circumstance I would ascribe the distinguishing features in his character and in his discoveries:—a vivid imagination sketching out new tracks in regions unexplored, for the judgment to select those leading to the recesses of abstract truth."
I have always thought that the mind of the late Dr. Clarke, the Mineralogical Professor of Cambridge, was little less imaginative than that of Davy; but it was deficient in judgment, and therefore often conducted him to error instead of to truth. Dr. Black was not deficient in imagination, and certainly not in judgment; but there was a constitutional apathy, arising probably from ill health, which damped his noblest efforts.[121]
It is by the rarity with which the talent of seizing upon remote analogies is associated with a spirit of patient and subtile investigation of details, and a quick perception of their value, that the fact so truly stated by Mr. Babbage is to be explained; viz.m> that long intervals frequently elapse between the discovery of new principles in science and their practical application: thus he observes, that "the principle of the hydrostatic paradox was known as a speculative truth in the time of Stevinus, as far back as the year 1600,—and its application to raising heavy weights has long been stated in elementary treatises on natural philosophy, as well as constantly exhibited in lectures; yet it may fairly be regarded as a mere abstract principle, until the late Mr. Bramah, by substituting a pump, instead of the smaller column, converted it into a most valuable and powerful engine. The principle of the convertibility of the centres of oscillation and suspension in the pendulum, discovered by Huygens more than a century and a half ago, remained, until within these few years, a sterile though most elegant proposition; when, after being hinted at by Prony, and distinctly pointed out by Bonenberger, it was employed by Captain Kater as the foundation of a most convenient method of determining the length of the pendulum. The interval which separated the discovery of Dr. Black, of latent heat, from the beautiful and successful application of it to the steam-engine, was comparatively short; but it required the efforts of two minds; and both were of the highest order."[122]
The discoveries of Davy present themselves in striking contrast with such instances. The same powerful genius that developed the laws of electro-chemical decomposition, was the first to apply them for the purpose of obviating metallic corrosion; and the nature of fire-damp, and the fact of its combustion being arrested in its passage through capillary tubes, were alike the discoveries of him who first applied them for the construction of a safety-lamp.[123]
In contrasting the genius of Wollaston with that of Davy, let me not be supposed to invite a comparison to the disparagement of either, but rather to the glory of both, for by mutual reflection each will glow the brighter. If the animating principle of Davy's mind was a powerful imagination, generalizing phenomena, and casting them into new combinations, so may the striking characteristic of Wollaston's genius be said to have been an almost superhuman perception of minute detail. Davy was ever imagining something greater than he knew; Wollaston always knew something more than he acknowledged:—in Wollaston, the predominant principle was to avoid error; in Davy, it was the desire to discover truth. The tendency of Davy, on all occasions, was to raise probabilities into facts; while Wollaston as continually made them subservient to the expression of doubt.
Wollaston was deficient in imagination, and under no circumstances could he have become a Poet; nor was it to be expected that his investigations should have led him to any of those comprehensive generalizations which create new systems of philosophy. He well knew the compass of his powers, and he pursued the only method by which they could be rendered available in advancing knowledge. He was a giant in strength, but it was the strength of Antæus, mighty only on the earth. The extreme caution and reserve of his manner were inseparably connected with the habits of his mind; they pervaded every part of his character; in his amusements and in his scientific experiments, he displayed the same nice and punctilious observation,—whether he was angling for trout,[124] or testing for elements,
he alike relied for success upon his subtile discrimination of minute circumstances.
By comparing the writings as well as the discoveries of these two great philosophers, we shall readily perceive the intellectual distinctions I have endeavoured to establish. "From their fruits shall ye know them." The discoveries of Davy were the results of extensive views and new analogies; those of Wollaston were derived from a more exact examination of minute and, to ordinary observers, scarcely appreciable differences. This is happily illustrated by a comparison of the means by which each discovered new metals. The alkaline bases were the products of a comprehensive investigation, which had developed a new order of principles; the detection of palladium and rhodium among the ores of platinum, was the reward of delicate manipulation, and microscopic scrutiny. As chemical operators, I have already pointed out their striking peculiarities, and they will be found to be in strict keeping with the other features of their respective characters. I might extend the parallel farther; but Dr. Henry, in the eleventh edition of his "System of Chemistry," has delineated the intellectual portraits of these two philosophers with so masterly a hand, that by quoting the passage, all farther observation will be rendered unnecessary.
"To those high gifts of nature, which are the characteristics of genius, and which constitute its very essence, both those eminent men united an unwearied industry and zeal in research, and habits of accurate reasoning, without which even the energies of genius are inadequate to the achievement of great scientific designs. With these excellencies, common to both, they were nevertheless distinguishable by marked intellectual peculiarities. Bold, ardent, and enthusiastic, Davy soared to greater heights; he commanded a wider horizon; and his keen vision penetrated to its utmost boundaries. His imagination, in the highest degree fertile and inventive, took a rapid and extensive range in pursuit of conjectural analogies, which he submitted to close and patient comparison with known facts, and tried by an appeal to ingenious and conclusive experiments. He was imbued with the spirit, and was a master in the practice, of the inductive logic; and he has left us some of the noblest examples of the efficacy of that great instrument of human reason in the discovery of truth. He applied it, not only to connect classes of facts of more limited extent and importance, but to develope great and comprehensive laws, which embrace phenomena that are almost universal to the natural world. In explaining those laws, he cast upon them the illumination of his own clear and vivid conceptions;—he felt an intense admiration of the beauty, order, and harmony, which are conspicuous in the perfect Chemistry of Nature;—and he expressed those feelings with a force of eloquence which could issue only from a mind of the highest powers and of the finest sensibilities. With much less enthusiasm from temperament, Dr. Wollaston was endowed with bodily senses[125] of extraordinary acuteness and accuracy, and with great general vigour of understanding. Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had acquired a powerful command over his attention, and had habituated himself to the most rigid correctness, both of thought and of language. He was sufficiently provided with the resources of the mathematics, to be enabled to pursue with success profound enquiries in mechanical and optical philosophy, the results of which enabled him to unfold the causes of phenomena not before understood, and to enrich the arts connected with those sciences, by the invention of ingenious and valuable instruments. In Chemistry, he was distinguished by the extreme nicety and delicacy of his observations; by the quickness and precision with which he marked resemblances and discriminated differences; the sagacity with which he devised experiments and anticipated their results; and the skill with which he executed the analysis of fragments of new substances, often so minute as to be scarcely perceptible by ordinary eyes. He was remarkable, too, for the caution with which he advanced from facts to general conclusions: a caution which, if it sometimes prevented him from reaching at once to the most sublime truths, yet rendered every step of his ascent a secure station, from which it was easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions. Thus these illustrious men, though differing essentially in their natural powers and acquired habits, and moving, independently of each other, in different paths, contributed to accomplish the same great ends—the evolving new elements; the combining matter into new forms; the increase of human happiness by the improvement of the arts of civilized life; and the establishment of general laws, that will serve to guide other philosophers onwards, through vast and unexplored regions of scientific discovery."
My history draws towards a conclusion.—Sir Humphry Davy, during the latter days of his life, was cheered by the society and affectionate attentions of his godson, the son of his old friend Mr. James Tobin.[126] He had been the companion of his travels, and he was the solace of his declining hours.
He had been resident for some months at Rome, where he occupied the second floor of a house in Via di Pietra, a street that leads out of the Corso. During this period, he declined receiving any visitors, and had constantly some one by his side reading light works of interest to him, an amusement which was even continued during his meals.
As soon as the account of Sir Humphry having sustained another paralytic seizure was communicated to Lady Davy, who was in London at the time, she immediately set off, and so rapidly was her journey performed, that she reached Rome in little more than twelve days. Dr. John Davy, also, hastened from Malta, on receiving intelligence of his brother's imminent danger.
During his slow and partial recovery from this seizure, he learnt the circumstance of his name having been introduced into parliamentary proceedings, in the following manner. On the 26th of March 1829, on presenting a petition in favour of the Catholic claims from a very great and most respectable meeting at Edinburgh, Sir James Mackintosh, after having mentioned the name of Sir Walter Scott as being at the head of the petitioners, continued thus:—"Although not pertinent to this petition, yet connected with the cause, I indulge in the melancholy pleasure of adding to the first name in British literature the first name in British science—that of Sir Humphry Davy. Though on a sick-bed at Rome, he was not so absorbed by his sufferings as not to feel and express the glow of joy that shot across his heart at the glad tidings of the introduction of a bill which he hailed as alike honourable to his religion and his country."
I am assured that the last mark of satisfaction which he evinced from any intelligence communicated to him was on reading the above passage. He showed a pleasure unusual in his state of languor at the justice thus done, in the face of his country, to his consistency, to his zeal for religion and liberty, and to the generous sentiments which cheered his debility. The marks of his pleasure were observed by those who were brought most near to him by the performance of every kind office.
Although there appeared some faint indications of reviving power, his most sanguine friends scarcely ventured to indulge a hope that his life would be much longer protracted. Nor did he himself expect it. The expressions in his Will (printed in an Appendix) sufficiently testify the opinion he had for some time entertained of the hopelessness of his case.
In addition to this Will, he left a paper of directions, which have been religiously observed by his widow. He desires, for instance, that the interest arising from a hundred pounds stock may be annually paid to the Master of the Penzance Grammar School, on condition that the boys may have a holiday on his birthday.[127] There is something singularly interesting in this favourable recollection of his native town, and of the associations of his early youth. It adds one more example to show that, whatever may have been our destinies, and however fortune may have changed our conditions, where the heart remains uncorrupted, we shall, as the world closes upon us, fix our imaginations upon the simplicities of our youth, and be cheered and warmed by the remembrance of early pleasures, hallowed by feelings of regard for the memory of those who have long since slept in the grave.
With that restlessness which characterises the disease under which Sir Humphry Davy suffered, he became extremely desirous of quitting Rome, and of establishing himself at Geneva. His friends were naturally anxious to gratify every wish; and Lady Davy kindly preceded him on the journey, in order that she might at each stage make arrangements for his comfortable reception. Apartments were prepared for him at L'Hotel de la Couronne, in the Rue du Rhone; and at three o'clock on the 28th of May, having slept the preceding evening at Chambery, he arrived at Geneva, accompanied by his brother, Mr. Tobin, and his servant.
At four o'clock he dined, ate heartily, was unusually cheerful, and joked with the waiter about the cookery of the fish, which he appeared particularly to admire; and he desired that, as long as he remained at the hotel, he might be daily supplied with every possible variety that the lake afforded. He drank tea at eleven, and having directed that the feather-bed should be removed, retired to rest at twelve.
His servant, who slept in a bed parallel to his own, in the same alcove, was however very shortly called to attend him, and he desired that his brother might be summoned. I am informed that, on Dr. Davy's entering the room, he said, "I am dying," or words to that effect; "and when it is all over, I desire that no disturbance of any kind may be made in the house; lock the door, and let every one retire quietly to his apartment." He expired at a quarter before three o'clock, without a struggle.
On the following morning, his friends Sismondi[128] and De Candolle were sent for; and the Syndics, as soon as the circumstance of his death was communicated to them, gave directions for a public funeral on the Monday; at which the magistrates, the professors, the English residents at Geneva, and such inhabitants as desired it, were invited to attend. The ceremony was ordered to be conducted after the custom of Geneva, which is always on foot—no hearse; nor did a single carriage attend. The cemetery is at Plain-Palais, some little distance out of the walls of the town. The Couronne being at the opposite extremity, the procession was long.
The following was the order of the procession:—[129]
| The Two Syndics, (in their robes) | { | M. Mastow M. Gallatin. |
| Magistrates of the Republic, | { | M. Fazio, M. Salladin. |
Professors of the College, in their robes,
MM. Simond de Sismondi—A. de Candolle.
THE ENGLISH.
Lord Eglington,
Lord Twedell,
Right Hon. Wm. Wyckham,
Capt. Archibald Hamilton,
Mr. Campbell,
Mr. Franks,
Wm. Hamilton, Esq.,
Ex-Ambassador at Naples.
Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart.
Colonel Alcock,
Captain Swinters,
Mr. Alcock,
Mr. Drew,
Mr. Heywood,
Mr. Sitwell,
&c.
The Students of the College.
The Citizens of Geneva.
The English service was performed by the Rev. John Magers, of Queen's College, and the Rev. Mr. Burgess.
The grave was stated in the public prints to be next to that of his friend the late Professor M. A. Pictet: this is not the fact. It is far away from it, on the second line of No. 29, the fourth grave from the end of the west side of the Cemetery.
Sir Humphry Davy having died without issue, his baronetcy has become extinct.
At present, the only memorial raised to commemorate the name of this distinguished philosopher is a Tablet placed in Westminster Abbey by his widow. It is thus inscribed:—
TO THE MEMORY OF
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BARONET;
DISTINGUISHED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
BY HIS
DISCOVERIES IN CHEMICAL SCIENCE.
PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY;
MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
BORN 17 DECEMBER 1778, AT PENZANCE.
DIED 28 MAY 1829, AT GENEVA,
WHERE HIS REMAINS ARE INTERRED.
The numerous scientific societies of which he was a member, will, no doubt, consecrate his memory. An eloquent Eloge has been read by Baron Cuvier before the Institute of France; but it has not yet been published: I have obtained, however, a copy of a speech delivered upon the same occasion, by H. C. Van der Boon Mesch, before the Institute of the Netherlands.
Mr. Davies Gilbert, his early friend and patron, has likewise paid to his memory a just and appropriate testimony of respect and admiration, in an address from the chair of the Royal Society.
The inhabitants of Penzance and its neighbourhood, animated by feelings of honourable pride and strong local attachment, will shortly, it is understood, raise a pyramid of massive granite to his memory, on one of those elevated spots of silence and solitude, where he delighted in his boyish days to commune with the elements, and where the Spirit of Nature moulded his genius in one of her wildest moods.
As yet, no intention on the part of the Government to commemorate this great philosopher, by the erection of a national monument, has been manifested: for the credit, however, of an age which is so continually distinguished as the most enlightened period in our history, I do hope the disgrace of such an omission may pass from us; although, I confess, it is rather to be wished than expected, when it is remembered that not a niche has been graced by the statue of Watt, while the giant iron children of his inventive genius are serving mankind in every quarter of the civilized world. A very erroneous impression would seem to exist with regard to the object and importance of such monuments. They are not to honour the dead, but to improve the living; not to give lustre to the philosopher, but to afford a salutary incentive to the disciple; not to perpetuate discoveries, for they can never be lost; but to animate scientific genius, and to engage it upon objects that may be useful to the commonwealth. Let it be remembered, that the ardour of the Roman youth was kindled into active emulation, whenever they beheld the images of their ancestors.
"Nam sæpe audivi, Q. Maximum, P. Scipionem, præterea civitatis nostræ præclaros viros, solitos ita dicere, cùm majorum imagines intuerentur, vehementissimè sibi animum ad virtutem accendi. Scilicet non ceram illam, neque figuram tantam vim in sese habere; sed memoriâ rerum gestarum eam flammam egregiis viris in pectore crescere, neque prius sedari, quàm virtus eorum famam atque gloriam adæquaverit."[130]
The fame of such a philosopher as Davy can never be exalted by any frail memorial which man can raise. His monument is in the great Temple of Nature.[131] His chroniclers are Time and the Elements. The destructive agents which reduce to dust the storied urn, the marble statue, and the towering pyramid, were the ministers of his power, and their work of decomposition is a perpetual memorial of his intelligence.