'Sir Humphry Davy, in the year 1825, originated the Zoological Society, and asked me to join, which I did most willingly; and perhaps it has been the most popular and successful of any modern society of that kind. It commenced operations by purchasing the well-known Cross collection of Exeter 'Change, in which, in my early days, I took an especial delight; for, considering all things, it was a very wonderful collection, and it is difficult to understand how, in such a confined and unhealthy spot, it could have been maintained in such good condition. The only other exhibition of the kind in London was at the Tower; the collection of animals there consisted of presents from the sovereigns of different countries. These were afterwards lent to the Zoological Society, who established their museum in the Regent's Park; and taking it altogether, it is probably the finest and best maintained in the world.'
In the spring of 1815 he returned to England, viâ Mayence and Brussels, and bought for his residence a house in Lower Grosvenor Street, No. 28.
There is perhaps no subject connected with the career of Davy with which his name is more inseparably and more honourably associated than that now to be mentioned,—and it was a subject which even the genius of a Humboldt had failed to master—namely, the brilliant and philanthropical discovery of the Safety Lamp (the original lamp in its first and simplest form is preserved in the Royal Institution), which has often been described in detail. His brother goes fully into the train of reasoning and of experiments which led to its construction. It is, as he says, a cage of wire-gauze which actually makes prisoner the flame of the deadly fire-damp, and in its prison consumes it. This grand invention—and it is not the less grand because it is so simple—by which in all probability more lives have been saved than by any other invention of similar character,—Davy nobly refused to patent, lest the sphere of its usefulness should be restricted: indeed, throughout his life he was indifferent to mere money; he was constantly giving away things for which he had no immediate use, and never kept a book after he had once read it. He received for the invention of the Safety Lamp unbounded praise and heartiest thanks from the great body of coal-owners and coal-workers of the Tyne and Wear especially; and was presented by them, on 11th October, 1817, with a magnificent service of plate worth £2,500,[111] at a public dinner at the Queen's Head Hotel, Newcastle, when the Earl of Durham (then Mr. Lambton) said in the course of his speech: 'If your fame had needed anything to make it immortal, this discovery alone would have carried it down to future ages, and connected it with benefits and blessings.'
Of this lamp (which the miners call 'a Davy,') the inventor, with his usual philanthropic spirit, often said, 'I value it more than anything I ever did.' The Emperor of Russia sent him a magnificent silver-gilt vase, the cover of which was surmounted by a figure of the God of Fire weeping over his extinguished torch, and the present was accompanied by an autograph letter. Early in the following year, his services to Science and to Humanity were recognised, somewhat tardily, by his having a baronetcy conferred upon him by the English Sovereign.[112]
In the summer of 1818 he contemplated a second visit, with Lady Davy, to the Continent. The programme included Flanders, Austria, Rome, and Naples,[113] to the two last of which places he went commissioned by the Prince Regent to investigate at Pompeii the bases of the colours employed by the ancients in their frescoes; and to discover, if possible, some chemical process of unrolling the papyric MSS. affected by the fire at Herculaneum: in this, however, he was unsuccessful; and his want of success—a thing so unusual with him—afforded him infinite chagrin. Most of the summer and part of the autumn of 1819 were spent in luxurious repose at the baths of Lucca; but the winter found him again at Rome, all the while making notes and storing up thoughts for his delightful book, 'The Consolations of Travel.'
In the summer of 1820 he returned, by way of the south of France, to his house in Grosvenor Street, and deeply interested himself in an inquiry into the 'Connexion between Magnetism and Electricity,' the result of which he communicated to the Royal Society on the 12th November.
Again he visited Scotland; and Lockhart gives a graphic account of the party at Abbotsford, in the autumn of this year, as they started on a sporting expedition, in which, after sketching the portraits of some members of it, Scott's biographer goes on to say: