Davy thus expressed his own feeling of satisfaction to his mother:—
“London.
“My dear Mother,—I have been very busy in the preparation for my lectures; and for this reason I have not written to you. I delivered my second lecture to-day, and was very much flattered to find the theatre overflowing at this, as well as at the first. I am almost surprised at the interest taken by so many people of rank, in the progress of chemical philosophy; and I hope I am doing a great deal of good, in being the means of producing and directing the taste for it.
“I have been perfectly well since I visited Cornwall; and I enter upon my campaign in high health and spirits. After four months of hard but pleasant labour, I shall again be free!
“I hope you are all well. I very often reflect upon the times that are past; and my mind is always filled with gratitude to the Supreme Being, who has made us all happy; and that, in placing us in distant parts, and in different circles, neither our feelings or affections have been disturbed....
“I shall be very glad to see you again. I intend in June to pass through Scotland and to visit the Western Isles; but I hope I shall spend a part of the autumn with you.
“Pray write to me and give me a little news. Beg Kitty and Grace and Betsy and John to recollect me.
“I am, my dear mother, your very affectionate son
“H. Davy.”
The interest and spirit of enthusiasm thus roused was sedulously cultivated by Davy, and turned to the purposes of the Institution which he served. Rumford was no longer its moving and controlling spirit: his duty to the Elector of Bavaria, and his ill-starred devotion to Madame Lavoisier, had gradually drawn him away from London, and in 1803 he ceased to take any active part in the fortunes of his offspring. Shortly afterwards Sir Joseph Banks also withdrew. In a letter written April, 1804, he tells Rumford that his continued absence from England is a great detriment to the Institution:—
“It is now entirely in the hands of the profane. I have declared my dissatisfaction at the mode in which it is carried on, and my resolution not to attend in future. Had my health and spirits not failed me, I could have kept matters in their proper level, but sick, alone, and unsupported, I have given up what cannot now easily be recovered.”
Sir John Hippesley, who became treasurer, strove to make the Institution above all things fashionable. He had a project for placing private boxes in the theatre, and was concerned about its want of a proper coat-of-arms. Mr. Bernard still continued to hope that Sydney Smith’s lectures on Moral Philosophy might somehow better the condition of the poor. They would, at least, said Horner, “make the real blue-stockings a little more disagreeable than ever, and sensible women a little more sensible.” But the real directing power was Davy, and he gradually stamped upon the place the character it now possesses. How he felt his power and used it, may be gleaned from the following extract from a lecture in 1809, in reference to a fund which had been raised to supply him with a great voltaic battery:—
“In a great country like this, it was to be expected that a fund could not long be wanting for pursuing or perfecting any great scientific object. But the promptitude with which the subscription filled was so great, as to leave no opportunity to many zealous patrons of science for showing their liberality. The munificence of a few individuals has afforded means more ample and magnificent than those furnished by the Government of a rival nation; and I believe we have preceded them in the application of the means. In this kind of emulation, our superiority, I trust, will never be lost; and I trust that the activity belonging to our sciences will always flow from the voluntary efforts of individuals, from whom the support will be an honour—to whom it will be honourable....
“Without facilities for pursuing his object, the greatest genius in experimental research may live and die useless and unknown. Talents of this kind cannot, like talents for literature and the fine arts, call forth attention and respect. They can neither give popularity to the names of patrons, nor ornament their houses. They are limited in their effects, which are directed towards the immutable interests of society. They cannot be made subservient to fashion or caprice; they must forever be attached to truth, and belong to nature. If we merely consider instruction in physical science, this even requires an expensive apparatus to be efficient; for without proper ocular demonstrations, all lectures must be unavailing,—things rather than words should be made the objects of study. A certain knowledge of the beings and substances surrounding us must be felt as a want by every cultivated mind. It is a want which no activity of thought, no books, no course of reading or conversation, can supply. That a spirit for promoting experimental science is not wanting in the country, is proved by the statement which I have just made, by the foundation in which I have the honour of addressing you, and by the number of institutions rising in different parts of the metropolis and in the provinces. But it is clear that this laudable spirit may produce little effect from want of just direction. To divide and to separate the sources of scientific interest, is to destroy all their just effect. To attempt, with insufficient means, to support philosophy, is merely to humiliate her and render her an object of dirision. Those who establish foundations for teaching the sciences ought, at least, to understand their dignity. To connect pecuniary speculation, or commercial advantages, with schemes for promoting the progress of knowledge, is to take crops without employing manure; is to create sterility, and to destroy improvement. A scientific institution ought no more to be made an object of profit than an hospitable, or a charitable establishment. Intellectual wants are at least as worthy of support as corporeal wants, and they ought to be provided for with the same feeling of nobleness and liberality. The language expected by the members of a scientific body from the directors ought not to be, ‘We have increased your property, we have raised the value of your shares.’ It ought rather to be, ‘We have endeavoured to apply your funds to useful purposes, to promote the diffusion of science, to encourage discovery, and to exalt the scientific glory of your country.’
“What this institution has done, it would ill become a person in my place to detail; but that it has tended to the progress of knowledge and invention, will not, I believe, be questioned. Compare the expenditure with the advantages. It would not support the least of your public amusements; and the income of an establishment, which, in its effects, may be said to be national, is derived from annual subscriptions scarcely greater than those which a learned professor of Edinburgh obtains from a single class....
“The progression of physical science is much more connected with your prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental philosophy some of the most important and peculiar of your advantages. It is not by foreign conquests chiefly that you are become great, but by a conquest of nature in your own country. It is not so much by colonization that you have attained your preeminence or wealth, but by the cultivation of the riches of your own soil. Why, at this moment, are you able to supply the world with a thousand articles of iron and steel necessary for the purposes of life? It is by arts derived from chemistry and mechanics, and founded purely upon experiments. Why is the steam engine now carrying on operations which formerly employed, in painful and humiliating labour, thousands of our robust peasantry, who are now more nobly or more usefully serving their country either with the sword or with the plough? It was in consequence of experiments upon the nature of heat and pure physical investigations.
“In every part of the world manufactures made from the mere clay and pebbles of your soil may be found; and to what is this owing? To chemical arts and experiments. You have excelled all other people in the products of industry. But why? Because you have assisted industry by science. Do not regard as indifferent what is your true and greatest glory. Except in these respects, and in the light of a pure system of faith, in what are you superior to Athens or to Rome? Do you carry away from them the palm in literature and the fine arts? Do you not rather glory, and justly too, in being, in these respects, their imitators? Is it not demonstrated by the nature of your system of public education, and by your popular amusements? In what, then, are you their superiors? In every thing connected with physical science; with the experimental arts. These are your characteristics. Do not neglect them. You have a Newton, who is the glory, not only of your own country, but of the human race. You have a Bacon, whose precepts may still be attended to with advantage. Shall Englishmen slumber in that path which these great men have opened, and be overtaken by their neighbours? Say, rather, that all assistance shall be given to their efforts; that they shall be attended to, encouraged, and supported.”
On a subsequent occasion, when the subjugation of Europe was threatened by the restless military spirit of France, he thus dilated upon the influence of experimental philosophy in strengthening the desire for rational freedom:—
“The scientific glory of a country may be considered, in some measure, as an indication of its innate strength. The exaltation of reason must necessarily be connected with the exaltation of the other noble faculties of the mind; and there is one spirit of enterprise, vigour, and conquest, in science, arts, and arms.
“Science for its progression requires patronage,—but it must be a patronage bestowed, a patronage received, with dignity. It must be preserved independent. It can bear no fetters, not even fetters of gold, and least of all those fetters in which ignorance or selfishness may attempt to shackle it.
“And there is no country which ought so much to glory in its progress, which is so much interested in its success, as this happy island. Science has been a prime cause of creating for us the inexhaustible wealth of manufactures, and it is by science that it must be preserved and extended. We are interested as a commercial people,—we are interested as a free people. The age of glory of a nation is likewise the age of its security. The same dignified feeling, which urges men to endeavour to gain a dominion over nature, will preserve them from the humiliation of slavery. Natural, and moral, and religious knowledge, are of one family; and happy is that country, and great its strength, where they dwell together in union.”
It was, of course, to be expected that amidst the general chorus of approval some discordant notes should be heard. People who preferred the severe and formal manner of his colleague, Dr. Young, who, in spite of his profound knowledge, could never keep an audience together, said that Davy’s style was too florid and imaginative; that his imagery was inappropriate, and his conceits violent; that he was affected and swayed by a mawkish sensibility. Dr. Paris would have us believe there was some show of justice in this accusation, but he thinks that “the style which cannot be tolerated in a philosophical essay may under peculiar circumstances be not only admissible but even expedient in a popular lecture.” The “peculiar circumstance” in Davy’s case was, in Dr. Paris’s opinion, the Royal Institution audience.
“Let us consider for a moment,” he says, “the class of persons to whom Davy addressed himself. Were they students prepared to toil with systematic precision, in order to obtain knowledge as a matter of necessity?—No—they were composed of the gay and the idle, who could only be tempted to admit instruction by the prospect of receiving pleasure,—they were children, who could only be induced to swallow the salutary draught by the honey around the rim of the cup.”