The discourse usually commenced with a short tribute of respect to the memory of those distinguished Fellows who had died since the preceding anniversary. It then proceeded to announce the choice of the Council in its award of the medals, enumerating the objects and merits of the several communications which had been honoured with so distinguished a mark of approbation, and stating the circumstances which had directed the judges in their decision.
Much has been said and written upon the inutility, and even upon the mischievous tendency of this practice; and great stress has been laid upon the vices inseparably connected, as it is asserted, with the style of composition to which it gives origin. It appears to me, however, that it is only against the meretricious execution, not against the temperate use of such discourses, that this charge can be fairly and consistently sustained; and in the chaste and yet powerful addresses of Davy, such an opinion will find its best sanction, and obtain its strongest support.
Does it follow, because praise, when unduly lavished upon the labours of the scientific dead, may create comparisons and preferences injurious to the living, that we are to stifle the noblest aspirations of our nature, and become as cold and silent as the grave that encloses their remains? Does it follow, because an undisciplined ardour may have occasionally exaggerated the merits of our contemporaries, that we are henceforth to withhold from them a just tribute of applause at their discoveries—to forego the advantages which science must derive from a plan so well calculated to awaken the flagging attention, to infuse into stagnant research a renewed spirit of animation, and to encourage the industry of the labourer in the abstract regions of science, with prospects gleaming with sunshine, and luxuriant in the fruitfulness which is to reward him?
Such was the character, such the effect of Davy's discourses. They exhibit a great assemblage of diversified talents, and display the refined views he entertained with respect to the mutual relations which the different sciences maintain with each other; they evince, moreover, a great command of language, and a power to give exact expression to what his mind had conceived.
To these six Discourses is prefixed his Address upon taking the chair of the Royal Society for the first time; the subject of which is "The present state of that Body, and the Progress and Prospects of Science." Upon this occasion, he particularly adverts to the light which the different branches of science may reflect upon each other. "In pure Mathematics—though their nature, as a work of intellectual combination, framed by the highest efforts of human intelligence, renders them incapable of receiving aids from observations of external phenomena, or the invention of new instruments, yet they are, at this moment, abundant in the promise of new applications; and many of the departments of philosophical enquiry which appeared formerly to bear no relation to quantity, weight, figure, or number, as I shall more particularly mention hereafter, are now brought under the dominion of that sublime science, which is, as it were, the animating principle of all the other sciences."
"In the theory of light and vision, the researches of Huygens, Newton, and Wollaston, have been followed by those of Malus; and the phenomena of polarization are constantly tending to new discoveries; and it is extremely probable that those beautiful results will lead to a more profound knowledge than has hitherto been obtained, concerning the intimate constitution of bodies, and establish a near connexion between mechanical and chemical philosophy."
"The subject of heat, so nearly allied to that of light, has lately afforded a rich harvest of discovery; yet it is fertile in unexplored phenomena. The question of the materiality of heat will probably be solved at the same time as that of the undulating hypothesis of light, if, indeed, the human mind should ever be capable of understanding the causes of these mysterious phenomena. The applications of the doctrine of heat to the atomic or corpuscular philosophy of chemistry abound in new views, and probably at no very distant period these views will assume a precise mathematical form."
"In Electricity, the wonderful instrument of Volta has done more for the obscure parts of physics and chemistry, than the microscope ever effected for natural history, or even the telescope for astronomy. After presenting to us the most extraordinary and unexpected results in chemical analysis, it is now throwing a new light upon magnetism.
'Suppeditatque novo confestim lumine lumen.'
"I must congratulate the Society on the rapid progress made in the theory of definite proportions, since it was advanced in a distinct form by the ingenuity of Mr. Dalton. I congratulate the Society on the promise it affords of solving the recondite changes, owing to motions of the particles of matter, by laws depending upon their weight, number, and figure, and which will be probably found as simple in their origin, and as harmonious in their relations, as those which direct the motions of the heavenly bodies, and produce the beauty and order of the celestial systems.