The volume forms an octavo of upwards of 250 pages; and it is quite evidence enough that the matter, no less than the manner of the lectures of Dr. Young, were more fitted for Cambridge than for the Royal Institution.
Dr. Paris thus contrasts Davy’s manner with that of Young:
To judge fairly of the influence of a popular style we should acquaint ourselves with the effects of an opposite method, and, if an appeal be made to experience, I may very safely abide the issue. Dr. Young, whose profound knowledge of the subjects he taught no one will venture to question, lectured in the same theatre, and to an audience similarly constituted to that which was attracted by Davy, but he found the number of his attendants diminish daily, and for no other reason than that he adopted too severe and didactic a style.
The first afternoon lecture was given by Dr. Young, on Wednesday, January 20, 1802, and the first evening lecture on Friday, January 22.
At the commencement he gave an introductory view of the nature and objects of the Royal Institution and of the particular plan of the lectures. Afterwards he proceeded to the subject of mechanics with the doctrine of motion.
In the introductory lecture, when dwelling on the objects of the Royal Institution and the dissemination of elementary knowledge, he said:
Those who possess the genuine spirit of scientific investigation, and who have tasted the pure satisfaction arising from an advancement in intellectual acquirements, are content to proceed in their researches without inquiring at every step what they gain by their newly-discovered lights, and to what practical purposes they are applicable; they receive a sufficient gratification from the enlargement of their views of the constitution of the universe, and experience in the immediate pursuit of knowledge that pleasure which others wish to obtain more circuitously by its means. And it is one of the principal advantages of a liberal education that it creates a susceptibility of an enjoyment so elegant and so rational.
On the subject of the education of females at the Royal Institution he said:
The many leisure hours which are at the command of females in the superior orders of society may surely be appropriated with greater satisfaction to the improvement of the mind, and to the acquisition of knowledge, than to such amusements as are only designed for facilitating the insipid consumption of superfluous time.
The Royal Institution may in some degree supply the place of a subordinate university to those whose sex or situation in life has denied them the advantage of an academical education in the national seminaries of learning.